Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Marriage as Priority and Friendship

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

I’m tired of listening to sentimental, slurpy talks on marriage during weddings and in Sunday school and in sermons. They have about as much depth and reality to them as a Hallmark card. The fact is, marriage is many things—in fact, it’s everything except slurpy and sentimental.  Marriage is glorious: it’s a burning strength and joy. Marriage is hard: it’s blood, and it’s sweat, and it’s tears. It’s defeats, and it’s victories. It’s almost everything except sweet.  We’re in a series on the Bible’s view of marriage. We’ve already looked at the power, the definition, and the priority of marriage. We look now at 1) the great purpose of marriage, and 2) what this purpose means in practicality. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 8, 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. The power of marriage is that it is a reflection of the gospel. Today, Tim Keller explores how marriage can help us more deeply understand Christ's love for us, and how Christ's love for us can completely transform our marriages. Okay, to Ephesians 5. We've, starting somewhere in August, I guess, about three weeks ago, this is the fourth week, obviously, we're looking at this passage in Ephesians 5. We're looking at verses 22 to 32, which is really maybe the classic text in the whole Bible on marriage. And we're spending about six to eight weeks looking at the subject, and let's proceed. Let me read it again to you. Starting verse 21.

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is 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 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. 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, I always must do a little recapping, but a little bit less each week. Marriage is something that the people talk about in the church all the time, but I must admit I'm tired of listening to sentimental, slurpy talks on marriage during weddings and in the church and in Sunday school and in sermons. They are slurpy. They are sentimental. They have about as much depth and reality to them as a Hallmark card. they are sentimental, they have about as much depth and reality to them as a Hallmark card.

The fact is, that marriage is many things. In fact, it's everything except slurpy and sentimental. Marriage is glorious. It's all a burning strength and joy. And marriage is hard. It's blood and it's sweat and it's tears and it's defeats and it's victories. It's almost everything except sweet. In fact, many a night, married people go to bed and as they're falling asleep after a hard day of marriage, about the only part of this passage, this passage on marriage that they can remember is the verse that goes, this is a profound mystery.

And so we're going to go and see that the Bible's view of marriage is completely realistic. It's great, it's terrible. It's glorious. It's blood, sweat, and tears. It is not sweet. Now, what we've looked at so far are three headings in this passage. First one was the power of marriage. We saw that was in verse 21. Just the quickest reminder, and yet in some ways the scariest and most profound thing that this passage says, is this passage on marriage is built on the previous verses on being filled

with the Spirit. Paul is assuming that there is in your life a Spirit-created unselfishness. The result of being filled with the Spirit in verses 18 and following is verse 21. Submit yourselves to one another out of reverence for Christ. Because there's reverence for Christ, because you have awe and fear and trembling before the greatness of His gospel, that He has saved you, that He's died for you. When you take the gospel into your heart every day so that it becomes a reality, that's what we mean by being filled with the Spirit. And that creates an unselfishness, a willingness and ability to serve one another, to give up your rights, to put the needs of the other person first. We talked

about that, but the first principle that we looked at at great length, which we just remind you of now, is the main problem in marriages is self-centeredness. The main disease that eats away marriages is self-centeredness. All other problems are derivative or secondary to that. It's selfishness. And only the Spirit of God can get rid of that. And there are people who have relatively decent marriages without the Spirit's created unselfishness, but they're really more like, it's a little bit more like peaceful coexistence. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. You stay away from that area and I'll stay away from that. This assumes the power of marriage is the gospel creating a spirit of unselfishness. Self-centeredness is the main problem. If you're

married, it's the main problem in your marriage. If you're not married-centeredness is the main problem. If you're married, it's the main problem in your marriage. If you're not married, it will be the main problem if you ever get married. If you're divorced, it probably was the main problem in the marriage that you left. And I think that any kind of reasonable and fair-minded analysis will see that. Number two, the definition of marriage was cleaving. We looked at that a couple weeks ago. But it's always a helpful thing to remind people, not only the married people, but especially the singles.

