Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Overview: Marriage as Commitment

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

Ephesians 5 is the most detailed and famous of New Testament passages about marriage. It shows us the power, the definition, the priority, the purpose, the structure, and the mystery of marriage. In this series, we’ve already looked at the power of marriage, though we’ll talk a little more about it now. Then the next aspect to discuss is the definition of marriage: that marriage is a covenant. We’ll look at 1) what it means that marriage is a covenant and 2) the amazing and practical ramifications of marital commitment. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on August 25, 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? Inpatients, 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 GospelUnlife.com and sign up for email updates. When you sign up, you'll receive our quarterly newsletter with articles about Gospel Change

Lives, as well as other valuable Gospel-centered resources. Subscribe today at GospelUnlife.com. We're going through the book of Ephesians. We've come to the classic text on marriage. The most detailed, the longest, the most popular, the most famous of all the passages in the Testament on the subject of marriage. Now, what we're going to do is look at this for a number of weeks. What I would like to do for the next four or five minutes after I read the passage is I'd like to tell you

what the basic headings are. Now, you know, those of you who've been around now that what I have a tendency to do is tell you what the headings are and then spend as much time as many weeks as necessary to get through them all. It would be great if every week I would do a heading. Then move on to the next, but I tend not to do that. I tend to go until the time is up,

or even a little bit past where the time is up, and then pick up next week. What I like to do is read the passage and tell you what I think the basic principles or the basic elements or the basic aspects of marriage are that Paul is treating. Then we'll get started and go through them, Siri Adam, for the next several weeks.

It's difficult for me to always know until the evening's over. Just what, how much of the topic I preached on, so it's a little bit different, difficult for me to give it a topic ahead of time. Let me read Ephesians 5, 22 to 35, actually, Ephesians 5, 21 to 33, excuse me. Ephesians 5, chapter 5, verse 21 to 33, then we'll take up four or five minutes

to give you the basic principles that we're going to be looking at for weeks, and then we'll try to tackle one more tonight because we tackled one last week. Submit yourselves to one another out of reverence for Christ. Live 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 as body of which he is Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so why should submit to their husbands and 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.

Under state of the year, but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you must love his wife as he loves himself and the wife must respect her husband. This is God's word. Pretty overwhelming. I would suggest to you that there's many ways to break this down but I suggest to you that there's five basic to break this down, but I suggest to you that there's five basic elements, six, excuse me, six basic elements or principles that Paul lays out here. We looked at one last week, we'll look at one tonight, and then we'll try to move through the rest as they go on.

But let me tell you what they are. Let me go over them. First of all, what we looked at last week was Paul lays out what the power for marriage is in verse 21. The power for marriage, where it says, submit yourselves to one another out of reverence, out of fear of Christ literally. That's where you get the fear of Christ. The word fear does not mean scared of in the Bible. It means to be odd before the reality of. In the Bible, it says, for example, in Psalm 130, thou forgive us sin, therefore I fear you.

See, the word fear does not mean to be scared of. How could it possibly be that the Psalmist says, because you forgive my sins, I fear you. Because the word fear means to be an awe, to be completely controlled by, to be overwhelmed, see, to be prostrate before the inamazement of out of fear of Christ, out of a relationship with Christ, out of the experience of Christ, you are enabled and you're able to serve other people. Submit yourselves to one other

out of reverence for Christ. That's the power for marriage. That's the first. We looked at that last week and there's no need to recap it, but we said last week, if you think of this negatively, Paul is assuming, if you're going to have a good marriage, verse 21 is the first verse. He's assuming that you have a spirit-created ability to be unselfish in the way in which you live. to be unselfish in the way in which you live. Stated negatively, this verse means that the main problem in every marriage is self-centeredness. That's what kills marriage. That's what always is the heart of every marriage problem.

That's the most basic problem you have. Now, like I said, we don't have to recap it, but what this does is it assumes the gospel. It assumes it. recap it, but what this does is assumes the gospel. It assumes it. It assumes, and we've talked about the gospel before, but when we say that this is a gospel-preaching church, what we mean is, here's a little phrase that I hope everybody in our church eventually will know by heart. The gospel is that you're more sinful and evil and weak than you ever dared believe, dare believe, but you are more valued and accepted in love than you ever dared believe, dare believe, but you are more valued and

accepted in love than you ever dared hope at the same time. Churches or institutions that stress how bad you are without talking about grace, those are legalistic churches and they're always saying you better perform a God-o-getcha. Permissive churches are churches that stress how loved and valued you are without talking you about the importance and the seriousness of sin. So they say God loves everybody, so try your best, but basically accepts everybody no matter how you are. The Gospel instead does not create a legalistic kind of message or a permissive kind of message. The permissive kind of message is the person that says, this is a great arrangement.

