SERIE MATRIMONIOS TIM KELLER

Marriage
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Marriage as Ministry PowerEphesians 5:2133

OverviewMarriage as CommitmentEphesians 5:2133
Marriage as Commitment & PriorityEphesians 5:2133
Marriage as Priority & FriendshipEphesians 5:2133
Marriage as FriendshipEphesians 5:2133
Marriage as Completion; One FleshEphesians 5:2133
Marriage as Completion; Gender RolesPart 1Ephesians
5:2233
8 Marriage as Completion; Gender RolesPart 2Ephesians
5:2233
9 Marriage Supper of the LambEphesians 5:2133

MARRIAGE AS
MINISTRY POWER
MarriageAugust 18, 1991

Ephesians 5:2133
Ive started preaching a little sermon series on
marriage. We did Immortal, Invisible, God Only
Wise at our wedding. That was our hymn on the way
in. On the way out it was Nobody Knows the Trouble
Ive Seen. As you know, were going through the
book of Ephesians, and instead of a series of sermons
(I dont know when I started these) on Ephesians, what
it really is a series of series on Ephesians.
Because when you get to a particular set of verses
and see it is on a new subject, then what we try to do is
show you when you take a look at a small number of
verses on a subject, there is a tremendous amount that
can be drawn out of there. We try to go through in a
more (not totally) comprehensive and exhaustive way,
looking at that subject.
Now we come to the classic, maybe the locus
classicus, passage in the whole Bible on marriage. Its
Ephesians 5, and Im going to start reading from verse
21 down to verse 33. Its maybe the most famous, its
certainly probably the longest and meatiest passage
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there is in the Scripture on how God understands

marriage.
Were going to read that, and we will give an
overview of some basic principles (as often we do
when we begin). Then were going to go to the Lords
Table and ask him to meet with us. You dont have to
worry about covering all the territory on the first night,
because as you know I ever ever do. Lets look at
Ephesians 5, and Ill read verses 2133. Familiar.
Famous. Its well-deserved.
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Submit to one another out of reverence for

Christ. 22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the
Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as
Christ is the head of the church, his body, of
which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church
submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to
their husbands in everything.
25
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ
loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to
make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with
water through the word, 27 and to present her to
himself as a radiant church, without stain or
wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and
blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to
love their wives as their own bodies. He who
loves his wife loves himself.
29
After all, no one ever hated his own body, but
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he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the

church30 for we are members of his body. 31 For
this reason a man will leave his father and mother
and be united to his wife, and the two will become
one flesh. 32 This is a profound mysterybut I
am talking about Christ and the church.
33
However, each one of you also must love his
wife as he loves himself, and the wife must
respect her husband.
This is Gods Word
What a lot there is to look at lots of explosive,
controversial issues, too, none of which, as usual, we
will touch on immediately, at least not tonight. What I
do want to suggest to you is a thought or two about
why were covering the subject of marriage when such
a good number of you are not married. Why do that?
Isnt that kind of dangerous? You want to go out and
immediately apply the text to your life on Monday,
and in many of your cases that would be rash.
Here are some of the reasons why we study this
even though such a large number of you arent
married. First, youre supposed to study Gods Word
and learn what he says because its there. Its always a
danger to go to what you consider the relevant parts of
the Scripture, but are you so wise as to know what the
relevant parts of the Scripture are?
Thats why you need to just read the Bible
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systematically, instead of going after those parts you

think relate to you. How do you know what relates to
you, unless you read the whole thing? The Bible is
wiser than you are, so filter your life through its
wisdom rather than filtering it through yours. Were
studying it because we came to it.
Secondly, from what I understand there are plenty of
you who are single who would consider marriage, and
are considering it, and would like to be married.
Frankly, inordinate fears of marriage, inordinate
longing for marriage, and therefore, inordinate
resentment over not being married, or inordinate
romanticizing of marriage are all things that cloud
your understanding.
Therefore, when you try to think about the future,
when you try to look at a person and say, Do I want
to marry this person? unless you are able to think
clearly about what marriage is, unless you are able to
look at people through the lens of the Scripture instead
of the lens of your own fears, your own romanticism,
and your own anger, youre not going to be able to
make intelligent decisions about your future regarding
marriage at all. Its very, very critical.
I guess what Im trying to say is you can apply this
teaching on Monday. You can begin to apply it
immediately, not by getting married, but by beginning
to think about your future through the lens of the
Scripture instead of through your own past, through
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your own experiences.

Thirdly, a lot of you have been divorced. Youre not
married, but youve been divorced. Heres a greater
danger. You may have a more distorted understanding
of marriage than people who never have been married.
The reason for that is because, as were going to see in
a moment, one of the principles of marriage is
marriage is a way God invented for us to deal with our
loneliness.
A lot of people say you shouldnt get married just
because youre lonely. Adam did. Well see thats why
Adam got married. Its not good that Adam should be
lonely, God said, and so he got them married.
Marriage is actually supposed to be a deep consolation
for loneliness, but many of you know you are far
lonelier in a bad marriage than you are in no marriage.
Because of that, you may have a more distorted
understanding of what marriage is than even
somebody who never has been married. You may also
be thinking of your own future through the lens of
your memories rather the lens of the Scripture.
Therefore, it really is important, though it may seem
to be painful, to saturate your thinking and what the
Scripture says about it. Of course, there are plenty of
you who are married and can apply this in the most
obvious and most practical ways immediately. Lets
take a look at it. Tonight I want to lay out four basic
principles for marriage that you do see here, that are
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laid out here that Id like to talk about as being very

critical to our understanding of what God says
marriage is.
Marriage, contrary to what a lot of people say, is not
something a bunch of people around a cave-fire in the
Late Bronze Age suddenly thought up. They didnt
say, I have an idea! According to the Scripture,
marriage is a divine invention. There are basically
three human institutions that stand completely apart
from others because they didnt evolve out of human
thinking. Theyre not actually anthropological in their
sources; theyre theological. They are the family, the
church, and the state.
There is nothing in the Bible about schools or how
schools ought to run. There is nothing in the Bible
about community centers. There is nothing in the Bible
about art galleries. There are all sorts of great human
institutions the Bible doesnt say anything about.
Why? The Bible doesnt regulate them. Why? Because
God didnt invent them. But God invented marriage.
When you enter into marriage, you enter in underneath
his authority, whether you will or not. Lets take a look
and see these four basic principles, and then were
going to go to the Lords Table and say, O Lord, help
me!
The first principle is actually in the verse as we see
it because of verse 21 and how it stands in proximity
to the rest of the passage. Verse 21 says, Submit to
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one another out of reverence for Christ. Do you

remember that the passage before this passage on
marriage was about how to be filled with the Spirit?
We spent a number of weeks on that. Then it tells us a
person who is filled with the Spirit has these certain
characteristics, and the last of the characteristics
mentioned is in verse 21. There are many things that
are going to be the characteristics of a person filled
with the Spirit. This is the last one.
Most any commentator on Ephesians will tell you
its very clear that Paul is not artificially, but very
organically, moving from this phrase, Submit to one
another out of reverence for Christ, into these next
examples of relationships: in marriage (between
husband and wife), in the family (between parent and
child), and then lastly in the workplace (between
employer and employee). All of them are outworkings
of this principle.
The principle is to submit to one another out of
reverence for Christ. You cant overlook that Paul is
saying this is an assumption. Paul assumes if youre
going to have a marriage that sings, then there is
already a Spirit-generated ability for you to serve, to
take yourself out of the center, to put the needs of
other people ahead of yours.
The first principle is self-centeredness is the main
problem in any marriage. Self-centeredness is the
main enemy of any marriage. The ability to submit to
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another person takes the Holy Spirit of God. It is

impossible for somebody who is not Spirit-filled. Paul
is assuming a Spirit-filled humility and ability to serve
another person and get out of being absorbed by your
own problems and needs. Hes assuming that as a basis
for everything else he says about marriage.
Now think of that. Self-centeredness is the main
cancer, the main enemy, the main problem in any
marriage. Its the most foundational problem, because
its the foundation for any kind of decent marriage.
Ive had a number of experiences to remind myself of
this lately. A lot of people say, Hi. You had a great
vacation, right? I just tell them I had a great vacation,
because I did.
I dont want to tell you what I actually did, because
you wont understand why it was such a great
vacation. It goes to show you a change is as good as a
rest. I spent one week at a beach on Lake Erie in a
beach cottage with my wifes family, 12 children. I
spent an entire week in North Carolina with another
family, all in one beach cottage, with six children
under the same roof.
Somebody says, Thats a vacation? A change is as
good as a rest. During that time I learned that the
ability to give yourself to another person, the ability to
give up your rights, the ability to serve others interests
ahead of your own, the ability to submit your own
concerns for the good of somebody else, the ability to
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defer your desires to help another person reach their

desires is not instinctive. Theres nothing more
unnatural than that.
Paul is saying it is impossible, unless the Spirit of
God generates and helps you into a non self-centered
life, for you to have a happy marriage. By the way, this
doesnt mean only Christians can have happy
marriages (thats another subject), but what it is saying
is if a person who is not a Christian has a happy
marriage, theyre being helped by God; they just may
not know it. It is impossible for you to live a non selfcentered life apart from his help.
Therefore, at the root of any marriage problems
youd better look for self-centeredness to be the key.
The ability to submit (as in verse 21) is from the Spirit.
The word submit is very strong. Right now Im not
talking at all about wives submitting to their husbands,
which is what it says in the next verse. Ill cross that
bridge and fall on that grenade when I come to it.
The word submit is a military word, and it was
usually used in Greek to talk about soldiers submitting
to an officer. Why? Because when you join the
military, you lose a tremendous amount of control over
your schedule. You lose a tremendous amount of
control over when youre going to take a holiday,
when youre going to eat and what youre going to eat.
Why? Because in order to be part of a whole, in order
to be in concert, in order to become part of a greater
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unity, in order to act as a body, you have to defer a

whole lot of your decisions, a whole lot of your
wishes, and whole lot of your desires. You have to.
Dont forget Paul is not talking only about marriage.
He is saying that this ability to enter into a body and
no longer chose your own rights first, to serve and put
the good of the whole over your own good, is not
something that is instinctive. Its not something thats
natural, and its something that is absolutely assumed
as the foundation of marriage, Paul says here.
Let me put it another way. Especially those of you
who are married right now, you really need to be
thinking kind of carefully about this at this point.
When we say self-centeredness is the most
fundamental thing, Im not just talking about marriage.
This is a big debate right now. Whenever you talk to
someone who has been deeply wounded A lot of
people have been deeply wounded.
I was just reading about a woman who spent her
childhood with a mother. This isnt the most horrible
thing youve ever read or heard, but it seemed horrible
enough. When her mother wanted to punish her, she
would lock her in a closet for two days and make her
sleep in there, and make her stay in there, and feed her
(it wasnt that she deprived her of food). But that was
it. Lock her in a closet. Thats pretty bad. Thats not
burning her with cigarette butts or any of those kinds
of horror stories.
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Thats pretty bad. She grew up a wounded person,

and that makes sense. Whenever you talk to someone
who has been really wounded by significant others in
their lives, youll notice two things about them. One is
they have really been oppressed. They have really
been mistreated. Theyve been treated unjustly. They
are victims of that kind of injustice and oppression.
Youll also notice something else. They are usually
enormously self-centered. That means they are so
absorbed in their own problems they really cant think
of other people. If they do think of other people they
do it in a completely obsessive way, so theyre not
really meeting the needs of other people, but theyre
meeting their own needs by burning themselves out
meeting other peoples needs.
The fact is people who are wounded are also very
absorbed. They dont notice whats going on around
them usually. Theyre too absorbed in their own needs
to worry about anybody else. They cannot defer. They
cannot submit to others out of reverence. They cant
do it. My real question is, and this is a very big issue,
What do you do with a person like that?
One understanding of humanity assumes all people
are naturally good and if a person is self-centered its
because they have been wounded; therefore, you dont
challenge them at all. You just figure these people need
to have their self-esteem developed. They shouldnt be
challenged. They basically need to have all pressure
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taken off of them. They need to take care of

themselves. They need to be good to themselves. They
need to pamper themselves. There are a lot of books
like that, are there not?
That assumes self-centeredness isnt natural and if
youre self-centered, youve been abused. That
assumes it. Thats a religious assumption. Nobody can
prove that about human nature. Thats a belief. Thats
an article of faith, and theres actually no religion in
the world that teaches that except the self-made
religions of our modern time.
The other approach, and this is the Christian
approach, is to say as badly wounded as that person
has been, their self-centeredness has been aggravated
by their mistreatment. It has been aggravated terribly.
It has reached up like a cloud of smoke that chokes
them, and yet their self-centeredness was prior to their
woundedness.
Therefore, though they have to be dealt with
extremely gently, they also have to be challenged to
see their self-centeredness is not something that has
been caused by people outside of them, its just been
aggravated. They have to do something about it.
Otherwise, theyre going to be miserable forever.
Most of you know this scenario. When you first get
married (generally because you like the other person,
unless it was an arranged marriage or something like
that or the person is a billionaire and 98 years old),
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you marry somebody because you just think theyre

wonderful. But as soon as you get married, within a
year or two, you begin to find this process going on.
You begin to see how selfish they really are. You see
more and more of it. Another thing happens at the
same time; they begin to tell you about how selfish
they think you are.
Theres a third thing that happens, and that is you
dont see your own selfishness is anywhere near as bad
as the other persons. The reason for that is you sit
there and you say, Well, thats true. I do that. I know I
do that, but you just dont understand. Inevitably,
what will happen is you both will see the other
persons selfishness, and youll be hearing about your
own selfishness, and youre sure the other persons
selfishness is worse than yours. Thats going to
happen.
What happens when it happens? You can go two
ways. You can decide your woundedness is more
fundamental than your self-centeredness and decide,
Unless this person sees the problems I have and takes
care of me in all this way, nothing is going to work.
Of course, theyre not going to do that if theyre
thinking the same way about you. So what usually
happens, or at least in many marriages, is an emotional
distance starts to develop.
What you do is you bargain with the other person.
You say, Ill tell you what. Now you dont do this
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out loud, but you basically say, You dont bug me

about that, and I wont bug you about that. And you
dont bug me about that, and I wont bug you about
that. They may be actually looking pretty happily
married after 40 years, but when you have the
anniversary and they have to kiss for the photographer,
itll be forced.
Now there is another thing you can do. You can
decide as a Christian verse 21 is there, and you can
decide as this process begins youre going to
determine to see your own selfishness as more
important and more serious than the other persons,
youre going to treat your own flaws as more serious,
youre going to act upon the selfishness thats revealed
to you or reported to you, regardless of what the other
person is doing.
Youre going to treat your own self-centeredness as
more important, more serious. Youre going to treat the
needs of the other person as more important, and you
make that determination. When two people do that at
once, you have the possibility of a truly great
marriage. Two people who see, Self-centeredness, my
self-centeredness, is the main problem in this
marriage. Frankly, theres actually a third possibility.
One is to refuse to see that. The second is to both do it.
The third is one of you does it and one of you doesnt.
Ordinarily, what that means is as time goes on
theres not an immediate response from the other
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person. If you are the only one who decides, My

selfishness is the thing Im going to work on, youll
find as time goes on the other person will soften. It
will be easier for that person to admit their faults
because youre not always talking about them.
Especially if its the man. Its very, very difficult for
men to admit Even when you know they got you
red-handed, youre just not going to say it.
The point is even if only one person decides to do
that, even if one person says, Self-centeredness is the
problem, the main problem in my marriage, not my
past, not my wounds, not my needs, and not this other
person and what theyre doing to me. Im going to
work on my selfishness If both of you do that, the
possibilities are endless. If one of you does that, the
possibilities are very great. Do you understand that?
Do you see that?
There is a conservative approach to marriage that
says the basic problem in bad marriages is the two
people need to submit to their roles. Husbands need to
be head. Wives need to submit. Thats the basic
problem. That can be a problem, by the way. Well talk
about that later. But if the main problem is selfcenteredness then pushing the roles first might actually
encourage self-centeredness. It may encourage people
to take advantage of each other. It may encourage it.
Isnt that right?
Theres another side. Theres a secular approach to
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marriage that says the real problem in marriages is you

have to get that other person to recognize your
potential, to develop your potential. You cant let that
other person trample all over you. You have to realize
yourself. You have to develop yourself in this
marriage. If that other person wont do it, you have to
negotiate. If that other person wont negotiate, you
have to get out.
If the basic problem in marriage is self-centeredness,
that actually may be a problem. As we can talk later
on, divorce is something God allows in circumstances
he outlines. Yet if the main problem is selfcenteredness, dont you think all that emphasis on selfdevelopment can actually play into the hands of it?
The Christian principle is Spirit-generated
selflessness is (we have talked about this before) not
thinking less of yourself or more of yourself, but
thinking of yourself less. Its taking your mind off
yourself and realizing in Christ your needs are going to
be met and are being met so you dont look to that
other person as god and your savior. A person who has
the gospel in their blood can turn around and say, My
selfishness is the main problem here; Im going to
work on that, and thats the key to everything.
Let me tell you what the other three principles are,
but Im going to have to be even briefer because I
really do want to bring you to the Table. You see
already you have things to work on. If youre married,
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the self-absorption, the self-centeredness, the self-pity

that When your spouse points out your selfishness
and you say, But you dont understand. Nobody
knows the trouble Ive seen, thats a cancer. Ive said
that before.
It reminds me of the place where God looks at Cain,
who is full of self-pity, in Genesis 4. He says, Cain,
sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but
you must master it. Theres a principle of self in your
life thats crouching at the door. It wants to have you.
It wants to pounce on you. It wants to devour you. Its
up to you to do something about it, God says. Deny
yourself to find yourself. Lose yourself to find
yourself. The heart of the gospel.
Ill just tell you what these other three principles are,
and were going to be opening them up. Whats great
is near the end of the chapter, Paul grounds what he
tells us about marriage into Genesis. Theres the locus
classicus of Genesis, the classical text on marriage in
Genesis is he made them male and female, and for
this reason a man shall leave his father and cleave unto
his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
Now a lot of you are going to be going to weddings
soon. There are a lot of weddings going on. Some of
them Im able to get to and do, and some of them I
cant. Im very sorry about that. The glory of a
growing and burgeoning ministry has a dark side to it
as well, and thats part of it. If you get around, youre
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going to hear me say things like this in the weddings.

