What Makes a Man Worthy of Marriage?

We have all heard the saying: A good man is hard to find. This phrase is sad, but true. A good man is hard to find.

Good woman aren’t much easier to find. It seems that many young men and women today grow up to be anything but. Long gone are the days of men acting like men and women behaving like women. The values that once helped shape a young person into a admirable adult are no longer taught or even acknowledged, values like: honesty, integrity, courage, honor, responsibility, and respect.

Today, culture values values individualism, self-reliance, wealth and material success, education, and a cut-throat drive. In a world teeming with self-absorbed, self-focused individuals it is difficult to find people to befriend let alone marry. And if you are a woman looking to be married, it can be as I said before “hard to find a good man.”

So where do you look to find such a man? Once you have found him how do you evaluate whether or not he is marriage material? What makes a man worthy of marriage?

My thinking is this: A man worthy of marrying must in fact be a man. Sounds pretty straightforward right? But who or what determines that a man is indeed a man? It may sound crazy but I’m going to refer to the Bible on this one. It actually has a lot to say about men being men since it gives us a detailed outline of the greatest man ever to roam the earth…you know, Jesus. Talk about a man being a man.

There is an infinite amount of characteristics that Christ holds that distinguish Him as a worthy man, one that hopefully husbands and future husbands will emulate. Of Jesus’ endless characteristics, a few that stand out to me in the “man being a man” arena, are His humility, love and self-sacrifice.

Humility in a man today is unfortunately a rare quality. If you walked up to the average man on the street and asked him if he was humble he would probably say “no” and rightfully so. The word “humility” has become a dead concept in today’s culture. Most men today don’t want to be associated with being humble. They want to be seen as driven, aggressive,and self-reliant. Christ however said, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve…”

When it comes to choosing a man worthy of marriage, it seems like the quality of “love” would be a given. But the world sells a counterfeit version of love. The world’s love is self-serving, self-satisfying, greedy, circumstantial, and selfish.

Kids today are told love is sex and not only sex but sex with lots of people. The love of Christ, which we can never fully comprehend, however is not based on circumstances or how “good” we are or aren’t. His love for us does not shift or sway, undulate or vacillate. A man earnestly seeking to follow Christ’s example of love, to me, is worthy of marriage.

Lastly, Christ was self-sacrificing. Since we know that it is counter-culture for a person to be self-sacrificing, we also know that this quality is rarely seen. Who in today’s society is seen laying down their time, comforts, money, let alone life, for others? Self-sacrifice goes hand-in-hand with humility and love. It is a product of the first two. The self-sacrificing man says his own wants and needs can be relegated to those of his wife and/or children. A man willing to sacrifice himself for his family or wife, I feel, is worthy of marriage, as well.

When I consider these three qualities I realize how truly opposite they are of the world’s message. Boys aren’t raised to be men any longer. They are raised to be imitations of a man. Men in name only, not in action. But Christ gave us a perfect model of a man. A model to look to when asking the question, “What makes a man worthy of marriage?”

What do you think are the qualities a man should hold in order for marriage? What else does the world tell men they should be but Christ does not? If you are married what made your spouse worthy?