I think a couple weeks ago, I tried to show you, I said, if there's so many single people here in the evening, why should you speak on marriage? And the answer is, you don't know how to go about deciding whether to be married or who to be married to unless you know what the heck marriage is. And the answer is, you don't know how to go about deciding whether to be married or who to be married to, unless you know what the heck marriage is. You know, Jesus says, before a man goes and builds a tower, he counts the cost. He knows what it costs.

Before a king goes off to war, he counts the cost. He knows what it will entail. You can't go off to war until you know what it means and what it entails and so on. You can't even make a decision about being married, unless you understand something about what Bible says marriage is. And here's one of them. The definition of a marriage, we said, is a covenant. It's a public promise. Or, remember this? This is something worth remembering. The essence of a marriage is a permanent and exclusive legal commitment to share your entire life with someone else. Every single church, every tradition, Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, the Jewish tradition,

the Islam tradition, all these religions agree on this. Unless you have someone who is willing to give you a promise like that, and that same person you are willing to give a promise to, you mustn't give yourself to that person. Marriage is a permanent, exclusive, legal commitment to completely share your life with somebody else. If you don't have a promise like that, you're not willing to give a promise like that, you don't really love that person enough to be married to them. The modern way of talking about love is totally different. It has a completely subjective meaning. When people say, why don't we live together? Why do we need to be married? I love you. And why do I need a piece of paper to show you that love? Well, if you define love as feeling, that's right. That's not what the Bible ever means when it means love. Biblically, if somebody says, I love you, but I don't want to marry you, what they mean is, I don't love you that much. There's no way around that.

A person who says, I love you, and I want to marry you, and a person who loves you more than a person who says, I love you, but I don't want to marry you. Period. Why? Because love, by definition, biblically, is commitment. The ability to make an exclusive and a permanent commitment. That's what love is. And that's what you most want, and you know that. And so when somebody says,

I don't need a piece of paper to show love. Yes, you do. If you love a person the way the Bible says two people are supposed to love one another in order to share their lives together, that means you have no problem making a legal, permanent, exclusive commitment to them. And the reason I think this is very important for singles is this. Therefore, what the Bible means by love is a commitment. At some point, love is a decision simply to serve somebody and be committed to

somebody regardless of your feelings and regardless of how that person acts. Look, your feelings can take you to the door. You know, the person attracts you. There's a lot of things you like about the person. You have fun together. That takes you to the door. But at a certain point, the door will not open unless you simply make a decision, I'm going to love this person,

because your feelings will always come and go. We've talked about that. But the problem is a lot of people don't get married because they're sure that if this is the one, my feelings will never ebb. If this is the one, then I'll just know it's the one, because I'll never have any problem. I'll never look at that person and feel, ugh. I'll never look at that person and feel, yuck. I'll never look at that person and find a problem there. I'll always, always feel like giving myself to them. You will wait till hell freezes over if you wait for that. And that's

the reason, see, if that's true, if that's true, then those of you who are married and those of you who are considering married need to consider this. Here's one Christian writer says, people get from books the idea that if you have married the right person, you may expect to go on being in love forever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think that this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change. But let the thrills go.

Let it die away. Let it go on through that period of death into the greater but much more profound interest and happiness that follows, and you will find you're living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and you try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old person for the rest of your life. Thus you find so many middle-aged people, men and women, maundering

on about their lost youth. Now, what he's saying is, frankly, the thrill that you usually call being in love is basically an ego kick. Here is somebody that I think is admirable to other people, and he or she digs me. Well, that's enough to give you a kind of rush for a while, several weeks at least. And then eventually, you will begin to realize that there's a decision that has to be made. You have to move on and let the thrills die and realize that the more you act in loving, the more you give, the more you serve, the more you will find yourself falling truly in love. There has to be a death of the thrills to move on into real love. A lot of people never, ever let that happen, or if they do happen, they think it's pathological, and I've made a terrible mistake.

Love is a commitment. First, it's a commitment to serve people. First, love is an action. First, it leads to feelings, not a feeling that leads to an action. Thirdly, we said we looked at the purpose, the power of marriage. We looked at the definition of marriage last week. We looked at the priority of marriage. And I got a lot of questions afterwards. The priority of marriage, it says a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. And that means very clearly that no other relationship is more fundamental. No other relationship is more fundamental than a relationship between a husband and a wife. It's the primary relationship. Father-mother-child relationship is secondary. And therefore, your spouse and your marriage has to be the number one priority.