This little locus classicus text tells you three things
about marriage Ill just name right now.
First, the essence of marriage is a covenant. The
essence of marriage is a contract. A man shall cleave to
his wife. The word cleave literally means to be glued
to, and it means to take a vow. Whats the essence of
marriage? Some people say feelings, feelings of
affection. Just on TV the other night I saw somebody
say, Come on, honey, lets get married. She said, I
dont need a piece of paper to tell you I love you. I
love you. Who needs marriage? She completely
misunderstands what the essence of marriage is.
Feelings cant be the essence of marriage. A dog can
love you. It has wonderful feelings. Theyre not
married to you. Some people say having children is the
essence of marriage. Rats, mice, and rabbits do a
wonderful job of that, and they dont need marriage
either. Some people say sex is the essence of marriage.
Its not. Because if sex was the essence of marriage,
feelings were the essence of marriage, or having
babies was the essence of marriage, then marriage
could come and go. It would be a moment-to-moment
thing.
The essence of marriage is a promise. When
somebody says, I dont need a piece of paper to
declare my love for you; I dont need to be married,
they dont know what theyre talking about. When you
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get married youre not saying how you feel now.

Listen to the marriage vows. Youre not saying
anything about your present. Youre not saying
anything about your feeling state.
What do you say when you get married? You dont
say, I love you. I cherish you. I want to give myself to
you. You say, I promise to be loving. I promise to be
tender. I promise to be affectionate. I promise to be
caring. I promise to be loyal. I promise to be faithful
under any conditions until we die. Youre not saying
anything about your present. Youre not saying
anything about your feelings. Youre talking about the
future.
The essence of marriage is a promise. A promise is
you make an appointment with yourself in the future
and you say, Ill be there 10 years from now. Ill be
there 20 years from now. Ill arrange my schedule so
Ill be there. Thats what it means. You make an
appointment with yourself in the future.
Secondly, the purpose of marriage is
companionship. You will notice it leaves it out in his
quote. When he quotes from Genesis 2 he says, For
this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and
cleave to his wife. For this reason What reason?
If you go back to Genesis 2, youll see the reason is he
made them male and female. This gets into a subject
well go into in greater detail later.
When Adam was made a male, everything Adam
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touches and looks at is good, and then you get to this

strange spot in Genesis 2 where it says Adam could
not find a companion. Thats where God says it is not
good. Everything else in the book of Genesis is
benediction, it was good , and it was good
, and it was good, all the way through the early
parts of the verses, and then suddenly it was . not
good , malediction (a bad word).
It was not good Adam would be alone. Its clear God
created us with designed deficits. He created us to
need companionship and to need a particular kind of
companionship that could only be generated between
two different genders. Now I know Im opening a lot
of doors, but Im not going into them tonight. The key
thing is marriage was built for companionship.
The essence of what it means to be married is the
vow. The purpose of the vow is for this person to be
your best friend. If youre married and you have
committed sexual adultery with somebody else, youve
technically broken your marriage vow. Listen to me.
If you have somebody else of a different gender who
is a better friend than your spouse to whom you can
talk and share and speak and open and feel like, I can
pour myself out to that person; they understand me. I
feel supported and lifted up and understood If you
enter into that kind of relationship If somebody else
of a different gender becomes a better friend than your
spouse, youve substantially frustrated the very
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purpose of your marriage.

Thats essential, thats substantial intimacy. Thats
substantial unfaithfulness, by the way, if you actually
go ahead and cultivate that kind of relationship. My
wife and I know that right now. We know adultery, of
course, is technically the grounds for divorce, and
adultery would be the technical breaking of our
covenant. We also know if some other person of the
opposite gender became a better friend than our
spouse, at that point we would already be unfaithful to
ourselves. We know that. Everybody knows that
instinctively, though they may not know it
intellectually.
Its serious, of course, because a lot of times you
dont get married for companionship. The way you
choose who youre going to date isnt for
companionship. You walk into a room; you see 10
people of the other gender. Seven of them dont look
nice; you go for the three most attractive ones (theyre
the ones that attract you). One of them will date you,
and eventually you see if you can turn them into a
friend. It could be people who are most likely to be
your best friends youve already ruled out of your life
because theyre too tall or too short or too fat or too
skinny.
If the thing that really makes a marriage a marriage
and if the thing that really is essential is somebody
who understands you, somebody who looks into the
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center of your life and doesnt yawn or laugh but says,

Wow, youre going about your dating all wrong. As
a result of all that, you get into a marriage and this
person isnt somebody thats really going to be your
best friend.
What happens in most situations Its not
dastardly. What you do is you find somebody of the
same gender who is a far better friend than your
spouse. Even thats kind of dangerous, but its not the
same thing, because you dont look for that. The
essence of marriage is a promise, but the purpose of
marriage is companionship. For this reason
Because we need companionship, because were
alone, because we need this kind of deep sharing, deep
intimacy, and deep communication, a man shall leave
his father and mother and cleave unto his wife, and the
two shall be one flesh.
Lastly, the priority of marriage has to be number
one. This says a man shall leave everything else and
cleave to his wife. No one else, not your father, not
your mother, can have a higher priority over your
spouse. Marriage has to be number one. Marriage has
the power to set the course of your life as a whole.
Marriage is the vortex of your life. It has that power.
Youve heard me say this if you come to a wedding.
If everything around you is a mess and weakness, and
yet your marriage is strong, it doesnt matter, you
move out into the world in strength. If everything
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around you is strong and successful, but your marriage

is a wreck, it doesnt matter, you move out into the
world in weakness.
It has the power to set the course of your life as a
whole. It should have priority in your life. Nothing is
more important than that relationship. Nothing is more
important than that person. God built it that way, and if
you get into marriage and you act under any other kind
of auspices or principles, you will wreck your life.
Whether youre married or not, were coming to the
Table, and we see its our pride and our selfcenteredness which can only be dealt with through the
gospel, because the gospel is youre more wicked than
you ever dared believe, but youre more loved and
accepted than you ever dared hope. Right? That is
what does a one-two on your ego.
The person who thinks too much of himself, youre
more wicked than you ever dared believe. The person
who thinks too little of him or herself, youre more
loved than you ever dared hope. The two kinds of selfcenteredness, Im so wonderful, or Im so awful,
both of which make it impossible for you to serve
other people, are destroyed at the foot of the cross.
Youre leveled. If you want to deal with the problem,
come to him now. Lets pray.
Father, were going to come to the Table and were
going to ask that you would enable us, as we confess
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our sins, to meet you and to hear you say to us, I will
restore you. I will forgive you. I will renew you. I will
turn you into a friend. I will turn you into someone
who can love and be loved. Thats what we ask now.
We pray it in Jesus name, amen.

OVERVIEWMARRIAGE AS
COMMITMENT
MarriageAugust 25, 1991

Ephesians 5:2133
Were going through the book of Ephesians. Weve come to the classic text on marriage.
The most detailed, the longest, the most popular, and the most famous of all the passages in
the New Testament on the subject of marriage. What were going to do is look at this for a
number of weeks.
What Id like to do for the next four or five minutes after I read the passage is Id like to
tell you what the basic headings are. Those you who have been around know 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 and then move onto 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 the next week. What Id like to do is read the passage and tell you
what I think the basic principles, or elements, or aspects of marriage are that Paul is

25

treating. Then well get started and go through them seriatim for the next several weeks.
Its difficult for me to always know until the evening is over just how much of the topic
I preached on, so its a little bit difficult for me to give it a topic ahead of time. Let me read
Ephesians 5:2133, then Ill take four or five minutes to give you the basic principles were
going to be looking at for weeks, and then well try to tackle one more tonight (because we
tackled one last week).
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Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit to your
husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the
head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits
to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
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Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself
up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the
word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or
any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
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In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He
who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but
he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church30 for we are members of
his body. 31 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to
his wife, and the two will become one flesh.
32
This is a profound mystery[understatement of the year] but I am talking
about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as
he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
This is Gods Word
Pretty overwhelming. There are many ways to break this down, but Id suggest to you that
there are six basic elements or principles Paul lays out here. We looked at one last week,
well look at one tonight, and then well try to move through the rest as they go on. Let me
tell you what they are. Let me go over them.
1. What we looked at last week was Paul lays out what the power for marriage is in
verse 21, where he says, Submit to one another out of reverence [out of fear, literally] for
Christ. The word fear does not mean scared of, in the Bible. It means to be awed before
the reality of. In the Bible it says, for example, in Psalm 130, But with you there is
forgiveness; therefore you are feared.
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? The word fear means to be in awe, to be
completely controlled by, to be overwhelmed, and to be prostrate before in amazement of.
Out of fear of Christ, out of a relationship with Christ, out of the experience of Christ, you
are enabled and youre able to serve other people. Submit to one another out of reverence
for Christ. Thats the power for marriage.
Thats the first. We looked at that last week, and theres no need to recap it. We said last
week, if you think of this negatively Paul is assuming if youre going to have a good
marriage (verse 21 is the first verse), hes assuming you have a Spirit-created ability to be
unselfish in the way in which you live. Stated negatively, this verse means the main
problem in any marriage is self-centeredness. Thats what kills marriage. Thats what the
heart of every marriage problem always is. Thats the most basic problem you have.
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We dont have to recap it, but what this does is this assumes the gospel. Weve talked
about the gospel before. When we say this is a gospel-preaching church, what we mean is
(heres a little phrase I hope everybody in our church eventually will know by heart) the
gospel is youre more sinful, evil, and weak than youd ever dared believe, but youre more
valued, accepted, and loved 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. Theyre always saying, Youd better perform, or God will get you.
Permissive churches are churches that stress how loved and valued you are without
talking to you about the importance and the seriousness of sin. They say, God loves
everybody, so try your best. He basically accepts everybody no matter how you are. The
gospel, instead, does not create a legalistic or permissive kind of message. The permissive
kind of message is the person who says, This is a great arrangement. God enjoys forgiving
sin. I enjoy committing it. The legalistic mindset goes more like this, I know Im in
Gods will because Im 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 and a legalist is the legalist repents out of
fear and anxiety, and a Christian repents out of gratitude for what Christ has done for him
or her and out of a desire to be like Christ.
When you know youre saved, youre accepted, and youre loved, you have a freedom
to repent. You repent more often. When I feel my acceptance with God is based on my
performance, I really, in a sense, have to repress how bad I am. My conscience cant take it.
If somebody shows me or if my performance shows me something is wrong with me, I
cant repent if Im a legalist. I cant repent if I think thats the basis for my performance,
because if I repent, thats the end of my life. Ill have to admit Im worthless.
When you have gospel self-esteem and love in your life, it makes you more prone and
more able to repent, because its not the end of the world. It makes you more able to do it.
You conscience is framed with grace so it can take a clear look at itself. Thats 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 basis for everything we say.
The gospel means, on the one hand, youre a very humble person, but youre by no
means in despair or discouraged. This is all in verse 21. Out of fear of Christ, knowing what
hes done for you, out of awe before what hes done for you on the cross, it makes you, on
the one hand, a strong person, and on the other hand, a humble person, so you can be an
unselfish person and you can live in an unselfish way.
A legalist can serve, but in a codependent way. I have to. Im driven. I have to let
people step on me. Its the only way Ill ever live up to standards. A permissive person can
be selfish, but usually in an oppressive way. I have my rights. You cant tell me what to
do. A person who understands the gospel, who has the gospel in his her blood, is a person
who is strong and yet humble and therefore, out of reverence for Christ, submits and is able
to serve other people and put the needs of other people ahead. Thats the power of marriage.
That is the basis. Thats assumed in verse 21. Everything else that comes after that is built
on this.
2. Paul gives us the definition of marriage, not just the power. The definition of
marriage is it is a covenant. Thats what well look at tonight. Give me a second, and well
be right back. You see it in the word cleave, where it says, Therefore shall a man leave his
27

father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife
The word cleave is a technical, covenantal term in the Bible. To cleave means to be
glued to. It means to be bound legally to somebody. Its not simply a word that means to
hold onto in some general way. It means to be bound. It means, essentially, marriage is an
institution of law. Its covenantal. Its designed by God, and you enter marriage through a
public promise.
3. We mentioned this last week. This passage teaches us the priority of marriage. It
says, Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife
The Bible teaches us your marriage is more important to you than your job. Its more
important to you than your career. Its more important to you than anything else in your life.
Thats the reason why God can put up the idea of leaving the father and mother. Your
relationship with your father and mother is a pretty fundamental relationship. Its the most
fundamental relationship you have until you get married.
Its the one (whether you like it or not) that has most driven 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. If you dont leave, if you dont give it priority, it
introduces all sorts of distortions into your marriage, and well talk about that in the future.
Plenty of people have marriage problems because they havent left. In some cases, they
havent left their father or their mother.
You say, I know those kinds, the kinds that are tied to their apron strings. No. If you
hate your parents, you havent left them either. If you cannot enter into a new marriage and
really say, Were going to be a new decision-making unit. Were going to develop new
patterns, but instead you impose the patterns you saw in your own family, you havent left.
There are all kinds of ways in which you can fail to give marriage its priority.
In a place like New York, you have to point out the Bible says marriage has to have
priority over your career. When you live in your house, you go by your rules. Instinctively,
when you get into somebody elses house, dont you instinctively go by their rules? In your
house, maybe youre drinking something and you just put the glass down on the coffee
table. In somebody elses house, you look around. Maybe they always put a cup down on a
coaster. You notice these things because when youre in somebody elses house, you go by
their rules.
When you get into marriage, youve gotten into something that was invented by God. If
you say, Im going to run my marriage my way, youre in for a lot of trouble. When you
enter into marriage, you enter into Gods house, into his institution. Its built his way. To
ignore his laws is something you do to your peril. If you say, No, no, no. Marriage is going
to come second or third in my life, and my spouse just has to get used to it, watch out!
Marriage isnt built that way.
4. Paul lays out the purpose of marriage. The purpose of marriage is the two will
become one flesh. The purpose of marriage is friendship, oneness, and to have somebody
with whom you can be naked. Were not just talking about physically at all. The physical is
really just simply a result. Its a consequence of friendship. Well talk about this later. The
reason the Bible says dont be naked physically with someone until youre naked spiritually
and socially It makes sense.
The reason the Bible says dont have sex outside of marriage is until youve gotten
married and bound yourself to somebody, you havent really made yourself vulnerable. You
havent really bound yourself to them. You havent really, in a sense, stripped. You havent
become naked socially and emotionally until youve married somebody. I dont care what
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you say. Why havent you gotten married? Because you werent willing to bind yourself
like that. You werent willing to be that vulnerable to that person.
The ultimate purpose of marriage is oneness, deep and soul oneness. Physical
nakedness is just a consequence. Its just an image. Its just a result of soul nakedness. This
person has to be your best friend. This person has to be someone with whom you have no
secrets, or youve frustrated the purpose of marriage: oneness, friendship, companionship.
Somebody is going to say, Why are you taking this time? My wife pointed out that
this series is going to end up becoming a series of tapes people will be passing around to
each other. I know how this works. Unless I give the outline here, its going to be very hard
to understand where I am later on. This is the table of contents for the series.
5. This is going to be where we get into a real minefield, 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. It says, no
one ever hated his own body
Its talking about the same illustration Paul uses to describe the church. The church is
like a body with every part pulling its own weight, complementary functions. Do you
remember all that? A marriage is like the body. What Paul is talking about here is
something very deep. He is saying the differences between the genders are complementary.
We need one another to complete one another. We are not equivalent, but were equal.
The differences between genders are much more than biological. The deep structure of
gender difference is something we have to deal with in marriage. The wifes role and the
husbands role are not interchangeable. When we have found our roles, we fit together, we
complement each other, and we complete each other at the deepest level. What does that
mean? Of course, thats where you get into a minefield, but well get there when we get
there.
6. Paul talks about the mystery of marriage. He says, This is a profound mystery
That is, marriage is basically a mirror for the relationship between Christ and his church. If
you look here, youll see 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. Paul is saying you
will never really understand the point of marriage, 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. Hes actually saying marriage is sort of like a glass. The
only human institution on earth thats like a glass, that can actually pick up a ray, a beam of
the glorious life of heaven were 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 its going to be like to be
known face to face by Jesus on that day.
Youve heard me say that before when weve talked about sex. Were going to get into
it in greater detail. You must realize God invented sex and invented marriage as a whole as
a way of giving us a foretaste of heaven and a foretaste of what it will be like to flop into
our Saviors arms on the last day. Until you understand that, you have no idea what the
exalted nature of marriage is, and you really dont understand the purpose of it. The
purpose of marriage is to be washed.
It says here, 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
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somebody holy. Thats what its there for.

