Myths of Marriage #6: "Separate bank accounts are wise"

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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Another crazy myth about marriage is that having separate bank accounts keeps things fair.

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Now, I don't know what the sentiment in the room is about this, or what you've experienced.

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How many people know someone, or know a couple, who has separate bank accounts?

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Have you ever encountered that before? Okay, a few people have encountered it before. It's something that happens pretty often when couples feel like things aren't really fair in the marriage.

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They want to make things fair, so they create separate accounts. That way, no one's overspending and taking too much of the money.

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But first of all, what is fairness? When we say that this keeps things fair, what is fairness?

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Are we saying that it should be a 50 -50 split? Sometimes that's what people mean. Sometimes they mean, well, we both work separate jobs, so after we each pay our half of the rent, then the rest of that money should be for me to spend after we split our regular bills 50 -50.

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And then after that, whatever I make extra, that's for me to spend. That's an odd notion of fairness.

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There's nothing in marriage that is really symmetric. Why would we expect the finances to be symmetric?

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Fairness in general tends to be very misguided. So what you see in marriage is that authority is not symmetric, according to the

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Bible. General duties are not symmetric, given what the Bible describes about marriage.

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It's even the case that physically it's not symmetric. Men are different than women. And for example,

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I can get a certain amount of sleep and be fine. Sarah can get an extra hour. Sometimes it's not enough.

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And so I could be very tempted to say, well, that's not fair. It should be – she should have to wake up at the same time

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I do, et cetera. That attitude is not a good foundation for marriage.

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And just to give you all some other tidbits about how fairness – notions of fairness can often be misguided and what you should be looking for is something more principled and well -grounded.

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Consider how people think about fairness in life. A lot of times they look at the situation where some people have more than others, and they think that's not fair.

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So even though God created property, he created the eighth commandment, which says, Thou shalt not steal, which means there's property.

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Even though he said that man should have dominion over the creatures, which means that people are going to have ownership over things.

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There are a lot of people who have looked at the situation where some people have more than others and say that's not fair. So they abolish the notion of property and try to live in a commune or some communistic way.

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And they think that that is going to be more fair. So they take what God calls good and they throw it out and replace it with something else that they think is going to be good because they've elevated this notion of fairness so highly.

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And you see that just in a lot of places where people take a true impartiality and they replace it with this false impartiality.

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Another issue I was thinking of where a lot of people have this notion of fairness that really gives them an unbiblical view of things.

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A lot of people think about this with salvation. I know that when I was a kid, I thought it was necessary that everyone had the exact same chance to hear the gospel.

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You know, that that's only fair. Everyone needs the same chance to hear the gospel or at least everybody needs a chance.

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And a lot of authors have written this. You read C .S. Lewis. He says stuff like this that if someone doesn't get a chance to get a free passage to heaven, basically, the

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Bible has something very different to say about this. And if this is new to you, well, good.

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I'm glad you're learning this. But Romans 10 .14 says, How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

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Sorry, let me start at verse 13. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

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And how are they to believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

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And how are they to preach unless they are sent? And as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.

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So, the Bible says that someone is not saved unless they hear the gospel. This is the way the

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Bible describes the situation. But so many people, rather than keeping the Bible and what

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God has said as the determiner of truth, rather take their own notion of fairness as a determiner of truth, and they say, no, it must be the case that either everybody hears or if they don't hear, then they get a free passage to heaven.

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But the Bible says exactly the opposite. And this attitude that people have, they take it to salvation, they take it to notions of how government should work, and they take it even to their marriage, right?

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So, church, government, family, basically all the different societies you have in life, people take that notion of fairness and they use it to confuse what

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God has made very orderly and structured. So, next I'd like you to consider, whose property is it?

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You know, if we're talking about having separate bank accounts to keep things fair, then you've got a husband with one set of finances, a wife with another set of finances.

