Augustine argued that the deepest problem with human life is not that we love the wrong things. It's that we love good things in the wrong order. 

That reframes a lot of what marriages quietly struggle with. They're loving good things, but loving them too much, in the wrong place, ahead of something more important. A career is good. A child is good. A ministry, a friendship, a hobby, a goal. None of these is the problem. The problem is when they get pushed up the list past where they belong, and the marriage gets demoted to make room.

When the order goes wrong, marriages go wrong. Resentment creeps in. Conversations get sharper. Distance grows between people who started out close. 

Marriage is a covenant that reorders your life. The vows you took on your wedding day weren't just promises to your spouse. They were a public declaration of how the rest of your loves would be ranked from that day forward. Here's what that ordering actually looks like.

Love God Above Your Spouse

Your spouse is loved in God and for God. Jesus said it plainly: “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37). The same logic extends to husbands and wives. The person you married is a gift, not a god. The moment they become the source of your worth, your peace, and your identity, you've handed them a job they were never designed to do, and they will eventually disappoint you for the simple reason that they aren't divine.

The healthiest marriages are not the ones where the spouses love each other most. They're the ones where each spouse loves God most, and out of that overflow, loves the other person well.

Love Your Spouse Above Your Children

We assume that loving our kids more than anything is a virtue. But the marriage covenant precedes parenting and outlasts it. Children are a gift, not the center.

When kids become the center, marriages get sacrificed on the altar of parenting. And ironically, the children grow up watching a marriage that was never actually loved well, which shapes their own future marriages in ways no one intended. Genesis 2:24 says a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife. The same principle eventually applies in reverse. Your children will leave you. Your spouse remains.

Loving your spouse above your children isn't neglecting your kids. It's giving them the gift of parents whose marriage they don't have to worry about.

Love Your Spouse Above Your Career

Provision is good. Vocation is good. Ambition is good. But your job is not your covenant.

Disordered love trades presence for achievement, intimacy for ambition. The problem isn't usually a single dramatic decision. It's a thousand small ones over many years. Late nights that became normal. Phones that came to the dinner table. Energy that was spent at work and arrived home depleted. Ecclesiastes says to enjoy life with the spouse you love. You can't enjoy what you're constantly absent from.

Love Your Spouse Above Yourself

Paul tells husbands to love their wives the way Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25). That's not a metaphor. 

Marriage rewards people who learn to die to themselves a thousand times. The dishes you didn't have to do. The conversation you didn't feel like having. The forgiveness you didn't feel like extending. The patience you didn't feel like offering. Disordered love says my happiness is paramount. Ordered love says my spouse's flourishing matters.

A Question Worth Sitting With

Here’s a question to sit with: what am I currently loving more than God? And then: where in my marriage is disordered love causing the most chaos right now?

The good news is that disordered love is reorderable. You don't have to dethrone every false love through sheer willpower. You confess it, receive God's forgiveness, and ask Him to do what only He can do, which is to become more beautiful to you than the thing currently sitting in His seat. F