Submit to One Another 46:57

Have you ever wondered why the Apostle Paul calls love, patience, and kindness fruit of the Spirit instead of just character traits or attributes? Tim Keller contends that gradual growth is key to understanding the nature of how Christians change to become more Christlike. Join us now as Dr. Keller teaches on the fruit of the Spirit.

After you listen, we invite you to go online to gospelandlife.com and sign up for our email updates. When you sign up, you'll receive our Life in the Gospel quarterly journal with articles that feature how the gospel is changing hearts, lives, and communities, as well as highlighting other gospel-centered resources. Subscribe today at gospelandlife.com. The scripture reading is from Ephesians 5, verses 21-33.

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is a 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 this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.

He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it just as Christ does the church, for we are members of his body.

For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. This is God's word.

Now, this is a profound text, a profound mystery. Marriage is a deep subject. Many times my wife and I have fallen into bed at night, exhausted from a hard day of marriage, and have said, this is a great mystery. And there's a lot to marriage. And as some of you know, about seven years ago in the evening service, I preached a series of nine sermons on this text, which you can still get from the Tate Ministries.

And they're popular for some reason. I'm not sure why. And I can't possibly hope to go into all the details and answer all the questions that arose in your mind as we went through this.

But that's one of the places where you probably will hear, you'll get a lot more details. It's too profound to handle quickly, but there's advantages to looking over from the, and get the big picture of the overall view of the passage. And there is something, let me just say something before we actually get into it.

It's very hard to listen to this passage or any passage on marriage because whenever you listen or read about marriage, we bring filters to it. A filter, well, what do I mean? We listen to this through filters. We have psychological filters. If you've had a bad marriage or if you were raised by a bad marriage, then when you see the word, when you hear a husband say to a wife or you hear somebody say, I love you, you might hear it, I want to control you.

Because that's what you heard in the marriage you're familiar with. You say, "That's a psychological filter." But in all fairness, if you've come from a good marriage, if you were raised by a great marriage, for example, if you came out of a great marriage, you might be naive about marriage. You might be naively optimistic about it. I mean, there's filters. And then there's cultural filters, not just psychological filters. As we'll get to in a second, you might come from a traditional culture in which the purpose of marriage is to fulfill social functions.

Or you might come from the Western individualistic culture where the purpose of marriage is to fulfill personal feelings. And if you come from the traditional model, you have a filter, and when you read this text, you love the word "submit" and you either don't understand or you might even laugh at the word "love." But if you come from a Western grid, you love the word "love," you get excited about that, but you're really upset about the word, or at least uncomfortable about the word "submit."

Why? Because you see, if you can read through this passage and some things you like and some things you don't, it's your filter talking. That's the reason why your filter, some of you are filtering out, some you're filtering in. But before you start to pick and choose this passage to death, I ask, I beg that you would stand back and consider that this is a view of

of marriage, a model of marriage that is maybe challenging your whole filter. I mean, before you start to pick and choose it, let it challenge your filter itself. Look at it as a whole because the biblical model of marriage is not traditional or modern. It's not. It's not optimistic or pessimistic about human nature. It's not. So let's listen to it. Now, the biblical model of marriage in this passage has three things to it. The Christian model of marriage is

has a power, a purpose, and a pointer to it. A power, a purpose, and a pointer. Let's take a look at them. I always try to make the first point quick so people feel like we're making progress. So let's do this. First of all, there's a power to it. In fact, even though all three principles are out here in the whole text, they're also embodied in verse 21. The power you see in the word out of. Marriage is out of. The purpose, submit to one another.

and the pointer out of reverence to Christ. All right, now first of all, the power out of. Now, let me do a little grammar on you, a little grammar. Verse 21 is often called a bridge verse between two subjects. If you were here last week, you know that there's a passage, verse 18 to 21, that's about being filled with the Spirit. And then in verse 22, it seems like we have another subject, another topic, and that is marriage.

