Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Marriage as Completion: One Flesh

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

We’re in a series on marriage, and we’ve said the purpose of marriage is friendship and a unique oneness. And we’ve also said there’s a structure in marriage.  Ephesians 5 teaches that there���s a mutuality between husband and wife, and yet the commands are not the same to both. They’re equal, but they’re not equivalent. We’ll look now at 1) the concept that in marriage you become one flesh, 2) how this oneness happens, and 3) how this oneness bridges into the subject of role relationships between men and women in marriage. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 22, 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.

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. This is the sixth week.

I understand that everybody wants to buy the series of tapes on marriage. And Jim Irwin tells me that if it's long enough, and if the series is long enough, the sales will be such that we'll be able to buy our own building. And so I'm thinking of, you know, this is the sixth in a series of 652 talks on marriage. No, this is our sixth talk on this passage, the classic text in the Scripture on Christian marriage, Ephesians 5.

And I would just like to read it to you and then continue our exposition of it. This is the sixth week we've been on it. Ephesians 5, and sorry about my sound and sorry about the occasional memory lapses that I am bound to have tonight. But let's see if we can muddle through best we can. That's Ephesians 5, and we'll go verses 21 to 33. It's a great passage to know by heart. Here it goes. 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 wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives just 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, just as 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 also must love his wife as he loves himself,

and the wife must respect her husband. This is God's Word. Now, there's been topics, and in the early part of the series, I said we were going to move through topics. We said we would look at marriage as ministry. We'd look at marriage as covenant or commitment. We've been looking at marriage as friendship. But tonight, I'd like to bridge out of, finish up, very briefly, the idea of marriage as friendship and bridge into another section. We said the purpose of marriage is friendship.

However, we also said this passage teaches us that there's a structure, there's a role structure in marriage, that the role of husband and wife is not reversible and it's not interchangeable. There is, as one person said, there's a mutuality between husband and wife that we see here as we will start to look at tonight. There's a mutual submission in love

and yet the commands are not the same to both. There's an asymmetrical mutuality that this passage is talking about, that it's true that husband and wife are one flesh, and yet the two pieces, when you put the one flesh, and it's one flesh because two pieces fit together, yet when you take a look at the two pieces separately, you discover that they're not identical. They're equal, but they're not equivalent. Now, what I want to do is to return to where we were, and that is this concept that in marriage you become one flesh. And I'll show you how this bridges us from the end of us talking about marriage as friendship into talking about the role structure of marriage. The Bible says, a husband will leave his mother and father

and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. And this word one flesh is so strong, it means that there is a possibility of deep unity and deep oneness when two people of two different genders enter into a permanent, exclusive, binding legal commitment to share their entire lives with each other. When that happens, there's a potential for deep oneness that no other relationship has the potential for. By talking about two married people as one flesh, I think I may have referred to this. Again, this is one of the things I can't remember.

You know, in the Bible, the word flesh doesn't simply mean your body. It doesn't simply mean like what the English word flesh means, which always means simply, you know, skin and sinew and blood and guts. Actually, there's a place in the Bible where it says, where God says, I will pour out my spirit on one flesh and on all flesh, excuse me, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. There I go. And that doesn't mean I will pour out my spirit on everybody's body. It means I'll pour out my spirit on all people. And see, the word flesh means a person. And when it says the two will become one flesh, it says you're one person. You're really no longer the same two people, but you're a third entity. You're a new compound, just like two chemicals come together and they interact, so they become a third kind of chemical.

They're not the same. It's not like two chemicals that just happen to be sitting in the same test tube with each other, one on top of the other, or even intermingled. You see what the idea is here? If you take two chemicals that do not react with each other, but just sort of put them together the way you put together, the way you sort of knead, you know, let's say chocolate chips into the dough.

You know, you just work it through, but you've still got dough and you've still got chocolate chips. We're talking about something different. Two chemicals that when they come together, interact in such a way that their molecular structure is changed and they become something that's third, that's new such a way that their molecular structure is changed and they become something that's third, that's new. And that's what the Bible is saying.