The power of marriage, the definition, the priority, the purpose, the structure, and the
mystery. Were going to try to take a look at all of these. We took a look at power last week.
Even though Id like to say Ill do two tonight, you know better than that. What Im going
to do now is just talk to you about one we started on last week, but that Id like to open up a
little bit more.
What is the definition of marriage? Dear friends, cleave is the definition of marriage.
Marriage is a covenant. In the 60s and the 70s there were lots of articles saying, Will
marriage last? Will marriage survive? Will the institution of marriage survive? They used
to say if it does it wont survive in a recognizable form. In the 80s and 90s everybody
started writing articles on why we think marriage probably will survive and it has more
staying power than we thought.
Usually what they do is they give you statistics like this. The divorce rate is actually
dipping a little bit. Its not going up, at least not in our country. Theyll point out the fact
that, whereas 10 or 20 years ago they said maybe fewer and fewer people will get married,
its not happening. More and more people get married, and people who get divorced tend to
get married anyway. So they have all these statistics and they say, See, maybe marriage is
going to stay.
Biblically, thats ridiculous because marriage may wax and wane as an institution and,
sociologically, you can study that with statistics, but the Bible says this is the one human
institution (apart from the church) thats a divine institution. It was invented by God. Its
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. We already talked
about that.
If its created by God, when you enter into it, you enter in underneath the rules and
regulations of the creator. Just like when you get a car and you say, Ive decided Im going
to put Hersheys Syrup in it instead of gas, youll kill the car. If you buy the car and if you
didnt build the car, it operates on the rules and regulations of the creator, the inventor, of it.
Therefore, you have to submit to that or else youll destroy the car. When you get into
marriage, youre not getting into a human institution. Its sort of an amphibian. Its a human
institution, but its of 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 youll never
understand, basically, how it works. What is the structural root of marriage? Marriage is a
covenant. What is a covenant? A covenant is a binding, public, and legal contract or
agreement. Thats how God defines marriage. Thats the essence of it. I want you to realize,
of course, that we live in a society that is anti-law and really will hate this whole idea.
In the Old Testament, whenever a covenant is put together, the covenant always has
these elements. First of all, the parties are introduced. Heres so-and-so and heres so-andso. The second part of the covenant always is the stipulations. Every contract has duties and
obligations. Those obligations are always laid out. These are the regulations of the
relationship between the parties. Theyre called stipulations. Thirdly, in every biblical
covenant, there is a list of the blessings and the curses.
That means if you obey the covenant and 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. Fourthly, you have the vows. In some way,
you publicly ratify. It doesnt matter how. In the Old Testament, one of the ways in which
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you would ratify a covenant is you would take an animal, rip the animal in half, lay it on
the floor, walk between the pieces, and say, If I do not do all the works of this covenant,
may I be as this dead animal.
I considered rewriting some of our marriage services that way and just suggesting the
bride and groom go and get an animal and cut it up and then walk between the pieces.
Theyd say, usually, Wed rather exchange rings. Thats fine. It doesnt matter if you
jump over a broom. It doesnt matter if you cut an animal in half. It doesnt matter whether
you exchange rings. These things arent magic. What makes a covenant a covenant is its
public and youre standing up in front of your friends, your family, and the witnesses,
which is always a part of every covenant. Theres 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. Thats what makes it a contract. Thats
what makes it a covenant as opposed to something else. The modern mind is tremendously
anti-law and anti-covenantal. The covenant talks all about commitment, discipline, and
service. The modern mind values spontaneity, freedom, and choice, not duty, obligation, or
discipline. Theres a tremendous anti-law idea, and when it comes to marriage, the modern
mind doesnt like to think about it that way at all.
Not too long ago, I was watching a TV program that was very typical. It was a drama.
There was a man and a woman. They were living together and, in this case, the man says, I
want to get married. The woman is just furious. She says, Im offended by the idea 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! 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. You were a woman. There were duties and there were obligations
expected of you and your family and your society. 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. Its not just a little
different.
Modern people get their meaning out of feeling theyre 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. As a result, when you come up against the Christian and biblical understanding
of marriage, theres a lot of fear, a tremendous amount of fear.
If you think that lady sounded sensible in the TV soap opera, Im offended by the idea
you think I need a piece of paper to love you, its 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. When you read the Bible through the
spectacles of your modern mind, youre going to have a lot of trouble. Im not picking on
soap operas. In fact, it might not have been one. I cant remember where it was. Im picking
on the mindset, not the program.
When the woman said, I dont need a piece of paper to love you with, what did she
mean? She was assuming a definition of love. Can you understand that? The definition of
love is a love that focuses on the inside and me. Its a feeling. When she says, I love you,
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and I dont need a piece of paper to love you with, she means, I feel affection for you. I
feel love for you. I want you. She calls that love. When the Bible talks about love, its
thinking covenantally, always. 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 is right in saying you dont need a piece of
paper for this. She is 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 youre
willing to give to a person. She says, I dont need a piece of paper to love you. It means
she defines love subjectively. Heres how much I want from you. When the Bible talks
about love, its measuring how much youre willing to give, not how much youre willing
to take or 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 they were thinking about
marriage completely in terms of the modern, popular understanding of love. When they
wrote their wedding vows, heres what they said, I love you, and I want to share my life
with you. I want to share everything with you. Thats not a wedding vow. That person who
says that is saying, Heres how much I want from you. Heres how much I love you.
Heres what I feel about you.
Wedding vows are covenantal. 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 affectionate, that I feel faithful. Thats
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.
A real vow is not talking at all about your feelings. Its talking about behavior. Its not
talking at all about your insides. Its talking about your outsides. Its not talking about you.
Its talking about what youre going to give, not what you want to get. Covenantal love is
commitment. Biblical love is always defined in terms of commitment and how much youre
willing to curb your choices as a way of meeting the needs of somebody else. Thats what
love is.
If anybody here is saying, Thats panicking me. That makes me even more scared of
marriage than Ive ever been in my life, what youve done is youve bought the whole
modern thing hook, line, and sinker. The modern world tells you, Dont 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 youre going to get married, make sure
its mutual and make sure its negotiable.
The Bible actually says if you want to do it that way, thats fine. That great quote I
never tire of quoting (some of you may be tired of me quoting it) by C.S. Lewis says,
Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. Do you
remember this quote? He says, If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must
give your heart to no one lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.
Make sure you make yourself vulnerable to nobody. Make sure you open yourself to
nobody. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will change. Do you
remember how that goes? He says, It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable,
impenetrable, irredeemable. [] The only place outside heaven you can be perfectly safe
from all dangers and perturbations of love is hell, where nobody gives their heart to
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anybody.
If you think that if you would commit yourself to somebody else like that, that would be
really be scary, that would really be frightening, and you might get hurt, I submit to you
that youll 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 will 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 will become impenetrable and irredeemable.
You will experience the alienation and dislocation of the modern society you are
listening to in the news as it sings to you, and you march to the beat. Society is full of
alienated and dislocated people because theyre looking out for 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. The only possible way you can ever
really experience the joy of marriage is if you take a tremendous plunge of commitment.
The practical ramifications of this are pretty amazing. Heres what they are.
First, the essence of love basically is love is not a feeling. Its essentially an action. The
modern definition of love is its like a ditch; you fall into it. Its like a virus; you catch it.
Youre passive. You cant help yourself. You get love. The biblical understanding of love is
love is primarily an action. When the Bible uses the word love: love your wife, love your
husband, and love your enemies, its using the same word. How can you love your enemies
if the biblical understanding of love is affection? You dont feel any affection for your
enemy.
When the Bible says love your enemy, that means wish your enemies good, do good for
your enemy, and even be willing to take it on the chin to do good and to serve your enemy
if you can. The Bible doesnt say make it easier for your enemy to sin over you. What its
saying is take the risk and 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. Its
an action that leads to a feeling, not a feeling first.
You learn this as a parent, and its inescapable. When you give yourself to your spouse,
you have a tendency to still think of love as a bargain, not a commitment. Were just really
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.
Eleazar goes over, finds Rebecca, and says to her father, How many camels do you
want for her? If shes beautiful, well give 50 camels for her. If shes not so beautiful, well
give 25 camels. We say, Thats incredible! Thats awful! It was awful because women
were being treated as property. Weve come so much further today because now we do it to
each other. Shes in the market, they say. He got a bad deal. How in the world did he
ever fall for that sales pitch?
When you look at who you want to marry, you think in terms of a bargain. You say,
Im getting this and this and this. Shes this way and shes this way and shes this way.
Shes a little bit this way, but Im this way and this way. Shes a little better than I expected
to get, but shes falling for me. What you do is you basically say, I think I will get as
much out of this relationship as Im putting in, or maybe a little bit more.
You think in terms of a bargain. What happens is you get into these relationships and
you get married. As I mentioned before, most people think of love in terms of what they
want. That is just emotional hunger. Thats 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
33

vulnerable, not how much youre willing to get.

You get into marriage and you find your spouse is not giving you what you expected or
wanted, so you withdraw. What happens is you say, Hes not being the husband he used to
be. Why should I be the wife I used to be? He used to do this, and he doesnt anymore, so
why should I do this? Then you pull back and you pull back and you pull back.
When you have a child, its the other way around. Your child is born and your child
doesnt give you a thing, acts like a baby, spits on you, bites your finger (luckily, he doesnt
have any teeth), and you get nothing from the child. The child needs you. The child needs
everything. You have to walk with it. You have to do all these things. You get nothing, and
all you do is serve the child. The more you serve the child, the more you love.
Theres a place where somebody said first the Nazis killed the Jews because they hated
them. Then the Nazis hated the Jews because they killed them. It works backwards, too.
First you love somebody by serving them, and then you find through the service, youve
come to love them. You give and you give and you give to the kid, and the next thing you
know you find your heart absolutely bound up. The feelings of love follow the action of
love.
By the time the kid is 18, 19, or 20, if that child is a jerk, do you still love him? If that
child has no redeeming social value, do you still love him? In those same 18 to 20 years,
the cycle has 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. The less you give, the less you
feel like loving. The less you feel like loving, the less you act loving. The less you act
loving, the less you feel loving. For 18 years, youre doing the 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
give. The more you act loving, the more you feel loving. The more feel loving, the more
you act loving. They go in reverse. Why do you think so many marriages fall apart as soon
as that kid steps out of the house? Why do you think? Youre operating with your child,
because you cant help it, on a biblical pattern.
The feelings of love follow the action of love. Youre acting with your spouse on a
bargain rather than a commitment basis, and the feelings of selfishness are following the
actions of selfishness. By the time 18 years of those cycles have gone on, you feel you have
no love left for your spouse and yet 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 dont feel like
giving. Its amazing!
This does not mean 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 you have to find somebody who understands you that you understand. Theres this deep
unity and oneness. That has to be there, and you cant have that with just anybody.
I am trying to tell you this. There are plenty of people who dont get married because
they think love is a ditch you fall into. There are plenty of people who say, The essence of
love is a feeling and I will know when Im to be married because there will be this
overwhelming, unrelenting feeling of love for this other person that I will have. There will
never be doubts. I will never look at this person and go, Yuck! I wont have good days and
bad days. It will be overwhelming. It will just pick me up like a tidal wave, and it will just
wash me into marriage.
Marriage is covenantal. Nobody operates like that. No marriage operates like that. If,
for some reason, you just accidentally are so temperamentally one with a person so you
34

never have any scrapes before you get married, or if accidentally the person who has fallen
for you happens to be the body type youve 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 would be the worst thing for you, because when you finally do get married you
will see marriage is covenantal. Marriage is a commitment. The feeling of love will follow
the actions of love. Frankly, the days 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 dont feel much
affection at all. When you feel warm and toasty, its easy to serve. When you dont feel
warm and toasty, thats love.
Thats the way Jesus loved us. On the cross, did he look down and say, Just my body
type. I cant 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 the knowledge that he has forgiven you, even though you dont feel much affection for
your spouse, its amazing how fast your feelings will kick back in. You follow your feelings
in marriage, and youre on your way down in that cycle. The practical implications are
pretty simple. Love is not a feeling first. Its not.
The second practical implication (and its the only other one I can mention tonight) is
the essence of marriage is confrontational. Youll never understand that, know it, and have
the benefits of it until you understand love is covenantal. I just said that most people think,
If we have a great marriage or if I know I should be marrying this person, this is the
person I will always feel affectionate for. Thats ridiculous!
Verse 26 says one of the key purposes of marriage is that we cleanse one another. We
wash one another. We get rid of one anothers faults and flaws and blemishes. We get the
dirt off of each other. The idea of taking a bath is kind of nice. If youre thinking, when it
says the husband and the wife cleanse one another through the washing of water and the
word, and if you think of a bubble bath, youre really going down the wrong track.
If youre already in pretty good shape, a bath doesnt hurt. Has anyone here been
beaten, scraped up, wounded all over the place, and you get into a bath full of soap? Do you
know how it feels? It hurts. It stings. In 1 Corinthians 4:5, it says the coming of Christ
will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of mens hearts.
So does marriage.
If any of you ever been to one of my marriage services, youll know I like to say this,
and this is very important. Heres a bridge, and there are all sorts of structural defects in the
bridge, but you cant see them. Theyre hairline fractures. Nobody can really see them. A
great big five-ton Mack truck comes over the bridge. 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 and the flaws are.
The truck doesnt create the flaws. It doesnt create the weakness. It reveals the
weakness. When you get married, your spouse is this great big Mack truck coming right
through your heart. Before you were married, other people tried to tell you about those
defects. Your parents tried to tell you. Your roommates tried to tell you. You werent in
covenant with them. You could write it off. You werent so intimate and so close that it
really created problems for you: your selfishness, your fear, your pride, your bitterness,
35

your worry.
You were never, even with your parents, in such an intimate relationship that those
differences created problems for you. 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 being in that close of quarters, those sins, those structural flaws, will be brought out.
The real mistake people make, almost always, is you feel like the conflict marriage has
brought you into is a conflict with your spouse. Not a bit! The power of marriage is
marriage brings you into a confrontation not with your spouse; its with yourself. Marriage
forces you to look in the mirror. Marriage gets you by the scruff of the neck, pushes your
face in the mirror, and says, Look at these things!
The most wonderful thing about marriage, the way marriage helps you escape from
your sins, is marriage is (relatively speaking) an inescapable relationship. You cant just
walk out. Yes, you can, but its very hard and difficult. Even in this society, its tough. What
happens is your marriage will, for the first time in your life, show you your warts and your
flaws in a way you cant escape them. Youll have to cry out to God. Youll have to say,
Lord, only you can help me, and thats the beginning of your healing.

MARRIAGE AS COMMITMENT &

PRIORITY
MarriageSeptember 1, 1991

Ephesians 5:2133
Please turn with me to Ephesians 5. Those of you who come to evening service know this is
part of a series we started 18 years ago or so on the book of Ephesians. Weve been moving
through the book of Ephesians at the pace of a geriatric slug, pretty much. Very, very, very
slowly. Weve come to the classic text, the longest, the most famous text in the entire Bible
on the subject of marriage. Let me read to you again from Ephesians 5:2133, and then we
will take it from there.
21

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit to your
husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the
head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits
to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself
up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the

36

word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or
any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to
love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29
After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as
Christ does the church30 for we are members of his body. 31 For this reason a man
will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become
one flesh. 32 This is a profound mysterybut I am talking about Christ and the
church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and
the wife must respect her husband.
This is Gods Word
Theres a lot of stuff to say about this passage. Heres how weve been dividing it. Let me
remind you of where weve been. Were looking at marriage in this passage under six
headings. Were looking at the power of marriage, the definition of marriage, the priority of
marriage, the purpose of marriage, the structure of marriage, and the mystery of marriage.
We mentioned that last week. I wont tell you what all those are, but thats what were
doing. Were moving through it. So far, weve only looked at the first two. Tonight I want
to get to the third.
1. The power of marriage
The power of marriage is in verse 21. For those of you who were here in May and June,
when we were looking at 5:18 and following, on what it meant to be filled with the Spirit.
Verse 21 is a direct link from the passage on being filled with the Spirit to the passage on
what it means to be married and what is a good marriage. There is a link. The one assumes
the other. Do you know what the link is? The link is cause and effect.
The cause of a good marriage is being Spirit-filled. Verse 21, which is the end of the
passage we looked at, is talking about the fact that when youre filled with the Spirit,
theres a Spirit-created unselfishness, a willingness to submit to and serve other people, not
to be defensive, and to have a servant heart. That is the basis for any kind of healthy
marriage. We talked about that, but let me make a couple of observations to make sure
those of you who werent here know where were going and where weve been and those
who were here have it clearly in mind.
There is a spirit of servanthood, a servant heart, which is the foundation for any kind of
decent marriage. Thats why verse 21 comes before everything else. Some people have
asked me, What do you mean? What is the servant heart? What is that? Its kind of vague.
All right. Let me give you at least three critical aspects, without which a marriage will not
run. These three things, which are really just constituent parts of a servant heart, are like the
oil in a car engine. Try to run an engine without oil. Just try it. Dont put any oil in there, no
lubrication.
What basically happens, of course, is the friction, the tension, will destroy the engine so
quickly. It will get so hot. It will overheat so quickly. There has to be something in there
that acts as a buffer. Obviously, friction is what an engine is all about, motion and
movement. Something has to absorb that. What absorbs it? What absorbs it is the servant
heart. Let me give you three constituent parts to it.
First, the ability to hear criticism without being crushed. Thats a lack of self37

defensiveness. Secondly, the ability to give criticism without crushing, and thirdly, the
ability to forgive people without residual anger. In other words, to forgive people and really
let it go. Thats what I mean by a servant heart, the ability to take your mind off yourself
when youre giving criticism, when youre receiving criticism, and when youre forgiving.
Where does that come from? As we said last week (we cant go back into all the Spiritfilledness), what it means to be Spirit-filled means the Spirit of God is illuminating your
heart and making very real to you the work of Jesus Christ. When Jesus work for you
becomes very real. The example that always comes to my mind is when I talked to that 16year-old girl years ago in my church. She didnt have any dates. Nobody was asking her
out.
She said, Yeah, Im a Christian. I know Im going to live forever in heaven. I know
Jesus loves me and cares for me. I know he died for me. I know he gave himself for me. I
know he lives in me. I know Im his child. I know I have his ear. I know he comforts me
and will take care of me. But what good is all that if you dont have any dates?
She wasnt quite that eloquent, but at that moment she was saying, Intellectually, I
know what Jesus has done for me. But right now, my heart is overwhelmed with the beauty
of the prospect of being a desirable woman. Thats what she was saying. Whereas when I
think about the fact Jesus loves me and cares for me, that doesnt thrill me. Being Spiritfilled means youre in touch with reality. Reality is who cares what a drippy 16-year-old
boy thinks about you when the King of the universe says, You are mine, and I will stand
with you and for you for all eternity?
What kind of absolutely insane person could possibly put those two things up against
one another and have the pimply-faced 16-year-old win? Yet theres nobody in this room
who hasnt been through that. What does it mean to be Spirit-filled? It means your head is
on straight. Youre in touch with reality, and you realize what Jesus Christ has done for you
is everything. The Bible says every human being is religious. It says this in Romans 1.
Theres a systemic religious structure to everybodys life.
Every one of us, down deep inside, has a way in which we think if we behave, things
that if we get to them, then well be fulfilled, then well have nirvana, then well be saved.
Every one of us says, I will be able to accept myself if I get this. Weve talked about this
before. Every human being, Romans 1 says, has some form of religion, something they
worship, something they say, If I get that, then Ill be all right. The gospel says not your
performance, not success, not relationship, not love none of those things will ever satisfy
you.
You can know who you are and be secure when you realize Jesus Christ has died for
you and youre resting in what hes done for you. When that happens and when you see the
work of Jesus Christ for you, when youre Spirit-filled, that gives you the ability to submit
to one another out of reverence for Christ. When it says in verse 21, out of reverence
for Christ (literally, out of fear of Christ), you can submit and you get this unselfishness
because Christ is real to you youre continually in awe before the reality of him.
How can you receive criticism without being crushed in your marriage (or anywhere)?
The way is because in your heart youre thinking this: Jesus is my priest. Jesus is my
friend. Jesus is my King. Jesus is my brother. I can handle this. He loves me. He cares for
me. Hell show me. You can take criticism without being destroyed. You have a cradle of
security for your moment of great vulnerability.
How can you give criticism without crushing? You think like this, I am a sinner. I
should be cast off. Youre using the gospel on yourself. But gentle Jesus has put up with
38

me for so long. He continually shows me the truth, and I continually turn my back on him,
but bit by bit hes coaxed me, and hes been patient with me, and hes brought me along.
How then could I be any harsher with this person than hes been with me?
Somebody is out there saying, Sure, sure. If your wife yells at you and youre sitting
there thinking about Jesus Christ as your brother and your friend, and your cradle of
security in the moment of greatest vulnerability In the beginning, when youre trying to
reorient your life, when youre seeking to live your life and have your relationships living
out of the matrix of servanthood, out of the matrix of the gospel, you do have to talk to
yourself like that.
I want you to realize this is not a mindset you can turn on this week, right away. Youd
better get started now because it takes time. I tried to refer to this in a sermon in one of the
earlier services. It goes like this. Most of you realize (I guess) that when Im prepared, I
quote from all sorts of people. When Im not prepared for a sermon, I just quote from C.S.
Lewis.
Why? C.S. Lewis is somebody who Ive read. Ive read everything hes ever written
over and over and over and over again ever since I became a Christian. Some of you are
like that. There are a couple of books You just master an author. You know what its like
to do that. Another guy is George Whitefield. I have just read his sermons and read his
sermons and read his sermons. What happens after a period of time is you not only get to
master the persons works, but you actually begin to understand how that guys mind
works.
You know what he thinks. Even though you never read anything he said about the
subject, you know what he would say. When you meet a character you say, I know what
George Whitefield would say about that in a sermon. Why? Because Ive read his sermons
thousands of times. What happens is you get an author who really speaks to you, and you
just read the stuff and you read the stuff. After a while, youve gone beyond just the words
of the book or the sermons, and youve come to penetrate to the way the guys mind works.
Thats what happened in my case with a couple of these authors. Thats the reason why
when Im just speaking extemporaneously and Im just speaking out of my heart, he comes
out. Why? Hes in there. Thats an image. Most of you know how that works. A lot of you
may have people like that in your life, authors, people that have just sunk down so deep you
know how they think, and you know how to look at life through them. Their ideas and
thoughts are in there so deep they just come out spontaneously.
Do you realize what would happen to you and to me if we started to relate to Jesus like
that, if we were so saturated in his promises to us, and his summons to us, and his
encouragements to us, and what he says about us in his Word? If that had sunk down as
deep as what Im talking about, to the place where not just the words but the very way his
mind works and the very way he thinks about you becomes intrinsic, inherent, spontaneous,
reflexive, and instinctive to you, thats when youve developed a servant heart.
When somebody gives you criticism, of course youre not consciously thinking, Jesus
is my brother. Jesus is my friend. He loves me. His opinion matters more than anything
else. I dont have to be scared to receive this kind of criticism. This is not the end of my
life. This isnt the end the world. I know who I am in Christ. You dont think that
consciously, and yet youre thinking that. What its doing is its giving its cast to everything
you do, everything.
Theres a stability I keep talking about. Theres a poise there, a deep kind of cosmic,
spiritual poise, a sense like, I dont have to be afraid of anything anymore emotionally.
39