And verse 22 is seen as a kind of bridge between the two. But I think that's wrong. And if you look carefully at the grammar, you would see that. Would you just give me 60 seconds and bear with me? Verse 21, though in English texts, it's made a separate sentence for readability. Verse 21 is the last clause in a sentence that started back in verse 18 about being filled with the Spirit.

Verse 21 is not a bridge. It's part of the passage. In fact, let me read it to you literally. Here's literally what it says in the Greek. Verse 18, it goes like this. Do not get drunk with wine, which is excess, but be filled with the spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord, giving thanks always to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

So verse 21 is talking about it's part of that clause. So you say, well, it's part of the first subject. Ah, but wait a minute. On the other hand, when you look at verse 22, another thing the translators did. In verse 22, verse 21, you have the word submit, right? And in verse 22, you have the word submit. Ah, but the English translators had to do that for readability. The verse 22 does not have the verb submit in it. It uses the verb in verse 21.

In other words, literally, Paul says, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ, wives to your husbands, and then it goes on. What does that mean? There is no division. There is not a two subjects. I mean, we had to divide it up somewhere, right? You have the sermon on the filling of the Spirit. You have the sermon on the marriage. But that's not really what Paul's talking about. There is no division here. Paul does not say, I've talked to you about the Holy Spirit. Now I'm going to talk to you about marriage. Oh, no. What he is saying is,

The biblical model I'm about to give you flows directly out of the radical new approach to human relationships, the new music in your heart, the new life of pervasive gratitude and unselfishness that comes from being filled with the Spirit. What Paul is really saying, let me paraphrase it. Paul's not saying, I talked to you about the fullness of the Spirit. Now I want to talk to you about marriage. He says, if you have the fullness of the Spirit down, this is what marriage will be. He's just illustrating. This is not another subject.

This is still talking about the fullness of the Spirit. Well, you say, why? What? Now tell me, what's the whole point? Here's the point. The biblical model of marriage won't work without the fullness of the Spirit. Paul is saying the wild and crazy and deep way I am calling you to be married has the fullness of the Spirit as the absolute prerequisite. Now let me put it to you this way. Here's what Paul's saying.

Many times you'll see things happening on TV, stunts or magic tricks or something, and the commentator always says, "Boys and girls, don't try this at home." Okay. "You don't have the right equipment. Don't try this at home." You know what Paul's saying here? Before he starts to say, "Wives do this and husbands do this," he is saying, "Don't try this at home." What he's saying is, "Don't try this without the Holy Spirit." Let me apply this briefly. Look, marriage is for everybody.

Genesis 2 tells us that. God gave marriage to Adam and Eve. He gave it to humanity. In fact, down there in verse 31, Genesis 2 is quoted. A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. That's from Genesis 2. And we know, therefore, marriage is for everybody. And we also know that God wants everybody who's in marriage, whether you believe in God or not, to leave, cleave, and become one. In other words, he wants everybody in marriage to

to be faithful to each other and loving and so on but Beyond that the details that Paul gives us here are not Regulations for everybody they are challenges for Christians. Let me be real specific I'm not looking at any other verse, but I'm telling you what this verse is doing This verse is not telling the world how their marriages should go. Let me be real specific. I

This verse, Paul is not calling all the women of the world to submit to all the men. In fact, he's not even, not here. He is not calling all the wives of the world to submit to all their husbands. He is saying, if you have the fullness of the spirit, you can do something that's wild and deep, but don't try this without the proper equipment. That's what he's doing. And therefore, he is saying there's a power, there's a prerequisite, excuse me. There's a power and there's a prerequisite here.

The fullness of the Spirit. Without it, this model won't work. So this is not a model for everybody. This is a model for people who say, you've got this down, now here's what can happen. As I'm going to come back to you, in a sense, Paul realizes, Paul almost is creating firewalls here. He is saying, make sure these things are in place before you try this. So that's the first thing. Now, by the way, that doesn't mean I can say, gee, honey, I'm not filled with the Spirit this week. I guess I don't have to love you. That's not what we're talking about.