It has to come before your career. It has to come before your friends. It has to come before your children. That's a very hard one, especially nowadays. It really is. It has to come before anything else. Afterwards, I got a number of questions about this. Somebody came up and said to me,

all right, what if the man thinks that he is putting his marriage first, but the woman thinks he's not? How do you solve that? Or what if the woman thinks she is putting her marriage first and the man thinks she isn't? How do you solve that? It's simple. If one person thinks the marriage is first and the other person thinks it's not, then it's not. It's simple. You see, when somebody says to you, you're not putting me first in your life, you can't say, oh, yes, I am. It's a little bit like saying,

you got a sweater on, but I know you're still cold. Put another sweater on. You have to say, how do you know if I'm cold? I'm the one who knows that I'm cold. Now, I know that there are people who are disturbed. I know there are people who can become hysterical. I know there's people who can be irrationally jealous and so on. Leaving those folks out for the moment, realizing that that's a minority, obviously,

realizing that that's an extreme. The fact is, when your spouse thinks that you're not putting the marriage first and you think you are, you've got to listen to your spouse, because your spouse is the only one that knows. It's sort of like if two people, if one person thinks we have a communication problem, the other person thinks we don't have a communication problem, then you do have a communication problem, by definition. Isn't that right?

You have to both agree, or it's, you have to both agree the marriage is okay, or it's not. To put your marriage first means both of you have to continually recheck and say, is the marriage, does it have the priority that it's supposed to have? If you don't give marriage your priority, it was built for that, and I tell you, you disregard this biblical principle at your peril.

God's laws bite back. If you break them, they break you. It's just the way marriage was built. You enter into marriage and you put it second, it will destroy you. And we also said, going on a little further, what it really means is that when two people get together, everything is negotiable except what the Bible says in the marriage. That means when you leave your father and mother, that means that you are a new unit. Now, we're getting into the new topic, which is the purpose of marriage. The Bible says that two people come together to become what? One flesh.

That is about as strong a statement as the Bible could make. That is about as strong a statement as the Bible could make. There's a place in the Bible where it says, where God says, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. What does that mean? Does it only mean my body's going to get it, but not my soul? You know, what does that mean? The word flesh does not just mean a body in either Greek or Hebrew.

When it says, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, what it means is I'll pour out my spirit on all people. And what this is saying, it couldn't be said more strongly, a man shall leave his father and mother, cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one person. A new person. I'll get back to this in a second.

But what this means is, you have not, there has never been a marriage, there's never been a unit, there's never been a family like you. You are unique. You are both unique, and now together you become actually like a new compound. You are not just like your father and mother, nor are you like your spouse's father and mother, and you can't come in saying, well, in my family, the man always does this. Well, in my family,

this is the way we always give gifts. Well, in my family, when the first child comes along, always give gifts. Well, in my family, when the first child comes along, this is what the wife does. Listen, if the Bible says it, you have to do it because God invented marriage and you have to follow his regulations. Apart from that, everything is negotiable. You are a new unit. You have to renegotiate on the basis of your particular needs and your particular capacities and potentialities, everything. You have to develop a new culture, new ceremonies, new rituals. And if you don't, you haven't left your father and mother. Marriage has got to have a priority, and your marriage has got to have a priority over your parents' marriage,

over your career, over the views of your parents and the opinions of your parents, over your children. You've only got your children temporarily. You're raising them up, the Bible says. Raise them up, it says in Ephesians 6. We'll see it later. You know what that means? It means get rid of them. It literally does. I know where I'm moving ahead. It doesn't just say, it says raise them up. It literally means get them to the place where they don't need you. That is your purpose as parents. And if you find that your children are more important to you than your spouse,

all kinds of pathologies happen. If your children are more a source of emotional warmth for you, if they are more a source of your self-esteem in a sense, if they are really the ones who are ringing your bells and making you feel like someone loves me, you're in a lot of trouble. Your kids are in a lot of trouble in their future. You're in a lot of trouble right now in your marriage. Somebody, some people have done research on child abuse, say this is one of the main problems of child abuse, not that parents hate their kids. Child abuse happens in families

where the kids become surrogate spouses. A man shall leave his father and mother and everything else and cleave to his wife. Now, we've already built the bridge into the new topic. And the new topic is, what is the purpose of marriage? We've looked at the power and the definition and the priority of marriage. What's the purpose of it? And the purpose of marriage, some of you heard me mention this in passing many times, I hope. Tonight I'm going to try to give you a closer definition. The purpose of marriage is friendship. Friendship.

