Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Marriage and Our Culture

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

We're at a cultural moment in which most people recognize that marriage is struggling. And what does the Christian vision of marriage have to say for that? We believe that understanding the biblical vision for marriage will help you no matter your own situation. We’re applying it to the culture. We're applying it to unmarried people. We're applying it to married people. Kathy and I will each talk about different aspects of this. We’ll look at 1) marriage and our culture, and 2) the biblical contours of marriage: the power, the essence, the purpose, and the three major means of marriage. This talk was given by Dr. Timothy Keller and Kathy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 30, 2012 for the conference "Marriage, Sex & Singleness Conference". Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. When it comes to marriage, we often use words like soulmate or the one. These words can reveal an underlying belief that to have a good marriage, you just have to find the perfect person. But the biblical vision for marriage is starkly different. It's a way for two imperfect people to help each other become who God intended them to be. Listen as Tim Keller explores the meaning of marriage. I will start.

What we're going to do tonight is we're going to talk and talk and talk and you're going to sit and sit and sit. But in this way, we're going to be doing it sort of as a tag team. Our goal here is to lift up the historic Christian biblical vision for marriage. In doing that, of course, we're going to be looking at all sorts of things like ethics, and we're going to look at some biblical passages. But the whole idea is there's a Christian vision for what marriage is. And we want to show you what that is and then essentially apply it to several different things. First of all, I'm going to just right now spend a kind of introductory time applying it to the crises of marriage in our culture. Right now we're at, and I'm going to show

you right away in one second, that we're at a cultural moment in which most people recognize that marriage is struggling. And what does the biblical vision of marriage have to say for that? It's impossible for us to just sit down and think, what does it mean for me, without asking, what does it mean for society? On the other hand, after that, we're going to actually have a section that Kathy and I are calling the biblical contours of marriage. And I'll tell you what those are, but Kathy and I will go back and forth and hit four of what we would call the biblical contours of marriage.

So first, marriage and our culture, and then the biblical contours, in which case, those of you who are single, we believe that the biblical vision for marriage, if you grasp it better, will help you figure out whether to seek marriage or not and how to do it. If you're married, the biblical vision for marriage will help you not only work on your own marital problems, but in general improve what you have. So we're applying it to the culture. We're applying it to unmarried people. We're applying it to married people. That's almost everybody, isn't it?

Anybody out? I don't think I left anybody out. So let me start off with a kind of marriage in cultural context. Let me start off with a kind of marriage in cultural context. Let me tell you something about what, there's a whole lot of things you've been reading and I've been reading about. Let me tell you four things, statistics, that tell us that marriage is in something of a crisis, or at least it's in a time of transition. Most everybody knows that divorce rate today is just around 50%, just about 50% of all marriages end in divorce. And that's double what it was in 1960. Double. So that's pretty big. Second important statistic. In 1970, almost 90% of all births

were to married parents. And now it's less than 60%. That's also a very, very big change. The third statistic, which I think actually in some ways is the most telling, and you may not have heard of it. I didn't until I was doing research for the book. In 1960, just about 75% of all U.S. adults were married. And today it's about 50%. That's a big, big change. Only 50% of all U.S. adults are married, whereas just 40 years ago it was three-quarters and upwards of three-quarters. And then the last one is, this is of interest,

is today, of course, in 1960, cohabitation, which was partners living together who are not married. In 1960, it was statistically negligible. I mean, there was nobody, but the point was it was essentially 0%. There were so few. Today, one quarter of all unmarried women between the ages of 25 and 40 are living with a partner. Not married. 25 percent. One quarter. And it's estimated that one half of women today will live at some point with an unmarried partner sometime before they're 40.

One half. Those are monumental changes statistically. Now, along with those changes go attitude changes. And let me give you three. This is, again, empirical stuff. It's not biblical stuff. It's just social science. Let me give you three specific attitudes that are very important,

very prevalent amongst younger adults, three specific beliefs about marriage and one general. The specific belief about marriage, the three specific beliefs are this. There is a very, very strong sense when they do studies of young adults that belief that most marriages are unhappy or become unhappy. Most marriages become unhappy. And it's actually fairly logical. If 50% of all marriages end in divorce, surely the other 50% are not all happy. So it makes sense to say that most marriages are pretty much unhappy, end up unhappy. So that's a pretty negative view, and that view is there. A second view, which again is negative amongst young adults, is that the key, the reason why it's so hard to be happily married, is the key to marriage is finding a compatible mate. This is something, by the way,

that say 30 years ago, nobody even thought about. 40 years ago, for sure not. But today, when studies are done, it's at the height of, it's at the very top of people's consciousness. What I'm looking for is a soulmate or a compatible, I'm looking for compatibility. And we'll get to what that compatibility is. I'm going to get to that really quickly. But basically, compatible means someone who I don't need to change much and someone who doesn't want to change me that much. And so finding that compatible person is at the very top of people's, you know, understanding of marriage, and they're having trouble finding it. That's the reason why they're kind of negative. Third thing is there's a very prevalent view that if you have any chance of finding that

compatible person, that cohabitation helps you do it. And having sex with people before you're married, absolutely you need to have sex. Otherwise, you have no idea if you're compatible. So the idea of living together, being good, having sex before marriage practically a necessity in order to figure out compatibility is also a belief. But in general, as I said, those are three specific beliefs.

But in general, it is pretty striking when you read this stuff, the social science, how much younger people today feel that marriage is really a problem, a scary thing, a fearful thing. Right now, one third of all high school students in this country, if you ask them, do you think that in general, being married is better than being single or living together for most individuals? That's the question. Do you believe that being married in general is better for individuals than being single and living together? Only one third say yes. Whereas we do know 50 years ago, the vast majority of people would have said being married is better. Vast majority. So there's a big change.

All right. Point one. Okay. Our attitudes toward marriage, our practices of marriage have gone through a sea change. Point two. Empirically, do our attitudes line up with reality? And no, they don't. Now here, I'm still doing social science because we're talking about culture right now. And partly because marriage is going through all these sea changes, there has been a lot of research being done in the last 20 years on marriage. And here's some interesting things that you may find. You're interesting. Did you know that those living together before marriage are more likely to divorce than people who don't live together before marriage? Did you know that? Secondly, oh, by the way, and most cohabitations don't lead to marriage. So most cohabitations don't lead to marriage, and people who get married after

cohabitation are more likely to divorce than people who have not. Secondly, in general, the earlier in a relationship that sex is introduced, the more likely that relationship is to break up and fail. Some social scientists have actually said those two facts are at such variance with what most young people believe. Most young people do not believe that at all. That social scientists actually struggle trying to figure out how it is that that's the reality on the ground, and yet it's completely at variance with beliefs. And they have to say that most younger adults want to believe that cohabitation is better and that having sex is necessary to figure out compatibility. They want to believe that, but the facts of the matter is just it's not true.

And they want to believe it so badly that they just filter out all the evidence that doesn't fit with their paradigm. It's a really big disconnect. Thirdly, here's another empirical fact. What about the idea that all marriages or most marriages are unhappy? Here's a couple things that are important. First of all, it is true that the divorce rate is 50%. But the vast majority of divorces happen to people who get married before the age of 18. And you need to know that if you get married after the age of 25 and if you have a high school diploma, especially a college diploma,

your chances of getting divorced are actually fairly small, statistically. That may not be a much consolation to the many people, of course, who have been married over 25, college educated, and their marriage is broken up. Plenty of people do. But the point is that 50% number should not be looming up in people's minds the way it does for most people. Secondly, 62% of all people for the last 15 years have said their marriage is not just happy, but very happy. If you can check happy, very happy, whatever, 62%, it's been holding up for years. It's been holding up across the time frames. Here's another one. Two-thirds of all people who check the box that their marriage is unhappy or very unhappy, if they stay together, five years later, they check the box happy. In other words,

two-thirds of all unhappy marriages, if they stay together, become happy within five years. if they stay together, become happy within five years. Two-thirds. And then, I guess I could say on top of that, there are just piles and piles of data that will tell you that married people have far higher levels of physical health, mental health, wealth accrual, even when you can control for the same age, the same ethnicity, the same educational background across the board. And the reason is most social scientists talk about what they call marital societal norm, pardon me, marital social norms. The simple fact is your spouse can force you into self-discipline in a way that your parents can't, your friends can't, your siblings can't. There is nobody that can force you into self-discipline like a spouse.

There's nothing even close. And so in general, it's the reason why right away, if you're married, your automobile insurance goes down. Listen, these are not ideologues. Those actuaries do not care. They're not Republican or Democrat. They're not Christian or atheist. They don't care. They're not culture warriors. They don't care. They just know marital social norms. The fact of the matter is something happens when you're married that actually makes you save more, makes you better with your money, makes you better with all sorts of things. And yet, now, I'm halfway done with this little part of this introductory lecture. I want you to see that what people think about marriage and the realities of marriage are utterly apart.