This is not a condition for your duties. This is a condition for the success of your duties. This is a condition for the model. All right? So first there's the power. But now secondly, and this is kind of the heart of it, the heart of the model is the purpose. There is a special purpose that Paul says, that the Bible says, that God gives us, really, very much throughout, that what makes biblical marriage different is the purpose of it. I mean, that's what, what is it for?

What you think marriage is for will determine everything, really, about it. Now, before we say what the biblical purpose is, let me just tell you what historically the world has said. Cultural historians across the spectrum, to my surprise as I was studying this this week, have a remarkable amount of consensus about the fact there have really been two, basically two historical answers to the question, what is marriage for? What's its purpose? And the first thing marriage is for is

The first answer that has really been dominant for centuries, though not as much now, was what's called the dynastic view of marriage. And the dynastic view of marriage says the purpose of marriage is to fulfill social functions, social duties. You choose your spouse to get to the place where you want to be, the position economically and socially you want to be. You choose your spouse to get you the family you want to have and the children you want to have.

And you don't base it on romance and passion. Romance and passion is nice if you get it, but what you want is that social commitment and you stay loyal, see? And therefore, in fact, what they would say is, look, marriage isn't about love. It's nice if you can get it. The important thing is you get in there and you make that commitment and you're true to your social obligations and you get the family you want, you get the position you want, and you choose a spouse that way.

This is one of the reasons why in the traditional view of marriage, you never, I'll get back to this in a minute, you never get a divorce. Why do you need a divorce? You have your mistress. You have, you know, you get romance where you want to get your romance. I mean, that's not what marriage is basically about. Marriage is about fulfilling social duty and obligations. This is, by the way, this is the ancient way. This is the old way. See, the old way said love and marriage, love and marriage do not go together like a horse and carriage. All right.

I remember when the French leader Mitterrand died, his wife and his mistress were both at the funeral. And what was so silly was American commentators had the tendency to say, "Ah, you see, the Europeans are so much more progressive. "You know, we Americans are so Puritan." What, progressive? That's the old approach. See, love and marriage, love and marriage don't go together like a horse and carriage. You have the horse over here, you have the carriage over here, they both come to the funeral. But you don't need to keep them together. They're not together.

That's the old approach. Why would you ever want a divorce? Anybody who would want a divorce clearly got married for love. Are you an idiot? Why would you go through, you know, see in the old way, you never got a divorce. Why would you do that? Why would you put your children through that? Why would you put your family through that? The complications, the humiliations, the pain, the suffering, why would you do that? I mean, if you're going to get a divorce, that clearly shows you got married for love. Are you a fool? What are you thinking about? What kind of society will we have that way? That's the old way.

Okay, but then the cultural consensus has changed, at least in the West. And since the Enlightenment, the dynastic approach, which said we get married to fulfill social obligations, has given way to the romantic ideal, which is that you get married to fulfill personal feelings, desires, and dreams. And what's interesting is that the dynastic approach said the important thing is commitment. And if you can get romance, great, but commitment.

The new approach is romance and passion. And if you can get commitment, that's nice, but you don't really expect that. You don't truly expect it. You really want, of course, is the passion, but you don't get that commitment. I mean, that'd be awfully nice. That's the reason why he has such a different view of divorce. The reason that in the traditional approach, you never had a divorce is you said, well, what's love got to do with it? Got to do with it. And in the new approach, you said, well, if the passion's gone and the love is gone, there's no marriage left. Do they look different? They're not.

Do they look utterly different? Some of you, if your parents came from traditional societies, but you were raised here, when you came to tell them who you were going to marry, and they went through the roof, you were living a thousand years of cultural history in one lifetime.