Companionship. Friendship. Your spouse has got to be your best friend or you don't have a marriage. I know that's not traditional, but it's biblical. I know traditionally it happens many times. It's very, very normal in many cases for you, in some cases, to have a pretty good friend who may even be of the opposite sex, but the person doesn't turn you on. Yet you find that you can share your heart a lot more with that person, or you can understand that person, and that person understands you, but the person's not your body type. You're not

attracted to them. Then along comes somebody who just really turns you on. And this person, you know, wants to date, and you develop a romantic relationship and you know doggone well that you're nowhere near as good a friend with that person as the one of, you know, the person of the opposite sex as you were friends with the other person of the opposite sex. You're in a lot of trouble. I'm not saying that you have to marry the person who is your best friend. That person, biblically, is a far, far, far better candidate for a happy marriage than the one that looks like you're on the road to marrying. This is just a joke. Somebody told me, this is a true story, but it was told as a joke. Somebody said he knew for sure of a guy who, when he got

married, his best man was a woman. And everybody said, well, hey, why not? You know, we're saying in the Bible that your best man's got to be a man. You know, your best man's usually your best friend. Turned out, in this case, the guy's best friend was a girl. So he asked her to stand there by him and, you know, give the ring and all that. Listen, I got no problem, frankly, with that from any kind of Christian point of view. I've got a problem with that because of what it tells me about his understanding of marriage. He married a sex object. He married somebody who wasn't his best friend. In the Old Testament, in particular, one of the words for wife is covenant partner, One of the words for wife is covenant partner, soulmate.

When Adam saw his wife, I'll get back to this too in a second. When Adam first saw Eve, what did he say? He said, no, he didn't say, what a babe. No, he didn't. He didn't say, this is a major babe. He said, this at last, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. Huh, you know what he's saying? He is saying, love you, I am you, or you're me or something. And what he means is, I finally, in your presence, know who I am.

In your presence, I know who I am. This is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. I'm finally whole. I finally know who the heck I am. 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. What is friendship?

The purpose, what friendship is, I'll give you a definition and we'll try to break it down. I'll show you how this passage talks about that. Friendship is deep oneness. Turn it over. Yeah. Friendship is deep oneness that comes through a mutual journey to the same horizon. Deep oneness that comes from a mutual journey, from a journey together to the same horizon. In C.S. Lewis's book, Four Loves, and by the way, I am prepared. In C.S. Lewis's book, Four Loves, some of you remember the joke from last week. Lewis says that he tries to talk about erotic love and friendship love, eros and philos. And what he says there is, he says, if you had to draw a picture of eros and philos,

in eros, it's two people looking at each other. In Philos it's two people standing side by side, shoulder to shoulder, looking at something else in common. So that's the difference between Eros and Philos. And if you want to get the gist of it, you can look at all the, I don't know they're not making too many of them anymore, but the old male bonding kind of movies, like The Dirty Dozen. Now, there's a whole slew of movies that go like this. Here's a bunch of guys, and they hate each other because they're so

different. You know, one of them is a Harvard guy, and one of them is an ex-convict, and they don't like each other, and they don't get along, and the early part of the movie sets up all the tensions and all the conflicts, and how different they are, and yet they develop the same vision. One way or the other, they all develop, maybe underneath a particular leader, a common goal. They all start to look to the same horizon. We've got to take Porkchop Hill, or we've got to make the, we've got to journey to the center of the earth, or we've got to win the pennant for the Gipper. I guess that was something else. That was another sport, wasn't it? But anyway, and along the way, what

happens to these guys? They become friends. They're different, but they've got a common goal. And along the way, they start to rescue each other from tight scrapes, and they lose fingers for each other as they're trying to rescue each other, and they become friends. They become the deepest of friends. All those movies are great. They're wonderful. Poorly acted, but great.