God enjoys forgiving sin, I enjoy committing it. The legalistic mindset goes more like this. I know I'm in God's will because I'm miserable. Instead, the gospel says, you need to repent, not because you need to repent in order to be saved, you need to repent because you are saved. The mark of the difference between a Christian and a permissive person is the Christian repents. As Martin Luther said, all of life is repentance. The difference between a Christian though and a legalist is the legalist repents out of fear and anxiety and the Christian repents out of gratitude for what Christ has done for him or her and out of a desire

to be like Christ. You see, when you know that you're saved, when you know that you're accepted, when you know that you're loved, you have a freedom to repent. You repent more often. When I feel that my acceptance with God is based on my performance, I really have, in a sense, I have to repress how bad I am. My conscience can't take it. If somebody shows me, or if my performance shows me something's wrong with me,

I can't repent if I'm a legalist. I can't repent if I think that that's the basis for my performance. I can't, because if I repent, that's the end of my life. I'll have to admit that I'm worthless. But when I know that I'm accepted in's the end of my life. I'll have to admit that I'm worthless. But when I know that I'm accepted in him, it actually does not, when you have gospel self-esteem, when you have gospel love in your life,

it makes you more prone and more able to repent. Because it's not the end of the world. It makes you more able to do it. Your conscience is framed with grace so that it can take a clear look at itself. That's the reason why we say the gospel creates a unique kind of person. Every so often we have to recap this because this is the context and the basis for everything that we say. The gospel means on the one hand you're a very humbled person but you're by no means and despair discouraged. And this is all in verse 21.

And this is all in verse 21. Out of fear of Christ, knowing what he's done for you, out of all before what he's done for you on the cross, it makes you on the one hand a strong person, and yet on the other hand a humble person, so that you can be an unselfish person. You can live in an unselfish way. See, a legalist can serve, but in a codependent way. I've got to, I'm driven.

I've got to let people step on me. It's the only way that I'll ever live up to standards. A permissive person can be self-imposed, but usually in an oppressive way. Hey, I've got my rights. You can't tell me what to do. But a person who understands the gospel has got the gospel in his or her blood is a person who is strong and yet humble, and therefore, out of reverence for Christ, submits.

Out of reverence for Christ is able to serve other people and put the needs of other people ahead. That's the power of marriage. That is the basis. That's assumed in verse 21. Everything else that comes after that is built on this. Now the second principle that Paul talks about, the second principle, he gives us the definition of marriage, not just the power of the definition. And the definition of marriage is that marriage is a covenant. That's what we'll look at tonight. Give me a second, it will be right back.

You see it in the word cleave, where it says, a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. The word cleave is a technical term in the Bible. It means, it's a covenantal term. The cleave means to be glued to it to it means to be bound legally to somebody. It's not just it's not actually simply a word that means to hold on to in some general way. It means to be bound. The definition of marriage as we're going to see is covenantal. It means essentially marriage is an institution of law. It's designed

by God and you enter marriage through a public promise. So that's the definition. Thirdly, and we mentioned this last week, thirdly, this passage teaches us the priority of marriage. It says, a man should leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. The Bible teaches us that marriage has got to be more important. Your marriage is more important to you than your job. It's more important to you than your job. It's more important to you than your career. It's more important to you than anything else in your life. That's the reason why God can put up the idea of the father and mother, leaving the father and mother.

Your relationship with your father and mother is a pretty fundamental relationship. It's the most fundamental relationship you have until you get married. It's the one, whether you like it or not, that has most driven your life and shaped your life and who you are. Marriage is more powerful in its impact than your relationship with your parents. And it must have priority. And if you don't leave, if you don't give it priority, it introduces all sorts of distortions into your marriage

and we'll talk about that in the future. Plenty of people have marriage problems because they haven't left. In some cases they haven't left their father and their mother. And you say, oh, I know those kinds, the kinds that are tied to their apron strings know. If you hate your parents, you haven't left them either. And if you cannot enter into a new marriage and really say, we're going to be a new decision-making unit, we're going to develop new patterns, but instead you impose the patterns that you saw in your own family, you haven't left. There's all kinds of ways in which you can fail to give marriages priority. And a place like New York, you've got to point out, the Bible says, marriage has got

the priority of your career. Look, when you live in your house, you go by your rules. Instinctively, when you get into somebody else's house, don't you instinctively go by their rules? You know, in your house, maybe you put down, you know, you're drinking something, you just put the glass down on the coffee table, but you look around, in somebody else's house, maybe they always put a cup down on a coaster.