Because you are choosing not on the basis of social expectations, but on the basis of your passions. And they wanted you to choose not passions. Come on, you'll get used to it. You do what you need to do to get to the position socially and economically you want to be and to get the children and so forth. But as different as they seem at bottom, they're the same because actually they're not different. Ah, but didn't you say they have different purposes? One says social obligation, other says personal fulfillment. But the whole point in both cases is

The purpose of marriage is to fulfill me. The purpose of marriage is not to serve my spouse, but to find a spouse that's useful, to get me where I want to be. As long as I have that, I've got a marriage, and if I don't, if I'm not getting my needs fulfilled, really there's no marriage. And that's the reason why both the old and the new, both the dynastic and the romantic ideal, both think it is ridiculous to think that passion and lifelong commitment are compatible.

The dynastic approach says lifelong commitment, but passion. I mean, you're not going to get that. Maybe you will, but not usually. And the new approach says passion, but lifelong commitment. Well, I mean, you're not going to get that. Maybe you can, but not usually. They both agree. Those two things are incompatible. You can't have both. You can't expect both. Because bottom line, they're both saying the purpose of marriage is to fulfill me. Now, the Bible says, and your hearts know that we've got to have both.

We long to have both. We must have both. Even in this very text, the Bible shows that you have to have both. If you go back to the Genesis 2, where it says leave and cleave. I can't do the exegesis for you right here, but leave means the lifelong commitment and cleave means the passion. We're right here. Here's Jesus Christ. And well, we'll get to that in a second. Here's the husband. Give yourself. See verse 26.

That's the crucifixion, by the way. That's abandonment. That's lifelong commitment. But then there's the light, the radiance, the ravishing, the ravished with the beauty. Listen, not only does the Bible say those two have to be together, but our hearts have to have them. We want truth and love. We want faithfulness and passion. We want respect and intimacy. In fact, the Bible goes this far. It doesn't just simply say...

But you have to keep compassion and commitment together. It says passion isn't really passion if you're not willing to commit. And commitment isn't really commitment if you're not passionate. These two things have got to come together. Why can they? And the Bible says they can if you choose a different purpose. And you know what the purpose is? This is only something possible for Christians, really. I mean, as I'm going to show you. And I am not trying to say only Christians can have happy marriages. It's much more complex than that.

But the purpose that is given to us here is this. The purpose of marriage is not to fulfill me socially, fulfill me emotionally. The purpose of marriage is to serve your spouse with a vision for his or her future glory. The purpose of marriage is to say, I see something glorious that God is doing in you. I believe I am both attracted and called to enable that process, to work with Jesus Christ in that process.

And that's where I want to go. That's what I want to do. Now, you see, that is very different. You don't just look at the person as they are. You look at the person as they are going to be. And you don't say, here's how I can, you can use, pardon me, how you can be useful to me. But you come and say, I find in myself a passion to make myself useful to you and to the one who is working in your life. Now, someone says, how does that work? Let me break it down for you.

submit to one another, which is a very, very different approach than use one another. The whole idea is you serve one another, you submit to one another rather than use one another. Now, let me break it down for you. The purpose of marriage is to do three things. Submit to one other's needs, differences, and glory. Okay, first of all, needs. The word submit is a military word. Now, somebody says, wait a minute, I'm looking at verse 21. The word submit is a military word. And a military word that means...

you give up your individual rights for the common good. I mean, that's the way it is in the army. The reason you don't go to bed when you want and get up when you want, you don't march when you want, you don't do drills when you want. Why? Because you're part of a bigger whole and we're going to die if you think like that. And therefore, you have to serve the common good. Now, what this is saying is simply this. The rule of thumb in marriage is you always serve

the needs of your spouse before your own. Always serve the needs of your spouse before your own. Now, right away, somebody says, oh, does that mean you let the other spouse walk all over you? You weren't listening. No. Here's why. Does your spouse need to walk all over you? Is that good for him or her? Does your spouse need to abuse you? Is that good for him or her? Absolutely not. And therefore, confrontation...

is the best way to tell whether you have a biblical and not a selfish submissive servant attitude. If you never confront your spouse, you know why? Because you put your need for peace and comfort over that person's need for the truth and for healing and perspective that would come from the truth. Or...