They are completely at variance. There's an enormous disconnect, so disconnected. In other words, young adults' view of marriage is so much more negative than the reality on the ground, that it's begging for an explanation. Now, the social scientists know that it's a problem. They just don't know where it comes from. But I will tell you. Or at least I'll tell you what I think. Where the negative view comes from is obviously not from experience. Look, there's no doubt that probably if there is an experience, it's this. The fact that the divorce rate is higher than it was 40 or 50 years ago, twice as high, means that more people go through divorce and the kids go through divorce. And if more people go through divorce, there's no doubt that that's probably the main original reason why

there's so much more of a negative view of marriage. Nevertheless, the facts on the ground are such that, like we said, your prospects of divorce are not that terrible. Marriages are not that unhappy. People who are married are, in many, many ways, are far better off. Oh, I forgot to mention, as you know, that children are raised with two married parents have two to three times, two to 300% better chance of positive outcomes than children who don't. So there's all sorts of those statistics. Okay, so why the disconnect?

Here's the disconnect. It's worldview. John Witte, who is a legal scholar and he's a historian of history. In other words, he's a historian of legal theory and legal practice, and he teaches at Emory University. He's written a lot about marriage, and he basically sums it up like this. The older ideal of marriage was a permanent contractual union designed for the sake of mutual love, procreation, and protection. But today, the new idea of marriage is a new reality as a terminal sexual contract

designed for the gratification of the individual parties. Now, let me translate that speak, okay? The older view of marriage was marriage was there to create a strong framework for lifelong devotion between a husband and a wife for three reasons. One, marriage was designed to help each party subordinate individual impulses to the greater good for the family, for the relationship. The purpose of marriage was for you to say, I want this and this, but as an individual, I'm going to put the greater good of the community, the greater good of the family, the greater good of my spouse, ahead of my own individual interests. So it's character forming. It was a way of basically getting you to subordinate your individual impulses.

Secondly, it was to get male and female, despite their gender differences and because of their gender differences, to work together in a partnership. The whole idea was that men and women are very different. Marriage was always seen as a way to bring them together and get them to work together in spite of their differences and because of their complementary differences and so forth. And then thirdly, marriage was designed to create stability, long-term stability, which is the only place that children can really safely be raised. Witte says that what changed was probably the Enlightenment. Because before the Enlightenment, even in the West,

the basic understanding of meaning in life was you get meaning in life through duty to higher things higher than you you know your community is more important than you your nation is more important than you your family is more important than you and your god is more important than you and you and you are a good person and you get meaning in life by by putting yourself lower than those things and living for those ideals and that was how you got meaning in life. The enlightenment says exactly the opposite. The way you get meaning in life is that you as an individual

must be free to do what you find fulfilling. So it's completely the opposite, which means marriage becomes something completely different. Marriage now, and this is what John Woody said, marriage is no longer a way for me to develop character. It's no longer a way for me to create stability. It's no longer something that basically is serving the broader good. That marriage is here for children. That marriage is here for my character. For marriage is here for the community, for society, to create stability. No, no. Marriage is here to fulfill

me as an individual. That's the change. And it's a big change. So for example, this is just near the end of 2010. There was an article in the New York Times by Tara Parker Pope who wrote, this is the New York Times, and the name of the article was The Happy Marriage is the Me Marriage. And she seems to understand exactly about the change. She writes this, quote, the notion that the best marriages are those that bring satisfaction to the individual may seem counterintuitive. After all, isn't marriage supposed to be about putting the relationship first? Not anymore. For centuries, marriage was viewed mainly as a social institution,

and the emotional and intellectual needs of the spouses were secondary to the survival of the marriage itself. But in modern relationships, people are looking for a partnership and they want partners who make their lives more interesting and who help each of them attain valued goals. And then she finally says, marriage used to be about us. Now it's about me. Finally says, marriage used to be about us. Now it's about me. In other words, I want to find a person, a mate, who accepts me as I am and enhances my freedom and doesn't put any shackles on me. In the old days, it was expected, I find a mate and then I serve the mate and I serve the family and I put myself second. That was the old idea.

And she says, no, that's not the old idea. Now here's the irony. Now that explains the change, right? But says, no, that's not the old idea. Now here's the irony. Now that explains the change, right? But does it explain the disconnect? No, not yet, but now I will. The new understanding of marriage as individually fulfilling has put enormous pressure on marriage that just wasn't there before. That's the irony. The new approach of marriage, I've got to find a compatible soulmate. My grandmother, my Italian grandmother, when she was, my Italian grandfather, my mother's father, immigrated from Italy, came through Ellis Island, worked, lived in little Italy and worked on some of the early subway. My grandmother was born to Sicilian immigrants. I think she was born here. I'm pretty sure. But the point was that when she was 12 and my grandfather was 20 something, she was betrothed

to him. That is, her parents said, this is the person. We've decided he's a good man. You're going to marry him. This was like 1912 or something like that. And I often talk to her about this. She married him when she was 17. He was 35. They got married. And they had a fine time. And from what I can tell from my mom and her, All reports are that she loved him and they had a loving relationship. On the other hand, she would say, you go in there expecting, you learn to love.

You get in there expecting that you're going to form a family and that's what's important. You're going to raise children. You're going to be loyal to each other. Love is important. We're going to work at that, but what's important is faithful. She didn't go in with all the, I got to find a compatible soulmate. Are you kidding? You know, can you imagine? Nobody thought like that. And as a result, they didn't have these ridiculous standards. They didn't say, oh my goodness, I've got to find somebody. I think here's what a compatible soulmate is. Somebody who, first of all, doesn't need a lot of change, low maintenance.. Somebody's very pulled together. I mean, obviously, my job is I want to get into marriage. I want to be happy and fulfilled. Remember what she said, what Sarah Parker Pope said? In other words, I'm looking for a partnership

and I want my partners to make my life more interesting and help me attain my goals. Well, this person needs all kinds of work. That's not going to happen. So you need a person who doesn't need any kind of work, and you need a person who doesn't think you need any kind of work. And actually, men are worse than women at this. I should say men are stronger than women at this. But men all say, tell the social scientists, that compatibility means a woman who doesn't want to change me.

they tell the social scientists that compatibility means a woman who doesn't want to change me. And, by the way, thirdly, since sexual chemistry is so important, the person doesn't need change. The person doesn't want you to change. You're fine the way you are. And the person needs to be

very sexually attractive. There isn't anybody out there like that. And you know what? Listen, let me just say say the average Christian single person, you have completely imbibed that even if you say, I only want to marry a Christian. Okay. Do you realize you're worse off than anybody? Because what you have said is, Oh, I'm being true to the word of God. I will only marry a Christian. And you want all those other things on topic. Whether you know, you've imbibed it and you're, it's hopeless. A person doesn't need change.

A person that won't change you. A person who's got looks and money and he's got to be loving the Lord. And so you're, it's hopeless. Stanley, Stanley Hauerwas of Duke University, some of you heard me, this is such a classic text. If you haven't heard me tell it to you, somebody else has told it to you. Stanley Hauerwas says the assumption, this is the modern assumption on which our entire culture is based. And it's the reason for the disconnect and it's reason for the crisis. He says the assumption is that there is somebody just right for us to marry and that if we look closely enough, we will find that just right person. This assumption overlooks a crucial aspect of marriage. It fails to appreciate the fact that you always marry the wrong person. We never know whom we marry. We just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right

person, just give them a while and he or she will change. For marriage being the enormous thing that it is means we are not the same person after we've entered it. So when you're looking for this person, this prospective mate, you see, he doesn't say, this is my, when you're looking for this prospective mate, you say, oh, this person's great, but you're looking at a person who's not married to you yet.

And as soon as that person gets married to you, the person's going to utterly change. And so will you. And so in the end, in other words, you have no idea who you're marrying, and then finally he says, the primary challenge of marriage is learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you so often find yourself married. Now, does that sound like bad news to you? It's good news. The point is you don't have to find that perfect person, and we're going to be talking about that tonight. Kat is going to be talking about it. We're going to be talking about it tomorrow.

Because let me end like this. Christianity can be such a relief. Christianity, Ephesians 5.25, the key passage on marriage in the Bible, and the key verse, and the key phrase in the key verse in the whole Bible about marriage is this. Husbands, love your wives. This will be true, of course, for wives. Spouses, love your spouses as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. It didn't say Jesus was looking for a compatible church. He was looking for someone who would help him reach his goals.

He was looking for someone who would enhance him. Being perfect, that would have been hard. Even non-Christian cultures have a better understanding of marriage than Western. Even non-Christian cultures have a better grasp of what Paul says here than our Western culture. Because the whole idea is fulfillment through sacrifice. Jesus Christ gave up everything, but he changed us. And if you want to know Jesus Christ and you want to enter into a union with him, a marriage to him, as it were, you have to give up everything. And then what? We're changed. Joy.

But it's not because we look in there and say, I don't have to do any changing and he doesn't want me to change. That's crazy. What a relief it is to start looking for a best friend and counselor instead of somebody who necessarily looks great and has a lot of money. What a relief is to expect conflict. What a relief. Our culture actually needs the Christian idea of marriage. All right. Now, what we're going to do for the next, I think, 45, 50 minutes is Kathy and I are going to go back and forth on, and I didn't bring the notes up, but I think I can remember it. We're going to talk about the biblical contours of marriage. So we're going to lay out a kind of biblical vision. And Kathy's first going to talk about the power of marriage.

