God’s creation is full of surprising variety. Such diversity extends to human creation. Each person is made in God’s image, each fallen and finite, each body and soul destined for eternity, each valuable, but each different. The wonder of personhood is dim to us only because it is ubiquitous. It is everywhere we look and we are part of it, so it can be hard to see. We climb mountains or visit remote coastlines to marvel at creation, when the driver’s license office may be even more spectacular—if we only had eyes for the wonder of created personhood.

God did not make people clones. While humans are one “kind,” the variety within humanity is staggering, and evidence of how particular God is in His creation. Between nature and nurture—we might call that small-scale creation and providence—God fashions each particular human. The image of God in every person expresses aspects of the Lord who made us and takes care of us. Some shared attributes, such as anger, are often twisted through the fall, but the capacities for creativity, innovation, love, thought, and dominion all find varied expression in the human creation that was the crown to the six days of God’s creative work. Each man, woman, and child has unique being and purpose and thought.

This has implications for marriage and is part of God’s design for the relationship. A recognition of our spouses’ personhood really is a lived-out acknowledgment of their fundamental identity. As part of God’s creation, our spouses have individuality: unique status as human beings made in God’s image. This extends far beyond their created bodies. God also made their minds, hearts, and souls. Each person is a different mix of genetics and family culture, history, and experience, which make the person who he or she is. The person has his or her own gifts and abilities, likes and loathings, interests, strengths, and failings. Personality is a large part of this, but personhood goes even deeper. Before this person is your spouse—and long after he or she is your spouse—the person is his or her own self before God, totally apart from you.

This concept might not sound like the fast track to oneness, but Scripture teaches both things: unity in marriage and a sanctified individualism. We have looked at oneness already. Unity is fundamental in a marriage. It is a source of great joy. The idea of personhood in Scripture is repeatedly shown in the importance of everyone’s individual choices in Psalm 1; the consequences of our actions in Matthew 25, Luke 12, and Romans 2; and the primacy of our relationship to God, both as a creature and as a redeemed sinner. Even after the best, holiest marriage, each person will stand on his or her own before God to give an account and receive a reward for deeds done in the flesh. A biblical marriage promotes unity and values personhood, as Scripture itself does.

In some passages, such as 1 Corinthians 7, the two concepts of unity and personhood overlap: “The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband” (1 Cor. 7:3). Here, even corporeal individuality in decided giving creates oneness. Unity and individuality become tangled in a way that can make it difficult to discern where one starts and ends, but they are both there.

So biblical individualism is not autonomy. In other words, it is not my calling the shots, defining myself, and pursuing independence. Instead, it is a recognition that we are each created by God for a particular purpose, and each in need of His saving grace and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Biblical individualism involves accountability and distinct roles, value, and limitations. This is why it is compatible with and complementary to oneness.

Since the Bible teaches both unity and individuality, they will not be contradictory in a Christian marriage. Instead, the idea of personhood brings blessing. It gives our marriages interest, allowing us to enjoy variety. It gives us freedom, releasing us from burdens that we are not designed to bear. And it also gives us responsibility, understanding Scripture’s requirements of us in relation to personhood.

The idea of personhood in marriage gives us the happiness of enjoying our spouses’ gifts as deliberate blessings from God in their unique callings. Because our spouses are each their own person, we can be interested in their strengths and talents not just as they relate to us as our spouses, but also as who they are as individuals, serving the Lord in church and community. So often, these are the things that attract us to someone before marriage: conversational skills, a healthy work ethic, creative involvement with friends and family, athletic ability, or musical talent. After marriage, we can enjoy these even more. We can see service and gifts and talent and particular sacrifice better than anyone else, and so we can be more thankful for it and encouraged by it. We can more deeply enjoy the display of gifts in this person with whom we share life. We can be drawn into the person’s interests—our own horizons broadened by another set of utilized strengths and gifts.

And being interested fosters being interesting: there is a healthy feedback loop here. As we enjoy our spouses’ use of their unique gifts, they feel and value it and are encouraged in using them. Someone who tries to use his or her gifts in an atmosphere of inferiority or invisibility will soon lose zeal: practicing a skill or exercising a gift in an environment of criticism or dismissal makes further effort feel pointless. But the opposite is also true. Even common skills that we use daily—in work, parenting, or recreation—become sweeter when they are met with recognition and appreciation. Encouragement blesses even the most independent people, and unity becomes a fruit of recognizing individuality.

Being conscious of personhood also gives us the freedom of getting to know this other human being on a level that nobody else does. Another person, indwelled by the Holy Spirit, is something that we will never come to the bottom of in this life. We do not fully understand ourselves, let alone someone else, so in marriage we can enjoy the privilege of a lifetime of study and discovery. It is true even in the constant closeness of a marriage; there is always something new. Despite established life patterns and personalities, people are always changing. So there are always new things to observe. Sanctification is an incredibly interesting process! And it is a joy to watch, even if it comes, as it so often does, through pain. If you are in a Christian marriage, then you have a front-row seat for watching God make another believer increasingly Christlike. Things are always changing, and it is an exclusive honor to see this up close.

Knowing that your spouse is his or her own person will also give you the freedom to respect the unique likes, dislikes, and interests that your spouse has. Daily disunities in the little things have the potential to create friction and resulting heat. Maybe it is a preference in how the laundry is folded or the grass is cut or what is for supper, but respecting your spouse’s personhood can smooth things out here. Our spouses were made in God’s image, not ours, and they have their own preferences! We live in a time when cheerful, adaptable, mildly extroverted personalities are the cultural gold standard. They are the easiest to live with! Even John Owen, writing centuries ago, noted this: “Some are naturally of a more tranquil and quiet temper than others. These people are comparatively peaceable and useful to others.”¹

This perspective is especially true in the twenty-first-century West. People who do not fit this profile tend to be seen as aberrant. We have fewer eccentrics: people whose personalities make others uncomfortable by their intensity or introversion or grief. The characters who populated Dickens’ novels do not live in middle-class America, at least not publicly. This does not mean that there is never a time for behavioral intervention. And though certain personalities are prone to certain sins, we can never blame a personality for sin any more than we can blame circumstances for sin. Personality itself is part of divine creation and divine creativity. Each personality, though fallen, has something unique to offer, some role to play that another cannot, some perspective to show that another is unable to see. In marriage, personality is a factor that affects daily life and gives it great interest. Respecting that gives both spouses freedom to enjoy activities and ideas and blessings that we might not naturally see or appreciate. There is happiness in appreciating our spouses for being themselves.

Winston Churchill was not an easy man. The story goes that one female MP actually told him, “If you were my husband, I’d put poison in your coffee!” (He retorted that if she were his wife, he would drink it.) But a biographer wrote about Winston and his wife, Clementine: “Their completely different temperaments ... found a clear appreciation of each other.” “Their marriage never would have worked had it been otherwise.”²

We can value our spouses for who they are, not just what they do. It is easy, as the years flow on and husbands and wives follow the same routines, month after month, to blur our spouses with their role, to confuse who they are with their function in the relationship: the one who primarily cares for the children, or makes the bulk of the income, or schedules everyone’s social lives. While associations can be inevitable, m...

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