Do Your Homework

The late Walter Cronkite loved sailboats. When substitute news anchors filled in for him on the evening broadcasts they would tell viewers, “Walter Cronkite is off on assignment.” Cleverly, Cronkite named his sailboat “Assignment.”

Does the word “assignment” have a positive sound to you? Students grumble when their teachers assign them homework. Workers complain when their supervisors give them difficult assignments. Athletes feel dissatisfied when the coach assigns them to the bench instead of the starting line-up. Yet, assignments are a necessary part of life, and there can be joy in fulfilling them—especially when God himself is the one handing out the assignments.

The apostle Paul warned his Corinthian friends not to focus on their human leaders. “What, after all, is Apollos?” he asked. “And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task” (1 Corinthians 3:5). In the church, God has assigned some to be planters and others to be waterers, weeders, and harvesters, but everyone needs to work on the same team and pursue the same goal.

And the same is true in the home. When Paul spoke about marriage, he again referred to God-given assignments. After discussing marriage and divorce, Paul stated that “each one should retain the place in life that the Lord assigned to him and to which God has called him” (1 Corinthians 7:17). Earlier in the same chapter he wrote, “The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband” (v. 3). At first glance this looks like a joyless command that would remove all the romance from sexual intimacy in marriage. Where is the spark when a husband and wife come together merely to fulfill their “marital duty”? Yet, the biblical view of married love is far from joyless and dull. Have you read the Song of Solomon lately, or First Corinthians chapter 13? And what about the biblical instruction, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25)? That’s quite an assignment! It requires a man’s best effort and focused attention to lay down his life for his beloved, as does the adjacent command to wives, “Submit to your husbands as to the Lord” (v. 22).

Won’t a man’s view of his wife take on new meaning and purpose if he considers his marriage a God-given assignment—a privilege to be cheerfully instead of grudgingly fulfilled? “Be considerate as you live with your wives,” says 1 Peter 3:7, or as the King James Version puts it, “dwell with them according to knowledge.” When a man marries, he embarks upon a lifelong education in the skills of husbandry. God’s “commands are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3). Everything he asks us to do will ultimately prove good for us. In the home he has assigned us to show respect and honor, to build up instead of tearing down, to promote our partner’s best interests instead of insisting on our own way. He’s given us the privilege of a shared life—to listen and learn from one another, to experience the shared memories and deep joys that only come from being together over a long period of time.

After more than three decades together, my wife and I still have plenty of room for improvement. The Lord alone knows whether our marriage deserves an “A” grade. But since he’s the one who gave us the assignment, we are determined to keep doing our homework.