I think I can remember. Kathy's going to talk about the power of marriage. I'm going to come back and talk about the essence, so power for marriage then me the essence of marriage and Kathy will come back and talk about the mission or the purpose of marriage, and finally we'll come both back and forth to talk about the three major means of marriage, truth, love, and grace. So, like I said, we're going to talk and talk and talk, and you're going to listen and listen and listen.

Okay? So I would like to introduce to you my wife. Do you understand her? to my wife. Yeah, I think so. Tim does this for a living. I don't, so. And I apologize to you. One of the things that you share in marriage is germs. And Tim gave me his coal last week,

and I love him so much, I've just kept it. So if I choke and have to take drinks of water, excuse me ahead of time. I was told this was the power for marriage, not the power in marriage, so I hope that's what it is. You've heard Tim talk about compatibility not being possible, that it's not even something that you should expect. If we agree that there's no way in the world that two sinners are ever going to be compatible in the modern sense of the word so that they can sustain a rich and long-term relationship, then what hope is there for anybody's marriage?

Have you seen, has anybody else besides me seen that internet dating commercial that's on TV where there's some guy that's saying, I won't tell you what company it is, some guy that's saying, yeah, I want to find a girl who just doesn't want me to change, who just takes me as I am. Has anybody else seen that besides me? Yeah, I've seen Harmony. I know I didn't want to out them. He said it before I said it. But I mean, that's just such a prevalent idea in our culture, and Tim has gone over that. But if you think about it, it's the most absurd thing that you could ever require of a relationship. You know that you have to change in order to grow, and you do it in every other area of your life. You go to the gym, you try new restaurants, you sign up for a learning annex course, You go to the theater even because you're trying to find ways to become deeper and wiser and more fulfilled. But yet,

when we get to the point of our heart of hearts and granting access to our most inmost selves, to another person who loves us and who may change us, oh no, no, no, we're not going to go there. And the belief that if you're compatible, you won't need to be changed is such a staggering assumption because if you're going to grow in every area of your life except the most important inward ones, the status quo, that's perfectly acceptable.

I can just be whoever it is I am. I don't need to change. I think this is actually more motivated by a combination of fear and self-centered, selfish, self-absorption. Is that enough emphasis on the word self, you think? Who knows? If I entrust myself into the arms of someone else, what might happen? What about that sickness and health clause that gets into that wedding service. Or maybe I'll be inconvenienced, or maybe he'll snore, or, you know, all kinds of things that John Tierney wrote a very funny article about years ago, which I won't quote, but you can go online and find it. Really, this is

nothing less than just massive, self-centered, selfish, self-protectiveness. It's also three other things. It's delusional, it's self-destructive, and it's doomed. And I'll go through all those. Delusional. You're going to change, will you or nill you. You are going to change. Every cell in your body changes every seven years, right?

I mean, you learned that in elementary school. Change is inevitable. You are going to change. body changes every seven years, right? I mean, you learned that in elementary school. Change is inevitable. You are going to change. I mean, the roots start growing out. You just can't stop it. Change happens. And the toll that's going on, the change that's going on in your life is going to take its toll. Do you want that to be the result of a random process? Or do you want to have that guided? Do you want to have that guided? Do you want to have feedback from somebody that you trust? Somebody who knows you intimately?

Or do you just want it to sort of like take whatever course it's going to take? Perhaps you think that you have arrived this moment at the apex of human development and therefore you actually aren't going to be in need of any change. I don't think anybody believes that even for a second, no matter what their other philosophical commitments are.

Secondly, the belief that the perfect relationship won't require you to change is also self-destructive. To be unwilling to change begets a kind of hardness and a coldness and an inhuman self-absorption you've all heard tim well maybe you haven't all heard but probably if you've been around for a while you've heard tim quote the c.s lewis passage where he says that the only way to protect your heart from having any kind of pain is to lock it up in a little casket where it's dark and safe and it can grow hard and dead. And that's true.

If you really want to have no unpleasant encounters with either yourself or someone else, you have to avoid everyone. And that's deadly. That's self-destructive. You can't go through life. We are people who are made for community. And to live a life of dedicated self-absorption

is a way to actually not live at all. Also, it's doomed. Because engaging in relationships that don't challenge you and dropping them the minute that they do is as good a recipe as I know for becoming stale and flat and unprofitable. And if you're going to ask the right question, or if you're out there already asking the right question, you're thinking, okay, okay, I know that I have things that have to

change in me, but how can I launch out in any kind of confidence that this man or this woman is going to be wiser than I am about what those changes ought to be. I cannot tell you, I really cannot tell you, how many times I have had a conversation with a young man or a young woman, not even that young, and this is how it goes. But how do I know this is the right person? What if I get it wrong? What if I marry the wrong person? Here she seems really nice and I'm almost sure,

but how can I be really sure that this is the wrong person here, she seems really nice and I'm almost sure, but how can I be really sure that this is the perfect person? This fear of commitment, it gets called fear of commitment a lot of times, but what gets called fear of commitment is, I think, really less a fear of committing to the person and it turning out wrong than it's a fear of trusting God for your future. You think if you stay single, you'll have more control over the circumstances of your life than if you marry. And outwardly, that could seem to be true on a superficial level.

If you're not married, you don't have to consult anybody else about how you spend your money or your time. There's not any accountability for who your friends are or what your pastimes are, much less any other little someones who might come along to complicate matters. But if we have a sovereign God who is in charge of all of time and space and history, and you have entrusted your life into his keeping, then the assumption that, well, if I stay single or if I get this set of circumstances right, or maybe if I get my bank account big enough, I can make sure that I am protected against whatever bad things might happen in the future, is a rejection of not just God's

wisdom, but his love for you, his lordship over your life, and his plan that he may have for you. It's as foolish as it is wicked. I forget who I'm quoting and saying that, but I've, who am I quoting when I'm saying that? He's my cultural librarian, John Gershner. Okay, thank you. What's often billed as a fear of commitment is really a fear of the future, and by extension, a fear of that God's not going to get your life right. He's not going to get your future the way you have it visualized. And that's true. He may not. Lewis has this great place, and I can't even tell you where it is because I've read it so much that it all kind of melds together in my mind, where he talks about, we've all had this, well,

no, we haven't all had it, but if you start renovating your apartment or a house or a summer home or something like that, and you call a plumber in to do something about the drains. That's Lewis's analogy. And suddenly he's knocking out a wall and he's putting on a wing and there's a tower going up over here. And you think, what? I had this nice little cottage. I just want to be a nice, decent little cottage.

And Lewis's thing is, yes, but the king plans to come live here and he's making you into a palace fit for his own habitation. So your vision of what your future is going to look like may not be at all what God's vision is for what your future looks like. He has a much deeper, richer, higher one, probably one that would startle you out of your wits if you knew what it was, and not in a bad way, in a good way. So the answer to where we get the power for entering and sustaining a marriage and overcoming our fears and changing our selfishness to selflessness is that you have to enter marriage with the resources to face the future.

Staying single is not the answer. Marrying the perfect person isn't the answer because the person doesn't exist. What you need is to be filled with the love of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. David, come on. Okay, thank you. We have friends that are here, and he was going to punctuate that for me. We have to be filled with the love of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit before you try to love another person. Now, before you write that statement off as just a lot of spiritual mumbo-jumbo, let me be really practical. The picture of marriage given in the Bible really practical. The picture of marriage given in the Bible is not of two needy people who, through a lot of adversity, find each other and fall into each other's arms,

finding their significance and their meaning and their love for one another. Because really, if you put one needy person with another needy person, you just get a whole lot of neediness. And what you find, or at least what I have found, because I've been in a relationship like this, and I've been the cause of a relationship like this more than once, is that it becomes a competition as to who's the needier. No, no, no, I'm the more messed up. You have to take care of me.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I'm the more messed up. You have to take care of me. Has anybody else been in a relationship like that where you're, you know, who's had the worst day? It can be just on that sort of a shallow level. It could also be who's had the more traumatic life with more, you know, horrible things happen to you. And it's a competition is to see who is the one who gets to say, you have to take care of me because I'm the biggest mess here. But while no Christian lives a life of continual joy in God, or the Bible wouldn't have to tell us to keep on being filled by the Holy Spirit like it does in Ephesians 5, 18, which by the way,

is the verse right before you get into the passage about marriage, and I don't think that's a coincidence. Christians at least know where the source of marriage, and I don't think that's a coincidence. Christians at least know where the source of their joy is to be found. It's not in the other person. It's in God. Now Tim put it in the book, and I'm just going to read this. While we are often running on fumes spiritually, we know where the fuel station is, and even more important, that it exists.

After trying all sorts of other things, Christians have learned that the worship of God with the whole heart is the thing their souls were meant to run on. So having a source of joy that won't run out and dry up is what gives you the power to sustain a marriage. If you're taking notes, this is one you want to write down. Having a source of love that won't run out and dry up is what gives you the power to sustain a marriage. It's what gives you the power to abandon your lonely self-absorption and imitate Jesus in his selfless servanthood. You aren't crushing another person with the weight of your neediness and your need for meaning in life and love

because you found it in Jesus. You found it in his love for you. This love is experienced through the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. And as the Holy Spirit turns your eyes towards Jesus, seeing his love for you, you're filled with a supernatural grace and you're able to overflow with love into your spouse's life.