The potential is for two people who come together in the bond of marriage. This oneness is tremendously deep. It's organic. It's vital. It's not mechanical. I know that the modern world still has tremendous trouble with this idea of the one flesh.

A lot of people suggest that it's oppressive. We'll have to be talking about that the next two weeks. But the modern world says, don't get married, live together. But if you have to get married, make sure that you're, you always make sure that the relationship is continually fulfilling your needs. Make sure that you maintain your own economic and financial and social infrastructure so if things don't work out, you've got something to fall back on. See, that's a complete antithesis to the idea of one flesh.

Can you imagine the legs deciding, look, we need our own nervous system and we need our own blood supply in case the hands develop an infection. We don't want anything to do with them. But that's exactly what prenuptial agreements are. Now, how is it that this one fleshness can be developed? Or let me ask it another way. Why is it that one fleshness, this kind of deep oneness, doesn't happen in marriages? I'm going to give you three ways that it can happen and three reasons it doesn't happen. They're the same three reasons. If you do these three things properly, it develops deep oneness. If you fail to do them or if you do them wrongly, it creates what most marriages are,

and that is basically business partnerships. Now, we said the deep oneness develops like this. This passage is saying the two shall become one flesh. Therefore, a husband relates to a wife and a wife relates to a husband. As you relate to your body, that's how one you are. That's why, as we read through, it says that the husband cares for his wife the way he cares for his body. What is your relationship with your body? You really aren't separate from your body, and yet you can think about your body, and you can talk about your body, you can act on your body as an object, and yet it's pretty close to who you really are. In fact, it is who you really are. And we said there's three things that you have to do

to develop this one fleshness, or three things that if you blow will create the lack of it. It will undermine the one fleshness. One is you've got to let your spouse deal with you about your uncleanness, about your blemishes, about the unsightly nasal hair. We said last week, this was at the very end of last week, we said when this passage talks about how the husband has to care for the wife

and wants to present her spotless and without blemish and clothed and beautiful. And then he says, just like you deal with your own body. Well, how do you deal with your body? See, you wipe your body. You trim your body. You deal with the unsightly fat on your body. You buy clothes to hide the unsightly parts of your body while you're working out in the gym

to permanently change those parts of your body. And, of course, you have the right to do that. The Scripture says that when a spouse comes into your life, that spouse now has the same kind of rights, the same kind of access to your faults and your flaws. And therefore your spouse has the right to talk to you about what's wrong with you. And if you are touchy and if you refuse to let him or her in, and if you start to say, you are touchy and if you refuse to let him or her in, and if you start to say, you mind your business and I'll mind mine, nobody has the right to talk to me about those things, then you're denying the one flesh nature and the one flesh potential and the deep ability to really change

and grow and sanctify and be perfected and redeemed and become the glorious people that God wants you to be through this marriage. So unless you let your spouse really deal with your faults, unless you let your spouse in, unless you let your spouse have that kind of access, there won't be one flesh. Secondly, and I think we mentioned this last week too, secondly, your spouse has the right to reprogram your self-image. Last week we said this briefly, I'll say it briefly again, but let me show you why so many marriages fall apart,

because this ability is abused. When you get married, your spouse has got such a tremendous power over how you think of yourself. Remember this at the end of last week? There's a little... Years ago, this insight, which is very, very biblical, came from a paper that my wife read by Arvin Engelson. You remember that? Arvin, where are you?

We don't even know. He was a student at Gordon-Conwell. We barely knew him. He had a paper that Kathy had to read in some kind of seminar. It was on marriage as a vehicle of redemption, and it is such a powerful paper. It's shaped my whole understanding of what the Bible says about marriage.

I've never met the guy, and I have no idea where he is. Arvin Engelson, if you're listening to this tape, I want you to know that your paper has meant a lot to me. And in that paper, he says, marriage is recreational. And these are some of the things he says. He says, your entire life, your entire self-image is basically a compilation of verdicts that have been passed on you, things that people have said about you. Now when you get married, your spouse

has got massive ability to overturn, has the power to overturn all those verdicts in a single word. Your spouse has the ability to reprogram your self-appreciation. Your spouse can say, I don't care what anybody ever, ever said, you're smart. You are a bright person and you will become feeling bright. You'll feel that way. And if everybody else has said, I think that you are a louse, I think that you amount to nothing. Your spouse says, I think you're a significant human being. I think you contribute to so many people's lives. You'll start to feel significant. It's also true if your spouse starts to say, you're a louse. You'll never amount to a hill of beans. What that does is it completely destroys you. You see, marriage, you put into the, when you get married, you put into the hands of your spouse the ability to make or break you.