If you find that you do confront, but you do it ineffectively and your spouse gets more aggravated and resentful, it's because you've actually put your need to tell the person off over the person's need for patient handling. We want you to know about a new standalone podcast series we're releasing soon titled Cultivating a Healthy Marriage with Tim Keller. This short podcast series features the messages from the most popular sermon series of Dr. Keller's time at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.

Preached in 1991, this series was the basis for the best-selling book by Tim and Kathy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage. Whether you're single, married, widowed, or divorced, you'll learn how to apply God's wisdom about marriage to your life. In this series, listeners will work through tough questions like, how can I honestly address my self-centeredness? How can we learn to serve each other out of love? What do we need to reconcile when we hit rough patches in our relationship?

A truly submissive person

is constantly confronting and often being totally quiet. It's not, when it says submit to one another, when the Bible says serve the needs of your spouse rather than your own, it is not saying be passive or be active. It's saying choose your passivity and choose your activity on the basis of the needs of the other person. That means in many cases you are extremely confrontive. If I've ever heard anybody, and I have, say I have just

I've just given it, given to my spouse, and now I've got to do something for me. You'd only say that if you've been selfishly submissive, if you've been submissive because you want to feel virtuous or because you just wanted peace. Selfish submission eventually makes you want to explode. But truly selfless submission means that you've been telling the person off all along. But you've been doing it in a winsome way because you're not trying to win. You care. You love.

So the first thing you have to do is you have to serve one another's, you have to submit to one another's needs. Same thing. Secondly, you have to serve or submit to one another's differences. Now you're going to have to help me here because this is not the main point of the passage, but it's a big hot issue now. So you're going to have to moderate your interest and you're going to have to moderate your emotions as I tell you what it's saying. Notice husbands and wives don't get the same verbs. Husbands love, wives respect. Okay. Husbands respect.

Give, wives, submit. And even though the word submit is an overall saying you have to make sure that you're serving in everything you do, both husbands and wives, it's very, very clear in verse 22 that Paul is saying, just as Christ has authority over the church, so the husband has authority over the wife in the marriage. This is the thing that Paul's inviting people into if they have the whole fullness of the Spirit. Now, right away, people say, what?

Isn't that it doesn't isn't that doesn't that open a person to abuse? Yes, of course, and that's the reason why there's all these firewalls around it There's many many firewalls at first before I tell you what the firewalls are. Let me tell you what it's saying Why does it say a husband and a wife will leave cleave and become one flesh now? Why why one flesh that word in both Greek and Hebrew is deeply ambiguous very ambiguous and

because that word can mean body or it can mean person. Obviously, the word flesh can mean body, but it can also mean purpose as when God says, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, meaning all persons. So what is it saying? That when a husband and wife get married, they become one body or does it mean they become one person? And the answer is yes. And here's what it must mean. Physically, a male and a female body literally interlocks.

They become one body because the husband physically moves out and into and toward and the wife receives. This must mean, and what the Bible is saying here, is that there is an extension of the maleness of your body and the femaleness of your body into your soul. That it is not an accident that our souls, it's not that our souls have no reference to our bodies at all, but rather there's an extension. In other words,

What the Bible teaches is just as it is natural physically for a husband to move toward his wife, so in terms of soul, it's natural for him to move toward his wife emotionally and relationally. And just as physically it's right for the wife to receive her husband, so it means that emotionally and relationally there is a sense in which she receives her husband. In other words, what happens physically must be and is mirrored at some point

spiritually, psychologically, emotionally. Or another way to put it is this. This is what C.S. Lewis calls the great dance. Look, if two people are up here and we're not dancing face to face but side by side, we can both have our right, that's a left, left foot, right foot, see? And my partner, we can both do left together, we can both do right together. But if we're intimately dancing, if we're facing each other dancing, we cannot possibly do

The very same thing. We have to complement each other. When I go forward with my left, he or she's got to go back with that same foot. In other words, instead of identical and equivalent movements, there have to be complementary and harmonious movements. And what C.S. Lewis says is at some deep level, there's a difference between male and female that creates a soul interlocking just like there's a physical interlocking.