You notice these things, because when you're in somebody else's house, maybe they always put a cup down on a coaster. You notice these things because when you're in somebody else's house, you go by their rules. When you get into marriage, you've gotten into something that was invented by God. And if you say, I'm going to want my marriage my way. You're in for a lot of trouble because marriage, when you enter into marriage, you enter into God's house and into his institution, it's built his way to ignore his laws is something you do to your peril. If you say no, no, no, no, no, marriage is going to come second or third in my life and my spouse has just got to get used to it. Watch out. Marriage isn't

built that way. So we see here the priority of marriage. Forthly, Paul lays out the purposes of marriage. And the purpose of marriage is the two shall become one flush. The purpose of marriage is friendship. The purpose of marriage is oneness. The purpose of marriage is to have somebody with whom you can be naked. And we're not just talking about physically at all.

Physical is just, you know, the physical is really just simply a result. It's a consequence of friendship. As we'll talk about this later, the physical is really just simply a result. It's a consequence of friendship. As we'll talk about this later, the reason the Bible says, don't be naked physically with somebody until you're naked spiritually and socially, it makes sense. You say, well, I can, you know,

the reason the Bible says, don't have sex outside of marriage is until you've gotten married to somebody, until you've bound yourself to somebody, you haven't really made yourself vulnerable. You haven't really bound yourself to them. You haven't really in a sense stripped. You haven't become naked. You haven't become naked socially and emotionally until you've married somebody. I care what you say.

Why haven't you got married? Because you weren't willing to bind yourself like that. You weren't willing to be that vulnerable to that person. The ultimate purpose of marriage is oneness. Find yourself like that. You weren't willing to be that vulnerable to that person. The ultimate purpose of marriage is oneness, deep oneness, soul oneness. Physical nakedness is just a consequence. It's just an image. It's just a result of soul nakedness. This person's got to be your best friend. This person's got to be someone with whom you have no secrets. Or you've frustrated the purpose of marriage. One this, friendship, companionship,

fifthly, and somebody was gonna say, why are you taking this time? Because my wife pointed out that this series is gonna end up becoming a series of tapes that people will be passing around each other, know how this works. And unless I give the outline here, it's gonna be very hard to understand

where I am later on. This is a table of contents for the series. The power of marriage, the definition of marriage, the priority of marriage, the purpose of marriage, fifthly, and this is going to be where we get into real-mind field, the structure of marriage. The structure of marriage is the body structure. Paul lays out here that the structure of marriage is the head body structure. The husband is the head and the wife is the body structure. Paul lays out here that the structure of marriage is the head body structure, the husband's the head and the wife is the body.

It says, no man hates his own body. It's talking about the same illustration that Paul uses to describe the church. You see, the church is like a body with every part pulling its own weight, complimentary functions. Remember all of that? So a marriage is like the body. And what Paul it some way. Complementary functions, remember all of that? So a marriage is like the body.

And what Paul is talking about here is something very deep. He is saying that the differences between the genders or complementary, that we need one another, to complete one another, that we are not equivalent though we're equal. And the differences between genders are much more than biological. And the deep structure of gender differences

is something that we have got to deal with in marriage, and that the wife's role and the husband's role are not interchangeable. And that when we have found our roles, we fit together, and we complement each other, and we complete each other at the deepest level. What does that mean? Of course, that's where you get into a mind field,

but we'll get there when we get there. The structure of marriage, lastly, Paul talks about the mystery of marriage. He says, this is a mystery, and that is that the marriage is basically a mirror for the relationship between Christ and His church. If you look here, you will see that basically the entire description of what the wife and the husband are to each other

in marriage is all based on the way Christ relates to us. So Paul is saying, you will never really understand the point of marriage and the purpose of marriage and the internal deep dynamics of marriage until you understand the relationship of Christ to his church. In fact, he goes even further. He is actually saying that marriage is sort of like a glass, the only human institution on earth that's like a glass, they can actually pick up a ray, a beam of a glorious life of heaven that we're going to know when we see God face to face.

When a man and a woman are united, perfectly and beautifully in marriage, economically and socially and physically in every way, you begin to taste a little bit of what's going to be like to be known face to face by Jesus on that day. That is the... You've heard me say that before and we've talked about sex. I'm going to get into it in greater detail. You must realize that God invented sex and invented marriage as a whole as a way of giving us a four taste of heaven and a four taste of what it will be like to flop into our Savior's

arms on the last day. Until you understand that, you have no idea what the exalted nature of marriage is and you really don't understand the purpose of it. The purpose of marriage is to be washed. See, it says here, it says, 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.

