Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Marriage as Completion: Gender Roles, Part 2

Episode Date: September 18, 2023

We’re looking at a subject that’s controversial. I’m going to try to speak as personally out of my own experience as I possibly can. Yet it’s still an area to think carefully. In our series on marriage, we look for the second time at Ephesians 5:22: “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.” What does this mean? It means a whole lot.  Let’s look at what this passage teaches about the head: 1) head means the husband and the wife complete one another, and 2) head means there is an authority structure inside marriage. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 6, 1991. Series: Marriage. Scripture: Ephesians 5:22-33. Today's podcast episode 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.

What's the greatest enemy to any marriage? Impatience? Criticism? Boredom? Tim Keller argues that self-centeredness is the biggest problem in any marriage, and that all other problems come from that. Listen as Dr. Keller explores how the gospel frees us from selfishness to love, serve, and bear with our spouses.

After you listen, we invite you to go online to gospelandlife.com and sign up for our email updates. When you sign up, you'll receive our quarterly newsletter with articles about gospel-changed lives as well as other valuable gospel-centered resources. Subscribe today at gospelandlife.com. We're looking at a subject that's controversial, and yet on the other hand, I find I hate most

controversial subjects. As a lot of you know, I don't enjoy getting after things that divide people. And yet this is not a controversial issue that's intellectual. This is a very, very personal one. And in most controversial issues, it's very hard for me to preach with a lot of conviction because I say, who knows? A lot of wonderful, godly, intelligent people that believe differently. How do I get off preaching from Mount Olympus and saying this is the way it is? In this area, though, I think it's biblically clear. And I also know I'm going to try tonight, especially to speak as personally out of my own experience as I possibly can. And yet it's still an area where I have to tread lightly, I have to think very carefully. And so tonight we'll continue for one more week the subject of looking at the passage,

Wives, verse 22, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. What does this mean? And the answer is, it means a lot, a whole lot. Let's just read the whole passage as usual, because I'd like you to keep on thinking of the whole passage. Ephesians 5, 21 to 32. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church,

his body of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it as the Christ does the church. For we are members of his body. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you must also love his wife as he loves himself,

and the wife must respect her husband. God's Word. Now, recap, elaborate, work out the implications. What is it that he's teaching? What is Paul teaching? First of all, let's take a look at this word, head. For the husband is the head of the wife, christ is the head of the church this means two things and i don't know if you can those of you here last week you might not remember it since i you know as usual was verbose and spent a lot of time uh developing the themes but let me let me

boil this down to the teaching of the passage first of all head means that the husband and the wife complete one another. And secondly, head means that there actually is an authority structure inside marriage. Those are the two things. Now let's look at them again, and let me try to elaborate as well and make it as clear as I can. First of all, when it says the husband is the head of the wife,

we said the word head means, just like the word authority, I didn't say this last week, the word authority has actually two parts to it. Inside the word authority is the word author. And therefore, the word author means source. Something has authority if you're the source. And the illustration I like to use, and some of you have heard it, of course, is that if you're having a debate in your English class over what this poem means, and everybody's saying, I think this means this, and somebody else says, I think it means this, somebody says, no, it means this, in comes the poem, the poet, now I know the deconstructionists don't care what he thinks, but you know, the

normal, the normal logical person realized, in comes the poet, and the poet says, I wrote this thing. I'll tell you what it means. And everybody shuts up. Why? Because this is the author speaking. Because he's the author, he alone can tell you what it means. Because he's the source, therefore he has authority. See, the idea of authority and source go together, even in the English word,

because inside the English word authority, you have the word author. And inside this Greek word for head, you've got both the idea of source as well as the idea of authority structure. So first, you have the idea of source. And when Paul says, the wife submits to the husband for the husband is head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, He is talking and thinking about the Old Testament. He's talking about Genesis, where we're told that Adam was created out of Eve. And pardon me, Eve was created out of Adam. The two actually were part of one another. You don't have two separate creations ex nihilo. You don't have Adam created out of the ground and Eve created out of the ground, out of the dust, but you have Adam created out of the ground and Eve created out of Adam.