Biblically, Philos is the first stage and eros is supposed to grow out of philos. In other words, that's what happens even in the Dirty Dozen movies. It's not actual erotic love in the sense of sexual love. What happens is, because they have a common horizon

and they're moving in the same direction, deep oneness begins to develop. And after a while, they can actually look at each other and like each other and love each other. Friendship is deep oneness. Deep oneness that comes from having a common horizon. All right. Biblically, what is this common horizon in a marriage? And this is critical, and this is one of the reasons why two Christians have got the potential for a marriage that is so far greater than two non-Christians, it beggars the imagination. Non-Christians can have pretty good marriages, they can have good marriages, they can have very happy marriages and harmonious marriages,

but they have no idea. It's a little bit like they get into marriage the way, it's like getting into the Millennium Falcon and going along and not knowing about hyperdrive. And you're moving along all right, and you say, hey, this is great. You have no idea about what it means to jump into hyperspace. Now look, what is the common horizon that a man and a woman in Christ can have in a marriage? It's actually laid out here when it talks about what the husband's supposed to be doing, but it's mutual, as we can see, and I'll show you later. It says, Now, Paul's going, in the future, to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish.

Now, Paul's going, in the future, Paul's going back and forth between Christ and the church and a husband and a wife, but look, this is it. The common horizon, the journey is to the throne, and the common horizon, the deep oneness comes from the mutual journey to get one another into a holy and blemishless and blameless state. I'll put it another way, and I got this, Kathy helped me on

this one a lot. In a Christian marriage, each person looks at the other and penetrates and sees a beautiful thing that God is bringing about in that person's life. Kathy will often give this kind of advice. Most people, when they get married, are looking for a statue, when actually you ought to look for a wonderful block of marble. And what she means, and what I'm trying to say is, you have got to look into the caterpillar and see the butterfly. If you want to get married because this person is just perfect, you have not to look into the caterpillar and see the butterfly. If you want to get married because this person is just perfect, you have not got the ability to understand this journey. The passion and the goal of a Christian husband and wife is to get to the throne and along the

way to offer one another up and to cleanse one another with the washing of water of the word. and to cleanse one another with the washing of water of the word. You look at that other person and you say, I see underneath your flaws, underneath your imperfections, underneath your weaknesses, underneath your dependencies. And if you don't see those flaws and weaknesses and dependencies, you can't even get, you're not even in the game. Underneath it, I see something absolutely ravishing that God is making you into.

I see flashes of immortality. I see flashes of glory. I want to be part of helping you to become the person God wants you to be. I see your potential. I want to be part of that. And I know you can do that to me, too. We want to present one another before the throne, spotless and without blemish. And when two Christians, understanding this, stand before the minister, all decked out in their wedding duds, they realize what they're doing is they're playing dress-up. Have you ever seen kids, little kids, get, you know, here's a little boy and a little girl, and they get into the daddy and the mommy's outfits, and they look kind of silly in them, because, you see, they're not big enough, they're not wise, they're not mature enough to really do it for real. When you get in front of the minister, all done up in your wedding

does, what you're really doing is what you're really saying is someday, billions of years from now, we're going to stand before the throne and our souls and our character are going to be without spot and blemish. And God's going to look at us and going to say, well done and good and faithful servants. Over the years, you lifted one another to me. You sacrificed for one another. You held one another up with prayer and with thanksgiving. You confronted one another. You rebuked one another. You hugged and you loved one another and continually pushed one another toward me. And now look at you. You're radiant. You're presentable to me without spot and blemish. And when two people get up there in front of the minister, they're both Christians. They realize that billions of years from now, they're going to be standing alongside of each other

with the joy and the satisfaction of knowing that they have been vehicles for redemption in the other person's life. That's where you're going. The ultimate purpose of marriage and the ultimate purpose of your marriage is the deep oneness that comes from journeying together toward holiness, toward making one another holy. That's what you're after. That's what you're there for. Romance, fun, all those other things are just results. They're dessert, but they're not the staple. They're not the thing that the marriage really runs on. You're committed to the other person's holiness.