Marriage has been invented to be a vehicle for your sanctification and for your redemption. The basic purpose of marriage is to turn you into somebody holy. That's what it's there for. The power of marriage, the definition, the priority, the purpose, the structure, and the mystery. We're going to try to take a look at all of these. We took a look at power last week, and even though I'd like to try to say,

I'll do two tonight, you know better than that. What I'm going to do now is talk to you about one that we started on last week, but that I like to open up a little bit more. That is the definition of marriage. What is the definition of marriage? Dear friends, clean is the definition of marriage. Marriage is a covenant. In the 60s and the 70s, there were lots of articles saying,

we'll marriage last. We'll marriage survive. You know, will the institution of marriage survive? And they used to say, if it does, it won't survive in a recognizable form. In the 80s and 90s, everybody started writing articles on why we think marriage. Probably we'll survive, and it's got more staying power than we thought. And usually what they do is they give you statistics like this. The divorce rate is actually a dipping a little bit.

It's not going up, at least not in our country. Or they'll point out the fact that whereas, you know, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, they said, maybe fewer and fewer people will get married. It's not happening. More and more people get married, fewer people will get married. It's not happening. More and more people get married and people who get divorced tend to get married anyway. So they have all these statistics, again, I mean, and they have all these statistics. And they say, see, maybe marriage is going to stay. Biblically, that's ridiculous, because marriage may wax and wane as an institution.

And sociologically, you can study that with statistics. But the Bible says that this is the one human institution, apart from the church, that's a divine institution. It was invented by God. It's not like a bunch of cavemen were sitting around the fire in the late Bronze Age and came up with this great idea. Instead, this is an institution created by God.

And we already talked about that. If it's created by God, when you enter into it, you enter into the rules and regulations of the Creator. Just like when you get a car and you say, I've decided what put Hershey's syrup in instead of gas, what you're doing is you know, you'll kill the car because you have to say, look, if you buy the car and if you didn't build the car, it operates on the rules and regulations of the creator, of the inventor of it.

And therefore, you have to submit to that or else you'll destroy the car. When you get into marriage, you're not getting into a human institution. It's sort of an amphibian. It's a human institution, but it's a divine origin. You can study the shoots of it statistically, but the roots of it are divine,

and you have to study that through revelation. You have to see what the Bible says. Or you'll never understand basically how it works. Now, what is the structural root? The structural root of marriage is a covenant. And what is a covenant? Covenant is a binding. It's a public, and it's a legal contractor agreement. It's a binding, it's a public, it's a legal contract or agreement. That's how God defines marriage. That's the essence of it. Now I want you to realize, of course, that we live in a society that is anti-law and really will hate this whole idea.

Really hates that idea. In the Old Testament, whenever a covenant is put together, the covenant always has these elements. First of all, the parties are introduced. Here is so-and-so, and here is so-and-so. The second part of the covenant always is the stipulations. Now, every contract has got duties, duties, obligations. And those obligations are always laid out. These are the regulations

of the relationship between the parties. They're called stipulations. Then thirdly, in every biblical covenant, there is a list of the blessings and the curses. That means if you obey the covenant, if you do your duties, these are all the great things that will happen in your life. If you disobey and you break the covenant, these are all the curses that will work themselves out in your life. Then fourthly, you have the vows. In some way, you publicly ratify. It doesn't matter how. You know, in the Old Testament, one of the ways in which you would ratify a covenant is you would take an animal and you would rip the animal in half, lay it on the floor, and walk between the pieces. And say, if I do not do all the works of this covenant, may I be as this dead animal.

Now I've considered rewriting some of our marriage covenants that way, our marriage services, and just suggesting that bride and groom won't look, let's go and get an animal and cut it up and then walk between the pieces. They'd say, usually, we'd rather exchange rings. And that's fine. It doesn't matter if you jump over a broom, it doesn't matter if you cut an animal in half, it doesn't matter whether you exchange rings. These things aren't magic.

What makes a covenant a covenant is that it's public. And that you're standing up in front of your friends and you're standing up in front of your family, you're standing up in front of your family, you're standing up in front of the witnesses which is always a part of every covenant. There's no such thing as a covenant in the backseat of a car. A covenant is something public. A covenant is a way for you to make a promise that you do not mind who holds you accountable to it. That's what makes it. A contract. That's what makes it a covenant as opposed to something else. Now the modern mind is a tremendously anti-law and anti-covenantal. See the covenant talks all about commitment and discipline and service and the modern mind values spontaneity and freedom and choice, not duty, not obligation and not discipline. 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 gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelandlife.com slash give. That's GospelandLife.com slash give.