What is the significance of that? Very, very great. In Genesis 128, we're told, In the image of God created he him, male and female created he them. Now, when in Hebrew you put two statements back to back, they're usually parallel. That means one is a restatement of the other. So, first of all, it says God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he him, male and female created he them, which is pretty clear. What that means is that when God says, I'm going to create a human being,

that human being is in the image of God means the human being is like a little mirror that reflects to God his own being, his own rationality, his own personality, his own creativity, his holiness, his righteousness. Being in the image of God means that we are persons. And we have the ability to reflect to God his nature in a way that the animals don't,

in a way that the rocks don't, and that the trees don't, in a way that the rocks don't, and that the trees don't. But then it says, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them. The clear implication is that when God created human beings to reflect him, he created human beings in two modalities, that together, male and female, were built to stand there and reflect back to God, his being, in a way that the male alone or the female alone can't do. Now, maybe an illustration of that, I mean, maybe you're thinking about kind of like two pieces of a mirror,

and you put them together and then they show forth the image of God. That doesn't quite work because, you know, if you have a mirror and you sort of crack it down the center and you have two mirrors, the fact is that both mirrors can completely reflect the totality of your being. Isn't that right? You don't need a large mirror or a small mirror. The small mirror can do it. I think it's more like this. Here's a piece of aluminum foil, and that aluminum foil reflects you fitfully. And here's a piece of glass, clear glass, and the clear glass reflects you fitfully, too. The aluminum foil reflects you in a kind of distorted way. The glass reflects you not in a distorted way, but in a shadowy way.

But if you stick the aluminum foil behind the mirror, if you back, pardon me, if you back the glass with the foil, what have you got? You've got a mirror. And the mirror perfectly, by putting those two elements together, reflects the person who's looking into it. The scripture in so many ways says that male and female together reflect God in a way that male alone or female alone cannot. This may sound like common sense to you. This may be something you know the Bible's taught for years, maybe. But I want you to realize it's an amazingly, amazingly controversial topic. And our entire society is moving completely away from the idea.

Ramifications are huge. I guess we ought to think about some of them tonight. Let's show another place in which that comes up. When in Genesis 2, Adam is naming the animals, we're told at the end of all of his naming of the animals, it says, but a companionable, a suitable companion was not discovered for him. That tells us that Adam was created with certain design deficits, that he needed a companion. He needed something to complete him. It says, you know, you go back into the Old Testament and you'll see in the early stages of the book of Genesis,

you have nothing but benediction. The word benediction means a good word. Bene, right? And dict, like dictionary. A good word. Bene, right? And dict, like dictionary. A good word. And so all you see is God created the light and the darkness, and he saw that the light was what? Good. It's a good word, benediction.

And he created the flora and the fauna, and it was good. And he created the fishes and the animals, and it was good. He's creating all these things, and it's good, it's good, it's good. Benediction, benediction, benediction. Suddenly, it says, it was not good for man to be alone. Malediction, a bad word, and you know there's no sin in the world yet. There's been no fall, there's been no entrance of evil. How could it be bad? Unless God actually went ahead and he created Adam in such a way that he was not able to reflect the image of God in totality. Therefore, literally it says, when Eve was created, it says,

Eve was created as a helper fit for him. Now, literally the word helper means, I mean, pardon me, the word is a helper, a companion opposite to him or corresponding to him. She was opposite to him. And when he discovers her, I guess we mentioned this a couple weeks ago, when he first sees Eve, what does he say? He breaks into poetry, the first poetry in the Bible, and therefore the first poem in history. Now, when you think of poetry, you Bible, and therefore, the first poem in history. Now, it doesn't, you know, when you think of poetry, you think of rhyme, if you're not real sophisticated, you all know poetry is

more than that. In Hebrew, there's a particular poetic form, a poetic couplet, that Adam breaks into when he sees Eve, and he says, this at last. See, at last. There's been a longing, there's been a yearning, there's an incompletion. You don't yearn for something unless there's an incompletion. This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. What is he saying? He is saying, this is really weird. You're really different than me. I mean, you're opposite to me. It says he was a helper opposite. You're opposite to me, and yet you're me. You're opposed to me. You're against me, and yet you're me.

Yet I find myself in you. You're the missing part. At last, my bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, you shall be called woman, for you were taken out of man. How many times does the Bible have to put it to show that there is a fundamental incompletion that each gender has in itself, but that together forms a whole and enables humanity together to reflect the image of God? We're told in verse 25 of Genesis 2, immediately after he meets his wife, it says, and they were naked and unashamed. What happened to him when he was completed?