You're committed to the other person's beauty. You're committed to the other person's greatness and perfection. You're committed to the other person's honesty and committed to the other person's compassion and all those things. That's your job. That's your job in one another's lives. And any lower goal than that, any smaller purpose than that,

you're just playing marriage. You're not really, really doing it. Now look, what does this mean in practicality? I'm going to get into the practical soon. It's warm in here tonight. All right, here's a couple of practical applications. If all this is true, number one, how do you go about choosing a spouse and how do you go about choosing a mate? I got a bone to pick with most of you singles on this point. Some of you, I've picked it with you in person. You see, here's how you go about looking for someone to marry. You walk into a room. There's 20 people of the opposite gender. The first thing you do is what? First thing you do is you rule out about 17 of them.

Why are you ruling them out? They're not slick looking. They're not cool looking. They're not fetching. They don't turn you on. They're not your body type. They're not polished looking. They're too tall or too short or too fat or too thin. Or, you know, their face just doesn't remind you of the kind of face you've been looking for. And so, okay, so out goes 17. And there's three. So you go over and you start to talk to those three. Maybe one of them wants to go out with you. So in other words, now let's see. We've got romance. Let's see if we can turn this person into a friend. So you start with romance. You start with the kick. You start with the affection, in a sense. You start with the eros. Of course, and I'm talking about Christians. I'm not talking about people who simply jump into bed with each other. I'm talking about Christians who

don't think they should do that. And you still start with the Eros because you're facing one another like this. Instead, frankly, you may have ruled out all the persons in that room who could be wonderful spouses for you because they could be great friends for you. Now, I'll define friendship here in a second, but you've already ruled them out. They're gone.

Instead, what you've done is you've narrowed them down to the ones that you think you could have this romantic kind of sensation or rush for, and now let's see if any of them might happen to be friends. Maybe one of them could be a good friend, but you'll never know. And it's very likely that it, very, very possible, not likely, but very, very possible, you've already ruled out your best spousal material and timber. You start with friendship. You start with it. And by that, I mean, you start finding out what, what person is, does this person have a common vision? Does this person have common passions? Is this person looking for the same horizon?

Is there depth in this person? That's what you're looking for. Is this a person who probably could understand me? Is this a person that I could hand that I could be vulnerable with? These are all the questions that you ask when you're trying to find out if you should be a friend. How are you going about eliminating people is what I want to know. You've probably, in many cases, for years, you've been eliminating some wonderful people who can be wonderful husbands and wives. Okay, here's a second personal and practical application. They don't all make you feel this bad. Okay, second one, be careful with your friendships. Now here's what I mean by that. What I mean by that is when a male and a female enter into a certain kind of friendship, enter into a certain kind of friendship.

That's fine. And that's actually how you discern what kind of people out there there might be a future with you for. But when you enter all the way down and you become very good friends and then very, very good friends and then very, very good friends, biblically, you are dating.

And you might as well admit it. You're dating. What do you mean I'm dating? We haven't gone out to eat. I've never taken this person to a restaurant. We haven't, you know, stared each other over a candle. I'm not dating. Yes, you are. Because you see, you're doing it. You're doing, whether you know it or not, exactly what the Bible says you're supposed to do. You're in the first stage of moving toward marriage. If you can open your heart to someone, if you can share your life with someone, if you can be vulnerable, and if you find them understanding you, that is friendship. Friendship between a man and a man, friendship between a woman and a woman is one thing.

Friendship between a man and a woman is different. There is something about a man and a woman because of the way God invented Adam and Eve as two polarities. He divided up the characteristics of humanity, didn't put them all in one person or all in the other, but he put them, he put them in, he didn't put them all in, in one person, but he divided them between male and female so that Adam was alone. And in the beginning, when Adam wasn't sinning, when Adam was perfect, when Adam had a perfect relationship with God, he was lonely. God had to create Eve to complete him. And that means a friendship across the gender line has an unusually profound and mysterious completion component. There is a kind of completion and a kind of satisfaction,

something deep and something very mysterious. You realize you're in the presence of a friend, but you're in the presence of the Other, capital O. You're in the presence of someone who is different. And you find that that particular person, when they look at you, when you're vulnerable to them, when they look at your problems and your sins, and they say,