Its sunk down in there. Its part of you. Youre thinking like he thinks. You look at yourself
through his eyes. You look at the world through his eyes.
Its only when youve taken the time through prayer, through Bible study, through
coming to worship, through reflection, through meditation, through fellowship with other
Christians, and continually talking about these things together. As time goes on, it sinks and
it sinks until the gospel dwells in you richly.
Eventually, that will become the power in all your relationships and the power for
marriage. The ability to submit to one another, to really forgive, to give criticism without
crushing, and to take criticism without being crushed is only possible if you believe in
Jesus. I dont just mean believe in Jesus, but that youre thinking about him, thinking
through him, and thinking of him continually, almost unconsciously.
Otherwise, your heart and my heart are so hard, and we are so prone to disbelieve
anything Jesus says, even though intellectually we reject it at a deeper level, that Im afraid
16-year-old pimply-faced kids are continually beating Jesus out in our hearts.
2. The definition of marriage
Since I spoke on that last week, I can give you a little concise thing. The essence of
marriage is a covenant, a legal commitment. Somebody afterwards said to me, That still
doesnt tell me. What makes a marriage a marriage? Is it a minister? Theres a difference
of opinion between Catholics and Protestants on this, and I absolutely believe the Protestant
approach is right. The Catholic Church will say only a priest can marry somebody.
Protestants will say a priest can marry, a minister can marry, or a justice of the peace.
Marriage is marriage. It doesnt matter whether its a captain on a ship. It doesnt matter
whether its a justice of the peace. Why? Because look in the Bible where marriage comes
up. Originally, it was given to Adam and Eve. It wasnt given to only Christians. It was
given to human beings as human beings.
Therefore, its not a church ceremony that makes you married, though it can. Its not
jumping over a broom that makes you married. Its not stomping on a glass that makes you
married. Its not the rings that make you married. What is it that makes you married? A
permanent, exclusive, public, legal commitment to share all aspects of your lives together.
It has to be permanent. It has to be exclusive.
Some people say its time to have renewable contract marriages. You get married for
three years, and you have an option for three more. That might be interesting, but thats not
a marriage. By the Christian definition even a prenuptial agreement (to be honest with you)
radically cuts at the root of the Christian definition of marriage.
The Christian definition of marriage is a permanent and exclusive promise to share
every part of your life with somebody else. It has to be a permanent, exclusive, public, legal
commitment to share every part of your life with somebody else. If you say its not
permanent, its every three years, thats not marriage.
If you say its not every part of your life, just here and here and here (because of the
prenuptial agreement, you dont get this or that), all those things get at the root of marriage.
The Christian definition of marriage is permanent. Its exclusive. Its a legal, public,
binding, permanent, exclusive commitment to share every part of your life with somebody
else.
How you do that, whether its with a minister, whether its with a captain or a justice of
the peace, whether you jump over a broomstick, whether you exchange rings, it makes no
40

difference. Therefore, even in this culture which is deathly afraid of obligation and
commitment and responsibility and discipline It likes to talk about self-realization and
self-actualization and growth and potential, but it hates talking about discipline and
submission and obligation, this is the place in which the Christian understanding of
marriage has a head-on collision with society.
You should not give yourself to somebody unless you have that kind of promise and
unless youre willing to give them that kind of promise. If youre not willing to make a
permanent, exclusive, public, legal commitment to share your entire life with somebody,
then you dont really love them enough to be married, and the Bible says you should not
give yourself to that person until that person is willing to make that promise to you and you
are willing to make that promise to that person. Thats the definition. Its kind of scary, but
there it is.
I must tell you a number of people questioned me about it. The implications of this idea
that marriage is a cleaving (thats in verse 32), its that public commitment and essentially
love is a commitment, therefore. Somebody says, Youve de-romanticized marriage in my
eyes. What does that mean? What did I say last week? I said, therefore, the essence of love
is a commitment. Love is an action first. Its a commitment to invest yourself in another
person and meet their needs. Its a feeling second.
One of the weird things about becoming a pastor is when you become a pastor, for the
first time in your life you are bound and obligated to be friends with all sorts of people who
you really wouldnt choose to be friends with. I dont really know of anybody else whos
obligated. Doctors, for example, have to treat people they wouldnt ordinarily like, but they
dont have to like them. They dont have to be friends with them.
I dont know anybody else who basically suddenly gets a body of people and the job
description is you have to be friends with a lot of people who you would not ordinarily
choose to be friends with. Therefore, in a sense, pastors kind of have a unique experience to
talk about. You would be surprised at how selective you are. People who you dont like that
much, you just dont spend time with.
You dont invest yourself in them. You dont give yourself to them. You dont listen to
their problems. You dont go to see them at three in the morning. One of things I found
interesting in my earliest days Kathy and I moved into a new situation. I got a job as a
pastor. I had basically 100150 people, and I started to pastor them.
There were a good number of them who were people who if I was just living as a
private individual in that town, I would have chosen as friends, and there were a lot of
people I would have never chosen as friends. Not so much I didnt like them You just
dont have that much in common. Youre not quite the same. You dont have the same
interests. Theres no spark.
It doesnt matter if theres no spark. This person is a member of the church. Youre the
pastor in a small town. This person has a problem; youre there. This person is in the
hospital; youre there. This person has to talk to you at two in the morning; youre there.
This persons son runs away; you get in the car and go chase him. This mans wife has run
out on him; you get in the car and go find her.
Thats the way it is to be a pastor, especially in a small town and in a small church. You
invest yourself. You give. You do the actions of love for people who you really have no
particular affinity with. Then after a couple of years, a big surprise comes to Kathy. Every
couple of months, Id take a day off. On the day off, she would say, What do you want to
do? What do you just want to do socially, for fun?
41

I would say, Lets have John and Mary Doe over. She would say, Why? Why in the
world would you want to have John and Mary Doe over? Thats work, isnt it? The reason
you see John and Mary Doe, everybody knows all the problems they have and how
obnoxious they are and the difficulties they have. When you dont have to be with John and
Mary Doe, why in the world would you choose to be with John and Mary Doe?
I realized Id come to like them. I was the only person in town who liked them, but I
really did like them. Was it just because, Obviously, as a pastor, of course you just have
this natural ability to like people and love people because youre more holy, youre godlier.
Thats why youre a pastor. Its your job to be more spiritual? Thats not true at all. It
really happened. Do you know why? Id been loving them even when I didnt like them.
You dont have to bother whether you like somebody. Thats not what a Christian
worries about. What a Christian does is if you love people, eventually you come to like
them. It works in reverse, too. Do you remember I told you the one thing I once read where
it said at first the Nazis killed the Jews because they hated them, but then after a while they
hated the Jews because they killed them?
What happens is in the beginning, you love somebody just because you have to. The
more you love them, the more you give yourself, and the more you make a decision to
invest in them, the more you find your heart tied up in them. Do you know why? The Bible
says where your treasure is, there will your heart be. When you invest in somebody, youre
putting your treasure there. Youre putting time, which is tremendously valuable. Youre
putting emotion, which is tremendously valuable.
You invest and invest in that person, and of course you may still feel a hostility if that
person absolutely tramples you and is very cruel and harsh. Thats not what usually
happens. Usually you find that people who arent terribly lovely, if you love them, you will
come to love them. Im using the word love in an equivocal way. The way the modern
society thinks of love, youre thinking of a feeling. Thats not the way the Bible ever uses
the word love.
You love them, and you come to like them. You invest in them, and you find they get
lovelier and lovelier to you. Im trying to tell you this. You dont go ahead and get married
to somebody who you dont like, but I can guarantee you this. Whoever you marry, you will
fall out of like with. It is an absolute necessity. Not only that, you will start to fall out of
like with that person, in most cases, before you marry them, in the courtship or in the
engagement. Thats where most people say, I guess I shouldnt marry this person. Ive
fallen out of like with them.
Friends, your emotions come and go. If the essence of marriage is a covenant, a
commitment, then you will find that in spite of the fact you kind of love this person, you
feel a lot for them, you might be attracted to them, youre great friends, the fact is your
emotions will come and go. At a certain point, a marriage or even a potential marriage will
not work unless you make a decision to invest in that person.
When you find that your heart gets dry and you look at the person and you dont feel
any particular like, you invest in them, you give to them, you love them, you are tender,
you are cherishing, you listen, and you serve. What it does is it gets you through dry times.
Not only that, but it begins over the years to eliminate the dry times. Thats not the way
most of us do it.
When the dry times come and we fall out of like, we start to say, I guess this isnt the
one for me. Does that de-romanticize marriage? No. Do you want a marriage that sings?
What you do is you decide to love. Thats the way it has to go. It starts with romance. It
42

will end in despair unless, at some point, you make a decision to invest. For where your
treasure is, there will your heart be also.
3. The priority of marriage
This is actually the shortest of all of the topics. Thats the reason I thought I could get away
with the longer recap. The priority of marriage, which is the one thing I just want to say
something about, comes when it says, a man will leave his father and mother and be
united to his wife This is what the Bible teaches about the priority of marriage. Its
very, very important.
In our society, its hard for us to understand the importance of the relationship between
a child and parent. If you came here from another non-Western society, if your parents
came from an Asian or Latin society, you can understand this better. Theres no society like
America and Western society that more de-emphasizes the obligation of children to parents.
Almost everywhere else in the world, and almost everywhere else in history, your
obligation to your parents is a tremendously strong one, and it makes sense.
Just think of how foundational your relationship with your parents is. It shapes you so
profoundly. You live with it forever. What could be a more profound and more primary and
more foundational relationship than the relationship between a parent and a child? God
serves notice in Genesis 2:20 and right here in Ephesians 5:31, where he says, a man
will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife Hes serving notice. Hes
saying it in the strongest possible way.
Oriental and Asian readers who originally read this were probably shocked by it. Youre
not shocked by it, but you should be. What its saying is God did not put a parent and a
child in the garden. He put a man and a woman in the garden, a husband and wife. What
that means is the primary relationship in your life once you get married has to be your
marriage. The primary person has to be your spouse. No other person should you be
investing more time and money and energy and creativity and emotion in than your spouse
and in that relationship.
It comes out a couple of ways. It says, for example, in verse 28, husbands ought to
love their wives as their own bodies. You know your health is foundational to everything
you do. If you decide to put your work ahead of your health, what happens? If you decide,
Its more important for me to get this job, to make money, and to do my career than it is to
eat properly and sleep well (if you put work first and health second) youll eventually have
neither work nor health.
This is Pauls way of saying marriage has to have the first priority. Ill put it this way.
Marriage is the vortex. Its the center of your life. When youre married, it has the power to
set the course of your life as a whole. Some of you have heard me say this. If youve ever
come to a wedding, I try to say it constantly at weddings. Its the center of your life. If
everything around you is weak, but your marriage is strong, it doesnt matter about the rest
of life.
You move out into the world in strength. If everything around you is strong, but your
marriage is weak, it doesnt matter whats out there. You move out into the world in
weakness. Your marriage is the center of everything. Its the vortex of your life. If you
neglect it, youll lose everything. Therefore, when Paul says here, a man will leave his
father and mother what hes really simply saying is be really careful that nothing comes
before your marriage in your life, or it will introduce tremendous misery and pathology into
43

your life.
What are the things that can come before your spouse? One, of course, is mentioned
right here. Your father and mother (Ill talk to you about that in a minute). Your career. Put
your career before your spouse, and what happens? You lose both. Another one is your
children, and this is a particularly bad one today. Because the marriages are so bad, more
and more people are getting their primary emotional and personal nurture through the
parent-child relationship instead of the husband-wife relationship.
If your children come before your spouse, if you love your children more than your
spouse, if you get more out of your children and their love than you get out of love for your
spouse, that breaks the biblical principle. Biblical principles bite back! When you break
them, they break you. Its not like this is busywork that God just lays down. This is the way
things are. You break them, and things go wrong in your life.
An awful lot of research on child abuse has revealed that so many of the people who
beat their children and are abusive to their children dont hate their children too much; they
love their children too much. Their child is the person from whom they get most of their
love in the world. If their child does not love them or behave properly or give them the
things they need because theyre not getting it from anybody else, they go crazy.
Children are children! Children are not going to be mature. Theyre not going to be able
to give you the love you need. If your children become more important to you than your
spouse, youre in for tremendous pathologies and dysfunctions (as they say) and all those
sorts of things in your life. If your career comes before your spouse, youre in trouble. If
your children come before your spouse, youre in trouble.
If your friends come before your spouse, youre in trouble. If you have friends of either
gender who you enjoy being with more than your spouse, who you can share with, who you
feel understand you more than your spouse does, youre already in a tremendous amount of
trouble (well talk about this next week) because the main purpose of marriage is
friendship. Therefore, again, you havent left. Your spouse is not the number one and main
thing in your life, in that relationship.
Maybe the most important thing is (this is what I to mention before the time is up) when
the Bible says you have to leave your father and mother to cleave to your spouse, its a
profound statement. There are many ways in which peoples marriages have been
absolutely destroyed because of leaving problems, because they havent left. There are
many ways in which those problems can take shape.
Some people think, I know somebody like that. I know somebody who theyre
married, but theyre still financially dependent on her father or his mother or something,
and thats created all sorts of problems in the marriage. Or, I know somebody who is still
emotionally dependent on his or her parents. They dont make a move without finding out
what Mommy or Daddy thinks, and of course, that creates problems.
Thats right. Those are obvious. When you have a marriage and one spouse or both are
still very concerned to find out what the parents want, more concerned to find out what the
parents want than what the spouse wants, that creates all sorts of problems. Conflict
management is hard enough with two. Its impossible with three or four or five.
Not only that, intimacy is destroyed because when you feel the person who youre
supposed to be opening up with completely really is probably going to tell the parent much
or most of what you just said, you cant do it any more. Thats obvious, but its a little bit
more profound than that. Careful! You may have a problem leaving your parents
psychologically. Youve left them emotionally. You dont talk to them all of the time.
44

Youre not financially dependent on them.

