Five Categories for Jealous Purity in Marriage

We know that marriage is a picture of God’s loving covenant relationship with his people (Ezekiel 16:1–14; Ephesians 5:25–32). But have you considered that God’s jealousy—his demand for exclusivity—provides us with a picture of purity in marriage?

Jealousy Means Exclusivity

God is jealous for us both internally and externally. Internally—regarding what we love—he is jealous for his people’s exclusive affection (Exodus 34:16). Externally—regarding what influences us—he protects his people from outside manipulation and destroys those who would adulterously “eat the fruit” that was to be his alone (Jeremiah 2:1–3). This exclusive jealousy that God has for our relationship with him is repeatedly and emphatically highlighted throughout Scripture.¹

In Ezekiel 8, the prophet sees a vision of the temple, where Israel had set up “the image of jealousy, which provokes to jealousy” (Ezekiel 8:3). This “image of jealousy” was probably a figure of the Canaanite goddess Asherah, commentator Ian M. Duguid explains. “Modern readers may find this description [of God’s jealousy] strange, being accustomed to thinking of jealousy as a sinful emotion. However, appropriate jealousy refuses to share things that ought not to be shared, such as one’s spouse. Since Israel is the Lord’s bride (cf. Ezekiel 16), her attachment to other gods or goddesses alongside the Lord appropriately stirs his jealous anger against her.”²

Spouses are not meant to be shared, because marriage is exclusive. A husband and wife are to covet one another’s exclusive intimacy and affection. As Duguid observed, this sort of jealousy is appropriate. It is also extensive—it not only rules out adultery, but any form of intimacy belonging to the domain of marriage. 

According to Genesis 2, God establishes the domain of marriage as including:

1. Companionship. “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18)
2. Unity and satisfaction. “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23)
3. Authority and relational influence. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife” (Genesis 2:24)
4. Sexual intimacy. “They shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24)
5. Emotional and relational intimacy. “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25)

In each of these spheres, the bond between husband and wife is preeminent over all other relationships and activities, and serves as the determining factor for how those relationships and activities are ordered.

This does not mean that the husband as head (Ephesians 5:23) controls and micromanages every aspect of his wife’s life in an oppressive dictatorship that does not reflect the love of Christ for his bride (Ephesians 5:25). Rather, the husband and wife take such delight in one another as loving, intimate, united companions that they, in the words of the traditional marriage vows, forsake all others to love, comfort, honor, and keep one another in faithfulness as long as they both live.³

Jealousy Means Purity

All of this is a picture of worship. The Old Testament depicted worship as a battle between faithfulness to the Lord and harlotry in going after other gods:

• “You shall have no other gods before me…for I the Lord your God am a jealous God.” Exodus 20:3, 5
• “Make no mention of the names of other gods, nor let it be heard on your lips.” Exodus 23:13
• “You shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name in Jealous, is a jealous God.” Exodus 34:14
• “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” Deuteronomy 4:24
• “You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you—for the Lord your God in your midst is a jealous God—lest the anger of the Lord your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth.” Deuteronomy 6:14-15
• “And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish.” Deuteronomy 8:19
• “They stirred him to jealousy with strange gods; with abominations they provoked him to anger.” Deuteronomy 32:16
• “Therefore, be very strong to keep and to do all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, turning aside from it neither to the right hand nor to the left, that you may not mix with these nations remaining among you or make mention of the names of their gods or swear by them or serve them or bow down to them, but you shall cling to the Lord your God just as you have done to this day… Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God.” Joshua 23:6–8, 11
• “And Judah did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins that they committed, more than all that their fathers had done. For they also built for themselves high places and pillars and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree, and there were also male cult prostitutes in the land. They did according to all the abominations of the nations that the Lord drove out before the people of Israel.” 1 Kings 14:22–24
• “For they provoked him to anger with their high places; they moved him to jealousy with their idols.” Psalm 78:58
• “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord.” Song of Solomon 8:6
• “Do not go after other gods to serve and worship them, or provoke me to anger with the work of your hands.” Jeremiah 25:6
• “I have sent to you all my servants the prophets, sending them persistently, saying, ‘Turn now every one of you from his evil way, and amend your deeds, and do not go after other gods to serve them, and then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to you and your fathers.’ But you did not incline your ear or listen to me.” Jeremiah 35:15
• “Therefore thus says the Lord God: Surely I have spoken in my hot jealousy against the rest of the nations and against all Edom, who gave my land to themselves as a possession with wholehearted joy and utter contempt, that they might make its pasturelands a prey.” Ezekiel 36:5
• “The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.” Nahum 1:2