There's a tremendous anti-law idea and when it comes to marriage, the modern mind doesn't like to think about it that way at all. Not too long ago, I was watching a TV program, it was very typical. The TV program, it was a drama. Anyway, you know, man and man and woman they were living together and in this case the man says, I want to get married. And the woman is just furious. She says, I am offended by the idea that you think I need a piece of paper to love you and to express my love and to have a relationship of love with you.

How mechanical, how awful. And the man, of course, is cowed by this because in modern thinking, this is a plausible argument. In pre-modern times, the way a human being got a sense of meaning was out of obligations. You were a citizen, you were a father, you were a mother, you were a child, you were a man or you were a woman, so there were duties and there were obligations expected of you and your family and your society, and by fulfilling them, you received honor as such whatever you were. And you got a sense of fulfillment from that. In modern times, modern people get their

meaning in life out of the exact opposite. It's not just a little different. Modern people get their freedom and get their meaning out of feeling that they're free from any obligations to do whatever is fulfilling to them. Pre-modern people got their meaning out of obligation. Modern people get their meaning out of freedom of choice. Very different. Pre-modern people understood the idea of discipline and service. Modern people think about fulfillment and as a result when you come up against the Christian and biblical understanding of marriage, there's a lot of fear.

The tremendous lot of fear. Now, if you think that lady sounded sensible in the TV soap opera, I'm offended by the idea that you think that I need a piece of paper to love you. It sounds sensible, it's because you bought this. When a modern person uses the word love, the word has a very different definition, completely different actually, than when the Bible uses the word love. So when you read the Bible through the spectacles

of your modern mind, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. When a woman says, I don't need, when that woman, I mean that particular woman in the soap opera, when she said, I'm not picking on soap operas, in fact it might not have been one, but anyway, I can't remember where it was. But I'm picking on the mindset, not the program.

When the woman said, I don't need a piece of paper to love you with, what does she mean? She was assuming a definition of love. Can you understand that? And the definition of love is the love that focuses on the inside and it focuses on me. It's a feeling. When she means I love you, and I'll need a piece of paper to love you with, she means I feel affection for you.

I feel love for you. I want you. And she calls that love. When the Bible talks about love, it's thinking covenantly always. And it defines love not in terms of the inside, but in terms of the outside, not in terms of you, but in terms of the other. When this woman says, I love you, she means she is measuring her love,

and she's writing saying you don't need a piece of paper for this. She's measuring her love according to how much she wants to receive from this person. When the Bible talks about love, it measures love in terms of how much you're willing to give to a person. She says, I don't need a piece of paper to love you means she defines love subjectively. Here's how much I want from you. When the Bible talks about love, it is measuring how much you're willing to give, not how much you're willing to take, not how much you're willing to receive. The few times in the early part of my career as a pastor that I let some young couples

write their own wedding vows, I immediately discovered that they were reading, they were thinking about marriage completely in terms of the modern popular understanding of love. When they wrote their wedding vows, here's what they said. They would say, I love you, and I want to share my life with you. I love you and I want to share my life. I want to share everything with you. That's not a wedding vow. What that is doing is that person who says that is saying, here's how much I want from you. Here's how much I love you. Here's what I feel about you. Wedding vows are covenantal.

Christian love, a Christian wedding vow says nothing about the present and nothing about your feelings. A Christian wedding vow says nothing about the fact that I feel tender right now that I want you, that I feel affection, that I feel faithful. That's assumed real love goes way beyond that.

Feelings go up and down. Instead, what a Christian wedding vow says is, I promise to be tender to you. I promise to be loving. I promise to be faithful. I promise to be cherishing. I promise to be all these things regardless of how I feel and for the rest of my life.

See, a real vow is not talking at all about your feelings, it's talking about behavior. It's not talking all about your feelings, it's talking about behavior, it's not talking all about your insights, it's talking about your outside, it's not talking about you, it's talking about what you're going to give, not what you want to get. Because covenantal love is commitment and biblical love is always defined in terms of commitment and how much you're willing to curb your choices as a way of meeting the needs of somebody else. That's what love is. Now if anybody here is saying that's panicking me, that makes me even more scared of marriage

and I've ever been in my life. What you've done is you've bought the whole modern thing hook line and sinker because the modern world tells you don't you dare ever limit your choices. Keep your options open. Never, never, ever bind yourself and make yourself vulnerable to anybody that way. Never. If you're going to get married, make sure it's mutual, make sure it's negotiable. And the Bible actually says, if you want to do it that way, that's fine. You know, that great quote that I never tired a quoting, and some of you may be tired of me quoting it. The quote by C.S. Lewis says, sure, love anything

and your heart will be broken. Will certainly be wrong and probably broken, remember that quote? He says, but if you don't want your heart to be broken, don't give it to anybody. Lock it up in a casket of selfishness. Make sure you make yourself vulnerable to nobody. Make sure you open yourself to nobody.

