My friend’s husband uses Scripture to ask for more sex, but their marriage has serious problems. What do I do?

You have a unique position of encouraging and supporting and advising, helping your friend. She's confiding in you some pretty sensitive matters of the heart, the fine China, as Paul Tripp used to say, of her marriage. She trusts you. Now, even as she's coming to you and confiding in you and looking for help, you have quite a challenging position, because you're hearing this wife's perspective, you're hearing her experience and your view, your perspective may be limited. Proverbs 18:17 says, “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.” In Solomon, in all of his wisdom, says, “Look it, when you're talking to your friend and she is presenting her case to you, you have a limited view of the whole situation.” And it's not that Scripture is saying that taking sides is inherently wrong, right? There's nothing wrong with taking sides. Our whole US legal system is based on having an advocate. So that's not wrong. But what Solomon is saying is that my advice may be missing key information, and therefore I'm going to be advising and encouraging and speaking into the life of my friend in a way that may be misdirected. I may not see the full picture. So we have to be careful.

So first, your job is to advocate for your friend, but not at the exclusion or not without also advocating for your friend’s marriage. Many, many times a person goes to a friend and confides in them, and what do friends do? They jump on board, “Oh, what a jerk. And oh, you need to do this.” And they start giving dire advice, which the person actually doesn't find helpful because they're one-flesh with their spouse and they have to live and figure it out and make it work. And answers aren't so straightforward and they may not want a divorce. So two things. Number one, she's confiding in you. And what a blessing that you have a voice into her life. Number two, be careful because your perspective may be limited. You may not be seeing everything.

Now, when we get into the heart of your question, Scripture says that sex in marriage is God's gift to build up a husband and wife's relationship, to draw them close to each other, to unify them, and to create a fruitful relationship. The sexual intimacy flows out of the quality of their relationship, out of the quality of their friendship, out of the quality of their faithfulness to one another. And you're saying there's serious problems with that relationship. The friendship is on the rocks. And so what you want to know is what's going on? Is the spouse caught in unfaithfulness and infidelity? Is there something abusive that's going on in the relationship? Is the other spouse caught in an addiction? What is the serious problems in the relationship? Is there an emotional abandonment? And it quite may be appropriate for this woman to be refraining from sexual intimacy with her husband. Sexual intimacy may not be the number one priority. Safety, clarity. This will require a lot of wisdom and discernment. And so you’ll have to ask a few more questions as to what the serious problems are in this woman’s marriage, and avoid giving dire advice.

Now, as you press forward you may find out that the problems in this relationship are more common struggles, that they’re not in crisis, and that they’re just more distant from each other. And if that’s the case, then you want to take the opportunity to paint a biblical, positive view of God’s good design for sexual intimacy in marriage. And try to understand why there’s a lack of intimacy between this wife and her husband.