The New Testament took up this theme as well, often linking idolatry to the breaking of the marriage covenant:

• “Abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality.” Acts 15:20
• “You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?” Romans 2:22
• “But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater.” 1 Corinthians 5:11
• “Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, ‘The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.’”⁴ 1 Corinthians 10:7
• “For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 11:2
• “For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.” Ephesians 5:5
• “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, ‘He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us’?” James 4:4–5
• “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” 1 John 2:15

There’s an exclusivity to Christianity that permits no other relationship to encroach upon God’s claim on our lives. Jesus said, “Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33).

Think about that: All that he has. Jesus expands the exclusivity and preeminence of his relationship with us far beyond idolatry and sexual immorality. He blows up the categories entirely and says that anything at all—even good things like your spouse, parents, children, or your own life—can mar the purity of our relationship with him (Luke 14:26). 

What this means for our marriages is that both husband and wife should protect the purity, sanctity, and holiness of their relationship to the same degree that God protects the purity, sanctity, and holiness of his own relationship with his people.

Precisely because the marriage relationship is a picture of his love toward us, in our marriages everything must be on the table as something we may need to cut off for the sake of our relational purity.

Five Categories for Jealous Purity in Marriage

As you consider these five categories for relational purity, consider what purity actually is. 

Yes, at one level it is denying, rejecting, refusing, and avoiding things. But the goal of denying yourself those things is to enjoy something much better. Purity protects what you have so that it can be the very best it was meant to be.

Relational purity means a beautiful, unified marriage. It means healthy, joyful communication. It means regular, pleasurable sex. It means trust and freedom from shame. It means a functional, independent family unit living with a God-given, God-glorifying purpose.

Purity is the path towards a relationship that is pleasing to the Lord because it reflects his design for marriage. And in that design you will find the relationship you’ve always wanted with your spouse. 

So view these categories as areas to prune in order that they would grow to be areas of blessing, flourishing, intimacy, and joy.

1. Purity regarding companionship

It is “not good” for the man to be alone. God’s solution to loneliness is marriage, so for those who are married, the primary source for fulfilling your desire for companionship is your spouse.⁵

Therefore purity in your marriage—or, if you’re unmarried, your future marriage—requires you to eliminate anything that would keep you from providing companionship for your spouse and receiving the same.

If your job description, standard of living, dreams of travel or retirement, or foolish spending require one or both spouses to work to the extent that your primary source of companionship is other people, the job or spending needs to go.

The same goes for friends, children, and hobbies: as enjoyable and beneficial as these things can be, ladies’ night, Junior’s travel ball, and fishing are optional. The purity of your marriage is required by God, and takes precedence over each and every one of those things.

2. Purity regarding unity and satisfaction

Adam was overjoyed when he saw God’s design for unity between husband and wife. His cry of “At last!” (Genesis 2:23) indicated a deep satisfaction at how his wife complemented and completed him as “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”

Purity in your marriage requires you to eliminate anything that would keep you from unity and satisfaction. This is almost always a mental battle. If you find yourself wishing that your spouse was more like so-and-so, or wishing that he did this or she stopped doing that, you’ve found the problem: You are breaking the 10th commandment, which says that you shall not covet a wife different from your own (Exodus 20:17).

Since the fall, every marriage has involved two sinners—two less-than-perfect people. The solution is to renew your mind in biblical thinking (Romans 12:2). As you do, you will be able to see your spouse as God does: His hand-crafted creation, renewed and remade, clothed in the righteousness of Christ, and given as a special gift to you.

3. Purity regarding authority and influence

Many influences will seek to undermine the marriage relationship. This is why God established marriage with explicit instructions on how authority should work in the relationship: Leave and cleave (Genesis 2:24).

Leaving is not only for the man, and he does not only leave his father and mother. Husband and wife alike must leave all influences that would improperly affect the relationship, the husband’s role as leader, and the wife’s role as helper.

This could—and often does—involve changes to how you relate to in-laws, but it will also affect how you relate to siblings, grandparents, relatives, BFFs, friend groups, therapists, podcasters, social media influencers, gaming buddies, and much more. Leaving certainly also includes past romantic relationships, which can be complicated if children or business associations arose from those past entanglements.