Now, again, this is profound. This is deep. This is the thing I'm going to start to wrestle with a little bit for the next five minutes. I probably won't do justice to it, but we can see the results of completion. Personal ease, an at-easeness. They were naked and unashamed. There's no anxiety left. There's no hiding. There's a sense of being, there's a primordial and ancient unity and accord that Adam and Eve had that we've never had since. Because sin entered in and disrupted the unity that they were able to have. They were naked and unashamed, nothing to hide,

complete at-easiness with themselves and with each other. So the Scripture says, and I don't know how many ways it can say it, literally, that there is a complementary unity between, a non-reversible unity between the genders. When I say non-reversible, it means male and female are different. In some sense, they're opposed to each other. They complete each other. They're non-reversible. They're equal but not equivalent.

Now, what I was trying to say last night, last week, was that this is a very, very difficult thing to articulate. Actually, millions of husbands and wives have experienced this completion, but they can't articulate it either. And as soon as you try to sit down and explain what it is and give incidents of it, you'll see that you can always say, well, but couldn't someone else besides a spouse do that for you? And therefore, the actual experience of completion that comes through a decent marriage is always bigger than the sum of its parts. But essentially, the completion goes along this line. I mentioned last week, for example, Carol Gilligan in A Different

Voice is part of a whole new generation, in a sense, of researchers who are saying, you know what, when it comes right down to it, even though there's all sorts of, there's a spectrum of differences inside each gender, and even though there's all sorts of various permutations and variations, essentially male and female brains and hearts operate in somewhat different ways. And if you remember, the basic summary that she came up with was that men feel they're maturing as they become separated and independent, and women feel that they're maturing as they become attached and interdependent. Now, what that boils down to is something pretty interesting. When two people get together and start to complete each other, that means start to live together. That means get convinced that

each person, how do we used to put it a couple weeks ago, you get committed to the glory self of that person. That means you look into that person's heart and you see the great potential they have, see the great human being that God wants to make them. And you say, I'm committed to getting that person there. And so there's love and there's affirmation and there's confrontation and there's service,

mutual service and all that great stuff that happens, which is hard work. But what you're doing is you're not battling this out with a person of the same gender. The confrontation and the criticism and the affirmation and the building, all this stuff is not happening with somebody of the same gender. It's someone who is opposite to you, someone who was created to both oppose you and complete you. That's a hard thing to describe when you get into it. It doesn't happen with your parents, it doesn't happen with a friend of the same gender, and it doesn't happen even with a friend of the opposite gender with whom you don't have this depth of commitment. In marriage, you give people the right to come right on inside, we talked about this before, to see your dirty parts,

give people the right to come right on inside. We talked about this before, to see your dirty parts, see, to see the most intimate things. And therefore, when you get someone of the opposite gender in there, the completion work goes on. It's very hard to describe how something can be opposite to you, at the same time enhancing you. Musicians know that if you're, if here's a theme, here's a musical theme, the right kind of counter theme, which in a sense opposes the theme, just creates incredible beauty. The wrong kind of counter theme creates incredible ugliness. And don't ask me how to describe the difference. I mean, everybody knows that. Everybody knows that all by itself, a simple melodic line, all by itself, as beautiful as it is, can be filled out and furnished and enriched, and in some ways the beauty of it brought out because of opposing themes that are being

played at the same time. And we also know that those opposing themes can be played in such a way as to create incredible ugliness and just plain noise. And even though lots, I've heard people try to do it, I mean, I took a music theory class once. Nobody really knows why, why ugliness happens and why beauty happens, but we know it happens. So don't try to press me too far on how this completion happens. We just know it does. Here, basically the completion happens because you're forced for the first time in your life to continually look at the world through the eyes of someone of another gender. What does it do? It creates a wisdom and it fills you out, just like the opposing theme fills out

the melody. So, for example, I'm thinking of one kind of example, and hear me out before you jump on me for this. Here's Kathy and myself, and we have two different approaches to emotions. Kathy's approach, well, my approach goes like this. Kathy will one day say to me, you're mad, aren't you? You're really mad. And I'll say, no, I'm not mad. I'm fine. I can tell you I'm just fine. Three days later, I'll come back and say, you're right. I was just, I was really mad. She'll look at me and she'll say, how can a human being with more than a second grade education, how can a human being really live in this world and not know whether they're mad? How could that be? How could you stuff your feelings at the, how could you be so out of touch with yourself? Now what she's upset