But in that casket, dark and motionless, it will change. Are you happy, Akko? He says, your heart will not be broken. It will become unbreakable, impenetrable, and irredeemable. The only place, safe from the tragedy of a broken heart is hell, where nobody gives their hearts to anybody. You see, if you think that if you would commit yourself to somebody else like that,

that that would really be scary, that would really be frightening, that you might get hurt, I submit to you that you'll be more hurt in the long run if you refuse to submit yourself to anybody that way. If you rule it out, if you take your heart so it'll never be broken, if you never commit yourself and never make yourself vulnerable, which is really what the definition of marriage is, your heart will not be broken, it'll become impenetrable, irredeemable. You will experience the alienation and dislocation of the modern society that you are listening to and the muse as it sings to you and you march to the beat.

Society is full of alienated and dislocated people because they're looking after number one because they refuse to find love in terms of commitment and what you will give and how vulnerable you will be. Love is covenantal. Marriage is covenantal. And the only possible way that you can ever really experience the joy of marriage is if you take a plunge, a tremendous plunge, a plunge of commitment. You know, there's, well, I'll get to that at the end. Now, the practical ramifications of this are pretty amazing, and here's what they are. Practical ramifications.

Number one, it means that the essence of love basically is, love is not a feeling, it's essentially an action. Now, of course, look. The amount of definition of love is it's like a ditch. You fall into it. It's like a virus. You catch it. You're passive.

You can't help yourself. You get in love, you see. The biblical understanding of love is love is primarily an action. When the Bible uses the word love, your wife, love your husband, and when the Bible says love your enemies, it's using the same word. How can you love your enemies if a biblical understanding of love is affection? You don't feel any affection for your enemy. When the Bible says love your enemy, that means wish your enemies good. Do good for your enemy. Even be willing to take it on the chin to do good and

to serve your enemy if you can. Now the Bible doesn't say make it easy for your enemy to sin over you, but what it's saying, take the risk. Do what you can to serve your enemy. The essence of love is to put the needs of somebody else ahead of your own. Therefore, love is primarily giving. It's an action that leads to a feeling, not a feeling first. Now one of the things I learned, you learn this as a parent. The shame that in most cases, you learn this as a parent, the shame that in most cases, most cases, you learn this

as a parent and it's inescapable. When you give yourself to your spouse, you have a tendency to still think of love as a bargain, not a commitment. You know, we're just awful. We just really are upset when we read about the way things used to be. You can see it in Genesis 24.

Abraham wanted Isaac to have a wife, so what did he do? He heard good things about Rebecca, so he sent one of his servants to make a bid. Aliezer goes over and finds Rebecca and says to her father, how many camels do you want for? And you know, she's beautiful, will give 50 camels for her. If she's not so beautiful, we'll give 50 camels for her. If she's not so beautiful, we'll give 25 camels. And we say, oh, that's incredible, that's awful. But it was awful because you see, you know,

women were being treated as property. And we've come so much further today because now we do it to each other. She's in the market, they say. He got a bad deal. How in the world did he ever fall for that sales pitch Because when you look at who you want to marry you think in terms of a bargain you say I'm getting this and this and this She's this way and she's this way and she's this way. I she's a little bit like this way

But I'm this way this way. I feel like she's she's about. She's a little better than I expected to get But she's falling for me and what you do is you say you basically say I think I will get as much out of this relationship as I'm putting in, or maybe a little bit more, so you think in terms of a bargain. Now what happens is you get into these relationships, you get married. And as I mentioned before, most people think of love in terms of what they want. Now that is just emotional hunger, that's not love. The real way to know how much you love somebody is how much are you willing to give? How much are you willing to be vulnerable? Not how much are you willing to get? You get into marriage and you find that your spouse is not giving you what you expected,

not what you wanted. So you withdraw. What happens is you say he's not being the husband that he used to be. Why should I be the wife that I used to be? He used to do this and he doesn't anymore. So why should I do this? And you pull back and you pull back and you pull back. Now when you have a child, it's the other way around.

Your child is born and your child doesn't give you a thing. Acts like a baby. You know, spits on you, bites your finger. Luckily, he doesn't have any teeth. And there's no, you get nothing from the child. The child needs you. The child needs everything. You have to walk with you, you have to do all these things.

So you get nothing. And all you do is serve the child. And the more you serve the child, the more you love. There's a place where somebody said, first the Nazis killed the Jews because they hated them. Then the Nazis hated the Jews because they hated them. Then the Nazis hated Jews because they killed them. It works backwards too. See, first you love somebody by serving them.

