Review: The Intimate Marriage

RC Sproul. The Intimate Marriage: A Practical Guide to Building a Great Marriage.  Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, March 31^st, 2017. 163 pp.

5 out of 5

Purchase: Amazon

How is your marriage doing?  Are you growing in loving each other and also growing in godliness?  Do you desire to read a book that would help you strive to grow in these areas for your marriage?  If so this book is for you.  I realize the title of the book might sound its about sex but it isn’t solely on sex, though it does talk about that subject for one of the chapters.  It’s really a book on godly love between a husband and wife and what does God’s way looks like.  My wife and I immensely enjoyed this work.  I found this work very helpful so much so that I incorporated some of the insights of the book into my twenty four session series on marriage difficulties.

 

This was first written by the late RC Sproul in 1975 though it was reissued by the publishers in 2003.  Given that this was one of the earlier books by Sproul I found the work refreshing and also it was more “raw,” in the sense of him speaking in quite a transparent and honest manner about his flaws and desires.  I was kind of surprised at some of the things Sproul talked about!

This book has six chapters.  Chapter one is on communication in marriage, chapter two is on the role of the man and woman in marriage while chapter three is about problems in marriage and chapter four is about divorce.  Chapter is about communication and sex while chapter six is titled “The Institution and Sanctity of Marriage.”  Each of the chapter’s topic is important and relevant.  They are biblical and practical.

I recommend this book!

Here are some of the insights I appreciated from the book:

• Intimacy is more than physical sexual relations. One can have sex without intimacy but one cannot communicate in marriage without intimacy (12).  That intimacy between a husband and wife must also proceed before sexual union and of course intimacy increases with that coming first before sexual acts.
• Husbands and wives should work hard to learn and know about each others. The task of learning about one’s spouse never ends (23).
• 50/50 marriage is a myth. It isn’t reality and two things happen when one strive to have exactly 50/50 marriage: the marriage becomes paralyzed by stand off and/or there’s a constant struggle for authority (47).
• A wife shouldn’t subvert husband’s authoritative role even is the husband neglects his responsibility of leading the family. That’s similar to the way a son does not become the dad just because the dad neglect his duty of being a godly father (49).
• It’s all too easy for married men to give more attention to his spouse when he was courting his wife than when he’s married. But this ought not be.
• If marriage problems are solved it must be done biblically (66).