about is my non-completed masculinity. I separate. I'm moving out. I'm looking at impact. I don't look inside. I don't look at relationships. I don't care about attachment. You know, she's got to teach me that in a sense. She's got to furnish that. She's got to bring it out. She's upset about, in a sense, at that point, my uncompleted masculinity. But then later on, I may sit down with Kathy and we both agree that there's a person that we need to work with. We need to be civil to. We need to be courteous to because of a number of situations. But that person has been dirty, has been a louse. So she says, you're going to have to lead on this one. I say, why? She says, because you know how to stuff your feelings. By the way, have you ever

figured out, women who are in the professional world, the definition of professional behavior is an unrelentingly masculine approach. You see, because men were out in the workplace for so long and women were excluded, now they get in, all of the standards of professional behavior have all been worked out along with masculine gender types. See, what it means to be professional is to stuff your feelings, is to be absolutely unwilling to say to a person who you're dealing with how you feel about them, to be completely cool and completely civil and completely courteous. Now, the fact is, sometimes that's the right thing to do. Sometimes that's the servant thing to do. Sometimes it's the mature thing to do, but very often it's not. But very often when that has to be done,

she looks to me and she says, you help me because you know how to stuff those feelings. You know how to stuff those feelings so deep that you don't even know what the heck you're feeling for three days. Now somebody says, wait a minute, wait a minute. This is unfair. These are sexual stereotypes. The insensitive male, the emotional female. I'm sorry. They're not stereotypes. They're us. And what do you think stereotypes are? It's uncompleted masculinity, unredeemed masculinity, and unredeemed femininity. You see, what happens when you get two people together who are completing each other, who are pressing each other, who are confronting each other, who are loving each other, who are oppressing each other, who are confronting each other, who are loving each other into the kingdom of God. What you're continually doing is you are furnishing out

and completing to keep the independence from becoming tyranny, to keep the interdependence from becoming dependence. See? Together, we pull it together. In fact, here's what's interesting. what's interesting. If I am, as a man, over gender-typed, overly independent, overly autonomous, see, my spouse calls me on it because she sees it, because she's so sensitive to it. But on the other hand, if I'm under gender-typed, if I'm not independent enough in a situation that calls for it, she can call me on that and vice versa. We're completing each other. We're pulling each other together. We're bringing it together. It's a mystery that at some deep level, you realize when you're dealing with somebody of the other gender, here's a person who's different than me at the same time who is me, who's restoring me,

who's healing me, who's turning me more and more and restoring me into the image of God. me, who's turning me more and more and restoring me into the image of God. Male and female, created he them. This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. 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. The Meaning of Marriage is our thank you for

your gift to help Gospel and Life share the love of Christ with people all over the world. So request your copy today at gospelinlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give. Hedgehip means completion. Secondly, hedgehip means authority. Now one thing, I did mention this last week, but I think I better be as clear as I possibly can. When this place, the Bible says, wives submit to your husbands, husbands love your wives, what is it requiring? Let me give you a kind of little readout. I mean, a lot of people afterwards, I talked all week to people about this thing. And most everybody says, I think I got you. And I think I can live with it even if I don't like what you said. At least, you know, it's in the ballpark. And so let me try to work this out.

What does it mean when the Bible says, wives submit to your husband? Number one, it does not mean the wives give the husband unconditional obedience. It does not. Now, so I'll get in trouble with somebody here. Here we go. Acts 5.29. The civil magistrates tell the disciples to stop preaching Christ. Go to Romans 13 and you will see it says that the Christian must always obey the civil magistrate, must always obey

the government. That's what it says in Romans 13. And in Acts 529, what does Peter say? He says, God should judge whether we should obey you rather than him. So the point is that any human authority that you defer to, any support of human authority must never be unconditional. You give Christ unconditional obedience, but your obedience to any human authority is conditioned on this. You are free from human authority. If to support that human authority, you have to forbid what God enjoins or enjoin what God forbids. See, if you're supporting a