Now, I'll tell you why this deep unity doesn't work, doesn't develop in most people. Because when you get married, you have no idea the power you've got. When you get into your first argument, you start to deal with your spouse the way you've dealt with your brothers and your sisters and your parents and your roommates and your friends. And you say things just like you said to them. And you say mean things like you said to them. And you don't think that it's going to go any deeper into this person's heart than it did in other people's. Other people will walk away. Other people will get over it.

Look out. Look out. You think you've got a BB gun in your hands and you've got a rocket launcher. You think all you're going to do is sort of, you know, give him a little flesh wound. The next thing you know, there's nothing there but a pair of sneakers with smoke coming out of them. That's the funny illustration. The awful illustration is I'm thinking of Lenny in Mice and Men, who doesn't know his own strength, remember? And he has a little girl, has a girl, and trying to talk to her and trying to show her what he wants to say. And she starts to scream and he says, don't you do that! Don't you say anything! And next thing you know, it says, what does it say? Her head was flopping back and forth because Lenny

had broken her neck. She was dead. He had no idea how strong he was. He didn't know his own strength. He meant well. If you use your ability to reprogram your spouse's self-appreciation, if you learn how to go into somebody's life, and even when you criticize, you do it in a way that's affirming. If you learn how to do that, and friends, you need to be doing it with your father and your mother and your parents and your brothers and your sisters and your roommates, you need to be doing it with your father and your mother and your parents and your brothers and your sisters and your roommates. You need to be doing it anyway. They're not getting killed by your sharp tongue. They're not getting killed by the nasty things you say, the unedifying words you say.

But if you get into a marriage with these kinds of speech patterns, you will find that you will kill each other. If, on the other hand, you start building one another up, the more, what's fascinating is the more you affirm, you use that tremendous power to affirm the person, the easier your spouse, the easier it is for your spouse to open up about his or her faults. Because if you have a cradle of security for your moments of vulnerability, if you're, if you know, if you know that this is the one person who really respects me, knows me to the bottom, and loves me and respects me, and that's a certainty in your life. It's like a ground note underneath everything else. Then you have a sort

of security, you have a foundation from which you can, for the first time in your life, admit your faults. Because you see, in the past, to even admit your faults was very difficult because you began to wonder whether you were any kind of decent person at all. But now you know you are because of what your spouse is saying to you. You know about your worth there. Your spouse does. See, this is a great mystery. The relationship between a man and a wife is like Christ and the church. Of course it's a fascinating mystery because, as you know, if you've been here and heard the preaching, you know that it's the Scripture that says that it's Christ who does that to you. Christ reprograms your self-image.

Christ says, I died for you, and that's the only thing that matters. Christ says, let the fact that I died for you, let that be the weightiest fact in your life. Let that matter more than anything else. You matter to the only one who matters. See, Christ reprograms that. Next to Christ, the person who can do that the most effectively is your spouse, because marriage is basically built on the dynamic of salvation. It's built on the pattern of salvation. That's the reason why Paul can go back and forth talking about Christ's salvation in relation to us and the relationship between a husband and a wife. So in the same way, if you

do that, if you affirm, if you use this tremendous ability to reprogram that person's self-image, you'll find that you can, the person will open up more and more and the deep oneness will come. You'll have the ability to talk about one another's faults. But on the other hand, if you abuse this, if you don't realize you got a rocket launcher in your hands, it's very fast what will happen. What will happen very quickly is both of you will realize, I cannot trust the other person with what I really think. Because they can nail me like nobody ever has ever been able to nail me. So I'm afraid to do that. So what you do is you close up and you say,

this is what happens is instead of deep oneness, you have what most marriages are, which is a kind of a combination of business partnership and social contract and parenting partnership. A lot of people have slightly better relationships after they're divorced, raising their kids together, right? Which goes to show they never really developed or had the deep oneness. Now, we said there's three things. The first thing is you've got to let your spouse in

if you want that one fleshness. You've got to let your spouse deal with your faults, give him or her access to your dirt. If you don't do that, then you're denying the one flesh nature of marriage. Secondly, you've got to use this ability to reprogram your spouse's self-appreciation and affirm that spouse.