Then you find that through the service you've come to love them. You give and you give and you give to the kid. And next thing you know, you find your heart absolutely bound up. The feelings of love, follow the action of love. So by the time the kids 18, 19 or 20, if that child's a jerk, you still love them. That child has no redeeming social value, you still love them. But in those same 18 to 20 years, the cycle's been working in reverse. When your spouse acts like a baby, what have you done? The less your spouse gives to you, the less you give. And the less you give, the less you feel like loving, unless you feel like loving, the less you act loving,

unless you act loving, unless you feel loving. 18 years. You're doing this cycle the other way around with the kid. The more you give, the more you feel loving, the more you feel loving, the more you feel loving, the more you give, and the more you act loving, the more you feel loving, the more you feel loving, the more you act loving. So they're going reverse.

And why do you think so many marriages, as soon as that kid steps out of the house, fall apart? Why do you think? Because you're operating with your child, because you can't help it, on a biblical pattern. And the feelings of love follow the action of love. But you're acting with your spouse on a bargain rather than a commitment basis, and the feelings of selfishness are and the feelings of selfishness are following the actions of selfishness.

By the time that 18 years of that cycle is going on, you have nothing, no love left, you feel, for your spouse, and you have a lot of love for your child, and so you split. Love is an action first, the Bible says, and the feelings follow. You give even when you don't feel like giving, and it's amazing. Now, this does not mean that that means that you can be in love with anybody, because, as we said, one of the basic principles of marriage is friendship. One of the most important things about marriage is that you have to find somebody who understands you, that you understand it's just deep unity, this deep oneness. And see, that's got to be there, and you can't have it with anybody, but I am trying to tell you

this. There are plenty of people who don't get married because they think love is a ditch that you fall into. And there's plenty of people who say, the essence of marriage, of love is a feeling, and I will know when I'm to be married, because there'll be this overwhelming, overwhelming, unrelenting feeling of love for this other person that I will have that will never be doubt. So I'll never look at this person and go, Yuck, I won't have good days and bad days. It'll be overwhelming, they'll just who shit,

it'll just pick me up like a title, even it'll just wash me into marriage. up like a tidal avid will just wash me into marriage. Marriage is covenantal. Nobody operates like that. No marriage operates like that. And you know, if for some reason you just accidentally are so temperamentally one with a person so that you never have any scrapes before you get married. Or if accidentally the person that you have had his fallen for you happens to be the body type that you've been

fantasizing about for years and years. Then before you get married you might actually have that strong incredible feeling, bells going off every day. That'd be the worst thing for you. Because when you finally do get married you will see that marriage is covenantal, marriage is a commitment. The feeling of love will follow the actions of love. And frankly, the day in which you are most able to honor God by loving your spouse the way Christ loved the church, are the days in which you don't feel much affection at all. That's the day. When you feel warm and toasty, it's easy to serve. When you don't feel warm and toasty, that's. That's the way Jesus loved us when he was on the cross. Did he look down and say just my body type?

I can't wait to die for these people Jesus acted Jesus did not love us because we were lovely Jesus loved us to make us lovely When you love covenantally, you will find, over the years, your marriage will get more and more stable. It is astonishing how fast. When you act in a serving way, when you act in a tender way, when you act in an affectionate way out of love for Christ,

out of a sense of obligation, out of a knowledge that he has forgiven you, even though you don't feel much affection for your spouse is amazing how fast your feelings will kick back in. You follow your feelings and marriage and you're on your way down in that cycle. So the practical implications are pretty simple.

Loves is not a feeling first. It's not. Second practical implication. And it's the only other one I can mention tonight. Is that the essence of marriage is confrontational and you'll never understand that and know it and never have the benefits of it until you understand that love is covenantal. I just said that most people think if you have a great marriage or if I know I should be marrying this person, this is the person I will always feel affectionate for.

That's ridiculous. Verse 26 says that one of the key purposes of marriage is that we cleanse one another. We wash one another. We get rid of one another's faults and flaws and blemishes. We get the dirt off of each other. Now, you know, the idea of taking a bath is kind of nice, you know, if you're thinking when it says

the husband and the wife, they cleanse one other through the washing of water and the word. And if you think of taking a bath is kind of nice, you know. If you're thinking when it says the husband and the wife, they cleanse one another through the washing of water and the word. And if you think of a bubble bath, you're really going down the wrong track. If you're already in pretty good shape, a bath doesn't hurt. But as anybody here, been beaten, scraped up, wound it all over the place, and you get into a bath full of soap, you know how it feels, it hurts. It stings. Listen.