But there are other sorts of ways. When the Bible says, a man will leave his father
and mother and be united to his wife it is saying you have to leave behind old family
patterns and, in a sense, it is saying marriage is a fresh start. One of the great things about
the biblical teaching on marriage is it is a fresh start. Its new.
You do not come into your marriage saying, This is the way it was done. This is the
way I was raised. This is the way men operate, as far as Im concerned, because thats the
way we always did it in my family. This is womens work, because this is the way it was in
my family. This is the way people related. Thats the way it was.
If you come in like that, you havent left, and youre going to have all kinds of
problems. Its pretty subtle. Ill give you an example. In Kathys family, her father helped
her mother constantly. Her father used to help her mother with the chores that had to do
with the children. He would change diapers, take care of the mess, feed them, clean up, and
that sort of thing. He helped her that way, and she heard her mother say, This is how your
father loves me. He helps me with the children.
In my family, my father never, ever, ever was asked by my mother to do any of those
kinds of chores. He never even saw the inside of a dirty diaper. He didnt even know what
was in there. He had vague ideas. He had seen documentaries and things like that, but apart
from that Im not sure either of us heard our mothers say this out loud, but I heard my
mother say, This is how I love your father. He works hard. He works long hours. He
provides well for the family.
My mother did not work outside the home. So when your father comes home, I dont
ask him to do those things. I take care of these things. I heard her say that. So now these
two people, Kathy and Tim, get married. Everythings fine until the first child comes along.
Then one day, Im sitting there with the child and I notice a funny smell. I say, Kathy, the
kid needs to be changed.
Kathy says something Ive also heard also said around her family whenever a child is
found to have a dirty diaper, Finders, keepers. What that means around her family is,
Dont look at me. You have the child. Youre a parent. Im a parent. Come on. Im fixing a
meal here. What do you want me to do? You have it. Whats the big deal?
It was a big deal, because when I heard her demanding, Why dont you just help out
with the child? I heard her saying, I dont love you. I dont really think you work that
hard. Its not that important to me to show you love in that way. I was reading what she
was asking through the filter of my family. I hadnt left.
Meanwhile, when I refused to do it and I said, Come on. I dont like it. Its not my job.
You can do that better. You know what youre doing, she didnt just hear me asking for
help. Instead she heard me saying, I dont love you. It took time. We had to begin to
realize eventually we had to leave. We had to start fresh. We had to say, What is right for
you and me? How will you feel loved?
You have to sit down and say, I cannot react this way because I know that in a family,
if a wife loves a husband, she does this. Come on! This is a new wife, a new husband, and
a new family. a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife But
it goes even further. You can fail to leave your father and mother if you hate them, because
youre still being controlled by them.
Heres the man who says, Ill never take my kids to church because my father always
insisted on taking me to church even though I hated it. He forced me every week until I was
19 years old. Im never going to take my children to church, instead of him thinking, Is
45

this church true? Is it right? Is it good for my kids? Instead of thinking about this on its
own merits, hes controlled by his father. Hes not doing something because his father did
it.
A woman who says, I will not lay a hand on my children because my mother beat me
unmercifully. Instead of sitting down and saying, Would corporal punishment be a good
idea or not, she cant do it because her mother did it. Somebody says, Im never going to
marry her because she reminds me of my mother. Im never going to marry him because he
reminds me of my father. So what! Youre still being controlled by that? You leave your
father and mother, and you cleave to your wife. Marriage is a fresh start. Marriage is a
vehicle of redemption.
Marriage is so much like salvation that Paul starts eventually (we cant look at it now,
but later) to say, The more I think about marriage, and the more I think about the dynamics
of marriage, the more I have to think about salvation and how were redeemed.
Redemption is a fresh start. Old things are passed away. Behold, the new has come. I know
this all sounds very psychological and deep. Youre supposed to think about your parents
patterns and you shouldnt impose your parents Thats real modern, isnt it? No, its
not. Its ancient.
The Bibles wisdom was here before psychotherapy, and it was saying long ago, a
man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife Marriage has the power
to set the course for your life as a whole. You cannot neglect it. It has the power to change
you. It has the power to show you who you are. It has the power to tear you down and then
eventually build you up.
Friends, if you are married and you are getting scared by the things Im saying, youre
saying, What have I gotten myself into? I want you to know marriage is not a human
invention to make you happy. Thats what youre going to hear. Marriage is not a human
invention to make you happy so if its not making you happy anymore, you just discard it.
Marriage, instead, was invented by God to sanctify you. Thats the purpose of it, as well
see, to make you holy, without spot, and blameless.
I never, ever, ever, ever, ever would have seen the depths of my sin that I have seen if I
wasnt married. I never would have been in a position to see it. Its ironic that God actually
takes your selfishness in marriage and uses it against you for your own good. The reason
you have to finally come to grip with your faults, with your selfishness, with your
prejudices, and with your biases is because theyre ruining your life in the marriage.
The trouble is you have to do something about it. Why? Its simply the desire for
emotional survival. Finally, for the first time in your life, you cant run. God brings you into
confrontation with yourself and then says, If youre willing to be filled with the Spirit, if
youre willing to come to me, if youre willing to let my son, Jesus Christ, be your Savior,
wait until you see what will happen.
A lot of people who are not Christians and who dont understand this dynamic have
slipped through marriage and have made a pretty good go of it simply by just putting a kind
of wall around their heart so the things theyve seen that are really painful, they just bargain
with each other. They say, You stay away from that. Ill stay away from that. We just wont
ever bring that subject up. Theres just tremendous potential for change in marriage, but
really only people who understand the fullness of the Spirit will ever be able to capitalize
on it.
Those of you who are not married and youre saying, What does this mean to me?
Come on! If you have a head on your shoulders, all these things were talking about have to
46

do with relationships in general. Marriage is the most intense one. Look at the relationships
youre in right now. Apply these things now. Love is an action first. Its a feeling second.
Love will always be something that only a Spirit-created unselfishness can possibly
maintain.
You have to practice in your relationships now. You have to practice so youll be ready
for the time in which your life depends on it, which it does in marriage. What is Paul
saying? 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 The more we look into it, as we will
continue to, the more well understand our salvation. The more we understand our
salvation, the more well understand marriage. Well continue this next week. Lets bow in
prayer.
Our Father, we thank you that you have shown us tonight, again, more and more of the
mysteries of this great institution. All of us have been touched by it. Those of us who have
not been married are surrounded by marriages. Were the product of marriages. We have
all sorts of fears and hopes about marriage.
We pray you will take this Scripture were studying now, these words were looking at right
now, and you will mold us with them so the people who are considering marriage will walk
into it wisely, without distorted understandings of it, so the people who are now sitting in
marriages can turn around and not be afraid of the faults that are being revealed by it, not
be afraid of the conflicts that are coming up, and can begin to reorder the relationship
along the principles youve laid down here.
Father, transform us, change us, and make us more like your Son. Teach us more of your
salvation as we continue to study these words about this greatest of all institutions,
marriage. We thank you most of all that through Jesus Christ weve been married to you,
that we are in your family. Now Lord, make us more and more like your Son, for we ask it
in Jesus name, amen.

47

MARRIAGE AS PRIORITY &

FRIENDSHIP
MarriageSeptember 8, 1991

Ephesians 5:2133
Turn to Ephesians 5. Starting somewhere in August (I guess about three weeks ago; this is
the fourth week, obviously), we have been looking at this passage in Ephesians 5. Were
looking at verses 2232, which is really maybe the classic text in the whole Bible on
marriage. Were spending about six to eight weeks looking at this subject. Lets proceed.
Let me read it again to you, starting in verse 21.
21

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit to your
husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the
head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits
to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself
up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the
word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or
any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to
love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
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29

After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as
Christ does the church30 for we are members of his body. 31 For this reason a man
will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become
one flesh. 32 This is a profound mysterybut I am talking about Christ and the
church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and
the wife must respect her husband.
This is Gods Word
Now I always must do a little recapping, but a little bit less each week. Marriage is
something people talk about in the church all the time, but I must admit Im tired of
listening to sentimental, slurpy talks on marriage during weddings and in the church and in
Sunday school and in sermons. They are slurpy. They are sentimental. They have about as
much depth and reality to them as a Hallmark card.
The fact is, marriage is many things. In fact, its everything except slurpy and
sentimental. Marriage is glorious. Its all a burning strength and joy. Marriage is hard. Its
blood, and its sweat, and its tears. Its defeats, and its victories. Its almost everything
except sweet. In fact, many a night married people go to bed, and as theyre falling asleep
after a hard day of marriage, about the only part of this passage on marriage they can
remember is the verse that goes, This is a profound mystery
Were going to go and see the Bibles view of marriage is completely realistic. Its
great. Its terrible. Its glorious. Its blood, sweat, and tears. It is not sweet. Now what weve
looked at so far are three headings in this passage. The first one was the power of marriage.
We saw that was in verse 21. Just the quickest reminder, and yet in some ways the scariest
and most profound thing the passage says is this passage on marriage is built on the
previous verses on being filled with the Spirit.
Paul is assuming there is in your life a Spirit-created unselfishness. The result of being
filled with the Spirit in verses 18 and following is verse 21. Submit to one another out of
reverence for Christ. Because theres reverence for Christ because you have awe and fear
and trembling before the greatness of his gospel, that he has saved you, that he has died for
you.
When you take the gospel into your heart every day so that it becomes a reality, thats
what we mean by being filled with the Holy Spirit. That creates an unselfishness, a
willingness and ability to serve one another, to give up your rights, to put the needs of the
other person first. We talked about that. The first principle we looked at at great length,
which we just remind you of now, is the main problem in marriage is self-centeredness. The
main disease that eats away at marriage is self-centeredness.
All other problems are derivative or secondary to that. Its selfishness. Only the Spirit of
God can get rid of that. There are people who have relatively decent marriages without the
Spirit-created unselfishness, but its a little bit more like peaceful coexistence. You scratch
my back; Ill scratch yours. You stay away from that area, and Ill stay away from that.
This assumes the power of marriage is the gospel creating a spirit of unselfishness. Selfcenteredness is the main problem. If youre married, its the main problem in your
marriage. If youre not married, it will be the main problem if you ever get married. If
youre divorced, it probably was the main problem in the marriage you left. I think any kind
of reasonable and fair-minded analysis will see that.
Number two, the definition of marriage was cleaving. We looked at that a couple of
49

weeks ago, but its always a helpful thing to remind people, not only the married people but
especially the singles. I think a couple of weeks ago I tried to show you. I said, If there are
so many single people here in the evening, why should I speak on marriage? The answer is
you dont know how to go about deciding whether to be married or who to be married to
unless you know what the heck marriage is.
You know, Jesus says before a man goes and builds a tower, he counts the cost. He
knows what it costs. Before a king goes off to war, he counts the cost. He knows what it
will entail. You cant go off to war until you know what it means and what it entails and so
on. You cant even make a decision about being married unless you understand something
about what the Bible says marriage is.
Heres one of them. The definition of a marriage we said is a covenant. Its a public
promise. Remember this? This is something worth remembering. The essence of a marriage
is a permanent and exclusive legal commitment to share your entire life with someone else.
Every single church, every tradition (Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, the Jewish tradition,
the Islam tradition), all these religions agree on this.
Unless you have someone who is willing to give you a promise like that and that same
person you are willing to give a promise to, you mustnt give yourself to that person.
Marriage is a permanent, exclusive, legal commitment to completely share your life with
somebody else. If you dont have a promise like that or youre not willing to give a promise
like that, you dont really love that person enough to be married to them.
The modern way of talking about love is totally different. It has a completely subjective
meaning. When people say, Why dont we live together? Why do we need to be married? I
love you. Why do I need a piece of paper to show you that love? Well, if you define love
as feeling, thats right. Thats not what the Bible ever means when it means love. Biblically
if somebody says, I love you, but I dont want to marry you, what they mean is, I dont
love you that much. Theres no way around that.
A person who says, I love you, and I want to marry you loves you more than a person
who says, I love you, but I dont want to marry you. Period. Why? Because love, by
definition biblically, is commitment, the ability to make an exclusive and a permanent
commitment. Thats what love is. Thats what you most want, and you know that. So when
somebody says, I dont need a piece of paper to show love, yes, you do.
If you love a person the way the Bible says two people are supposed to love one another
in order to share their lives together that means you have no problem making a legal,
permanent, exclusive commitment to them. The reason I think this is very important for
singles is this. Therefore, what the Bible means by love is a commitment. At some point,
love is a decision simply to serve somebody and be committed to somebody regardless of
your feelings and regardless of how that person acts.
Your feelings can take you to the door. You know, the person attracts you. There are a
lot of things you like about the person. You have fun together. That takes you to the door. At
a certain point, the door will not open unless you simply make a decision, Im going to
love this person, because your feelings will always come and go. Weve talked about that.
The problem is a lot of people dont get married because theyre sure, If this is the one,
my feelings will never ebb. If this is the one, then Ill just know its the one because Ill
never have any problem. Ill never look at that person and feel ugh. Ill never look at that
person and feel yuck. Ill never look at that person and find a problem there. Ill always,
always feel like giving myself to them. You will wait till hell freezes over if you wait for
that. If thats true, then those of you who are married and those of you who are considering
50

marriage need to consider this.

Heres one Christian writer who says, People get from books the idea that if you have
married the right person you may expect to go on being in love forever. As a result, when
they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a
change Let the thrill golet it die awaygo on through that period of death into the
quieter interest and happiness that followand you will find you are living in a world of
new thrills all the time.
But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially,
they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored,
disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. It is because so few people understand this
that you find so many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth
Now what he is saying is, frankly, the thrill you usually call being in love is basically an
ego kick. Here is somebody who I think is admirable to other people, and he or she digs
me. Well thats enough to give you a kind of rush for a while, several weeks at least. Then
eventually you will begin to realize theres a decision that has to be made. You have to
move on and let the thrills die and realize the more you act loving, the more you give, the
more you serve, the more you will find yourself falling truly in love.
There has to be a death of the thrills to move on into real love. A lot of people never,
ever let that happen, or if they do happen, they think its pathological. Ive made a terrible
mistake. Love is a commitment first. Its a commitment to serve people first. Love is an
action first that leads to feelings, not a feeling that leads to an action.
We looked at the power of marriage. We looked at the definition of marriage. Last week
we looked at the priority of marriage. Now I got a lot of questions afterwards. The priority
of marriage. It says, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall
cleave to his wife That means very clearly that no other relationship is more
fundamental. No other relationship is more fundamental than a relationship between a
husband and a wife. Its the primary relationship.
Father, mother, child relationship is secondary. Therefore, your spouse and your
marriage have to be the number one priority. It has to come before your career. It has to
come before your friends. It has to come before your children. Thats a very hard one,
especially nowadays. It really is. It has to come before anything else.
Afterwards, I got a number of questions about this. Somebody came up and said to me,
All right. What if the man thinks he is putting his marriage first but the woman thinks he is
not? How do you solve that? Or, What if the woman thinks she is putting her marriage
first, and the man thinks she isnt? How do you solve that? Its simple. If one person
thinks the marriage is first and the other person thinks its not, then its not. Its simple.
You see, when somebody says to you, Youre not putting me first in your life, you
cant say, Oh yes, I am. Its a little bit like saying, You have a sweater on, but I know
youre still cold. Put another sweater on. You have to say, How do you know if Im cold?
Im the one who knows Im cold. Now I know there are people who are disturbed. I know
there are people who can become hysterical. I know there are people who can be
irrationally jealous and so on.
Leaving those folks out for the moment, realizing thats a minority (obviously),
realizing thats an extreme, the fact is, when your spouse thinks youre not putting the
marriage first and you think you are, you have to listen to your spouse, because your spouse
is the only one who knows. If one person thinks they have a communication problem and
the other person thinks they dont have a communication problem, then they do have a
51

communication problem by definition.

Isnt that right? You have to both agree the marriage is okay, or its not. To put your
marriage first means both of you have to continually recheck and say, Is the marriage
good? Does it have the priority that its supposed to have? If you dont give your marriage
your priority, it was built for that, and I tell you, you disregard this biblical principle at your
peril. Gods laws bite back. If you break them, they break you. Its just the way marriage
was built. You enter into marriage and you put it second, it will destroy you.
We also said going on a little further what it really means is when two people get
together, everything is negotiable, except what the Bible says in the marriage. That means
when you leave your father and mother, that means you are a new unit. Now were getting
into the new topic, which is the purpose of marriage. The Bible says two people come
together to become one. One flesh. That is about as strong a statement as the Bible could
make.
Theres a place in the Bible where God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.
What does that mean? Only my body is going to get it but not my soul? I mean, what does
that mean? The word flesh does not just mean a body in either Greek or Hebrew. When it
says, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, what it means is, I will pour out my Spirit
on all people. It couldnt be said more strongly.
For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and
the two shall become one person. A new person. Ill get back to this in a second, but
what this means is there has never been a marriage, theres never been a unit, theres never
been a family like you. You are unique. You are both unique. Now together you become
actually like a new compound. You are not just like your father and mother, nor are you like
your spouses father and mother.
You cant come in saying, Well, in my family the man always does this. Well, in my
family this is the way we always give gifts. Well, in my family when the first child comes
along, this is what the wife does. Listen. If the Bible says it, you have to do it, because
God invented marriage, and you have to follow his regulations. Apart from that, everything
is negotiable. You are a new unit. You have to renegotiate on the basis of your particular
needs and your particular capacities and potentialities. Everything!
You have to develop a new culture, new ceremonies, new rituals. If you dont, you
havent left your father and mother. Marriage has to have a priority, and your marriage has
to have a priority over your parents marriage, over your career, over the views of your
parents and the opinions of your parents, over your children. You only have your children
temporarily. Youre raising them up, the Bible says. Raise them up, it says in Ephesians
6. Well see it later.
Do you know what that means? It means get rid of them. It literally does. I know Im
moving ahead. It says, Raise them up. It literally means get them to the place where they
dont need you. That is your purpose as parents. If you find your children are more
important to you than your spouse, all kinds of pathologies happen.
If your children are more a source of emotional warmth for you, if they are more a
source of your self-esteem, in a sense, if theyre really the ones who are ringing your bells
and making you feel like, Someone loves me, youre in a lot of trouble. Your kids are in a
lot of trouble in their future. Youre in a lot of trouble right now in your marriage.
Some people who have done research on child abuse say this is one of the main
problems of child abuse, not that parents hate their kids. Child abuse happens in families
where the kids become surrogate spouses. A man shall leave his father and mother and
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everything else and cleave to his wife.