human authority that is pressing you to sin, that is supporting sin, at that point, your obligation to human authority goes. You cannot read Romans 13, it says, obey the civil authority as something absolute. In light of Acts 529, where the apostles look at the civil magistrates and say, you're telling us to preach, to no longer preach the gospel. God says we have to preach the gospel. At that point, we are no longer under your authority. This would mean, certainly, that for a wife to support the authority of her husband, when that authority is supporting those things which God forbids, if he says, you're going to help me sell drugs,

if he's beating her, you see, in other words, to support authority that's actually supporting that which God forbids, of course that's silly, that's ridiculous. It goes against Acts 5.29. You must never, ever, ever read this verse. Nobody should read that verse, saying where it says, Obey your wives that submit to your husbands should read the verse, saying where it says, obey your wives or submit to your husbands as to the Lord, does not mean in the same way you obey the Lord. It's saying

as you obey the Lord, you will obey your husband. You obey your husband because you obey the Lord. It doesn't say obey your husband in the same way, to the same dimensions that you obey the Lord. I know people have taken it that way. I know the church has twisted it that way. I can't help that. I'm not defending the church. I'm defending the Bible here tonight. So it doesn't say, when it says submit to your husbands, that means that there's some kind of unconditional obedience, some kind of unconditional servile total authority that the wife's supposed to give herself to. Secondly, and I think I did say this last week to some degree, secondly, when it says wives submit to your husband, that does not mean wives do not take part in a consensus form of decision-making.

The Victorian model of family authority, the little wifey model of authority that says, you see, wives submit to your husband, that means let your husbands make the decisions, and you just run errands and you just smile and you just demurely submit to him. Nobody seems to, you know, they never thought about what it means to complete one another. You know, when the Bible says friends are supposed to sharpen each other as iron sharpens iron, how much more the ultimate friendship, if submitting to your husband means that your husband makes the decisions,

that you never argue, you never go at a hammer and tongs, there's no completing going. How does completion work? Completion is hard work. Completion is conflict. Completion is going at each other. Completion is arguing. Completion is beating one up, others up in love. And I'm talking, of course, metaphorically. Okay? You see, completion's got to happen that way, and therefore, it's really clear from the Scripture, just by all this talk about how you're supposed to sanctify each other, and you're supposed to be washing each other, and you're supposed to be dealing with each other's blemishes and confronting each other, is extremely clear that that means decision-making is always by consensus. You fight it out. You duke it out. You spend a long time sharpening one another. That's got to happen or there's no

completion. All right, then somebody says, what does it mean? And we did say this last week, but I'll show you again why. What does it mean for, say, wives submit to your husbands? What it means is that when you can't agree, after lots of completion, after lots of consensus, somebody's got to break the tie. Let the husband do it. Why? Because the Bible says when that happens, when the husband breaks the tie, when the wife defers, then you're getting in touch with your masculinity and femininity, even though you may not like it, but you will, you'll find it. It's there. A lot of people said, will, you'll find it. It's there. A lot of people said, look, I have lots of friends who believe very much in something that is a completely new idea in the whole history of the world, and that is egalitarian marriage. I mean, it might be right, but at least you realize

that how incredibly innovative the whole thing is. And in egalitarian marriage, they say that decision-making has to happen and no one breaks the tie. You work it out. And if you cannot, if you can't come to agreement on it, nobody has the right to break the tie and take the authority. And I, my experience is nobody has been able to show me to, you might say, argue me out of this. My experience is that that's impossible. There are just too many places where you have to make a decision, and even not to make a decision means you're actually giving one person their way. There's enough, the perfect example which I used last week, and I didn't use our names, but of course

you know what it was all about. Here's Tim Keller who wants to come to New York to start a church, and here's Kathy Keller who doesn't. And at one time during all of this battling, I mentioned this, but I don't think I brought this out so clearly. During the battle, we suddenly realized that there was no such, there's no way that we could decide not to decide. At one point, you see, I said to her, well, if you don't want to come, we're not going to come. And she pointed out to me, that means I get to break the tie. And I suddenly realized, oh my gosh, there was no way out. No way out. Either I got to break the tie or she got to break the tie. There was no third way. There was no alternative. There's no such thing as an

egalitarian approach here. No way. And I can think of dozens and dozens of other situations. You know, like, do you put your kids in private school or public school or what school and so forth? You know, not to decide is to decide. Who's going to break the tie? And see, at that point, my wife says, you break the tie. Now, do you see what happened? My wife and I are not from the Midwest. We're not from the South. We're from the Northeast, raised in public schools, went to private schools. We don't have any ideological prejudice toward this approach. Not only that, neither of us, as most of you know, are very overly gender typed. And therefore, why did we do it? Why did we decide in this marriage, when we can't come to a consensus, when we really are kind of at loggerheads,

we've done all the completing we possibly can, we can't bring ourselves around, why let Tim make the decision? You know, I want you to realize this has happened less than 10 times in our marriage. In fact, we can only name about six. We're sure there must be some other ones. Why?