Second Corinthians 4.5 says, the coming of Christ brings to light the hidden things and discloses the purpose of the heart, so does marriage. If any of you have ever been to one of my marriage services, you'll know I like to say this, and this is very important. Here's a bridge and there's all sorts of structural defects in the bridge. But you can't see them. They're hairline fractures. Nobody can really see them.

But it's a great big truck, five pound, I mean a five ton, a very big, a five ton Mac truck comes over the bridge and when it gets on the bridge it shows up all the structural defects because it strains the bridge and suddenly you can see where all the mistakes are, where all the flaws are. The truck doesn't create the flaws, it doesn't create the weakness, it reveals the weakness. Now, when you get married, your spouse is this great big Mac truck coming right through your heart. And before you are married, other people tried to tell you about those defects. Your parents tried to tell you, your roommates tried to tell you.

But you weren't in covenant with them. You could write it off. You weren't so intimate and so close that it really created problems for you. Your selfishness, your fear, your pride, your bitterness, your worry. You were never in, even with your parents, never in such an intimate relationship, that those differences created problems for you. And on top of that, if they told you about them too much, you could always leave. There was no covenant, there was no commitment, there was no vow.

When you get married, it brings out the worst in you. When you get married, you will find that being in that close to quarters, those sins, those structural flaws will be brought out. And the real mistake that people make, almost always, is you feel like the conflict that marriage is brought you into is a conflict with your spouse. Not a bit. The power of marriage is this. Marriage brings you into a confrontation, not with your spouse. Not a bit. The power of marriage is this. Marriage brings you into a confrontation,

not with your spouse, it's with yourself. Marriage forces you to look in the mirror, marriage for you, it gets you by the scruff of the neck and pushes you in the mirror, face in the mirror and says, look at these things. And the very wonderful, the most wonderful thing about marriage, the way marriage helps you escape from your sins is that marriage is

relatively speaking and inescapable relationship. You can't just walk out. Yes, you can, but it's very hard. Very difficult even in a society. It's tough. And what happens is that your marriage will for the first time in your life show your warts, show your flaws in a way that you can't escape them, and you'll have to cry out to God, and you'll have to say, Lord, only you can help me and that's the beginning of your healing.

If you don't think therefore that there is a conflict, the Bible says in Book of Proverbs is iron sharpens iron, friends sharpens friends. And if that's true of friends, good friends sharpening each other. There's a constructive conflict. They point out each other's weakness and fault. How much more are the ultimate friendship, a marriage? You ought to think of each individual that gets into a marriage as sort of a rough stone put into a gem tumbler and the gem tumbler.

Brings you with a constructive conflict with each stone, a constructive conflict with one another, knocking the rough edges off so that when you come out of that gem tumbler, you're beautiful, you're smooth, you're perfect, you're polished, and all the glories inherent in that gem are revealed for the eye to see. for the eye to see. Marriage is a gemtumble or a Christian marriage has a compound, a grinding compound and it's called the Holy Spirit called the gospel that we talked about at the top of the hour. If you get in there with a gospel and you get in there with a covenant on understanding of love, you will change, you will grow. But if you think of marriage romantically, if you think of marriage subjectively, if you think of marriage with a modern understanding of love, you'll never get in there. Or if you think of marriage romantically, if you think of marriage subjectively, if you think of marriage with a modern understanding of love, you'll never get in there.

Or if you get in there, it'll be a disaster. Are you willing to stand up in front publicly of all the authority structures in the world, the authority structures state, the government, all your friends, your family? Are you willing to stand up in public before the whole world and promise the B-Tender and the B-loving and the B-Faithful and the B-charising and the B-loving to this person under all conditions for the rest of your life, then you love them enough to get married.

You don't have to keep on looking inside your heart and taking your spiritual and emotional temperature all the time. Jesus Christ says, love one another, as I have loved you. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that your son gives us the pattern for all our relationships, not just marriage.

We pray, Father, that those of us who are here who are married will walk away and take these principles and begin to apply them. We pray that those of us who are not married might begin to think and look at our relationships in our own heart and our own futures through the lens of what your word says about this great institution, this glorious thing, which is marriage,

this dangerous thing, this difficult thing, and this great thing. We pray, therefore, Lord, that You would enable us to see that we are Your bride, and as we come to understand the depths of the glories of Your love for us, we will, in the same way, and to a great degree, understand our relationship with one another and begin to walk as He walked, to love as He loved. Father, make us a community like that. And now we pray it in Jesus' name.

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 Unlife Monthly Partner. Your partnership helps more people access resources like this podcast. Just visit gospelunlife.com slash partner to learn more.

This month's sermons were recorded in 1991. The sermons and talks you here on the Gospel Unlife podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Materian Church.