Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas

Week 3: Chapter 2 — The Revealing Power of Marriage

Read Chapter 2 of Sacred Marriage. Key passages: Jeremiah 17:9; Matthew 15:18–19; 1 Corinthians 13:4–7.

Thomas argues that marriage is perhaps the most honest mirror God gives us — not because our spouse is always right about us, but because the relationship strips away the performance and shows us what is really there.

Discussion Questions

7 questions

1.Thomas argues that we can maintain a flattering self-image much more easily when we are alone than when we are married. Do you agree? What specifically does marriage reveal that solitude or even friendship does not?

2.He discusses how the way we treat our spouse when no one is watching is one of the truest measures of our spiritual character. How does that standard sit with you? What does it reveal?

3.Thomas observes that we are often far more patient and kind with strangers or coworkers than with our own spouses. Why do you think that is? What does that gap reveal about where your virtue is genuinely rooted and where it is merely performed?

4.He warns against using our spouse's faults as a way of avoiding examination of our own. When have you found yourself focusing on your spouse's failings as a distraction from your own? What might God be trying to show you in those moments?

5.Thomas talks about the way anger, selfishness, and pride tend to surface in marriage in ways they don't in other relationships. What does the consistent re-emergence of a particular sin in your marriage tell you about where deeper transformation still needs to happen?

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Closing Prayer

Full guide

Lord, we are so practiced at protecting our self-image, and marriage keeps getting in the way of that project. Thank you. Thank you for a relationship that sees through our public performance and exposes what is truly inside. We confess the pride, the impatience, the selfishness — the things marriage has shown us that we would rather not see. We bring them to the cross, the only place they can be truly dealt with. Give us the humility to be revealed, and the hope to be transformed. Amen.

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