Tim's called this love economics, if you've ever heard him talk about that. You know, if you are walking down the street and there's somebody there and they have their little jar, you know, collecting money for this good cause. And then another block and somebody else has their jar out or their coffee cup collecting money for me or collecting money for another good cause, and then another block, and somebody else has their jar out or their coffee cup, collecting money for me or collecting money for another good cause. After a while, you kind of get compassion exhaustion, and also you empty your wallet. There's nothing more to give because you haven't been stopping at an ATM every block and refilling your pocket. But what if you had like that magical purse in the grim fairy tale that no matter how much money you took out of it, there was always something at the bottom. There was always more.

That's what we're talking about as far as love in marriage. If you look to the other person and you can love them just as long as they're loving you back, because that way you keep, I'm not real good at economics, but that's how you keep it all balanced. Then the minute they go sort of off the reservation, they have a bad day, then you better step back because they might sort of drain you and you don't want to do that. You have to be able to get as much as you give.

But if you have another source of love pouring into you, another source of joy pouring into you, then if you're being temporarily or even long-term drained by the neediness of another person, it's not going to empty you because Jesus is always going to be pouring into you. I've counseled men and women, women and men, for years who really want to be married, and they're not, to abandon their crushing need, which may have actually even turned into an idol. Because wanting to be married can be an idol like any good thing could be an idol, excuse me. And instead, to concentrate on learning how to be

overflowing with the water of life through the spirit of Jesus in their lives. As a byproduct, this will make you a much more attractive person to marry. But that's not why you're doing it. But by then you're no longer going to be self-oriented. You're going to be other-oriented. You will also be cured of the myth that what you need to be happy is to be married. Which is the greatest impediment to a happy marriage that I know of. So the Holy Spirit filling us with the mind and heart of Christ.

And expelling our selfishness is where we get the power to enter. To endure. And to exalt in our marriages. And now you get Tim again. And then you get me again. And then you get Tim again. And keep you here all night. Now, the reason we did that first, the reason we wanted to talk about the Holy Spirit and the power of marriage before,

I'm telling you now the definition. In fact, Kathy said, shouldn't you start with the definition of marriage, and then move to the power? And actually, the definition at first is so counterintuitive to where most people are that it could be a little discouraging if you didn't hear about the power. But I'll refer to that again. What Kathy's saying is we talk about love economics or love philanthropy. It's another way to do it. And that is that the Christian view of marriage assumes you're a Christian. It assumes that you've got a vital relationship with Christ,

that there actually is a source of love that you don't just know about with your head, but that you actually sense with your heart. Otherwise, none of this stuff works. So keep that in mind. Now, what's the definition? I'm going to call it the essence of marriage. The essence of marriage is a covenant. What makes you married is that you're in a binding covenant. You take a vow. You're in a binding, long-term, whole-life covenant that brings two people together, every aspect of their life together, and the rest of their lives together, if God's gracious to you and all. So covenant, law and love together, a legal, binding,

intimate covenant. Now, let me talk to you about why that's so important. Some years ago, I remember hearing, I think it was a TV show. I think it was, I don't know, it was a drama or a sitcom. I don't remember. But a husband and a wife were, pardon me, a man and a woman who were in a relationship were arguing about whether to get married. I don't even remember who it was that wanted and who didn't want. But I do remember the person who didn't want said, you don't need a piece of paper to love. We don't need a piece of paper to love each other. In fact, the piece of paper complicates things, meaning a marriage license. And that got me thinking, what's the essence of marriage? If the essence of marriage isn't affected by the

piece of paper, then the essence of marriage is passion and feeling, and the piece of paper can actually hurt that. It certainly doesn't enhance it. But the Christian understanding is the piece of paper is the essence of the marriage. That's what makes you a marriage. You see how different that is? And if you're sort of taken aback by that, let me just point out a couple of things. First of all, a covenant creates intimacy, contrary to what that person was saying. A covenant actually creates intimacy. You say, why? When you are dating or when you're with each other, even if you're living together but you're not married, I like to push you and say you are actually in a consumer relationship.

I have a consumer relationship with my grocer. That is to say, I might know the grocer. I might say, hi, grocer. Hi, customer. So we know each other very well. But the fact is, if I find another grocer that gives me better produce for a better price, I am under no obligations to go to this grocer. I will go to that grocer.

A consumer relationship is a relationship in which my needs are preeminent. My needs are more important than the relationship. I can change the relationship if I get a better product for a better price. And, of course, in order to get my business, the vendor has to market, has to advertise, has to say, compare prices and look at this. And they do all sorts of things. And there's music when you come in and things like that. If you're not married, you're essentially in a consumer relationship, which means you're always in sort of marketing. You can only be so messed up or the person will just walk away from you you have to look good

you have to be okay you can't be too unhappy you can't be too taxing and therefore you can't really be yourself you can't you're still in marketing mode you're still in the consumer mode and that's not intimate

the idea that you don't need a piece of paper to have intimacy is wrong. As a matter of fact, I think you do need a piece of paper to at least know you've got the security to melt down a bit and just say, oh my word, look at this is what's happening to me. And know the person can't just immediately say, I don't need this. And tomorrow I'll leave. No, no, the piece of paper, covenant creates intimacy. Secondly, covenant creates stability. I already talked about this. Let me just talk about it again. Remember when I said that studies show that two-thirds of unhappy marriages are happy five years later if people don't break up? You remember Ulysses?

When he knew he was going to get near the island of the sirens, he told his sailors to put wax in their ears, tie him to the mast, and when he heard the sirens, he was going to probably go nuts and tell them to this and that. Just ignore me. Just keep rowing until I come to my senses. That's what a piece of paper does. It ties you to the mast until you come to your senses. And I want you to know that I'm not saying there's no grounds for divorce. In fact, in the Q&A tomorrow, there's a whole lot of questions I immediately know that I'm not answering because we can't. We're trying to move through a

lot of stuff here. But I mean, are there biblical grounds for divorce? Sure. Absolutely. In fact, Jesus says there's grounds for divorce. I'm not saying that. But in general, we bail too fast, especially in our culture where the whole idea is supposed to be that marriage is supposed to fulfill me. Marriage isn't supposed to change me.

It's supposed to fulfill me. And if that's the case, we're out so quickly. And what, well, let me keep on going quickly just to show you, in that case, you will never have a happy marriage. You'll just go from thing to thing to thing, because sometimes you've got to get through the sirens. And so it creates stability. W.H. Auden, of all people, said this, and this is the heart of what I'm trying to get across. I mean, it's a remarkable statement. When he says, I must have left it. Yes. W.H. Auden said, now listen carefully, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate. Any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely interesting, more interesting than any romance, however passionate. Then he goes on and says,

Because marriage is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion, but the creation of time and will. And we have got this backwards. For us, romance and passion is the ideal. And marriage is boring or stifling. But it actually creates the stability you need. It creates the intimacy. And I'll give you one more example. It creates freedom. And I know this is going to be weird. You say, what do you mean creates freedom? When you're bound to stick with this person, even when things are going badly, that creates freedom. You know why? Kierkegaard, in his stuff on love, is fascinating with this. Kierkegaard says, do you realize

that he was talking to somebody who says, I've just, you know, she doesn't, she just doesn't turn me on anymore. I don't know, however, you said that in Danish in the, in the 19th century, you know, my guess is, my, my guess is, is losing something in the translation of it anyway. Uh, but basically Kierkegaard was talking to somebody who said, you know, I, uh, I just don't love her anymore and I have to go. And he says, here's a man who is in the control of his impulses. He says, if you're not, if you're not bound to somebody, then you're actually a slave to your impulses. Because as soon as your feelings go, you've got to leave. And you say, well, I'm free now to leave. No, you're not free.

You're being pushed around by your feelings. Your feelings come and go. Listen, Louis Smedes. He was an ethicist. When I married my wife, some of you have heard this too. But listen all the way to the end. It's just too good. I'm going to read it. When I married my wife, I had hardly a smidgen of sense for what I was getting into with her. How would I know? How could I know how much she would change over 25 years? How could I know how

much I would change? My wife has lived with at least five different men since we were wed, and each of the five has been me. The connecting link with my old self has always been the memory of the name I took on back there the day I said, I am he who will be there with you. When we slough off that name, when we lose that identity, we can hardly find ourselves again now listen when I make a promise a promise this is the legal binding when I make a promise

I bear witness that my future with you is not locked into a bionic beam by which I was stuck with the fateful combinations of X's and Y's in the hand I was dealt with out of my parents genetic deck

when I make a promise I testify I am not routed along some unalterable itinerary by psychic conditioning visited on me by my slightly wacky parents. When I make a promise, I declare that my future with you is not predetermined by the mixed-up culture of my tender years. I am not fated. I am not determined. I am not a lump of human dough whipped into shape by the contingent reinforcement and aversive conditioning of my past. I know as

well as the next person I can't create my life de novo. I am well aware that much of what I am and what I do is a gift or curse from my past. But when I make a promise to anyone, I rise above the conditioning that limits me. No German shepherd ever promised to be there with me. No home computer ever promised to be a loyal help. Only a person can make a promise, and when you do, you are most free. See, what he's saying is, he says, if I promise I'm going to be there with you 25 years from now, that means my emotions,

they no longer have control. It means my genetic deck doesn't have control. My parents don't no longer have control over me. I'm not being pushed around. I've made a choice, and now I'm free. Do you think like that? No, modern people don't think like that, but let's try. So the essence of marriage is not the feeling,

because that actually makes you a slave. Suddenly it goes away. Uh-oh, now what do I do? No, no, it creates intimacy, it creates stability, it creates freedom. And let me give you one more thing. It also expands your understanding of love. And here's the last thing I'll say under this heading.