Now weve already built the bridge into the new topic. The new topic is what the
purpose of marriage is. Weve looked at the power and the definition, the priority of
marriage. Whats the purpose of it? The purpose of marriage. Some of you have heard me
mention this in passing many times, I hope. Tonight Im going to try to give you a closer
definition.
The purpose of marriage is friendship, companionship. Your spouse has to be your best
friend, or you dont have a marriage. I know thats not traditional, but its biblical. I know
traditionally it happens many times Its very, very normal in many cases for you to have
a pretty good friend who may even be of the opposite sex, but the person doesnt turn you
on, yet you find you can share your heart a lot more with that person, or you can understand
that person. That person understands you. That person is not your body type. Youre not
attracted to them.
Then along comes somebody who just really turns you on. This person wants to date,
and you develop a romantic relationship. You know doggone well youre nowhere near as
good a friend with that person of the opposite sex as you were friends with the other person
of the opposite sex. Youre in a lot of trouble. Im not saying you have to marry the person
who is your best friend, but that person biblically is a far, far, far better candidate for a
happy marriage than the one it looks like youre on the road to marrying.
This is just a joke somebody told me. This is a true story, but it was told as a joke.
Somebody said he knew for sure of a guy who, when he got married, his best man was a
woman. Everybody said, Well, hey why not? Where does it say in the Bible your best man
has to be a man? You know, your best man is usually your best friend. It turned out in this
case the guys best friend was a girl. So he asked her to stand there by him and give the ring
and all that.
Listen, I have no problem, frankly, with that from any kind of Christian point of view. I
have a problem with that because of what it tells me about his understanding of marriage.
He married a sex object. He married somebody who wasnt his best friend. In the Old
Testament in particular, one of the words for wife is covenant partner, soul mate. When
Adam saw his wife (well get back to this too in a second) Eve, what did he say? He didnt
say, What a babe. No, he didnt.
He didnt say, This is a major babe. He said, This at last is bone of my bones and
flesh of my flesh. Do you know what he is saying? He is saying, Love you? I am you, or
youre me, or something. What he means is, I finally in your presence know who I am. In
your presence, I know who I am. This is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. Im
finally whole. I finally know who the heck I am.
What is friendship? Ill give you a definition, and well try to break it down. Ill show
you how this passage talks about that. Friendship is deep oneness that comes through a
mutual journey to the same horizon. Deep oneness that comes from a mutual journey, from
a journey together, to the same horizon.
In C.S. Lewis book The Four Loves he tries to talk about erotic love and friendship
love, eros and philos. What he says there is if you had to draw a picture of eros and philos,
in eros, its two people looking at each other. In philos, its two people standing side by
side, shoulder to shoulder, looking at something else in common. Thats the difference
between eros and philos.
You know, if you want to get the gist of it, you can look at all the I dont know.
Theyre not making too many of them anymore, but the old male bonding kind of movies
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like The Dirty Dozen. There are a whole slew of movies that go like this. Here are a bunch
of guys, and they hate each other because theyre so different. You know, one of them is a
Harvard guy, and one of them is an ex-convict. They dont like each other. They dont get
along.
The early part of the movie sets up all the tensions and all the conflicts and how
different they are, and yet they develop the same vision. One way or the other, they all
develop (maybe underneath a particular leader) a common goal. They all start to look to the
same horizon. We have to take Pork Chop Hill. Or, We have to journey to the center of
the earth. Or, We have to win the pennant for the Gipper. I guess that was something
else. That was another sport, wasnt it?
Anyway, along the way, what happens to these guys? They become friends. Theyre
different, but they have a common goal. Along the way, they start to rescue each other from
tight scrapes. They lose fingers for each other as theyre trying to rescue each other, and
they become friends. They become the deepest of friends. All those movies are great.
Theyre wonderful. Poorly acted, but great.
Biblically philos is the first stage, and eros is supposed to grow out of philos. In other
words, thats what happens even in The Dirty Dozen-type movies. Its not actual erotic love
in the sense of sexual love, but what happens is, because they have a common horizon and
theyre moving in the same direction, deep oneness begins to develop. After awhile, they
can actually look at each other and like each other and love each other.
Friendship is deep oneness that comes from having a common horizon. All right.
Biblically what is this common horizon in a marriage? This is critical. This is one of the
reasons why two Christians have the potential for a marriage that is so far greater than two
non-Christians. It beggars the imagination. Non-Christians can have pretty good marriages.
They can have good marriages. They can have very happy marriages and harmonious
marriages, but they have no idea
Its like getting into the Millennium Falcon and going along and not knowing about
hyperdrive. Youre moving along all right. You say, Hey, this is great. You have no idea
about what it means to jump into hyperspace. Now look. What is the common horizon a
man and a woman in Christ can have in a marriage? Its actually laid out here when it talks
about what the husband is supposed to be doing, but its mutual as we can see and Ill show
you later.
It says, 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
Now Paul is going back and forth between Christ and the church and a husband and a
wife, but look. This is it. The common horizon. The journey is to the throne. The deep
oneness comes from the mutual journey to get one another into a holy and blemishless and
blameless state. Ill put it another way. Kathy helped me on this one a lot. In a Christian
marriage, each person looks at the other and penetrates and sees a beautiful thing God is
bringing about in that persons life.
Kathy will often give this kind of advice. Most people when they get married are
looking for a statue when actually you ought to look for a wonderful block of marble. What
she means and what Im trying to say is you have to look into the caterpillar and see the
butterfly. If you want to get married because this person is just perfect, you do not have the
ability to understand this journey.
The passion and the goal of a Christian husband and wife is to get to the throne, and
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along the way, to offer one another up and to cleanse one another with the washing of water
of the Word. You look at that other person, and you say, I see underneath your flaws,
underneath your imperfections, underneath your weaknesses, underneath your
dependencies. If you dont see those flaws and weaknesses and dependencies, youre not
even in the game.
Its underneath that I see something absolutely ravishing that God is making you into. I
see flashes of immortality. I see flashes of glory. I want to be part of helping you to become
the person God wants you to be. I see your potential. I want to be part of that, and I know
you can do that to me too.
We want to present one another before the throne spotless and without blemish. When
two Christians understanding this stand before the minister all decked out in their wedding
duds, they realize what theyre doing is theyre playing dress up. Have you ever seen little
kids get ? Heres a little boy and a little girl, and they get into the daddy and the
mommys outfits. They look kind of silly in them because, you see, theyre not big enough,
theyre not wise enough, theyre not mature enough to really do it for real.
When you get in front of the minister all done up in your wedding duds, what youre
really saying is, Someday billions of years from now, were going to stand before the
throne, and our souls and our character are going to be without spot and blemish.
God is going to look at us and going to say, Well done, good and faithful servants.
Over the years you lifted one another to me. You sacrificed for one another. You held one
another up with prayer and with thanksgiving. You confronted one another. You rebuked
one another. You hugged and you loved one another and continually pushed one another
toward me. Now look at you. Youre radiant. Youre presentable to me without spot and
blemish.
When two people get up there in front of the minister and theyre both Christians, they
realize billions of years from now, theyre going to be standing alongside of each other with
the joy and the satisfaction of knowing they have been vehicles for redemption in the other
persons life. Thats where youre going. The ultimate purpose of marriage and the ultimate
purpose of your marriage is the deep oneness that comes from journeying together toward
holiness, toward making one another holy.
Thats what youre after. Thats what youre there for. Romance, fun, all those other
things are just results. Theyre dessert, but theyre not the staple. Theyre not the thing the
marriage really runs on. Youre committed to the other persons holiness. Youre committed
to the other persons beauty. Youre committed to the other persons greatness and
perfection. Youre committed to the other persons honesty and committed to the other
persons compassion and all those things.
Thats your job. Thats your job in one anothers lives. Any lower goal than that, any
smaller purpose than that, youre just playing marriage. Youre not really, really doing it.
Now look. What does this mean in practicality? Here are a couple of practical applications
if all this is true.
1. How do you go about choosing a spouse?
How do you go about choosing a mate? I have a bone to pick with most of you singles on
this point. Some of you Ive picked it with you in person. You see, heres how you go about
looking for someone to marry. You walk into a room. There are 20 people of the opposite
gender. The first thing you do is what? The first thing you do is you rule out about 17 of
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them.
Why are you ruling them out? Theyre not slick looking. Theyre not cool looking.
Theyre not fetching. They dont turn you on. Theyre not your body type. Theyre not
polished looking. Theyre too tall or too short or too fat or too thin. Their face just doesnt
remind you of the kind of face youve been looking for.
So okay. Out go 17. There are three. So you go over, and you start to talk to those three.
Maybe one of them wants to go out with you. In other words, now lets see. We have
romance. Lets see if we can turn this person into a friend. So you start with romance. You
start with a kick. You start with the affection, in a sense. You start with the eros. Im talking
about Christians. Im not talking about people who simply jump into bed with each other.
Im talking about Christians who dont think they should do that.
You still start with the eros because youre facing one another like this. Instead, frankly,
you may have ruled out all the people in the room who could be wonderful spouses for you
because they could be great friends for you. Now Ill define friendship here in a second, but
youve already ruled them out. Theyre gone. Instead, what youve done is youve
narrowed them down to the ones you think you could have this romantic kind of sensation
or rush for.
Now lets see if any of them might happen to be friends. Maybe one of them could be a
good friend, but youll never know. Its very, very possible youve already ruled out your
best spousal material and timber. You start with friendship. You start with it. By that I mean
you start finding out, Does this person have a common vision? Does this person have
common passions? Is this person looking for the same horizon? Is there depth in this
person?
Thats what youre looking for. Is this a person who probably could understand me? Is
this a person I could be vulnerable with? These are all the questions you ask when youre
trying to find if you should be a friend. How you are going about eliminating people?
Thats what I want to know. You probably, in many cases, for years have been eliminating
some wonderful people who could be wonderful husband and wives.
2. Be careful with your friendships
Now heres what I mean by that. What I mean by that is when a male and a female enter
into a certain kind of friendship, thats fine. Thats actually how you discern what kind of
people out there with whom you might have a future. All right? When you enter all the way
down and you become very good friends and then very, very good friends, and then very,
very good friends, biblically you are dating, and you might as well admit it.
Youre dating! What do you mean Im dating? We havent gone out to eat. Ive never
taken this person to a restaurant. We havent stared at each other over a candle. Im not
dating. Yes, you are because, you see, youre doing (whether you know it or not) exactly
what the Bible says youre supposed to do. Youre in the first stage of moving toward
marriage. If you can open your heart to someone, if you can share your life with someone,
if you can be vulnerable and if you find them understanding you, that is friendship.
Friendship between a man and a man, friendship between a woman and a woman, is
one thing. Friendship between a man and a woman is different. There is something about a
man and a woman because of the way God invented Adam and Eve as two polarities. He
divided up the characteristics of humanity. He didnt put them all in one person, but he
divided them between male and female so Adam was alone.
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In the beginning when Adam wasnt sinning, when Adam was perfect, when Adam had
a perfect relationship with God, he was lonely. God had to create Eve to complete him. That
means a friendship across the gender line has an unusually profound and mysterious
completion component. There is a kind of completion and a kind of satisfaction, something
deep and something very mysterious.
You realize youre in the presence of a friend, but youre in the presence of the Other.
Youre in the presence of someone who is different, and you find that particular person,
when they look at you, when youre vulnerable to them, when they look at your problems
and your sin and they say, I understand, youll find in many ways that fulfills and that
completes in a way someone of the same gender cant fulfill and complete you.
You are on your way into marriage when you have a really deep friendship with
someone of the opposite sex, and you are dating. What that means is youd better be careful
deeply careful because when you get somebody that vulnerable and yet you are not
starting to make a social commitment to that person, youre starting to use them.
If you dont think thats true, if you say, Hey, I have one of those relationships, and
that person doesnt feel used, make sure! Talk to that person. Watch out, because youre
dating. Youre dating the way the Bible says youre supposed to be dating. You just dont
think youre dating. Okay?

3. What is friendship?
If you go to the book of Proverbs and you pull out (and I did this some years ago) every
single verse that has anything to do with friendship Were not talking about marriage;
were just talking about friendship. Marriage is the most intense friendship. If you pull out
everything on it, I tried to work it out into categories. I tried to break them down and cluster
them together and say, What does the Bible say are the characteristics of friends? I came
up with four. Im not saying there arent more or less. This is just the way it broke down for
me.
First, a friend is consistent. A friend is there for you. A friend is always there. If you
need that person, except in extreme situations, that person is there. That person listens. That
person is committed. Theres a consistency. If that person is not consistent, theres not
friendship. That person serves. The person is someone who is disciplined in that
relationship.
Secondly, honesty. This means honesty with you and honesty about you. There are
some people who are honest about you, but theyre not honest with you. Theyll tell you
whats wrong with you, and theyll tell you whats right with you. Theyll talk about you,
but they wont talk about themselves very much. They certainly wont be revealing. Thats
not a friend. Okay? Thats a lot of things, but its not a friend. A friend is honest.
Thirdly, theres vulnerability. It gets deeper. By vulnerability, that means youre able
and youre willing to some degree to be naked. Now, you see, in marriage, you have the
ultimate friendship. Physical nakedness is supposed to go along with every other kind of
nakedness. Biblically, you must not be physically naked until youre naked in every other
way.
See, to be naked means, Im totally vulnerable. Im showing you everything I am. I am
completely vulnerable and open to you. Youre seeing everything. Im hiding nothing. Im
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holding nothing back. Thats physical nakedness, but thats nakedness in general because,
see, for example, if somebody says, I dont want to marry you, theyre not letting
themselves be economically and socially naked, are they?
If somebody says, I want to marry you, but Im going to sign a pre-nuptial agreement,
theyre not being naked yet. Emotionally is this person someone you have to keep secrets
from? Are there things this person would never understand that are close to your heart?
Then youre not naked with that person yet, and youre not really a friend with that person.
Now, of course, the friendship Proverbs is talking about is not the absolute and ultimate
and total nakedness and friendship of marriage. Thats the ultimate friendship, but you see
the pattern is the same. The dynamics are the same. Its in marriage that its the most
dynamic. Vulnerability. I can open up my center. I can open up my heart. I can show you
everything. I can hold nothing back, and I will hold nothing back.
Lastly, blessing. Its hard to come up with a good word for it, so I gave you this one, but
Ill explain it. A friend is someone who is continually blessing you. Its a shame that word
now is so opaque in the English language. Right now the way its used on the street, to
bless somebody means to curse them, doesnt it?
What it means to bless someone in the Bible See what blessing is. See what happens,
for example, when Joseph is dying or when Jacob is dying, and all of his children and
grandchildren come around, and he blesses them. What is he doing? He says, I see great
things for you. I understand you. I know what God is doing in your life. Yes, its
affirmation, but oh my gosh. You know, in psychological jargon, affirmation is so weak
compared to what this is talking about.
Its deep affirmation. It means, frankly, I open myself completely to you. You look all
the way into the inside, and you say, I love you. I affirm this part, and I love you in spite
of that part. See, a good friend is someone who knows you better than you know yourself
and who understands you better than you understand yourself and has a better idea of where
youre supposed to be going.
It doesnt mean in every instance, it doesnt mean in every single argument, in a good
marriage between a husband and a wife you know the other person understands you better
than you do at that moment, but its a general conviction. What does it take to become a
friend like that? It takes consistency. It takes honesty. It takes vulnerability. It takes
understanding affirmation/blessing.
G.K. Chesterton says the meanest fear is the fear of looking sentimental. He says so
many times we say, So long, when we mean, I miss you, and I love you. Were afraid
to say it. A person who is afraid to say it, a person who cant express it, is not yet able to
really be a blessing to someone else.
If youre married, do everything you possibly can to become best friends. If it means
sitting down with your spouse and saying, To be honest with you, there are many things I
cant talk to you about. To be honest with you, I know if I talk to you about whats close to
my heart over here, Im going to get a yawn or a laugh. I have to talk to you about those
things that are keeping me from really being naked with you. We have to do something
about it.
Now your spouse will probably do the same thing back. Its extremely rare for one
person to say, Im totally open to you, and the other person say, Oh really? Im not
totally open to you. It doesnt happen that way. You must do everything. You must pay any
price to become best friends. Like I said, if you have secrets from one another, youre not.
You have to decide what to do about it.
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4. A Christian cannot marry a non-Christian

Why not? My dear friends, if youre a Christian and the person you want to marry is not a
Christian, by definition, the last two, or especially the last one, of the characteristics of
friendship is impossible. If youre a Christian, unless Christ is out in the suburbs of your
life, out in the far commuter suburbs of your life, youre not going to be able to really open
your heart and have your spouse look at you and understand you.
If Christ is downtown of your soul, if Christ is one of the most important things to you
and your spouse says, I dont care if youre religious. Thats great. I kind of like that about
you. Go to church. Im not interested Or even if your spouse is way behind, you cant
possibly ever expect your spouse to understand you. You know whats going to happen is if
youre turned on by a person in many other ways, you obviously could be very good friends
and everything is right.
If this person is not a believer, then whats going to happen is when you get married,
youll have to keep Christ in the suburbs of your life. Why? Its too painful for Christ to be
central and to have your spouse not understand it. Do you know why? Because if he doesnt
understand Christ, he doesnt understand you.
The thing you most want, the thing thats really romantic, the thing thats really
passionate, the thing that really makes a friendship, a relationship, a marriage heaven itself
is to have someone look all the way down deep into you and say, I love you. I understand
you. I see your passions. I see your horizon. Im on my way to it with you.
When you have that kind of complete nakedness and that complete vulnerability and
understanding and acceptance, even in the best marriages, its only episodic, but you can
sense the life of heaven. You know this is what heaven is going to be like. You mustnt
marry somebody who is not a believer. Why? Because ultimately you cant be friends. I
defy anybody to try to prove to me that you can. If you can be, then youve sent Christ to
the suburbs. You kept him out of the center of your life. Do you see the problem? Do you
see the points?
Jesus Christ is the ultimate friend, of course. You talk about consistency. You talk about
honesty. You talk about vulnerability. The most. You talk about blessing. Jesus Christs
friendship to us is the greatest. He says, I have called you friends. If you take what you
learn in your relationship with him and you begin to apply it in your other relationships, if
youre not married, that will move you and prepare you for the first time for real marriage.
If youre married, then you have to use what you learn from Christs friendship in your
marriage, and then and only then will you get a marriage that sings. So someday you
can say, At last this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. Now that Im with you, I
know who I am. Lets pray.
Now, Father, Lord, we can apply this on so many different levels. I pray for the married
people in our midst. I ask you would enable them to apply this to their own lives, that they
might have marriages which are not marriages which are just drains and burdens but
marriages which are healing places, incubators for the world of heaven. Father, I pray for
single people who wrestle with the issue of who to marry and whether to marry. I pray
youd clarify in their hearts some of these issues. I pray a lot of their fears and a lot of the
confusion would fall away.
Most of all, Lord, I pray we would begin to practice the life of heaven by developing
friendships, by committing ourselves to one another. I pray, Lord, you would enable us to
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do this with the Spirit of Jesus Christ who called us friends. We thank you, Lord, in his
name, the one who came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for
many. In Jesus name we pray, amen.