We did it as unto the Lord. We did it simply to obey. We did it simply to obey we did it simply because first of all somebody's got to do it and if you don't decide who it's going to be on the basis of what the bible says on the basis of revelation what are you going to do whoever has the loudest mouth whoever's the best at manipulation what are you going to do huh see the point is and i think that's the only alternative is if somebody has a better alternative, show me. As you know, as you can tell, I've been talking about this for 17 years to people, and nobody's even come close yet to showing me what that third way is. You have to decide who's going to do it, and we have found that even though ideologically and emotionally

and every other way, it doesn't really make much sense to us. We found out that it did bring out something in us. It did get us in touch with the male and the female form of our humanity. It did make us fit. It did complete us in a way we never ever would ever have thought of. But here's the other wonderful thing about this teaching that you must never ever miss. It says, wise respect your husbands. It does not say, husbands, get the respect of your wives, take the respect of your wives. The only thing husbands are commanded to do in a biblical marriage is love. Now, I want you to think about the implications of this. One of the guys that I go to all the time because I respect him so much as a teacher and as a scholar and as a preacher

was an English, well, a Welsh pastor, preacher, David Martin Lloyd-Jones. I got out his sermon on this text. And, you know, Lloyd-Jones was a man from the old school. He was raised in Wales in the early part of the 20th century. And he was by no means what you might call a modernist. And he tended to be very, very old school in many ways. It was amazing what he said. He says, the clear implications of this text were wives are told to respect their husbands, but husbands are not told to exert their

headship, but only told to love. He says the clear teaching is that husbands have absolutely, they are not at all entitled to headship unless they're loving their wives sacrificially. Put it another way, headship is never ever something you demand or take. It's only something you can receive. You see, if any women in this audience who feel like I hate this idea of headship, you have to see the Christian understanding of headship is incredibly realistic. It says a husband never, ever, ever has the right to take it, only to receive it. Never has the right to demand it, only to earn it.

If he's not earning it, if you don't trust him, husbands, if she doesn't trust you, if she doesn't have a, if you're not living such a sacrificial life for her, putting her needs ahead of yours, so that she trusts you, she's not going to give you headship, and you don't deserve it. And you don't even have any right to have it. Nor can you ever demand it. You want headship, you love her until she finds that it's something she wants to do. And that's what the scripture says. Clear implications. It never says, rule your wife. Never. It says, love your wife. And yet on the other hand, it turns around to the wife and says, respect and give the headship to your husband.

The realism of this thing is overwhelming. Why? Remember we said Genesis 2 and 3 tells us that sin has changed the headship principle and twisted it so that men will naturally oppress women. It'll always be a tendency. It will always be there. It doesn't eliminate the headship principle. Plenty of people say because of that oppression, we've got to eliminate it totally in marriage. It's just too dangerous. If it was too dangerous, you know, there's wisdom to that, but the Bible doesn't give you that wisdom. And we

can't try to be wiser than the scripture. What the scripture does though, is it hedges it about with all kinds of marvelous and wonderful safety catches, and here's one of them. Husbands, you're never allowed to take the headship. You're only allowed to receive it. You're only allowed to earn it. There's no oppression here. There's not even any chance of oppression if two people who sit down go in and understand what the Scripture teaches.

People can twist Scripture. They can twist anything if they want to. But if you look at the Scripture and see what it's saying, it's impossible with a decent understanding of it to use it to kill each other with. And people do it all the time, but it's because they don't understand it. Somebody says, well, look, if this is really true that male and female are that different? And they complement one another. And if that's really the basis for this unity, why is it that the Bible doesn't command all women to submit to all men? Why is it that there's only a command inside a covenantal relationship?