One of the reasons why everybody gets upset with the idea of marriage, many people say in the beginning it's great, romance, passion, sexual chemistry, but it always wears off. Bertrand Russell actually has an essay about that where he actually says it always wears off birch and russell actually has a an essay about that where he actually says it just it always wears off and that's the romance is good marriage is bad because eventually starts with romance and wears off but i want you to think along these lines first of all remember what harrow i said when you first marry somebody you're thrilled but you don't know the person so what who are you in love with

somebody, you're thrilled, but you don't know the person. So who are you in love with? There's a place in Lord of the Rings where, you know, movie or book, Eowyn falls in love with Aragorn. And at one point when she's, I guess, unconscious, Aragorn turns to her brother, Eomer, and says this, she loves you more than she truly loves me. For you she loves and knows. But in me she loves only a shadow and a thought of a hope of glory and great deeds and lands afar. And what he's saying is this. Well, when you first get married,

pardon me, when you first kiss, when you first hold hands, when you first have the contact, it's thrilling. You know why? Because you're in love with a person? No. It's mainly ego. It's the rush of knowing that this person likes you because you have no

idea who that person is yet. You have no idea who the person is. Now, here's what you think they are. You think they're cool. You think they're good. You wouldn't be with them unless they look good or there was something about them that made you want to be with them. And it is true. There is nothing sexier than to have someone you admire admire you. The praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards.

So someone you admire admiring you, that's thrilling. But here's what will always happen. In the beginning, why do you admire the person? And why is it so thrilling that this admirable person loves you? Because of how they look usually or because of their credentials or because they're so smart. All the most superficial things.

All the things that initially attract you to a person and make you admire them and therefore fill your heart because this person affirms me and loves me. Listen, as time goes on, it doesn't matter how good looking they are, it doesn't matter how wealthy they are, it doesn't matter how smart they are, it doesn't matter their connections, in the end, you're going to see their feet of clay, and they're going to see yours. And if five years from now, and ten years from now, you're still going to admire that person more than anybody in the world, it's going to be because of courage or humility. It's going to be

because of wisdom. It's going to be because of character. And your romantic love that's thrilled with this person affirming you because you admire them so much, but you're admiring them for almost all the superficial things, has got to be transmuted into real romance and real passion, a romance and a passion and, yes, a sexual thrill that will be there when you're both 70. Because it's not based on the superficial things. You admire this person more than anybody in the world. Now, how does that happen? It only happens when you've gone through, it's not the resume anymore, the talent or the connections or the personality or the brains or the looks. It's having, it's having learn how to repent and forgive. It's, it's by going through thick and thin. It's by sacrificing

for each other. It's by seeing the other person change for you and you changing for them. Do you get it? If you really, really, really think that that first initial rush is love and now it wears off and that's what happens to marriage. No, no, no. Real love is the praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards. Love is someone that you admire loving you and affirming you and making you feel like a million dollars. and making you feel like a million dollars. But you will not be able to keep on admiring a person unless you change from the things you initially loved them for to the things they really are. And they have to change, and you have to change.

And that happens through a covenant. That happens through a covenant. That happens through committing to one another. Marriage is one of the most significant human relationships there is, but is also one of the most difficult and misunderstood. In The Meaning of Marriage, Tim and Kathy Keller offer biblical wisdom and insight that will help you understand God's vision for marriage. Whether you're single, considering marriage, or someone who's been married a long time,

The Meaning of Marriage will help you face the complexities of commitment with the wisdom of God. So anyway, let me just give you one other terrible example of this. In the beginning of your relationship, what happens is your spouse, your marriage, your spouse does something and you say, well, she's not really being the wife she ought to be, so I'm not going to be the husband I ought to be. She's pulling back, I'm going to pull back. She's not being what I want, so I'm not going to do as much as, you know, I used to do. And as the years go by, you pull back from each other. Meanwhile, you have children. With children, it's completely the opposite. With children, you get nothing. For a long children, you get nothing. For a long time, you get nothing, nothing, eventually a smile. After like no sleep for a year, and then you get a smile. So in other words, you're in a completely different world because what you're

doing there is you're committed. See, you don't have a consumer relationship with the child. It's a covenant relationship. You never took a vow, but you sense it. See? In other words, this is about me committing to you through thick and thin, no matter what, even if I'm getting nothing out of it. But what happens is the culture makes us relate to our spouse like a consumer. And so if she's not giving me produce at a good price, I'm not going to give her. You know, In other words, I'm going to pull back, she's going to pull back. And after 18 years, you'll feel nothing for your spouse and you'll be absolutely committed to your children. Why? Because the feelings of love follow the actions of love. It follows the commitment of love. Even if your kids are a mess in 18 years,

you're going to love them because you gave to them. Because you operated with them as if it was a covenant relationship. Now act toward your spouse like it's a covenant relationship. And you'll begin to see why it's the essence of marriage. Now we're going to move into, well, what's the purpose of marriage? When you get married, why do you get married? And Kathy is going to pick that up. Forgotten how short I am?

Shorter every year. I just want to congratulate all of you on being extremely patient usually we like to do these kind of talks with lots of Q&A and we decided it was really the best thing to do a lot of the preliminary foundation laying talking tonight there will be so much time for Q&A tomorrow

in fact after lunch there's nothing but Q&A I mean you can just pound us with Q&A but even the talks tomorrow, we saved all this stuff to make you come back tomorrow. The talks on sex and gender tomorrow, which they'll both have Q&As. So there'll be lots of time for you to talk. Just don't want you to get discouraged and think it's going to be more of the same tomorrow. They're all right. They're all right. Okay. Okay. Well, just checking. The mission of marriage, Tim called it the purpose of marriage, but I'd rather say the mission.

Your marriage should have a mission. What's your marriage about? Is your marriage about anything if you're married? Or if you're not married, what would you want your marriage to be about if you were to be married? Those might sound a little bit like silly questions like, duh, you know, love and happiness and sex and children and, you know, there's a lot of good answers to that. But they really don't cover the whole spectrum of what a marriage can be about. Three things I'm going to cover pretty quickly and then Tim is going to be back up here. Friendship, sanctification, and service. And one flows out

of the other. So I'll start with friendship. Marriage is a remedy for loneliness. Bear in mind that Adam had an utterly perfect relationship with God in the Garden of Eden. And yet God said it was not good because Adam was lonely. Part of the image of God that Adam was created in, one of the ways in which he resembled the creator that he was made in the image of, was he needed relationships. He was a relational being. And so having another person to relate to was something that was hardwired into him. I mean, literally hardwired into him. When he sees Eve, he says, here at last is bone of my bone flesh of my flesh he feels like he's meeting his

his opposite number that his the complementary person that's like him but not like him his need of another person was part of the image of god in him c.s lewis has a book that you may have run into called the four loves and in it he discusses affection, friendship, romantic love, and Christian love. And I'm going to kind of talk about all of them, but maybe in a different order. I want to suggest that marriage is an amalgam of all of those things. And that taken together, you can find the mission for your marriage. Both its inward face, what it is doing for the two of you in the marriage. And also its outward face.

Because your marriage has an outward face as well. Not everybody, you know, this is not positioned where I can make any noise with it. So a friendship is the bedrock foundation of your marriage. The kind of marriage that the Bible envisions is similar, vision of life with similar joys, similar sorrows, common insights, common passions. I've heard Tim refer to it as the secret thread that runs through a relationship. Friendships between single people are really the best beginning for a marriage, but they're also an end in themselves. If you only go friend hunting as a prelude to spouse hunting, you're going to end up with neither. A friend

really is an end in and of himself and herself. There's someone who looks at things the same way you do, sees what you see, sees the same things that you see through their own eyes, and enriches you with that perspective. Single people need to cultivate very strong non-romantic friendships and married couples need friendships as well and i may as well say it here because it's not going to come up anywhere else in marriage same-sex friendships or couple friendships should be the strongest you can have friendly relationships cross-gender that's okay in moderation when you're married, but only when both members of the couple are friends. I count many men as my friends, but they're all friends of Tim's as well. And I think you would say that the women friends that you would name, all of them are my friends

as well. And anything else is kind of unwise, and that doesn't really fit anywhere else, but I shoved it in there just so it got said. Returning to the topic. When the secret thread... You have to get stuff in when you can. When the secret thread in a relationship is the love of Christ, then all the other commonalities or dissimilarities pale in comparison. You can be friends with people with whom you have nothing else in common. And I have a couple of illustrations of that. I once had to go into the Boards and Blades skate shop on West

72nd Street. I'm not even sure it's still there. Any of you know whether it's still there? Okay. My son's inline skates had popped a bearing or something like that and it was an unusual experience for me to be in a skate shop everybody was tattooed and pierced and I was this frumpy housewife coming in with an inline skate saying it needs something I'm not exactly sure what the guy who waited on me had a ring in the shape of a fish. And I'm thinking, hmm, you know, a little unusual. So you do the little, are you a Christian dance, you know? Yeah, it's an interesting ring you have. Yeah.