MARRIAGE AS FRIENDSHIP
MarriageSeptember 15, 1991

Ephesians 5:2133
I feel soberness tonight because We have a very interesting church. As some of you
realize who have been around for a while, its really an interlocking chain-link fence of
small churches, and there are grapevines. A lot of you dont know Donna at all or Jerry, but
we prayed tonight because they were evening Redeemerites, if there is such a thing. There
was a lot of prayer for Donna. I visited her in the hospital. Its a shock for a young and
sweet spirit to pass on like that.
I guess once you break into your 30s, you begin to actually lose friends, and it gets
worse and worse and worse. Tonight at the 4:00 service, Chris sang a song that means a lot
to me because it was a favorite song of a friend of mine who died when he was 31, a
wonderful man of God, tremendous future. He had two little children.
The non-Christian world is a world without windows. Its a world that says we have
time and space, and everything else is unimportant. Its called secularization. Its called
secularism. The word secular means the now, the time and the space, the present.
Secularism says, Im going to live today as if the now is all that matters. The problem is
at times like this, especially when we confront death, we begin to realize a world without
windows is really a very, very difficult world to live in.
The Christian world is a world with windows. Thats the reason why one great Christian
minister, once when he was very old, said to somebody in an interview He knew he was
sick. His name was Dwight Moody, by the way. He said something like, Listen, it wont be
many months now before youll read in the newspapers that Dwight L. Moody is dead.
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Dont you believe it! Im dead now compared to what I will be then. Im a vegetable right
now. My knowledge, my understanding, my level of being is Im a vegetable now
compared to what I will be when you read that obituary.
Thats a world with windows. Thats a world that realizes the here and now counts
forever. Its extremely significant. Its more significant than a world without windows. Its
more important to live a life knowing this is just the anteroom. Youre going to live for
zillions of years. You only have a few dozen here. Its a very important anteroom to your
real life.
Thats a completely different approach to things. Its a world with windows. It makes
you able not to give pat answers when somebody so young dies, but it gives you a
framework in which you can ultimately and finally handle it, after you cry a lot. You have a
framework. You have an understanding. You have a way of dealing with it. You have a way
of understanding it and thinking about it.
What weve been looking at in this series on Marriage, Im trying to give you a view of
marriage with windows to it. Especially last week and this week you see it so clearly, and
we want to continue. Last week we were reading through this passage in Ephesians. Ill
read it here in a second. As we were looking through this passage Weve been looking at
it for weeks.
Last week we began talking about Marriage as Friendship, marriage as spiritual
friendship, friendship with eternal dimensions. Id like to read again to you the passage, and
then Id like to continue and hopefully finish this subject of understanding Marriage as
Friendship. We spent a couple of weeks understanding Marriage as Commitment and
Marriage as Ministry.
We have more to go, but right now were looking at the subject of Marriage as
Friendship. Its a cosmic friendship, a spiritual friendship, a friendship in a world with
windows. Lets read the passage again until you know it very well, and then we will
continue to expound the subject of marriage as cosmic friendship. Verse 21, chapter 5, of
Ephesians.
21

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit to your
husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the
head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits
to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself
up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the
word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or
any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to
love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29
After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as
Christ does the church30 for we are members of his body. 31 For this reason a man
will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become
one flesh. 32 This is a profound mysterybut I am talking about Christ and the
church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and
the wife must respect her husband.
The basic thesis we started with last week is marriage basically is friendship. Ill put it
another way. Marriage is not basically romance garnished with friendship. It is basically

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friendship garnished with romance. Its not basically romance and attraction, and friendship
is thrown in as a wonderful little option, a wonderful little plus if you can get it. Rather,
biblically marriage is essentially friendship with romance garnishing and flavoring it.
The way we put it last week is if youre going to marry somebody, you should marry
someone who is now or has the potential to be your very best friend. You should not marry
somebody who you realize just would not be the sort of person who could understand you
to the bottom. We talked about that last week.
We also introduced the idea of the structure of friendship, and thats what I want to
show you. Thats how I want to try to move through the subject. Friendship is not just a
feeling of affection. We said a friendship is a particular form of love. Friendship has this
structure. There are three components to it, and we see it in this passage.
The structure is friendship is deep oneness that comes from two people journeying
toward a common horizon. Do you see those three things? First, the oneness; secondly, the
walking together, the interacting; and thirdly, the common horizon or goal youre going to.
You have the body illustration. That is something I havent really talked about till
tonight, and I need to bring it out now. If you look carefully you will see this entire passage
is based on the idea of the husband and the wife being parts of a single body. It says the
husband is the head, and the wife is the body. Its the same illustration Paul uses in
describing the body of Christ, that were all members of one another.
He says the way in which a husband and wife ought to deal with each other is the way
in which you deal with your body. It says the two become one flesh. Thats one body. The
goal is to present the body perfect and without spot and blameless, without blemish or stain.
The way you get there is by nourishing and cherishing your body and washing your body.
The illustration is a fascinating one. You are not really separate from your body, and
yet, in a way, you can think of your body as something distinguishable from you, because
you can act toward it. Youre not separate. Youre not distinct. What happens to your body
happens to you, and yet at the same time you can look at your body.
You can work on your body. You can say it has all sorts of flaws and all sorts of
blemishes. Its out of shape. It needs to be clothed differently. It needs to be washed
differently. It needs to be conditioned differently. You work at that body. Your goal is to
present it to be in a certain condition.
The Bible says marriage is like that, only you see how the passage goes back and forth
between how Christ relates to his body, which is us. Whats clear here is its the job of the
husband and the wife to sanctify one another. The common horizon two people in marriage
have, the thing that really is the axis mundi, the thing in which everything in the marriage
revolves around, is the fact we both have a vision for what we can be in Christ, what the
other one can be in Christ, and were on our way to get there.
Last week we talked about the horizon. This week I want to restate the horizon and then
talk about what it means to nourish and cherish and wash your body. How do you get to
that horizon? Then maybe Ill make a couple of comments on the deep oneness that occurs
if you are journeying together toward that horizon. Do you see the three?
1. The horizon
The way we put it last week, is you get a vision of what the person is becoming. You get a
vision of the glory self. You get a vision of a perfect, radiant being God wants this person
to be, you get excited about that, and you get committed to seeing that person developed.
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Now this is not something, of course, that is particular to just marriage. This is the way all
Christian friendships ought to be. This is friendship with windows.
If you get to know any Christian well, getting to know a Christian is a little bit sort of
like trying to look for a mountain on a cloudy day. Youll watch and youll watch and youll
see the wind swirls and blows things around, and at a certain point you can make out the
peak. At other times, its completely cloudy. All of a sudden, the wind could just whip right
through a cloud, and you see the snow on the mountain. You see the sun briefly shining on
it, and it takes your breath away. The next thing you know back has come the fog.
Getting to know a Christian is like that. Getting to know you is like that, and you
getting to know somebody else is like that. You get a glimpse every so often of the
gorgeous, radiant, perfect the glory person, the glory self this person is becoming.
You get a vision of what this person would be if this person was not shackled and fettered
by his or her sins and faults.
You get an idea of the beauty of it and the glory of it. You catch glimpses at certain
times, and you get committed to it, and you say, The Spirit of God is working to make that
person become that, and I want to be part of the synergism. I want to be part of the
process.
What it really means biblically to fall in love and to want to marry somebody is you get
a tremendous sense of that glory self, that real self, and you say, Im committed to that. I
want to be like a candlestick on which this candle is placed. Through prayer and service
and helping, I want to find the light The radiant person whos locked inside here, I want
the light of that to be evident. I want other people to see the beauty of this person. I want
this person to grow and develop in that direction as fast as possible.
That, we said, is the way any Christian friendship should go. Do you do that? Or do you
just try to find out whether this person also likes the same kind of music you like? By the
way, on top of that, they believe the Bible. Wow! Now look, thats a world without
windows. That is not a relationship thats constantly looking beyond time, constantly saying
we want to be friends for a few billion years.
That is very hard for you to think about in New York, when your friendships last eight
months, and then somebody moves. Thats the way all friendships should be, and in
particular thats the way marriage has to be. It has to be that kind of friendship. Thats the
horizon.
2. The implications
What are the implications? The implications of this are marvelous. I mentioned some of
them before. I didnt mention others. If thats the horizon, if thats the thing youre after,
first, it means
A. You will constantly find yourself falling in and out of like. Please dont say youve
fallen out of love. Do you remember? We talked about what love is. Love is commitment to
that glory person. Love is a commitment, but like is the feeling.
The fact is youll fall in and out of like with somebody you are in a relationship like this
with. Why? Because you really, in a sense, have the real self, the permanent self, and you
also have attitudes and personalities and traits and things like that that will burn off in the
light of Gods glory over the years. Theyre not permanent. Theyre temporary. Therefore,
there are going to be times in which youre looking at dross and youre mad about it.
In the process of marriage, marriage is actually a furnace. There are sparks, and not the
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romantic kind. There is heat. Whenever you take a piece of metal ore that has beautiful,
pure metal inside it and also a lot of impurities that have to be burned off, what do you do
with it? You put it through a furnace. In the furnace, the dross goes away, and the pure, real
metal stays.
In marriage, two people come to understand and agree what that real glory self is and
what the dross is. You understand it. You can point to it. You can say to one another, This
is the real you. This is the real me. This is the thing we know God wants us to be, and this is
the dross. This has to go. This is going to show up. This is going to crop up. We have to
work together against it. Of course, there are going to be times when you fall out of like,
because there is a lot of dross there.
There are times in which youre trying to say, Thats dross that has to go, and the
other person wrestles and says, Right. The beautiful thing about this is in a normal
marriage, not a Christian marriage, not a marriage that has these eternal horizons that are
the context and the framework for everything, in a normal marriage, when you come up
against the imperfections, which are there in spades, in droves, when you come up against
the warts and the imperfections, you dont think of it as dross, you just say, I wish I had
somebody better.
You come up against the imperfections, and you can imagine someone better. Whats
interesting is when two Christians are in love, theyre thinking along these lines, theyre
married, and they have these kinds of horizons, they also can envision somebody better, but
the person they envision better is the person theyre married to.
You want perfection, but you want her or his perfection, the kind of perfection only that
person will ever become, because you want them. You want the radiant them. You want the
perfect them. You want the holy them. You dont want somebody else. Of course, youre
mad at them right now. You dont want somebody else, you want the them, and you know
the only way youre going to get them is to stick with them, because theyre Christians and
youre a Christian.
The Bible says, Paul says, to the Christians in Philippi, Hey, I am convinced that the
one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion on the day of Christ. How
can he say that to an entire church? Does he know them? He has never even met them. He
says, If youre a Christian, if youre a real Christian, I know the good work he began in
you he will bring to completion on the day of Jesus Christ.
You can expect yourself to fall in and out of like, and yet the commitment grows, even
when you hate the imperfection you see because its dross. You want to get rid of it. You
also want a perfect person, but you want this perfect person.
B. Beware of the normal cultural pattern. We mentioned another implication last week,
but there are more of you than last week so I ought to mention this really briefly. You have
to beware of the normal cultural pattern. The way we usually do it, do you remember? I
said basically marriage biblically is friendship spiked with romance, not romance spiked
with friendship.
The way we ordinarily choose our spouse is we look for sexual attractiveness first and
eliminate anybody whos not polished enough, not my body type, not attractive to me. We
eliminate all those people, all the people who might be wonderful friends, and all those
people we might have a wonderful marriage with. After all, the Bible says, Beauty is vain,
charm is fleeting, and there are only so many face-lifts you can have. In the end, youre
going to look alike anyway.
What we tend to do is we say, Lets eliminate all the people except the ones Im
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sexually attracted to, and who knows? Maybe I can make some of these into friends,
instead of looking the other way around and saying, How can I find somebody who Im
attracted to their character, to the nobility, to their bearing, to their balance, to their
wisdom?
Frankly, there is a sexual attraction that comes from deep oneness with someone whose
character you admire to the sky and who incredibly admires yours too. There is nothing
sexier than that. Its a very different kind of sex. Its a very different kind of attractiveness,
and its amazing how it is not completely independent, but its semi-independent from the
looks of the other person.
As the years go by, it gets deeper even as your own looks fade. After all, what the heck
do you want? So be careful about the order. If its really true that marriage is friendship
spiked with romance, not romance spiked with friendship, why start with sexual
attractiveness first in doing your elimination process?
C. There are people who have a gift of singleness. This is something I only touched on
last week, but my wife has told me I need to say it, and shes my friend. She knows Im a
chicken. That is the Bible says there are people who have a gift of singleness, 1 Corinthians
7. What that means is if you go back to the Old Testament, youll see when Adam was
created he was lonely because he was male.
What God has done when he created human beings is he divided up his attributes and
his qualities into men and women. Men are different than women, and women are different
than men. Therefore, when Adam finds Eve, he feels a completion that can only happen in a
friendship across the gender line. He feels a completion that only happens when he has a
deep friendship with somebody of the other gender.
There are people, the Bible says, who have a particular gift that they can make it even
though theres a loneliness. They dont need that deep consolation many of us absolutely
have to have if were going to be happy. There are some people who have a gift of
singleness. They dont need that. They dont have that deep need for completion in the
same way.
What about the rest of us who have that deep need, need the complement of deep
friendship across the gender line, but dont have it because a) we just havent found
somebody to marry or b) were scared to death of marriage? There are some dangers, and
that is the dangers are you will try to get that kind of completion without a marriage
covenant.
The Bible says the only safe place to have it is in a marriage covenant. We talked about
that, a permanent and exclusive commitment of a man and a woman to one another, to
share their lives totally, permanent, exclusive, legal, binding. Its the only place you can
have this deep oneness. Its still not a fail-safe thing, but the Bible says its the only safety
net thats strong enough in which to do this stripping, this vulnerability stuff marriage is
supposed to be.
As many of you know, you can still get ripped apart in a marriage, but you certainly
shouldnt even try it outside of that safety net of a binding covenant. Yet theres a danger of
us trying to get that intimacy, trying to get that kind of comfort, and trying to get that
completion without the marriage covenant. Why? Because either nobodys willing to give it
to us, or because were afraid of it ourselves.
What are some of the ways to do it? One is pretty obvious and that is, Even though this
person is not a friend, I will have sex with them anyway. Superficially, it feels for the
moment youre getting that completion, but thats another subject, another sermon. Weve
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talked about that before. The Bible says thats not the way ultimately to satisfy that at all.
Youll find yourself becoming lonelier when you use sex outside of a covenant.
The second way to do it is when a man and a woman, for whatever reason, decide to
have that deep oneness, that best friendship, and yet refuse to try to get romantic. Heres a
person who is of the opposite sex who is my very best friend, no one is close, and yet either
that person nor I, one or the other, or both, refuse to be romantically committed. Were not
going to date. Were just going to have this deep friendship.
For a while that works, and I just suggest to you eventually somebody gets killed. It
could be the man. It could be the woman. That means one person says, This is great. Were
not possessive. Were not romantic. Were not dating. Were just good friends, and the
other person is dying because that person feels married, needs the covenant, and needs the
exclusive permanent. If you try to get that completion outside of the covenant, somebody
gets killed. Sometimes its the woman; sometimes its the man. It can work either way.
Theres another approach, and that is two people of the same sex can try to get that deep
kind of completion through a sexual friendship, which is homosexuality. Again, thats
another subject, of course, but I can tell you the Bible says you cant get that kind of
completion, the completion were talking about in marriage, from somebody of the same
sex. A friendship with somebody of the very same sex cannot complete you in the way that
Eve was built to complete Adam.
Some people can try to deny that and say, Thats not my experience. Ill be very
happy to argue with you, but we cant do it here. All Im suggesting is unless you have the
gift of singleness you must be careful about trying to get the kind of completion that
happens through a friendship between the genders, which we need and we want. We cant
try to do an end run around marriage.
If we dont have a marriage, if we dont have a marriage covenant, basically we have to
grin and bear it. How? The real consolation is through good same-sex friendships, not
same-sex friendships that try to replace marriage, but good same-sex friendships. Do they
do the job? Do they completely console the longing?
You know they dont, but theyre the consolation. Theyre the way youre supposed to
be tided over until you can be married, unless you find God gives you the ability to not
need marriage and not even want marriage, which he in many cases does, and thats fine
too. That can happen permanently, or it can happen for a season.
D. How to tell if its a friendship on which to base a marriage. The last implication of
this idea that marriage is about two people committed to the glory selves, marching to the
throne of God, wanting to present one another radiant and spotless before the throne, is
heres how you can tell whether you have a friendship on which you can base a marriage.
A lot of people come and say, Look, were attracted to each other. We have a good
friendship. Thats great. But how do I know if this is the kind of relationship youve been
talking about? How do I know if this is the kind of relationship I really, really ought to
have? Ill tell you what it is.
You can agree on what the real self is and what the dross is. That means as you talk to
one another, and as you spend time together in your relationship Let me take the mans
point of view for a minute. You find as you talk to this woman, not only does she have a
terrific insight into who you really ought to be, who you can be, the glory self, the thing
God wants you to be, the best about you, not only does she see it, but in some ways she
sees it to some degree better than you do.
As you speak to her, you find you get a better idea about who you should be, and you
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get ignited about it. You get passionate for it. In other words, the bottom line of knowing
whether this woman is a good enough friend to marry is does she make you want to be
holy? Does she give you a vision of what you could be in Christ that excites you so much
you want to get there? Do you find you know it better and want it more by being with her?
The real test is does it work backwards? In other words, if shes the one who helps you
see it, and shes the one who knows you, your glory self, but you dont really do a very
good job of helping her with hers, again, thats detrimental. If its happening both ways, if
the vice is truly versa, if you can agree on what that real self is, if you can agree on what is
dross and what is metal, you have the makings of a friendship on which to base a marriage
with windows on eternity.
The question is How do you get there? Ive had a number of people come after and
say, The problem with this is I didnt get married with any of this in mind. The fact is,
were not friends. I married him or I married her because we looked great together. We felt
great together. We had a lot of fun. People said we made a great couple. The fact is, I can go
talk to my guy friends about things I could never bring up to her, and vice versa.
The woman says, I can go to my girlfriends and talk about things I couldnt imagine
him ever understanding, but I guess I always thought thats just the way it was. Thats a
non-Christian understanding of marriage. So what do you do? The answer is right here in
the Scriptures. Theres no reason why you have to despair. What you decide is, Im going
to make this person my friend. Im going to work in that direction.
The Bible shows us there are really two parts to that. Its going back to the body
metaphor. You notice it says, on the one hand, 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
It says, nourisheth and cherisheth it in the Authorized Version. Up a little
further, it says, to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the
word To be friends, you have to be willing to do the negative and the positive. The
negative is cleansing your body. The positive is nourishing and cherishing it. Think for a
minute. Youre not going to be friends unless you have both.
I can only outline this now, and Im going to so we can get ready to come before the
Lords Table. These are very important, and some of you, if youve been to any of the
marriages Ive done lately, youll recognize them as seminal parts in any talk I give when I
perform a wedding.
On the one hand, think of what it means to clean your body. Its a private thing. In other
words, you have to work on your teeth. When you excrete, you wipe yourself. You clean
your fingernails. You deal with the problems of your skin. You shower, and you bathe. The
fact is, the most private thing you do is to keep your body clean.
The Bible says when you get married your spouse has that kind of access to you, to the
most private part of your life. That means your spouse will see and take part in cleaning the
dirt. To put it in Star Trek terms, your spouse goes where no man has gone before. If you
hate that and if you resent that, you dont understand marriage, and this person will never
be your friend.
One of the ways in which this person cleanses you is simply by him or her being there.
Are you a moody person? Are you prone to mood swings? Are you an indecisive person?
Are you a scaredy-cat person about certain things? Are you a kind of abrupt and critical
person? Are you an impatient person? You could always, in a sense, clean yourself in
private.
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If youre really mad, if youre really scared, if youre really grumpy, if youre really
irritable, if youre really moody, you could pretty much hide it from people, but now youre
constantly humiliated. Youre humiliated because these things are things your spouse sees.
Youre excreting spiritually all over the place. Your spouse sees that. Now your spouse says
something about it.
In other words, your moods, your indecision, and your fears create problems for your
spouse too. Youre moody together. Youre indecisive together. Youre scared together.
What this does On the one hand, its so cleansing just to have somebody there, just
seeing it, because for the first time in your life, you cant live in denial anymore. Every
mental health counselor will tell you thats the worst thing for you. If you live in denial,
you cant do a thing about it.
On the other hand, the spouse can say things to you and help you with it if youre
willing to realize its the nature of marriage that your spouse has access to cleansing you.
On the other hand, you have to be so gentle. You all know what its like to cleanse. Youre
so gentle with yourself. Can you imagine somebody else flossing your teeth? That would be
pretty scary. Can you imagine somebody else cutting your nails? Can you imagine
somebody else doing those things?
The reason youre scared is because its very hard for somebody else to be sensitive
enough. If youre married, its your job to do those things. You go in where no one has ever
gone before, but how do you do it? You do it, oh, so gently. To deal with one anothers sins,
to cleanse one another from sin, to point out sins, to admit sins, and to be accountable for
sins.
If that isnt happening, youre not friends, and you certainly dont have the horizon in
mind. If you have a relationship in which you just have to stay away from each other
because youre too testy, that means youre not committed to this understanding of
marriage, and you can never be friends.
Then theres the positive side, and heres where we have to conclude, but I want to read
you something. The positive side is it says you nourish and cherish your body. You find out
what really builds it up and nourishes it and makes it happy and makes it strong. At this
point, you really live out with your spouse the actual salvation of Jesus.
What Jesus does is he comes to you and he says, You are my beloved child, in whom I
am well pleased. Let me read you something. A lot of you may have heard this because
Ive brought it up in other situations, especially at weddings. This is a paper written by
someone I went to seminary with long ago. Let me just read it, and then were done.
Marriage is re-creational. In the context of marriage one encounters the possible
redemption of the full life, the retrospective healing of your personal history. The thorough
conversion of ones biography is a divine work begun in this life, and it would seem that
God has invested the marriage relationship with sufficient emotional power to challenge the
authority of accumulated biographical verdicts and thereby redeem the past.
Do you know what hes saying? You may have heard me say this before. When you get
married to somebody, yes, the other person has the right to cleanse you and point out your
faults, but heres also what happens. When you get married to someone You know that
place in the Bible says, For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart ? Do
you know why it says that?
There is a very important analogy. God invented marriage with this power. If your
spouse tells you youre gorgeous, you feel gorgeous no matter what anybody else says, no
matter what the culture says. If your spouse tells you, I dont care what your father or
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mother said. I dont care what your teacher said. You are great. I dont care what they said.
You are someone I admire, this is what the paper says, and I think this is true.
What the passage is saying is you have massive ability to completely reprogram the
self-appreciation of your spouse. Your word has the power to completely overturn all the
verdicts that have ever been passed on your spouse. Your spouse believes about himself or
herself whatever he has been told over the years. Hundreds and thousands of people have
told him what hes like, and now you have the power to completely turn that over.
If your hearts condemn you, your spouse is greater than your heart. That means if
everybody in the world calls you ugly and your spouse says youre beautiful, youll feel
beautiful. It also means if everybody in the whole world calls you beautiful and your spouse
calls you ugly, youll feel ugly. You have that ability to redeem. You nourish and cherish
one another. You find out what is good in the other, and you call it out. You affirm.
The only reason we know how this works is because Jesus Christ himself has done it for
us. Jesus is the Friend. Jesus is the one of whom its said, A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoking flax he will not quench till he brings forth judgment to victory. What that
means is he is a person who will come into your life and bring you forth to victory.
In the meantime, if you are so bruised, youre like a bruised reed, hell treat you so
gently you wont break off. If you are so dim youre like a smoking flax, like a candle that
has basically gone out, but theres just a glimmer of a flame there, he wont quench you.
Thats a friend. There is someone who will bring you to victory, who is committed to you,
who wont let you go, who will tell you about your faults, but is so completely committed
to you and who continually says to you, I love you. I care for you.
Hes greater than your hearts. He overcomes everything anyone else has ever said of
you, and in the marriage relationship youre living that out. My dear friends, have a
marriage, prepare yourself for a marriage if youre not married, and get yourself a marriage
if you are married with windows on eternity. Lets pray.
Father, as we go to the Lords Table, as we partake of the bread and the cup, we pray that
well remember your friendship, Jesus Christ, how you died for us, how you love us, how
you are committed to us, how you are consistent with us, how youre vulnerable to us, and
how you communicate to us, so we might become the kind of friends who can build other
people up toward the throne and prepare us to be the kind of husbands and wives who will
also bring you glory and joy. We pray this in Jesus name, amen.