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You've got your property split. But whose money is it? 1 Corinthians 7 says,

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For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

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So, the Bible, in talking about husband and wife and their own bodies and sexual relations, talks about them having authority over each other's bodies.

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Now, if you have ownership over each other's bodies, how much more must it be the case that you have ownership over things that are not so close to you, right?

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Other things like money or possessions. If you have authority over each other's bodies, if that's a shared good, then how much more is it the case that your money is a shared good?

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So, to treat it like, this is yours, this is mine, doesn't even make sense biblically with what the

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Bible says that marriage entails. And so there's several different things that are foundational in marriage that are really typically undercut by having separate bank accounts for the reason of saying that this is your property and this is my property.

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One of those is just, you know, the Bible talks about the unity between a husband and wife and that's a serious, very serious foundation in marriage.

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The Bible says that they are of one flesh, right? It says that in the two become one flesh.

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It says that in Genesis, it says that in the Gospels, it says it again in Ephesians 5. And then, on top of that, you have

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Malachi 2 .15, which says the following. Did he not make them one with a portion of the

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Spirit in their union? This is speaking about what happens in marriage.

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Not only do they become one flesh, but there's also, they become one in a way that there's even a spiritual union between them where God gives his

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Spirit to unite man and woman to produce, it says, for the purpose of producing property of offspring.

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God has established even a spiritual union of marriage. Now, what kind of union is there if you're not united on your finances?

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If you feel like, well, these are my purposes and finances and these are her purposes and finances. We should have shared goals and values in a marriage.

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And you might say, well, what about the couple that doesn't have shared goals and values? What should they do? Well, they should work on becoming unified in pursuing shared goals and values.

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So the way to pursue unity is not to force the bank account and then hope that something gets fixed later.

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Rather, it's to establish a real practical unity in a way that can foster better spiritual union.

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So another foundation of marriage is trust. To trust one another. Let me give you another verse related to this.

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Proverbs 31 speaks of an excellent wife. It says, an excellent wife who can find. She is far more precious than jewels.

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The heart of her husband trusts her. He will have no lack of gain. It talks about an excellent wife in an excellent marriage involves trust.

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The husband trusts her. And so that goes in both directions. The wife trusts the husband. The husband trusts the wife.

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Why do people often have these separate accounts? It's because there is a lack of trust. And the way to deal with a lack of trust is not to say, okay,

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I've got this lack of trust that I've got to live with. What do I do in order to make you feel better about the situation?

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Rather than fostering a lack of trust, you should be, once again, creating a situation that fosters a growing trust.

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Which means taking the ethical step of entrusting your bank account with another.

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Now, also, another foundation of marriage is self -sacrifice.

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And we are the self -sacrificial for someone.

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That is what love is. Love is a giving of self. And so a marriage that's focused on self and not a giving of self, what direction is that kind of marriage headed?

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Rather, we should be trying to give of ourselves as much as we can. And that's a couple where they feel like I need to worry about myself, worry about number one, and I need this bank account in order to make sure that I'm secure in my position.

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That shows a selfishness rather than a selflessness. And what does the

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Bible say about our relationship with God and the way he has treated us?

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The analogy between marriage and Christ and the Church. It says the relationship between husband and wife, it says this in Ephesians 5, the relationship between husband and wife is like the relationship between Christ and the

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Church. And that he has given himself up for the Church. Now, should it not be the case that husbands give themselves up for the wives and the wives similarly have a love for their husbands that they're willing to give?

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And even at a loss. You know, when you get together and you make vows and you sing for richer or for poorer, so many people make these vows not meaning any of these things.

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You know, always meaning the richer part or the health part or the – I forget what the others are.

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But the good parts, but not the bad parts. You've got to mean the bad parts, too. And here's another freebie.

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If you're going to get married, and maybe I'll make these other talks. A lot of people think it will be cute and special if they write their own vows.

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There's a reason why some of these vows have stood the test of time. Vows are really significant stuff.