And he's Australian, too, and really good looking. He says, yeah, Christians used to use that symbol of fish oh i'm a christian we sat and talked well we stood actually and talked for 45 minutes about the lord and how he came to faith and how i came to faith and where he went to church and his girlfriend coming to faith everybody else in the shop is going like, what's this guy, this hunk, have in common with this, you know, dumpy, frumpy housewife that walked in with one skate and didn't even know what to do with it. But we had an instantaneous bond. You know, if I had found more occasions to go to the blades and boards place, we could have become friends.

I had found more occasions to go to the blades and boards place. We could have become friends. Maybe it's just as well. All right, all right, all right. I would have taken Tim. Another illustration of this as to how your common thread of your love for Christ can really overcome any dissimilarity is my experience with, well, every fellowship group I've ever been in. But especially the one that I've been in in New York. And I see some dear members of my fellowship group sprinkled around here.

Any group that I've ever been in, and this, by the way, is not paid for. This is not a paid commercial for community groups. I'll have to remember to call them community groups. But something that's just been true in my own life. Every time I've ever started in a new Bible study or fellowship group or community group, I've looked around at the people and said, yeah, well, the last time I joined a group, I thought it was a pretty unpromising group of people. Last time I joined a group, I thought it was a pretty unpromising group of people.

And I would never really get to have any warm friendships with any of these people. I know I felt that way the last time, but this time it's really true. I really have nothing in common with these people. I really miss my old group where I had these close friendships. And this group will never take the place of my old group. And of course, over the course of time, you're sharing what Christ is doing in your life. You're praying together. You're weeping together. You're rejoicing together. And suddenly you're bonded to this group of people that you never had the slightest hope of ever being bonded to. Well, when we got to New York City, this Bible study 17 years ago started on the upper west

or upper east side with ladies who were Chanel suits and um I didn't even know where you bought Chanel I mean I'm from Pittsburgh and I thought to myself okay every other group I have ever been in, eventually there has been a bondingness with me and the women who were in it. This time, it's really not going to be, I mean, there's nothing I have in common, nothing, nothing, nothing. These women have been the closest people to me. I've come to them when I've been so ill and had, you know, just panic attacks that I couldn't even control and just lay on the couch and wept while they laid hands on me and prayed for me. I mean, they have been, they're my sisters. What can I say? They're as closest to me as my sisters. And that's because what we have in common with our

relationship with Christ trumps all the other things that are dissimilar about our backgrounds. Take Tim and me as the last example. When I met Tim, when I got to know him in seminary, I found out that he had played trumpet in the marching band from junior high school through college. And I liked classical music. I also found out he knew all the words and lyrics to the musicals in which he had played in the pit orchestra. You just try him sometime. If enough of you gang up on him, he can do the whole music man for you. And I liked classical music. But somehow what we had in Christ trumps all of those differences. I've run into people who have this checklist of someone they're dating.

I've run into people who have this checklist of someone they're dating. Oh, we have to like the same kind of music. And it's definitely, we have to, I mean, I watch Rachel Ray sometimes when I'm on the treadmill, you know. And she was just saying this morning, she says, yeah, yeah, yeah. When, you know, when you're dating someone, you have to find out, does he like garlic or not? Because that's a deal breaker. Okay. If you're really going to use that as your sorting mechanism,

I think you're going to have a small group of people. Anyway, the friends to whom this book is dedicated. We are a very diverse group of people. You're going to meet some of them tomorrow in the Q&A. That's going to be a fun thing. And we were diverse amongst ourselves and our marriages were very diverse. And the book talks about ourselves, and our marriages were very diverse, and the book talks about that a little. The point of all this is friendship, when it's in the context of Christian commitment, becomes capable of the highest form of love that Lewis mentions, which is koinonia, or Christian love. When Jesus was ready to die, the last thing, well, not exactly the last thing, but close to the last thing he said to his disciples was,

I call you my friends because sacrificial love for your friends is what makes them your friends. Your spouse is your best friend. The Bible calls a man's wife his halupa, which probably is not the right way to pronounce it, but I didn't take Hebrew. And this is surprising in an age when women were often seen as property and marriages were business deals or treaty ratifications, it was pretty radical thought that your spouse should be your best friend, the person who shares that secret thread with you,

who's knit to your soul in a common love of God. And finally, Lewis's first thing that he mentions, I'm mentioning last, affection, the person that you can be most comfortable with, that you can just be yourself with. When you add all of those things together, you have the kind of friendship that can sustain a marriage. If you're single and you're hearing this,

go ahead and rejoice because it's not too late to recalibrate your spouse-finding apparatus to sort for best friend. And the book, Tim calls this a game changer when you're considering someone as a potential spouse. If you're married and you find that the word best friend does not describe your relationship to your spouse, you have different challenges, but you don't have to despair. If you've married a believer, but you find yourself better friends with your buddies or your BFFs, it's time to invest in making your spouse your buddy slash BFF. Doesn't mean you'll

go fishing with him. It doesn't mean he'll go get his nails done with you. But that doesn't capture the essence of what your marriage is about, or at least I hope it doesn't. If you find yourself married to an unbeliever, one who doesn't share your commitment to Christ, you have a much more difficult assignment, but one which can glorify God and bring growth in your life. And rather than getting into this right now, it's a big subject. If you want to know more about it, bring it up in the Q&A tomorrow. I think Brent has already given you or is going to give you directions about texting questions in. So friendship's the first part. Sanctification is what the friendship leads to. If you have this friendship and your common thread is a commitment to Christ, then you are well resourcing your love and your affection inside your marriage. Then the internal mission of your marriage is for each of you to help the other one

in becoming the future glory self that God intends for us to become. Yes, we're new creations in Christ legally and in God's eyes, but we're not fully renovated yet. I hate to keep quoting the marriage book, but we did put our best stuff in it. The common horizon husband and wife look toward is the throne and the holy spotless blameless nature we will have there sometimes you have to look with the eyes of faith because we walk by faith not by sight and peer

into your spouse and see perhaps what god is making him or her, not maybe what you would have chosen or ordered up if you had been given a choice, but thank God that you weren't. This is the opposite of searching for a compatible person. You're committed to a person whom God is changing, and you're committed to sticking it out for the long haul and the bumpy ride and the changes that will be necessary in yourself for you to become the person that God wants you to make. And there's something I wanted to read. When two Christians who fully understand this stand before the minister, all decked out in their wedding finery, they realize they're not just playing dress up. What they're saying is that someday they're going to be standing not

before the minister, but before the Lord. And they will turn to each other without spot and blemish and they hope to hear God say, well done, good and faithful servants. Over the years, you've lifted one another up to me. You've sacrificed for one another. You've held one another up with prayer and with thanksgiving. You confronted each other. You rebuked each other. You hugged and you loved each other continually and pushed each other towards me. And now, We loved each other continually and pushed each other towards me. And now, look at you. You're radiant. Romance, sex, laughter, and fun are the byproducts of this product of sanctification.

Those things are important, but they can't keep the marriage going through the years and years of ordinary life. What keeps the marriage going is your commitment to your spouse's holiness. Okay, lastly, what's your marriage about externally? That's all what your marriage might have the mission in internally. Is your marriage about anything? What do the two of you bring to the world as a couple that individually you didn't have? That's for you to discover.

Perhaps it's a haven in your home for the lonely and the sorrowing. Perhaps it's hospitality to the body of Christ or mercy to the poor in some difficult area of the city or the world where having a partner would be a really good thing. The mission, should you decide to accept it, is to participate in God's redemption of the world. And your marriage is comprised of individual gifts and something more, the one flesh union that arises out of your commitment and enhances the strengths that you would never have known that you had. Discerning this is really critical. if you're ever going to make any practical decisions about career choices, moves, child care, additional education. And it can change its appearance over time. I mean, there are seasons in your life that different people will be taking different parts of the economy of the household.

And I think I'll leave that illustration out. Never mind. Of the economy of the household. And I think I'll leave that illustration out. Never mind. Tim has always been a support to me. And I always looked at my job as being the support system for him. I recognized a long time ago he had some unusual gifts.

He's been as supportive of me, though. Otherwise, I wouldn't be standing here. But on the other hand, he wouldn't be standing here while he's sitting. He wouldn't be standing here. But on the other hand, he wouldn't be standing here while he's sitting. He wouldn't be sitting here either. Because when I first met him, Tim was the one who was going to have a ministry in central Pennsylvania, where you started out as a minister with a three-church charge, riding the circuit in Barrysburg, Gratz, and Pillow, where each congregation had 35 members. I was the one that wanted to move to the city, you know, city ministry. Now, motherhood made a coward out of me, and you all know how that sort of flopped over, and he was the one who wanted to come to New York,

and I was the one that had to do the big wrestling match with God before I got here. But now that we're here, it's because we were both supporting one another. We both had a vision for what our marriage could be and what God wanted us to do with it. So if you're married, God brought you with your strengths, weaknesses, and unique destiny together with your spouse for a reason. And helping each other get to the throne of God is one part of that reason. But what else? Figure it out. Okay, now here's, we are at the home stretch because we're now going to do three short little sprints, short, five or six minute each. Hear that? Right. Sprints, the three things that you bring to bear in your marriage on one another that make you into that future glory self.