The answer, again, is the realism of the Bible. The realism of the Bible is that it knows, because of the influence of sin, just what havoc that would wreak, and why the Bible does not say all women are supposed to submit to all men, but simply says in a covenantal relationship, which is hedged about by all these safeguards, and this commitment to absolute love,

there and only there, with all these qualifications, can you begin to practice the headship principle and get back in touch with the primordial unity that Adam and Eve experienced. We'll never get all the way there. There's only flashes of it. And it's the only safe place to try it inside a covenant, inside a commitment, inside a legal bond. But in there, work on it and wait till you see how wonderful it is occasionally in splashes to really be at ease. it is occasionally in splashes to really be at ease. At ease. This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. Now, the other part of this verse is actually something that's just too wonderful. And it's always, because everybody's so busy arguing over

what the heck it means for wives to submit to their husbands, that they overlook the fact that it says, for the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church. And this is actually teaching us something marvelous about a relationship with Christ, and also saying, if you don't understand the glory of your relationship with Christ, you will never be decent in your marriage. You know what it teaches you? And this is how we're going to close up. First of all, it teaches you this about your relationship with Christ.

First of all, it teaches you that he is ravished with you. This is so bold. This is so bold. When it says that when you look at how a man falls in love with a woman, okay, and marries her, you begin to get a little bit of an insight into how Jesus Christ relates to you in terms of your salvation. The first thing it proves in our relationship with Christ is that Christ's love for us is not indifferent. It's not abstract. It's not abstract. He sets his heart on you with probably a considerable more passion and intensity than anybody in this room has ever set their heart on anyone else.

He is ravished with you. He is triumphant in you. He glories in his relationship with you. Now, I don't know what is a more daring image than that. I don't know what is a more incredible promise than that. image than that. I don't know what is a more incredible promise than that. Partly, it's just, it's almost so daring that you really don't let yourself get, bear the full brunt of it. The man is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. What an incredible thing.

There is a love that goes beyond any kind of passion that you will ever experience, that love for you. He sets his heart on you. He sets his love on you. He delights in you. He sings over you in his love, it says in Zephaniah. That's the first thing. It tells you about Jesus' love for you. Secondly, what we're told in this verse about Jesus' love for you is that it's in spite of love. Haven't you ever noticed how people often will say, of love. Haven't you ever noticed how people often will say, oh, they're in love, they're getting married. Hmm. I wonder what she sees in him. I wonder what he sees in her. Now, I want you to know that the most immature love and the most mature love look a lot alike. See, there's an immature kind of love that basically gets a crush on somebody, and in spite of all those flaws, that person, see, in immature love, you don't

see the flaws. Everybody comes up to you and says, honey, you're going to marry him. Do you realize? You know, you realize what he does to people? Do you realize these flaws? I mean, you're in trouble. And she sees the wonder, she says, but you don't understand, I see his heart. I see who he really is. The problem is, with immature love, is she sees the heart, but not the blemishes, not the rags. In mature love, you see the heart and you see things that nobody else sees. You see the jewels under the earth. You see the ore inside all the dirty rock. But you see the blemishes.

You see the rags. And this is how Jesus looks at you. He sees all of your blemishes. He sees all of your unworthiness. He sees all of your undeservedness. And he says, I don't care. I'm going to cover it. I'm going to deal with it.

Because I see the glorious person that you're going to cover it I'm going to deal with it because I see the glorious person that you're going to be in me and that's how he regards you and that's how he looks at you you see it's as the husband looks at the wife and wants to present him to himself spotless and pure

and all that kind of stuff that's in spite of love what does he see in you? You know, I'll tell you something. It's pretty hard. That doesn't happen that much in New York because we are so image conscious that almost none of us will be caught dead with somebody whose glory is not seen by everybody else around. Thank God Jesus is not like us. thank God Jesus is not like us. Thank God Jesus is not at all like us.