I understand. You'll find that in many ways that fulfills and that completes in a way that someone of the same gender can't fulfill and complete you. You are on your way into marriage when you have a really deep friendship with someone of the opposite sex and you are dating, what that means is you better be careful, deeply careful. Because when you get somebody that vulnerable and yet you are not starting to make a social commitment to that person, you're starting to use them. And if you don't think that's true, if you say, hey, I've got one of those relationships and that person doesn't feel used, make sure, talk to that person, watch out, because you're dating. You're dating the way the Bible says you're supposed to be dating. You just don't think you're dating. Okay, thirdly, what is friendship? If you go to the book of Proverbs and you pull out, and I did this some

years ago, you pull out every single, every single verse that has anything to do with friendship. And we're not talking about marriage, we're just talking about friendship. But marriage is the most intense friendship. If you pull out everything on it, I tried to work it out into categories. I tried to break them down and cluster them together and say, what does the Bible say are the characteristics of friends? I came up with four. Now, I'm not saying that there aren't more or less.

This is just the way it broke down for me. Number one, a friend is consistent. A friend is there for you. A friend is always there. You need that person, except in extreme situations, that person is there. That person listens. That person is committed. There's a consistency. If that person is not consistent, there's not friendship. Okay, that person serves. The person is someone who's disciplined in the relationship. Secondly, honesty. Consistency and then honesty. Honesty means honesty with you and honesty about you. There's some people who are honest about you, but they're not honest with you. They'll tell you what's wrong with you, and they'll tell you

what's right with you. They'll talk about you, but they won't talk about themselves very much. They certainly won't be revealing. That's not a friend, okay? That's a lot of things, but it's not a friend. A friend is honest, so there's consistency and then honesty. Okay, thirdly, it gets deeper. There's vulnerability. By vulnerability, that means that you're able and you're willing to some degree to be naked. Now, you see, in marriage, you have the ultimate friendship. Physical nakedness is supposed to go along with every other kind of nakedness. And biblically, you must not be physically naked until you're naked in every other way. And biblically, you must not be physically naked until you're naked in every other way.

If you're not willing, see, to be naked means I'm totally vulnerable. I'm showing you everything that I am. I'm completely vulnerable and open to you. You're seeing everything. I'm hiding nothing. I'm holding nothing back. That's physical nakedness. But that's nakedness in general because, for example, if somebody says,

I don't want to marry you, they're not letting themselves be economically and socially naked, are they? If somebody says, I want to marry you, but I'm going to sign a prenuptial agreement, they're not being naked yet. And emotionally, is this person someone you have to keep secrets from? Are there things that this person would never understand that are close to your heart? Then you're not naked with that person yet, and you're not really a friend with that person. Now, of course, the friendship that Proverbs is talking about, it's not the absolute and ultimate and total nakedness and friendship of marriage. That's the ultimate friendship. But you see, the pattern is the same. The dynamics are the same. It's in marriage that it's the most dynamic. Vulnerability. I can open up my center. I can open up my heart. I can

show you everything. I can hold nothing back, and I will hold nothing back. Consistency, honesty, vulnerability, okay? And lastly, it's hard to come up with a good word for it, so I'll give you not such a good word, but I'll explain it. Blessing. A friend is someone who's continually blessing you. It's a shame that that word now is so opaque in the English language. Right now, the way it's used on the street, to bless somebody means to curse them, doesn't it? But look, what it means to bless someone,

in the Bible, see what blessing is. See what happens, for example, when Joseph is dying or when Jacob is dying and all of his children and grandchildren come around and he blesses them. What is he doing? He says, I see great things for you. I understand you. I know what God is doing in your life. you. I know what God is doing in your life. Yes, it's affirmation, but oh my gosh, you know, in psychological jargon, affirmation is so weak compared to what this is talking about. But it's deep affirmation. It means, frankly, that I open myself completely to you. You look all the way into the inside and you say, I love you. I affirm this part and I love you in spite of that part. See, a good friend is someone who knows you better than you know yourself and who understands you better than you understand yourself and has a better

idea of where you're supposed to be going. It doesn't mean in every instance. It doesn't mean in every single argument between a good, in a good marriage, between a husband and a wife, that you know the other person understands you better than you do at that moment. But it's a general conviction. What does it take to become a friend like that? It takes consistency. It takes honesty. It takes vulnerability. And it takes understanding, affirmation, blessing. G.K. Chesterton says, the meanest fear is the fear of looking sentimental.