You've got to use that so carefully, because if you abuse that, your spouse will close up and your spouse will do it got to use that so carefully because if you abuse that your spouse will close up and your spouse will do it back to you and you will just become two people who don't have a deep oneness. You're not one flesh, you're simply a partnership. You're not a new chemical but rather you're just two chemicals that just happen to be interspersed amongst one another. You're laying there together and you interpenetrate one another, but you haven't actually become something new. Thirdly, the third thing is that you have got, if you want this one fleshness, you've got to recognize that neither of you can act independently of the other. 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 in 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. You see, the image of one flesh, of the head and the body, is pretty vivid. When the head turns right and the body turns left, you've got a problem. The head and the body have to both turn right. They're one, they're together. One of the hardest things about becoming one flesh is to recognize that you're no longer independent people. Now, of course, this doesn't mean you can't have your own interests. And if she hates golf, you can't

play golf. We're not talking at that level. What instead we're talking about is important life issues and decisions. You're not independent of one another. That means that you've really got to get inside of each other and do the hard work of consensus building and really build a new unit. You are not independent of one another. And this goes regardless of what your belief is about submission and headship. It doesn't matter what you think about, as we're going to see soon, when it says the man is the head of the wife, and the wife must submit to the man. The man is the head, and the wife is like the body in a marriage. No matter how you define authority,

the fact is the head is not independent of the body. The head can't turn right, and the body turn left. It's got to happen together. David Martin Lloyd-Jones, who's one of my heroes, and I quote him as often as I can, he's a great Welsh preacher, tells his story when he was preaching a sermon on the fact that the husband and the wife are not independent of each other. If you want to develop one fleshness, you've got to work out your decisions and you've got to work for consensus rather than just negotiating and bargaining with each other like two countries, you see, who are just trying to find cooperative agreements as far as they can. He has this illustration. He was preaching on world missions. You know, maybe there were slides that night.

And after the service, up comes a man who says, Dr. Lloyd-Jones, this was a stirring service. By the way, if any of you are thinking of doing this tonight, now watch out. He says, the Lord has called me into foreign missions. I've decided I'm going to go overseas and work in foreign missions. I know it. It's something that's really been on my heart lately, but now today, the Holy Spirit told me. And Dr. Lloyd-Jones instantly said, are you married? He says, sure. He said, have you talked to your wife about this at all? He says, no. He says, well, listen, the Holy Spirit wrote the Bible, right? The Holy Spirit, if this is the Holy Spirit, you got a great test. The Holy Spirit will tell your wife you need to go in the mission field too. And he says, in fact, I'm a little bit dubious because it's very unlikely the Holy Spirit would tell you to do something and not tell you, I better

work this out with my wife. Because you see, the Holy Spirit wrote the Bible, and a head is not independent of the body. The hard work of working on consensus and coming to one mind and to one heart about things, that hard work, if you don't do it, you will never experience and develop the one fleshness. So, now, one more thing. That's the reason that one fleshness doesn't work very often or doesn't develop, and it's also the reason why. That's the way in which you can develop it. But what the heck is it? What do you mean, oh preacher,

when you say that two people become something new, that they're not just interspersed with each other, they become a third kind of chemical, that you really become a third kind of person and not really the people you were? That is a complex subject, and we bridge into this whole subject of role relationships between men and women in marriage. And I can do some introductory work this week and next week lay the whole thing out. Let me just suggest that this one fleshness develops especially in two ways, along temperament lines and along gender lines. And I know that they're not completely different things,