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I would generally recommend not writing your own vows, but rather statements that try and prove things that talk about the kind of love that you're supposed to have between a husband.

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So, in general, those things – unity, trust, self -sacrifice, foundations of a marriage – that all imply there would be a sharing of finances.

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Now, I'm going to give you a couple of caveats. I think there are a couple of times where you – it would be possibly reasonable to have separate bank accounts.

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And I don't want you to hear me say – hear me be saying something just more absolute and unreasonable than I'm actually saying it.

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Okay, so one might be for accountability. Let's say one person in a relationship has a real serious spending issue.

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And they agree together that the way to deal with that is to have an account where you can't just spend everything.

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And they agree together that, yes, for accountability purposes, this would be wise.

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I can see something like that being reasonable. But at that point, you've got a shared agreement.

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Let's say you think this is needed but you don't have a shared agreement. Oh, you should pray about it. Do you still not agree?

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I think it counts. Do you still not agree? The Bible says that man has authority in the relationship. You should decide.

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If the wife feels that she's been very wrong with the situation, the Bible offers Matthew 18 as a way to deal with this.

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The Bible gives us just a whole path of trying to navigate that issue where someone might have a – actually have a serious spending issue.

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Another situation where it might be reasonable to have separate accounts is basically, in addition to accountability for accounting – and I know those words mean the same thing etymologically, but they have different connotations, right?

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One has a connotation of impatient. The other is just talking about keeping records straight.

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Another way to ask this question would be, should a husband have a joint bank account? I read a few articles about this, and I thought it was funny how many of them were saying, oh, it's necessary for me to have a joint bank account.

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Because in reality, it's not necessary to have a bank account at all. Bank accounts are something relatively recent in history.

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You're some clever person who has this neat accounting method where you use multiple accounts. That's fine.

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Go for it. But the idea is, once again, husband and wife, if they have authority over each other's bodies, they should have authority over each other's possessions as well.

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And it's just wonderful and beautiful what can come out of this. Proverbs 31, another thing it describes, it says,

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She considers her field and buys it. With the fruit of her hands, she plants a vineyard. Now, what kind of a woman in a relationship like this can purchase vows with her own self, with her own possessions?

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And that's really what God has brought us together for in marriage, is a unity that is that kind of sacrifice, that kind of trust.

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And even in the very intimacy God has designed it such that it requires a trust with your most vulnerable state.

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So that's just an illustration of how vulnerable we should be toward each other in marriage in general.

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And keep in mind, I'm telling you all these things as singles so that when you go into marriage, you have the right ideas.

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And when you're talking to people that you might consider marriage with, you're able to talk through these things and figure these things out early rather than later, as many people do when it's too late.

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And we've already run into a lot of these issues. I was looking at the statistics, and they're a bunch of different statistics that all kind of say different things.

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But it's pretty well known that money is the top issue of dating. One of the statistics

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I saw is that 22 % of divorced couples said that that was the number one thing. And almost all of the money was one of the issues, one of the more significant issues.

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So a lot of people think they can avoid that problem by mitigating the difficulties and creating separate bank accounts.

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But if you think about it, these money problems, they're not really money problems. That's not the heart of it. The heart of it is a unity problem.

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And you don't fix a unity problem by enforcing disunity. That's just fostering the problem to grow and to become worse.

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Once again, we have a great example for us in Jesus Christ. Romans says that if he has given us a son, how will he not also give us all things?

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Christ has given us all the life for us. And a lot of people feel like, well, my spouse, he or she, doesn't appreciate the things that I do.

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How little do we appreciate what Christ has done for us? You know, he did all this for us knowing that we would not be able to appreciate the full.

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Knowing not only that we wouldn't appreciate the full, but that we would not be able to. Because what he has done for us is so infinitely good and we are so finite.

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And we should approach marriage with that same mindset of giving to God himself.

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And that should be a testimony to the world of the love that we have. Alright, let's see.