And this interlocking must be far deeper than anything possible between two people of the same sex and far deeper than two people of opposite sex who are not in a lifelong commitment of both body and soul to each other. Now, how do you get that? See, what Paul is trying to say is there is a way to have an interlocking of maleness and femaleness, a complementary interlocking of your gender differences,

of soul, just as there is a complementary interlockingness of gender differences of body. That's what it must mean. How do you get that? Now, what I'm about to tell you is an extremely practical principle, but when I first say it, you're going to say, you're not going to think it is. I'm just warning you. Let me tell you what the practical principle is. We get no details. One of the dangerous things about this text in the hands of a conservative, can I tell you this? Let me tell you what the dangerous thing about this is.

When a conservative hears somebody say, wives submit to their husbands and say, "Right, that's what I believe. That means..." And I always want to say, "Yeah, what does that mean?" And as soon as he goes on, she goes on, he goes on, as soon as that person goes on, the person says this, "Well, that means that wives shouldn't work." Well, what about Proverbs 31 that says wives should be businessmen, women? Well, the person says, "That means that wives should raise children." But what about the next part of this chapter?

that says fathers and mothers together have the responsibility of raising the children. Well, that means husbands cut the grass. You see, there are no details. There are none. And what's really dangerous is if you bring your filter and your preference

You prefer a wife not to work. You prefer the wife to take the main responsibility with the children. You prefer that. You read this and you read that right in and you think, I have a biblical warrant for what I'm doing. No, you don't. Let me give you this practical principle again. If a husband, if a man and a woman, as they're getting married, decide that the husband will have final authority and they come to a mutual agreement on what that is, whatever that is, that will create that interlockingness of deep maleness and femaleness.

The Bible doesn't give you details. You know why? Because nobody has the right to impose what those details are. That has to be worked out mutually. The husband doesn't come in and say, I'm the authority therefore. You see, the husband has authority like Christ has authority who gave himself, who's crucified for us, which means the husband can never, ever, ever use whatever that authority is to serve himself, ever, to please himself, ever.

to meet his own needs ever. What does that mean? In the very, very beginning, in the very beginning, in the dating or in the engagement or in the beginning of the marriage, it means that when you actually get together, you look at each other and say, we have to decide what this means. We have to mutually agree on it. And once we do that, whatever that is, we can't negotiate the principle. We can negotiate all the details. And if you do that implicitly, even or explicitly, the gender differences kick in. I'm going to give you just one example.

just so you have one, but you have to promise not to take this as the paradigm. Kathy and I, day in and day out, we work by consensus, in partnership, and fairly infrequently, when the decision has to be made, has to be, not put off, and we cannot agree, then it's my job to make that decision, and if I ever use my authority just to please myself, it's my wife's job as a submissive wife to come at me tooth and nail,

Until I see the truth, but in a way that doesn't destroy the relationship. Otherwise she wouldn't be what? She wouldn't be serving me. And well, we've decided that. And beyond that, there's really very little in the way of differentiation at all. And you say, well, that's not much, but it's been enough for us. I mean, I always say this when I get to this subject. My wife and I are not gender typed. I'm not a macho person. She is not frilly. And yet that has been enough for us to get in touch with a maleness and a femaleness that we didn't know we had.

And that has been enough to unlock the gender differences that our culture is very, very unable to help us with. And I'm kind of unable to help you with, really. And it has enabled us to develop that wonderful unity on the way to what? The third thing. You submit to each other's needs, you submit to each other's differences, but then lastly, you submit to each other's glory. In this text, in the heart of the text, though it happens when he's talking about the husband,

He's not talking about the husband. He's therefore talking about Jesus. And therefore he's giving us a model for everybody, for both husband and wife. Paul suddenly at verse in the middle of verse 25, he rockets to Jesus. And this is what he says. He says, if you want a marriage that sings, let's look at what the purpose of Jesus marriage is. Because Jesus has united us because Jesus is in covenant with us because Jesus loves us.