because very often certain genders have certain temperaments. But let me explain it this way. What is a temperament? Now, you know, the traditional temperaments that the Greeks talk about, sanguine, choleric or choleric, I can never tell which way you're supposed to say it, melancholy, and phlegmatic. Remember that? Temperaments are habitual ways in which you deal with the world. Somebody once pointed out that if you have two axes, at this end you have people who believe that the world is basically a friendly place where good things happen, and here's people at the other end of the axis, people who basically believe the world is a dangerous place and an unfriendly place where bad things happen. Then take another axis, people who believe that basically you need to get out there

and act upon the world before it gets to you. And over on the other end, you have people who really believe that the wisest thing to do is to sort of lay back and wait for things to happen and then react to them. And if you diagram, if you put those two axes against one another, you basically come up with, you see, people who say the world is dangerous and also you need to get out there, that's the choleric person, the dominant personality, and a person who says the world's basically kind of dangerous, but you need to wait for the world to come to you, wait for the world to come to you, that's a melancholy person.

People say the world's basically a friendly place and you need to let the world come to you. That's a phlegmatic person. And the people that say the world's basically a friendly place and you need to get out there and do something, that's a sanguine person, an outgoing person, a very, very relationally oriented person. Now, I'm not trying to get into the temperaments

much other than to say this. I don't think there's only four, but that's a good way of putting it. What is a temperament? A temperament is a habitual way to deal with the world that we develop because we're not wise enough to be versatile. You see, is the world a dangerous place where bad things happen? That's down here, right? Or is the world a dangerous place where bad things happen? That's down here, right? Or is the world a friendly place where good things happen? Biblically, what's the answer to that? The answer is both. The heavens are telling the glory of God. There's beautiful things in the world. It's God's creation,

and yet it's a wicked place, and it's a dangerous place, and it's a broken place. Should you get out there and act? Or should you wait? Should you get out there and act, or should you wait? Hmm? And the answer is, if you go to the book of Proverbs, what is the right thing to do in every situation? The answer is, it depends.

So see, none of these situations are always the wise way to be. Jesus Christ had no temperament. He could not be classified. Why? He was perfectly wise. See, an extrovert is somebody who says the best thing to do is to walk out and introduce yourself. And the introvert basically says, I'll wait and see what happens. I'll see who's out there. I'll wait for somebody to ask me. What's the right thing to do? What's the wisest thing to do? What's the best way to deal in a relationship? The answer is it depends. Jesus was not an extrovert or introvert. He was exactly what he needed to be that the situation demanded. But none of the rest of us are. All of us develop temperaments, habitual ways of doing things. And if we happen to get into

a condition, if we tend to be a sanguine person, for example, and we're in a situation where, where that works very well for someone who basically is optimistic, basically feels people are going to like them, basically feels if I step out there and introduce myself, things are going to work out okay, everything's fine. But if you're in a situation that really calls for a phlegmatic or a melancholy response, you'll get your head taken off. When you get married, generally speaking, to some degree for sure, even if you're the same basic temperament you've got, there's different degrees, you are forced for the first time in your life to see the world continually

through the eyes of someone of another temperament. And what that does is has a profound, and of course the vice versa, and that has a profound, profound impact on your wisdom. Because after a number of years of marriage, there's two things that are happening instead of one. See, the old way, because of your temperament, you habitually would do something. Without even thinking, you react to a situation

because of your temperament. But now two things happen. There's not only a habitual thing, but you suddenly say, I know what Kathy would do here. And it's almost as habitual, not quite, it's almost as habitual to suddenly realize, I know what my spouse would do. And for an instant, you have the ability now, instead of one option, of two. You have the ability to realize it. You have the ability to slow yourself down and see which of these two things would be better. You've also had the experience of having your spouse sort of forcefully push you into a situation

that he or she knew was not the way that you would like to respond, but that he or she knew was the wise way to respond, and you found out how it does work. What happens is there's a kind of wisdom that can develop only through this kind of intimate relationship. And you really do become someone different. Your temperament actually changes. Your wisdom and your ability to understand the world actually changes. But then secondly, the reason you become one flesh is because for the first time in your life, you've got to relentlessly and continually look at the world through the eyes of another gender. Now, this is where I'd like to say a few words of introduction.