Kathy just said that the mission of marriage is not just your happiness and fulfillment, though, of course, that'll be the end result. It's to turn each other into the great glorious self that God is making the person. When Kathy and I love to go to parts of Britain, the pretty parts of Britain, which tend to be to the west, western isles of Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, places like that, but it always rains there. So sometimes you go to a place and you know there's a mountain out there. And you sit and you look, but you don't see anything but clouds. And you're there for like four days. And for three hours on one day, suddenly the clouds go away, and the sun comes out, and there's the mountain. It's gorgeous.

And then, of course, within three hours, it starts raining again. Most of us are like that. most of us are like that every so often the clouds part and you see people who love you and people who know you especially your spouse sees what you're becoming

sees not the parts that eventually hopefully will fall off which is your sins and your flaws and the distortions but what God's making you suddenly get a breathtaking picture of the person's future. And to become, to get, if you're ever going to really have truly love your spouse,

you have to develop comprehensive attraction that is not just attracted to the more superficial things, but to that. And you say, I just want to be there the day that it comes out, the sun comes out and the clouds roll away and they never come back. Now, how do you get there? Truth, love, grace. Marriage has got a power to it. And it's got the power of truth, which is to show you who you really are. That's very important for helping you grow. Secondly, it has the power of love, which means through your spouse, your self-image can be reprogrammed. And thirdly, grace, which is through repentance and confession. The truth and the love grow together.

Let me give you this quick overview, and then I'll talk a little bit about truth. Kathy will do love, and I'll come back and do grace. What I mean by that is this. Marriage, on the one hand, it's the most intimate of all relationships, and it brings you into a closer connection with another human being than any other relationship can. In some ways, parents and children do get to know each other extremely well, but you're on different planes, and children do grow up and leave, and there's a certain sense in which the parent-child relationship, though you get to

know each other, is not as inescapable. Siblings, friendships, but there's something about marriage that's inescapable, And in marriage, you find, you see each other's flaws. What are those flaws? I'm going to read you this. It's only going to take 90 seconds. But for example, you may be a fearful person with a tendency to be anxious. You may be a proud person with a tendency to be selfish. You may be an inflexible person with a tendency to be demanding and sulky if you don't get your way. You may be an inflexible person with a tendency to be demanding and sulky if you don't get your way. You may be an abrasive and harsh person, more respected than loved. You may be an undisciplined person with a tendency to be unreliable and disorganized.

You may be an oblivious person, tending to be distracted and unaware of your surroundings or your impact on people. You may be a perfectionistic person who tends to be very judgmental of others and even down on yourself. You may be an impatient, irritable person tending to hold grudges. You may be a cowardly person who tends to twist the truth to look good. You may be an independent person who just, you just don't like responsibility for others. You don't like making joint decisions. You may be a person who just wants so badly to be liked that you're always shading the truth. You can't keep secrets. You may be a thrifty person, but you tend to be miserly, or you use money to manipulate people. Now, in every other relationship, some people can see those things in you, but those sins don't create enormous problems. See, if you have a

tendency to hold grudges, that's bad for friendships, but it will kill you in marriage. So what happens is that your sins not only create problems for your spouse, but your spouse sees them more clearly than almost anybody else. your spouse, but your spouse sees them more clearly than almost anybody else. And as a result, when you get into marriage, it won't be long before you'll be in conflict. And what you're going to think, especially if you've been affected by our culture, is I married the wrong person. Because if I married a compatible person, this wouldn't be happening. But as Kathy has said, and I've been trying to say, you can't get two self-centered people, which is what sin is, into a marriage without this sort of thing happening.

And it's not really marriage bringing you into conflict with your spouse. It's marriage bringing you into conflict with yourself. Marriage takes you by the scruff of the neck, sticks your nose in the mirror and says, look, it's not pretty, is it? That's marriage. pretty is it? That's marriage. And I want you to know that that's good because every counselor in the whole world will say the one sin, the one flaw, the one thing that you can never overcome is the thing you're in denial about. You know what? To be an alcoholic will not destroy you. To not admit you're an alcoholic if you're an alcoholic, if you're an alcoholic, will destroy you. It's the same thing true of everything. Every single one of the things that

I just mentioned. And therefore, marriage has got the power to show you who you are in a way that nothing else does. Embrace the power. But it's not enough because it will destroy you. You'll just be fighting each other unless you also realize that now that the truth is out now each of you have to love one another as well as speak the truth and Kathy's going to talk briefly about that how do you do that how do you use that power very briefly five minutes six top you laugh but it, but it will be brief. One of the most practical concepts I ever learned about giving and receiving love is the concept of love languages. I hope many of you have heard that term before or are familiar with it. It's as practical and useful

in an office as it is in a home. It's as applicable to relationships between parents and child, roommates, as it is to a husband and wife. You can use love language in any relationship, but it's critical that you use it in your marriage. Love language is that combination of words and actions that communicate love to a person. We all have one, and they aren't the same. The most common and the most stupid and the most destructive thing you can do as a newly married couple is to say, well, if he loved me, he would know. He'd know I wanted to go out for my birthday. He'd know I didn't want him to watch TV when I had so much on my mind. She'd know I needed some down time with my buddies.

And there's a corollary to this, which is even worse. Well, if I have to tell you what I want, then it doesn't mean anything. You should know. That's a two for one. You know, you get to make them feel guilty for not knowing, and also they're not allowed to ask. So memorize this, okay? Write it down, tattoo it.

On this planet, at least, no one is a mind reader. Despite our fascination with telepathy and ESP, it just doesn't work that way. Love does not enable you to know what another person is thinking unless you put in the hard work, the study, and yes, the actual conversations that it takes to find out. If a person comes up to me and says in Finnish, I love you, in a very sincere and truthful way,

I would nevertheless not receive the message. If someone wants to communicate with me, I'm afraid they're pretty much going to have to use the language that I know, which is English. Or maybe they could get away with, and that's about as much German as is left from, yeah, I know my accent is even worse than my vocabulary. I first heard about love languages from R.C. and Vesta Sproul. R.C. told this story about his and Vesta's miscommunication, and bear in mind, if you didn't know this, they fell in love in fifth grade, and they got married when they were in college. So they knew each other pretty doggone well. For his birthday, R.C. was hoping that Vest would give

him a pair or a new set of golf clubs. He loves to play golf. If you know anything about R.C., you know he loves golf. Well, she's a very practical person. And so she was thinking in terms of being helpful and practical and giving him a gift he could really use, so she gave him six white shirts. He was a speaker. He was always needing white shirts. She bought him six white shirts. She was being very loving, but he was disappointed. So for her birthday, Arcee wanted to give Vesta something really special,

and he bought her a mink coat. Really frivolous, expensive. But she's a very practical person, and what she was really hoping for was a washing machine. True story. So they were both disappointed. Despite investment of a lot of money and time and thoughtfulness and the best of intentions, they weren't speaking each other's love language. Okay, on the matter of birthday presents, you can survive that, but if it's a constant undercurrent in your marriage that you are trying to send love to another person, and they don't recognize it, and they're trying to send love to you, and you don't recognize it,

it's going to be really deadly. In spite of knowing about this, teaching about this, for years, I made a colossal error in our marriage. And I will tell you about it. And tomorrow, by the way, there'll be lots of personal stories with sex and gender, so you must come back tomorrow. I have always thought the most helpful, loving thing I could do for Tim was to be his wingman, to point out where all the potholes in the road might be. My friends are up there nodding their heads. Yes, that's Kathy. Where any plan might have a weakness, show him a better way to do pretty much everything, choose his clothes, how he should eat his food, whatever. Little miss helpful hints. I was unaware that all of this was being received by Tim as a negative assessment of his ideas, abilities, competence, and even his manhood.

It's no good my protesting that I only meant it for the best to be helpful to support him and make sure other people respected him. Honey, please don't wear your running shoes to the office. It doesn't matter if your motivation is spotless because this is where you can fall into a vicious cycle of hurt feelings, anger, and resentment even when you both are actually trying to love each other. You offer love in the language you know. It's ignored or at least it goes unrecognized by the other person, who then feels unloved. But you have been loving, at least you thought you were, so you're hurt that your loving gesture has gone unappreciated when it was really unrecognized. I mean, it

was a staple of mid-20th century comedies that the frustrated and bored housewife wanted her husband to do some romantic, loving, tender gesture. And he comes home all exhausted from being the good provider and sits in the chair like this, you know, and says, why is she bugging me about this romantic stuff? I'm the provider. I'm showing her that I love her. They're not connecting

because they're not speaking the same love language. I told you I could do this in five minutes. I recommend to all of you, get your pants out, to buy a book by Gary Chapman, C-H-A-P-M-A-N, called The Five Love Languages. You need to get it and study it and study your spouse and become proficient in his or her love language. You can even take a test where you rate what you think are the most important love languages in your spouse, and then they look at it and tell you, have you missed that?