He says, so many times we say so long when we mean, I miss you and I love you, but we're afraid to say it. And a person who's afraid to say it, a person who can't express it, is not yet able to really be a blessing to someone else. express it is not yet able to really be a blessing to someone else. If you're married, do everything you possibly can to become best friends. If it means sitting down with your spouse and saying, to be honest with you, there are many things that I can't talk to you about. To be honest with you, I know that if I talk to you about what's close to my heart over here, I'm going to get a yawn or a laugh. And I've got to talk to you about those things that are keeping me from really being naked with you. And we've got to do something about it. Now, your spouse will probably do the same thing back. It's extremely rare for one person to say, I'm totally open to you. And the

other person say, oh, really? I'm not totally open to you. It doesn't happen that way. You must do everything. You must pay any price to become best friends. Like I said, if you've got secrets from one another, you're not. You've got to decide what to do about it. And, last application, a Christian cannot marry a non-Christian. Why not? A Christian cannot marry a non-Christian. Why not? My dear friends, if you're a Christian and the person you want to marry is not a Christian,

by definition, the last, especially the last two, or especially the last one of the characteristics of friendship is impossible. If you're a Christian, unless Christ is out in the suburbs of your life, out in the far commuter suburbs of your life, you're not going to be able to really open your heart and have your spouse look at you and understand you. If Christ is downtown of your soul, if Christ is one of the most important things to you, and your spouse says, I don't care if you're religious, that's great, I kind of like that about you, go to church, I'm not interested. Or even if your spouse is way behind, you can't

possibly ever expect your spouse to understand you. And you know what's going to happen is if you're turned on by a person in many other ways, you obviously could be very good friends and everything is right. This person is not a believer. Then what's going to happen is when you get married, you will have to keep Christ in the suburbs of your life. Why? It's too painful for Christ to be central and to have your spouse not understand it. You know why? Because if he doesn't understand Christ, he doesn't understand you. If he doesn't understand Christ, he doesn't understand you. And the thing that you most want, the thing that's really romantic, the thing that's really passionate, the thing that really makes a friendship, a relationship, a marriage, heaven itself,

is to have someone look all the way down deep into you and say, I love you. I understand you. I see your passions. I see your horizon. I'm on my way to it with you. When you have that kind of complete nakedness and that complete vulnerability and understanding and acceptance, even in the best marriages, it's only episodic, but you can sense the life of heaven and you know that this is what heaven's going to be like. You mustn't marry somebody who's not a believer. Why? Because ultimately you can't be friends. I defy anybody to try to prove to me that you can. If you can be, then you sent Christ to the suburbs. You kept him out of the center of your life. You see the problem? You see the points?

Okay, we're finished. Jesus Christ is the ultimate friend, of course. And you talk about consistency? You talk about honesty? You talk about vulnerability? The most. You talk about consistency? Mm-hmm. You talk about honesty? Huh. You talk about vulnerability? The most. You talk about blessing? Jesus Christ's friendship to us is the greatest.

He says, I have called you friends. If you take what you learn in your relationship with him and you begin to apply it in your other relationships, if you're not married, that'll move you and prepare you for the first time for real marriage. If you're married, then you have to use what you learn from Christ's friendship in your marriage, and then and only then will you get a marriage that sings.

So someday you can say, at last, this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. Now that I'm with you, I know who I am. Let's pray. Now, Father, Lord, we can apply this on so many different levels. I pray for the married people that are in our midst. I ask that you would enable them to apply this to their own lives, that they might have marriages which are not,

marriages which are just not drains and burdens, but marriages which are healing places, incubators for the world of heaven. Father, I pray for single people who wrestle with the issue of who to marry and whether to marry, and I pray that you'd clarify in their hearts some of these issues. And I pray that a lot of their fears and a lot of the confusion would fall away. Most of all, Lord, I pray that we would begin to practice the life of heaven by developing friendships, by committing ourselves to one another. And I pray, Lord, that you would enable us to do this with the spirit of Jesus Christ who called us friends. We thank you,

Lord, in his name, the one who came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. 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 in 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.