Because they're introductory words, I expect that some of you will find them controversial. Fine. That'll make you come back. As Jim Irwin says, it'll make you buy the tape so we can buy our own building. But here, let me say this along those lines. The Scripture clearly states again and again that a man and a woman in marriage are not reversible roles. Don't you see here, only the husband is told to love his wife. The wife's not told to love her husband. And only the wife is told to respect her husband. The husband's not told to respect his wife.

Now, what does that mean? Does that really mean that wives aren't supposed to love their husbands? Does that really mean that husbands are supposed to respect their wives? Of course, that's silly. You can't make the scripture ridiculous like that. What does it mean, though? It means that in the marriage, they're both building each other up. They're both changing each other in the ways we've been talking about,

but they are not doing it in the same way. The fact is the husband doesn't love his wife the way a wife loves her husband. The husband does not build up his wife the way a wife builds up the husband because being a woman and being a man are callings. They're different callings. You've got different gifts. You do it differently. There's nowhere in the Bible ever

that you see when a husband and a wife are both dealt with that they're told to do the same things in the same words. Modern wedding vows, the old wedding vows, used to have some differences. The modern wedding vows are absolutely reversible. The wife is asked and the husband is asked to do the very same things in the very same words. You never see that in the Bible. Why? Because even though there's obvious mutuality, there's obvious equality, there's not interchangeability, there's not equivalency. You know, studies are showing this. Put a woman as a CEO in this job, put a man as a CEO in the same job, give them the same goals. Ask them both to turn a $1 million profit this year. And what if they both do it? If they both do it, studies will show you a hundred times almost out

of a hundred, they will have done it different ways. A woman is not a manager the way a man is a manager. They have, in a sense, there's an asymmetrical mutuality even there, and you can see it. And when it comes to what I said is seeing myself, pardon me, working through a different gender, what it means is that for the first time in your life, being a male and being a female are two ways of being human, and by themselves, the Bible says, they are kind of unbalanced. Adam, when he had no sin in his life, when he had a perfect relationship

with God, there'd been no fall, there'd been no serpent, there'd been no apple or orange or whatever the heck it was, there'd been no fruit, none of that had happened. He was alone. He was lonely. And when the woman was brought to him, he said, at last I found myself. That means that there's, you see, there's a complementary nature, and it also shows that Jesus Christ has not given all of his attributes to both men and women in the same way. It doesn't mean, for example, that men and women can't both be heroes, and that men and women can't both be nurturers. But what's very clear from the Bible is men will nurture differently than women, and women will be heroes be nurturers. But what's very clear from the Bible is men will nurture differently than women, and women will be heroes in a different way than men.

The beauty of it is this. When the Bible says to the husband, Be men! What does it say? Look at Jesus. It says that here. Look at Jesus. Look at his relationship with his church. See how he died for his church. See how he manages everything in life for the church. The Bible says he manages all history for the church. And you, oh men, have to realize the

same thing. If you are going to be real husbands, it's your job to take authority. Yes, we'll talk about what that is, to take authority, but it's an authority that by no means is oppressive. Who can be upset with Jesus' authority? When he went to the mat, when he went to the cross for you, when he was willing to deny everything for you, and now does absolutely nothing, the Bible says, Romans 8, 28, except that which brings about your joy and perfection. Nothing. Is that oppressive authority? But here's what's so beautiful. When the Bible says, women, look at femininity,

and what does it mean to be feminine? The Bible says it means to be a help. What does the word help mean, as we'll see? The word help means to use your power in a way that enables and empowers somebody else. Women do that better than men. To use your power in a way that enables and empowers somebody else. Women do that better than men. To use your power in such a way that it empowers someone else, that it enables instead of replaces him. When I help my son with his algebra, it's because on the one hand, I help him if I know

more about it than he does. So a woman can only help her husband if she's got resources that he doesn't have, if there's a deficiency in him that's not in her, if there's things that she can do that he can't do. But I've also, in order to help my son with his algebra, cannot do it for him. I can enable him to do his algebra with my superior power in the areas I have power. But when I enable him, I am not replacing him. I'm not doing it for him. Feminine power means bringing to bear on the husband, the wife brings to bear on the husband, things that she can do that she knows that she sees that he doesn't have, resources he doesn't have. She's superior to him in certain ways. They're very difficult to define biblically, but they're there. However, what she does with her power, she doesn't replace him, she enables him, she empowers him.