Very frightening, actually, and very revealing. Someone from the counseling center, Brent, is that part of the prepare and rich thing that they do? Yes, it is. It's part of the prepare and rich thing that the Redeemer Counseling Center offers, where you test your love languages to see where you might be miscommunicating. So at the beginning I said you have to learn to recognize another person's love language and it's something you can benefit from and use, well people around you benefit from it even more than you do, in any relationship. Once I learned about love language it became clear

to me that my rocky relationship with my mother was due in large part to the fact that we had very different love languages. Mine was, leave me alone. I was the oldest of five and I was responsible for keeping a lot of balls in the air from a very early age. And all I wanted was some time to read and think and be alone. And my mother's love language was, include me. Tell me all your thoughts. I need to be important in your life learning to give my mom what she needed which is not synonymous with what she wanted made a huge difference in our relationship and similarly I made a terrible error once with another Christian

woman who'd invited me to an event that she was in charge of I went thinking she wanted me to critique her and give her pointers after all that, that's my specialty, right? That's my special gift. But she had invited me because she felt I needed someone to care for me rather than me doing ministry all the time. So when we got together for lunch afterwards and I presented her with a long list of ways to improve her ministry, what do you think happened? It wasn't pretty. I'm not going to belabor this point. Get the Chapman book, study a spouse, talk to each other. See? Five minutes. That was eight minutes. And I...

I'm just trying to be helpful. I'm just trying to be helpful. Yeah, well, let's just... Let's just throw the time out the window. Let me give you a love language illustration. And this does not count on my six minutes. It's part of her eight minutes. When we had our first child, our background was in Kathy's family because Kathy's mother actually had a stroke when she was 42.

The way things worked there was her father did an awful lot of household chores. And it was one of his ways of showing love to Kathy's mother, who was basically disabled. My father was a workaholic. And when he would come home, my mother, he never did anything. He had no idea where anything was. He didn't know where the spoons, the forks were. And my mother was saying, that's because I love him by not making him do anything. When we had our first child, I remember the very first time I was holding David and I realized I could smell his diaper was dirty. And I said, honey, David's got a dirty diaper. And Kathy says, well, you know what they say around my family?

Finders keepers. And so for a number of months, we struggled with the fact that I didn't like the idea that she didn't just pick up and change the diaper. And she says, you're the husband. What's the matter? You mean women only can do diapers? And we went back and forth thinking, is this a gender role difference? And, you know, you're a chauvinist and I'm liberated.

Or is this what is it? Is this a just we can't agree on division of labor? And it came to realize that when it was deeper than that, it was a live language issue. Because what was happening, because of our backgrounds, when I realized at a deep level, Kathy was saying, if you loved me the way my father loved my mother, you would do that. And I was actually thinking at a deep level, if you loved me the way my mother loved my father, you would do that. And I was actually thinking at a deep level, if you loved me the way my mother loved my father, you wouldn't ask me to do that. And we had to come to grips with the fact that we were feeling unloved, not just disagreeing on

household chores. You get that? That's the reason why the subject's very important. And you say, well, how did you work it out? Well, at a certain point, you decide, you have to realize that actually the other person is loving you. And you may not be hearing it, but they're sending it, but they're not sending it on a wavelength you get. So what you have to do is start to realize, well, they are sending it. So I'm going to hear it, but let's just talk about how can you send it in ways that I feel love so that over here I can do something that makes you feel love. The last thing we said, truth, love, and grace. The power of love is to make you affirmed. You can really affirm each other in marriage. The power of truth is to tell each other about your flaws. But truth and love

have to be combined. And there's the illustration that has helped me so much over the years is that of a gem tumbler. If you put two gems into a tumbler, they tumble around, they knock the rough edges off of each other, and they come out beautiful and polished. And to some degree, that's what should be happening in your own marriage. And yet, I understand that it's possible

to put two gems into a tumbler, and they crack each other. That's truth without love. The other possibility is they just bounce off of each other, and they really don't change each other, and that's truth without love. The other possibility is they just bounce off of each other and they really don't change each other and that's love without truth. But how do you get truth and love to work together? Generally, you'll see that they actually

do not work together well. Because you tell the truth and the other person doesn't feel affirmed and if you love them and you don't tell them the truth, then you're actually not helping them change. I understand that the way that the gem tumbler really works is through a grinding compound. You have to put a grinding compound in with the gems or else they either crack each other or they bounce off of each other. Well,

what is the grinding compound in this metaphor for marriage? It's grace. It's the ability to tell the truth in a non-blaming way to repent and really change and forgive and really really put it behind you repenting and forgiving the ability to repent well the ability to admit when you're wrong the ability to forgive and really really put it behind and not keep the hold the other person liable and not keep bringing it up. The ability to repent and forgive. If you both can do that, almost anybody can have a good marriage. It's probably the one skill set. It's the grinding compound that enables truth and love to fit. You got it? And where do you get that ability to really forgive and to really repent? I'm going to end like this. Some of you have ever been to a marriage

that I've done. If I do a wedding, I always end with this illustration. And I see some people out there who I have married. And so some of you are going to remember this illustration. You're going to hold each other's hands and go, oh, remember. You remember that illustration. It's a story about, it's, I'm not sure if it's a true story, but it's this story. It's a story of the old Russian czar, back when the Russians had a king, the czar. And he had a lieutenant, somebody in his army that was a very trusted soldier of his. And this man came to him at one point and said,

I'm a widower, I have one son, and I have a fatal disease. And when I die, your royal highness, if I have been a good soldier to you, would you be willing to take my child into the castle, into the palace as a ward and raise him and give him an education for me? And the czar said, yes, if you die, I will certainly do that for you. And the man did die, and the czar brought his son into his palace and raised him as really one of his own children. And he ate at his table and he got the best education and he went into the army and he became an officer. But as some of you remember the story, the way the story goes, this young man had a gambling problem. Because he had a gambling problem, he started to embezzle the funds from his particular regiment in order to pay his gambling debts.

But the more his debts got bigger, the more he embezzled. And one night, he was looking over the books. He was in his tent. He was looking at the books, and he realized the jig was up. He probably was going to be found out. It had gone so far. There was going to be an audit. They would find out what it was.

He would be disgraced. And so he decided he would kill himself. So he got out a gun and he got out the vodka. He started drinking vodka to get himself a little bit ready to kill himself, fortify himself. And he drank a little bit too much and he passed out. In those days, the czar used to sometimes, in order to find out what his country, what things were going on in his country, what was going on in his society, he would sometimes dress up as a common soldier, as an enlisted man in disguise, and go out onto the street and go out and just see what was happening. And so he was dressed up as an enlisted man and he walked into an army encampment just to

listen to see what people were saying, find out about morale, that sort of thing. He comes into a tent, and there he sees his foster son passed out. He goes up, and he looks to the books, and he realizes, oh, my goodness, he sees exactly what had happened. He saw that there had been embezzling. He figured this out. In the morning, the young man woke up. And when he woke up, next to him was a note. And on the note, it said, I, the czar, will make good this debt and had the czar seal. The czar had seen what he had done. He realized the trouble he was in, but he decided in love to cover the debt. Now, the fact is that our God also came into this world as an enlisted man, a very common man,

and he looked into our heart. He was on the cross, and he looked down, and he saw us betraying him, denying him, rejecting him, falling asleep on him. And he looked all the way into her heart and he saw all the mess that was in there. And he said, I see you, but I will cover it. So he saw you, he saw your heart to the bottom, but he loved you to the skies. And if you know he did that, and not just that you know in your head, but that you have the emotional wealth

and the strength that comes from knowing he's done that for you, then you can look into the heart of your spouse and even see the worst and say, I see you, but I cover it. I cover the debt. I forgive you. I love you.

I'm going to keep pressing you on this. I'm going to tell you the truth, but I'm going to do it in love. And if you're both doing that, the sky's the limit. Okay, now I think, let me close in prayer, and then Brent, that gives Brent a chance to come up here and tell everybody what to do next. Where are you? Oh, there.

Let's close in prayer. Father, thank you for the things that Kathy shared, and thank you for this opportunity for Kathy and I to share our hearts and our lives. We've been talking to many people about this for decades. There's people of all ages, people of all kinds of relationships that are just sitting out here that I'm looking at, people we've known for years, people we've married, people we've counseled, people we've never met, single people, married people. We're in different places. Only the Holy Spirit can help what we're covering here meet everybody's needs. The differences are too great.

But, Lord, you are up to it. So we pray that you'll continue to be present with us during this weekend. And that we will be able to, that all of us, especially our most burning questions with regard to marriage, that you, in your spiritual wisdom, would open our hearts and help Kathy and I say things. Especially when we have our discussion and we ask the questions, we will say things that will help everyone here become more and more conformed to the image of your son who gave himself for us and therefore was the ultimate and perfect spouse.

So we thank you for this time tonight. We pray that you'll be with us the rest of the night and tomorrow. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for joining us today. If you were encouraged by today's podcast, please rate and review it so more people can discover this resource.

And thanks again for listening. This month's sermons were recorded in 1991. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.