And what is it that turns his crank? What is the purpose? Why did he get incarnated? Why did he die? Why did he rise? Why is he ruling the world? Why is he doing everything? And here's the answer. To present you, to present us radiant, unblemished, spotless, beautiful. Jesus Christ does not just see us as we are. He sees us as we can be, as we were designed to be. Jesus Christ, his vision is

He sees us as the beautiful gem God cut us to be, and he's trying to put us in this setting. He sees us as the incredible melody God composed us to be, and he's trying to work us into the symphony. And Jesus Christ sees what we are, and he has a passion. Everything he's doing is to bring us to what God wants us to be. Now, this is a completely different approach, but here we go. When Christians want to form a marriage on the basis of this,

either before they get married, as they're about to get married, or after they're married and they finally figure it out. They look at each other and they turn around and this is what they say. I see what God is doing in you. I'm attracted to it. I love it. I want to be part of it. I renounce the shadow. I renounce the darkness. And I bind myself to you to take a journey to the throne so one day we can present each other to him. Marriage, the epic.

Marriage, the adventure. Not marriage, the beautiful world of feelings, nor marriage, the drudge of duty. Marriage, the epic. And what does this mean? Well, I'll tell you what this means. First of all, this completely changes how you choose a spouse.

Now look, in Christian circles, boy, I'll tell you, in Christian circles, you have, look, there's the old way. I find somebody who helps me get to where I want economically and socially. And there's the new way. I find somebody who just passionately raises my passions and my romantic feelings. And then there's the New York way where you try to wait for somebody who can do both, which is the reason why you wait forever.

And then of course there's the pseudo-Christian way in which you basically go after somebody because of sexual chemistry or because of the money they make and you gussy it up in spiritual language. And you say, I just love what God's doing in your life. But the way in which you really should find somebody to marry, here's a couple tests. Number one, first of all, you've got the insight from God to see through the caterpillar into the butterfly.

You know the person almost you see the direction that person's going and you have insight give insight And if this is a good person for you to marry then you when you talk to this person this person understands you really understands you maybe a little better than you understand yourself and secondly this person has a growing Combination of acceptance and resistance that makes you want to climb up makes you want to be better than you are now You know what I mean by acceptance resistance

Some people only resist. They're always criticizing and you never feel you can please them and they're trying to make you somebody they can love. And other people would only accept, which means they're just afraid you're going to leave them. But you see, if you only accept or only resist, it means you're really serving yourself. But what Jesus Christ has done in the gospel and only in the gospel is he says, I've died for you and I make you acceptable in my righteousness. And now I'm

Not in order to make you acceptable, because I am ravished with you, because I love you for who you are. I resist the sins and I resist the flaws and I resist all the things that keep you from being the glorious one that God wants you to be. And that combination of resistance and acceptance, which only comes from you having experienced resistance and acceptance from Christ. When you get into a relationship like that, both of you are making the other one want to reach up.

If your relationship with God is, if I try hard enough to be good, maybe God will love me, means that you're working very hard to criticize yourself. You don't know you're acceptable. And you're going to get into marriage, and you won't have experienced that from God. Therefore, you're not going to be able to give it in marriage. You're either going to be, you're going to shut up because you're afraid to say anything, or else you're going to come out, and you're going to resist, and you're going to make the other person feel undermined. But when two people who have experienced marriage,

The acceptance and resistance of Christ. Christ who says, now there's no condemnation for you, but I'm going to cleanse you because I see the beauty that you are. When you've experienced that, when you've seen that he has ravished with you, you can turn around and give it to somebody else. If you're living like that, both the lifelong commitment and the passion can be compatible.