He sees the jewels under the earth and he says, I'm committed to that. He loves you in spite of the lack of glory and the lack of beauty and the lack of purity. Thirdly, thirdly, we said Jesus sets his love on you. He's just as ravished with you as a man loving a woman. Secondly, he sees the beauty in you, and he sets his heart on you,

and he loves you in spite of your blemishes. He sees those blemishes, but that's not important. He's going to cover those things. He sees the glory that he's going to put in you. Thirdly, whenever you fall in love with somebody, you do everything for them. You know, before you used to go on, you used to enjoy going fishing, but now, frankly, you don't enjoy fishing unless he's along or she's along. Before you made money, now you really make money for her or for him. Now you think about what you can do together. What happens is when you're really

in love, you can't imagine, you can't enjoy anything without that person. You hear about the artist that was absolutely ruined as an artist. He was a landscape artist and he fell in love. And unfortunately, no matter what he drew, he stuck her. Every single painting he put her. Couldn't get his mind. Everything's done for her. Now look, the Bible says that Jesus Christ did not die for justice. He does not live for abstract holiness. It's for you.

The Bible says he does everything for you. Romans 8.28 says, All things work together for good to them that love God. And Ephesians 1 says he's governing all of history, all of circumstances. Everything is happening for you. How does Jesus regard us, the church? You know, you send a prayer up there and he gets it and he opens his mail and he says, ah, a letter from the church. Let's see, the church, the church. Yeah, a little organization I left down on earth 2,000 years ago. I wonder how they're getting along. No!

The Scripture says he does everything for the church. He lives for the church. Everything that happens is done for the church, for you and me. He doesn't govern the universe on the basis of abstract principles of righteousness or justice. It's all for you. Just like a man in love. Can you believe that? Can you understand that? Can you think about that? You won't ever have

a good marriage if you can't be ravished with the love with which he's ravished with you. Lastly, Christ's love has authority. The big problem, the reason a lot of you are scared to death to get married, and we're going to talk about that finally next week, finally we'll say, well, what if I'm divorced, what if I'm homosexual, and what if I'm single? What has all this got to do with me? It has a lot to do with you. That's next week. But I'll tell you one thing. One of the reasons why somebody says, I want to hear this.

But look, actually I don't know what the heck you've been doing for the last eight weeks. You might as well come next week, but what you were here for the last eight weeks, I don't know. But you see, one of the reasons a lot of people are so scared about marriage, and rightly so, is that when you fall in love, you fall under the authority of that love. We're not talking now about wife or husband. You know darn well how hard it is to actually be in love with somebody, because now you're not your own person. You've got to make decisions with them. You can't decide, hey, I want to move to L.A. You've got to find out whether she wants to move to L.A. too.

There's an authority under which you come. You lose control when you're in love. You have to lose control when you're in love. Otherwise, you're using people. If you let a person into your life and that person loves you, then you can't treat that person as a thing. You've lost control to the degree you've got a person in your life who loves you. And when the greatest person in the whole universe and the history of the world comes into your life, you really lose control. But just as you lose control when you enter into a beautiful loving relationship, you also find yourself. You get completed.

So there is nothing like the completion that comes from losing total control by giving yourself to the Lord Jesus. He is ravished with you. He loves you in spite of you, in spite of your flaws. He is absolutely doing everything for you. And lastly, he wants you to come in under his authority. A beep. It's 8 o'clock. Listen. Just remember that Jesus is the helper and he is the head.

Those of you who say, I want that completion, if I had a great marriage, I would be complete. Those of you with great marriages, meet me up here and maybe we can talk to these people afterwards and say, a great marriage is not enough. The best marriage in the world is not enough. It doesn't complete you. It doesn't completely put you into the restoration,

not restored into the image of Christ. It's Christ that completes you. He comes in as the ultimate helper. He comes in as the ultimate head. He comes in as the ultimate spouse. This text says, whether you're married or not, to a human being, you are married to Christ. And he's ravished with you and he loves you.

Come in under his authority and let him complete you. Let's pray. Now, Father, we thank you that you have given us the right, you've given us the right to boldly come before you and say, because you love us, we know that you will enable us, you will glorify us, you will do all things for us. know that you will enable us, you will glorify us, you will do all things for us. We thank you that it was so odd. The more we give up our authority, the more we give

you control, the more power, the more freedom, the more authority we feel, the more we become ourselves. Help us to take all these words that we have read tonight and we've studied and listened to tonight and apply them to our lives by your Spirit's power. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Go ahead, John.

Thanks for listening to today's teaching from Dr. Keller. If you were encouraged by this podcast, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel and Life monthly partner. Your partnership helps more people access resources like this podcast. Just visit gospelandlife.com slash partner to learn more. 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.