4. Purity regarding sexual intimacy

In marriage, two become one flesh, but adding a third will destroy the one-flesh union. Because sexual immorality, sexual temptation, lustful thoughts, and pornography so thoroughly pollute the purity of marriage, you must eagerly filter out anything that might lead towards failures in those areas. You cannot say you care about your spouse and then give her a jug of sewage water to drink. You must keep every part of your life free from these things, for a little impurity contaminates the whole jug.

Protecting and prioritizing your sexual intimacy may require you to remove threats including workplace environments, computers, phones, alone time, novels, movies, TV, YouTube, magazines, social media, men’s lounges, sports bars, the gym, coffee stands with flirty baristas, games or apps with sultry ads, AI image generators, deleting and blocking contacts, and so on. Anything that threatens the one-flesh union between husband and wife must be forsaken.

5. Purity regarding emotional and relational intimacy

The man and his wife were fully exposed to one another, yet had no shame. Sin, of course, would introduce shame into the relationship, and the couple would attempt to cover themselves to hide from God—and from one another. Yet even in this sin-cursed world God has granted a pure intimacy within marriage that allows a man and woman to be naked—literally and figuratively—before one another without shame.

Many things can hinder such emotional, relational, and sexual intimacy. Any of the previous four categories can cause problems, as can unconfessed or unforgiven sin, bitterness, unrealistic or unrealized expectations, memories of past failures, grief, and more.

The two ways to right the ship are 1) a clear understanding of the gospel, which will introduce humility on account of your own failures, forgiveness and understanding for the failures of your spouse, and 2) a Spirit-dependent, God-glorifying, Christ-centered prioritizing of your marriage regarding companionship, unity, mutual satisfaction, trust and respect for one another in your God-given roles, and relational intimacy that leads to joyful, shame-free sexual intimacy.

Five Questions to Consider

To conclude, let’s apply these truths to your marriage as you ask yourself the following questions.

Companionship. If your marriage lacks companionship, then consider: What is keeping me from giving and enjoying rich and ongoing companionship with my spouse? 

Unity and satisfaction. If your marriage lacks unity and mutual delight, then consider: What is keeping me from being satisfied with my spouse?

Authority and influence. If your marriage lacks healthy, well-functioning authority and submission, then consider: Are there any relational influences that affect how I lead my wife or submit to my husband?

Sexual intimacy. If your marriage lacks sexual intimacy and exclusivity, then consider: Is there anything that you allow in your life which pulls you towards intimacy—real or imagined—with anyone who is not your spouse?

Emotional and relational intimacy. If your marriage lacks emotional and relational intimacy, then consider: Is there anything that gets in the way of my relationship with the Lord, which includes growth in spiritual disciplines and my understanding of the gospel? Is there anything that gets in the way of prioritizing companionship, unity, trust, and openness in my marriage?

---

Notes

1. See the partial list of passages in the next section of this article. ↩︎
2. Ian M. Duguid, Ezekiel, ESV Expository Commentary, Volume 6: Isaiah–Ezekiel (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022), 964. ↩︎
3. The exclusivity and purity of marriage does not mean that you cannot enjoy relationships and activities apart from your spouse. Within the context of marital primacy and relational purity, you will both find freedom for ministry, fun, friends, hobbies and more. A husband or wife is wrong to demand every ounce of their spouse’s attention, affection, service, and delight because, according to the divine reality to which marriage points, God’s demand for our love from our whole heart, soul, and mind includes and results in love for our neighbor (Matthew 22:37-40). Demanding, controlling, manipulative, and abusive spouses are oppressive and fail to honor the spouse as an autonomous image bearer. The focus of this paper is the neglect of God’s design for marital purity and exclusivity, not the abuse of it. ↩︎
4. “‘To play’ probably refers to partying (possibly including immoral sex) while committing idolatry.” Andrew David Naselli, 1 Corinthians, ESV Expository Commentary, Volume 10: Romans–Galatians (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 304. ↩︎
5. For those who are single, in Christ you have something better than marriage. See “Single in Christ: A Name Better Than Sons and Daughters” in John Piper, This Momentary Marriage (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2009), 105–114. Available for free online at https://www.desiringgod.org/books/this-momentary-marriage. ↩︎