Lastly, somebody says, "This is really interesting. "Over here you have the wrong view, "over here you have the wrong," this typical Tim Keller sermon, "and here's the right view. "Everything fits together, but tomorrow's Monday," for crying out loud. "How do I do it?" And the answer is, in the text, we're pointed. Marriage is a pointer. Marriage says, this is a great mystery, but it's pointing to Christ. Marriage says, the biblical view of marriage says, "You do this only out of reverence for Christ." The word reverence,

What a namby-pamby word. The word reverence is sort of hallmark greeting card kind of thing. But that's what it means. But the actual word there, the translators again were sort of stuck, is the word fear. Submit to one another out of fear of Christ. What does that mean? Well, see, the word fear in the Bible means awe-inspired love, amazement. If you just believe in Christ in general...

You say, yeah, I know he forgave me. So I guess I ought to be forgiving. It says here by the power of the Holy Spirit, if you are filled with amazement at what Christ has done for you, then you will not look to your spouse or to your prospective spouses as saviors. It does not say submit to one another out of reverence for one another. If you get into marriage saying,

And now I'm acceptable. If I get married, then I'll be happy. If this person loves me, then I'll know I'm lovely. That means you're submitting to one another out of reverence for one another, which really means you're using that person to feel good about yourself, which means you're looking to that person as the savior. And that's the reason why your marriage is undermined. That's the reason why you're so devastated that you're not married. Unless you see marriage as a pointer beyond itself, you'll make an idol out of marriage and it'll ruin your life and you'll ruin whoever you're in it with.

No, no. What you have to say is, if this one is ravished with me, he's committed to me, he loves me, then because I'm pointed by marriage beyond itself, I'll be able to live in marriage in a way that really sings and it really helps everybody in it. So if you are not married and you're devastated about it, just remember, do you believe in Jesus? Someday you'll

You'll stand before the only altar that will really fulfill you and you'll be dressed in a way, it won't be dressed beautifully because you spent thousands of dollars someplace, but because your soul is perfect crystal and you will be espoused. You will fall in the arms of the only spouse that will ever fulfill you and that's even true for those of us who've got good marriages, so don't envy us too far. If you are married to a non-Christian, be careful. That's hard, but some of your unhappiness may be

Because you have made an idol out of marriage and you said if only I had a Christian spouse Then I'd be perfectly fulfilled for you're forgetting the pointer until you let marriage point you beyond marriage You'll be lousy in it and to those of you who aren't not you're not sure you're Christians and you say why did I just get this whole thing on Christian marriage? I don't know what what does this tell me? I'll tell you what it tells you you need a God, but not just any God you need a God who is a lover You need a God

who comes deeply into your life and from whom you can experience intimate love on your heart. Now, there really isn't any other God that is offered like the Christian God. And unless you get a God who is a lover, you will make gods out of lovers or else out of fear of that, you'll have nothing but sexual encounters. You need this God. You need a God who is a spouse. Marriage is a pointer. This is a great mystery, but it speaks of Christ in the church. Let's pray.

Our Father, we thank you that you've given us so much today to think about. And I pray that because of the fullness of the passage, that you would, by your Holy Spirit, take every person who's here and wing into their hearts those aspects of those parts of the text that they need to understand and hear. We pray, Lord, most of all, that you would help us to look forward to our great wedding day, the wedding feast of the Lamb, and help us to live in light of that, whether we're married or not.

whether we're unmarried or whether we're struggling in our married or unmarried states. We know, Lord, that that's what we need. Not a change in our circumstances, but a deepening of our relationship with you. Thank you for that. We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Thanks for listening to today's teaching. We trust you were encouraged by it and that it gives you new insight into how you can apply God's word to your life. You can find more resources from Tim Keller by subscribing to our quarterly journal at gospelandlife.com. When you subscribe, you'll receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other valuable resources. We also invite you to stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.

Today's sermon was recorded in 1998. 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. ♪