And when those two things are happening in the life, the two become one flesh. Where does a woman look for femininity? Where does a woman look for her model? She looks to Jesus, too. Why? Because, you see, it's what's beautiful. There's two places in the Bible that say a man is the head of the wife, like. Here it says as Christ is the head of the church, but in 1 Corinthians 11 it says as the father is the head of the son. So on the one hand, it means the son is the perfect example of masculinity. Look at him and then you know what masculinity is. Real leadership, real authority, no oppressiveness. But at the same time, the son is the picture of femininity too.

The voluntary subordination of an equal to an equal. The putting his power under someone else. The glorifying of someone. The enabling and the empowering of somebody. He is just as much a paragon of feminine power as masculine power and therefore of course being a woman or being a man neither is more fundamentally divine, neither of them, one is not higher than the other. When two people, incomplete, are brought together in marriage and continually and regularly look at the world through the eyes of the other, it is a heck of an experience.

It is an amazing experience. You're no longer really what you were before. The two chemicals have come together. And the reason the two chemicals have come together is because that you see both the power and the tenderness of Jesus have been united in your lives. Look at the masculinity of Jesus. Look at the femininity of Jesus. Look at the authority of Jesus. Look at the submission of Jesus. And you say, look at that. If you understand the gospel, you can understand the relationships within marriage. If you can understand the gospel, you can understand friendship. If you can understand the gospel, you can understand what it means to affirm your spouse and what it means to be one flesh. If you can't understand the gospel, you know, to me, the

amazing thing is not why so many marriages break up. The amazing thing to me, in light of what this passage is saying, and in light of the widespread ignorance of what the passage is saying, the amazing thing is why so many marriages stay together. Look to Jesus and he will complete you. One very last thing, and that is, now we'll mention this next week in some detail, but here's what I have to say. Some people say, I'm a single person and you're talking about the need for completion. Well, you know, this is discouraging. I'd like to be married. I'm not married. Does that mean I'm an incomplete person? In what way am I an incomplete person? And the answer is, don't forget, just as a spouse can reprogram your self-image, nevertheless, marriage is only an analogy of the great marriage of Jesus Christ with the church.

The real sanctifier is not a husband, my dear ladies, it's Jesus. The real helper, husband, my dear ladies, it's Jesus. The real helper, the real completer is not a wife, my dear friend guys, but it's Jesus. And you know, because we live in a fallen world and because all of us are sort of sub-men and sub-women, and because even the best marriage is so far from what it ought to be, let me just tell you that the difference between marriage and being single is not as great as it ought to be. Marriage is not nearly as sanctifying as it could be. It's not nearly as completing as it could be. And if God in his providence has kept you out of a marriage up to now, then look to him. He is your helper, guys. He is your husband. Ladies, if you look at him, whether you're married or whether you're single, you'll see in him the completion and the perfection of your souls. Let's pray.

Father, we ask especially that you'd help us to see the great power that we have in marriage. I pray that the people here who are not married may not be scared of this power, that they might not be intimidated, but recognize simply that you would not call them into a relationship unless you would give them the power and the wisdom to know how to use this great power. Father, those people who are here in a married state, I pray that you would show them how they can use this tremendous power to create one flesh, to create new units, to create deep oneness and unity. But most of all, Father, we pray that just as we learn from all this teaching on salvation about marriage, that we would also learn even more from all this teaching on marriage about your salvation. Help us to see it's only as we are in a relationship with you, O Lord Jesus Christ,

both husband and helper, both authority and submission model. We pray, Father, that it's through our relationship with Jesus that we might truly become completed. Give us marriage or keep us for marriage. Give us a great marriage or give us a mediocre marriage, but give us yourself, O Lord Jesus Christ, and we will have everything we need. And we pray this 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.