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MARRIAGE AS COMPLETION; ONE

FLESH
MarriageSeptember 22, 1991

Ephesians 5:2133
This is our sixth talk on this passage, the classic text in the Scripture on Christian marriage,
Ephesians 5. I would just like to read it to you and then continue our exposition of it. Its
Ephesians 5, and well read verses 2133. Its a great passage to know by heart.
21

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit to your
husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the
head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits
to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself
up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the
word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or
any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to
love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29
After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as
Christ does the church30 for we are members of his body. 31 For this reason a man
will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become
one flesh. 32 This is a profound mysterybut I am talking about Christ and the
church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and
the wife must respect her husband.

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This is Gods Word

There have been topics, and in the early part of the series, I said we were going to move
through topics. We said we would look at Marriage as Ministry and wed look at Marriage
as Covenant or commitment, and weve been looking at Marriage as Friendship, but
tonight Id like to finish up very briefly the idea of marriage as friendship and bridge into
another section.
We said the purpose of marriage is friendship. However, we also said this passage
teaches us theres a role structure in marriage. The role of husband and wife is not
reversible, and its not interchangeable. As one person said, theres a mutuality between
husband and wife we see here, as well start to look at tonight, theres a mutual submission
and love, and yet the commands are not the same to both. Theres an asymmetrical
mutuality this passage is talking about.
Its true that husband and wife are one flesh, because two pieces fit together, yet when
you take a look at the two pieces separately you discover they are not identical. Theyre
equal, but theyre not equivalent. What I want to do is to return to where we were, and that
is this concept that in marriage you become one flesh, and Ill show you how this bridges us
from the end of us talking about marriage as friendship into talking about the role structure
of marriage.
The Bible says a husband will leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife, and
the two shall become one flesh. This phrase one flesh is so strong. It means there is a
possibility of deep unity and deep oneness when two people of two different genders enter
into a permanent, exclusive, binding, legal commitment to share their entire lives with each
other. When that happens, theres a potential for deep oneness no other relationship has the
potential for. By talking about two married people as one flesh
I think I may have referred to this. In the Bible, the word flesh doesnt simply mean
your body. It doesnt simply mean what the English word flesh means which always means
simply skin, sinew, blood, and guts. Actually, theres a place in the Bible where God says,
I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh That doesnt mean, I will pour out my
Spirit on everybodys body. It means, Ill pour out my Spirit on all people. The word
flesh means a person. When it says the two will become one flesh, it says youre one
person.
Youre really no longer the same two people, but youre a third entity. Youre a new
compound, just like two chemicals come together. They interact so they become a third
kind of chemical. Theyre not the same. Its not like two chemicals that just happen to be
sitting in the same test tube with each other, one on top of the other, or even intermingled.
Do you see what the idea is here? If you take two chemicals that do not react with each
other, but just sort of put them together the way you sort of knead, lets say, chocolate chips
into the dough. You just work it through. You still have dough, and you still have chocolate
chips. Were talking about something different, two chemicals that, when they come
together, interact in such a way that their molecular structure is changed, and they become
something thats third, thats new.
Thats what the Bible is saying the potential is for two people who come together in the
bond of marriage. This oneness is tremendously deep. Its organic. Its vital. Its not
mechanical. I know the modern world still has tremendous trouble with this idea of the one
flesh. A lot of people suggest its oppressive. Well have to be talking about that the next

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two weeks.
The modern world says, Dont get married. Live together, but if you have to get
married, you always make sure the relationship is continually fulfilling your needs. Make
sure you maintain your own economic, financial, and social infrastructure, so if things dont
work out you have something to fall back on.
Thats a complete antithesis to the idea of one flesh. Can you imagine the legs deciding,
Look, we need our own nervous system, and we need our own blood supply in case the
hands develop an infection. We dont want anything to do with them? Thats exactly what
prenuptial agreements are.
How is it that this one-fleshness can be developed? Let me ask it another way. Why is it
that one-fleshness, this kind of deep oneness, doesnt happen in marriages? Let me give you
three ways it can happen and three reasons it doesnt happen, the same three reasons. If you
do these three things properly, it develops deep oneness. If you fail to do them or if you do
them wrongly, it creates what most marriages are, and that is basically business
partnerships.
We said the deep oneness develops like this. This passage is saying the two shall
become one flesh. Therefore, a husband relates to a wife and a wife relates to a husband as
you relate to your body. Thats how one you are. Thats why, as we read through, it says the
husband cares for his wife the way he cares for his body.
What is your relationship with your body? You really arent separate from your body,
and yet you can think about your body. You can talk about your body. You can act on your
body as an object, and yet its pretty close to who you really are. In fact, it is who you really
are. We said there are three things you have to do to develop this one-fleshness or three
things that if you blow will create the lack of it. It will undermine the one-fleshness.
1. Dealing with your uncleanness
You have to let your spouse deal with you about your uncleanness, about your blemishes,
about the unsightly nasal hair. We said at the very end of last week this passage talks about
how the husband has to care for the wife and wants to present her spotless, without blemish,
clothed, and beautiful. Then he says, just like you deal with your own body.
Well, how do you deal with your body? You wipe your body. You trim your body. You
deal with the unsightly fat on your body. You buy clothes to hide the unsightly parts of your
body. Why are you working out at the gym? To permanently change those parts of your
body. Of course, you have the right to do that. The Scripture says when a spouse comes into
your life, that spouse now has the same kind of rights, the same kind of access, to your
faults and your flaws. Therefore, your spouse has the right to talk to you about whats
wrong with you.
If you are touchy and if you refuse to let him or her in and if you start to say, You mind
your business, and Ill mind mine. Nobody has the right to talk to me about those things,
then youre denying the one flesh nature and the one flesh potential and the deep ability to
really change and grow and sanctify and be perfected and redeemed and become the
glorious people God wants you to be through this marriage. Unless you let your spouse
really deal with your faults, unless you let your spouse in, unless you let your spouse have
that kind of access, you wont be one flesh.

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2. Reprogramming your self-image

Your spouse has the right to reprogram your self-image. Last week we said this briefly. Ill
say it briefly again, but let me show you why so many marriages fall apart, because this
ability is abused. When you get married, your spouse has such a tremendous power over
how you think of yourself. Do you remember this at the end of last week?
Years ago this insight which is very, very biblical came from a paper my wife read by
Arvin Engelson. Do you remember that? Arvin, where are you? We dont even know. He
was a student at Gordon-Conwell. We barely knew him. He had a paper Kathy had to read
in some kind of seminar. It was on marriage as a vehicle of redemption. It is such a
powerful paper. It has shaped my whole understanding of what the Bible says about
marriage.
Ive never met the guy, and I have no idea where he is. Arvin Engelson, if youre
listening to this tape, I want you to know your paper has meant a lot to me. In that paper he
says marriage is re-creational. These are some of the things he says. He says your entire
life, your entire self-image, is basically a compilation of verdicts that have been passed on
you, things people have said about you.
Now when you get married your spouse has massive ability, has the power to overturn
all of those verdicts in a single word. Your spouse has the ability to reprogram your selfappreciation. Your spouse can say, I dont care what anybody ever, ever said, youre smart.
You are a bright person, and you will start to feel bright. Youll feel that way.
If everybody else has said, I think you are a louse. I think you amount to nothing, and
your spouse says, I think youre a significant human being. I think you contribute to so
many peoples lives, youll start to feel significant. Its also true if your spouse starts to
say, Youre a louse. Youll never amount to a hill of beans. What that does is it
completely destroys you. When you get married, you put into the hands of your spouse the
ability to make or break you.
Ill tell you why this deep unity doesnt work, doesnt develop in most people. When
you get married, you have no idea the power you have. When you get into your first
argument and you start to deal with your spouse the way youve dealt with your brothers
and your sisters and your parents and your roommates and your friends, and you say things
just like you said to them
You say mean things like you said to them, and you dont think its going to go any
deeper into this persons heart than it did in other people. Other people will walk away.
Other people will get over it. Look out! You think you have a BB gun in your hands, and
you have a rocket launcher. You think all youre going to do is sort of give them a little
flesh wound, and the next thing you know theres nothing there but a pair of sneakers with
smoke coming out of them. Thats the funny illustration.
The awful illustration is Im thinking of Lennie in Of Mice and Men, who doesnt know
his own strength. Do you remember? He has a girl and is trying to talk to her and trying to
show her what he wants to say. She starts to scream, and he says, Dont you do that. Dont
you say anything. Next thing you know, what does it say? It says her head was flopping
back and forth because Lennie had broken her neck. She was dead. He had no idea how
strong he was. He didnt know his own strength. He meant well.
If you use your ability to reprogram your spouses self-appreciation, if you learn how to
go into somebodys life and even when you criticize, you do it in a way thats affirming, if
you learn how to do that Friends, you need to be doing it with your father and your
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mother and your brothers and your sisters and your roommates. You need to be doing it
anyway.
Theyre not getting killed by your sharp tongue, theyre not getting killed by the nasty
things you say, the unedifying words you say, but if you get into a marriage with these
kinds of speech patterns, you will find you will kill each other. If on the other hand, you
start building one another up
Whats fascinating is the more you affirm, you use that tremendous power to affirm the
person, the easier it is for your spouse to open up about his or her faults. If you have a
cradle of security for your moments of vulnerability, if you know, This is the one person
who really respects me, knows me to the bottom and loves me and respects me, thats a
certainty in your life, its like a ground note underneath everything else.
You have a sort of security. You have a foundation from which you can for the first time
in your life admit your faults. In the past to even admit your faults was very difficult
because you began to wonder whether you were any kind of decent person at all. Now you
know you are because of what your spouse is saying to you. You know about your worth
there.
This is a great mystery. The relationship between a man and a wife is like Christ and the
church. Of course, its a fascinating mystery because as you know, if youve been here and
heard the preaching, its the Scripture that says its Christ who does that to you. Christ
reprograms your self-image. Christ says, I died for you, and thats the only thing that
matters.
Christ says, Let the fact that I died for you be the weightiest fact in your life. Let that
matter more than anything else. You matter to the only one who matters. Christ
reprograms that. Next to Christ, the person who can do that most effectively is your spouse
because marriage is basically built on the dynamic of salvation. Its built on the pattern of
salvation.
Thats the reason why Paul can go back and forth talking about Christs salvation in
relationship to us and the relationship between a husband and wife. In the same way, if you
do that, if you affirm, if you use this tremendous ability to reprogram that persons selfimage, youll find the person will open up more and more, and the deep oneness will come.
Youll have the ability to talk about one anothers faults.
On the other hand, if you abuse this, if you dont realize you have a rocket launcher in
your hands, its very fast what will happen. What will happen very quickly is both of you
will realize, I cannot trust the other person with what I really think because they can nail
me like nobody has ever been able to nail me. Im afraid to do that.
What you do is you close up. What happens is instead of deep oneness you have what
most marriages are, which is kind of a combination of business partnership and social
contract and parenting partnership. A lot of people have slightly better relationships after
theyre divorced raising their kids together, which goes to show they never really developed
or had the deep oneness.
We said there are three things. The first thing is you have to let your spouse in if you
want that one-fleshness. You have to let your spouse deal with your faults, give him or her
access to your dirt. If you dont do that, then youre denying the one-flesh nature of
marriage. Secondly, you have to use this ability to reprogram your spouses selfappreciation and affirm that spouse. You have to use that so carefully because, if you abuse
that, your spouse will close up.
Your spouse will do it back to you, and you will just become two people who dont
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have the deep oneness. Youre not one flesh. Youre simply a partnership. Youre not a new
chemical, but rather youre just two chemicals that just happen to be interspersed amongst
one another. Youre laying there together and you interpenetrate one another, but you
havent actually become something new.
3. Recognizing neither can act independently
The third thing is if you want this one-fleshness, you have to recognize neither of you can
act independently of the other. The image of one flesh, of the head and the body, is pretty
vivid. When the head turns right and the body turns left, you have a problem. Either the
head and the body have to both turn right or Theyre one. Theyre together.
One of the hardest things about becoming one flesh is to recognize youre no longer
independent people. Of course, this doesnt mean you cant have your own interests and if
she hates golf you cant play golf. Were not talking at that level. Instead, were talking
about important life issues and decisions. Youre not independent of one another. That
means you really have to get inside of each other and do the hard work of consensusbuilding and really build a new unit.
You are not independent of one another. This goes regardless of what your belief is
about submission and headship. It doesnt matter what you think about, as were going to
see soon, when it says the man is the head of the wife and the wife must submit to the man.
The man is the head and the wife is like the body in a marriage. No matter how you define
authority, the fact is the head is not independent of the body. The head cant turn right and
the body turn left. It has to happen together.
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones is one of my heroes, and I quote him as often as I can. He
was a great Welsh preacher, and he told this story. He was preaching a sermon on the fact
that the husband and the wife are not independent of each other. If you want to develop
one-fleshness, you have to work out your decisions, and you have to work for consensus
rather than just negotiating and bargaining with each other like two countries who are just
trying to find cooperative agreements as far as they can.
He gave this illustration. He was preaching on World Missions. Maybe there were slides
that night. After the service, up comes a man who says, Dr. Lloyd-Jones, this was a stirring
service. By the way, if any of you are thinking of doing this tonight, now watch out. He
says, The Lord has called me into foreign missions. Ive decided Im going to go overseas
and work in foreign missions. Its something that has really been on my heart lately, but
now today the Holy Spirit told me. Dr. Lloyd Jones instantly said, Are you married?
Sure.
Have you talked to your wife about this at all?
No.
He said, Now, listen. The Holy Spirit wrote the Bible, right? If this is the Holy Spirit,
you have a great test. The Holy Spirit will tell your wife you need to go in the mission field
too. In fact, Im a little bit dubious because its very unlikely the Holy Spirit would tell you
to do something and not tell you, Id better work this out with my wife, because the Holy
Spirit wrote in the Bible the head is not independent of the body.
The hard work of working on consensus and coming to one mind and to one heart about
things, that hard work, if you dont do it, you will never experience and develop the onefleshness. Thats the reason that one-fleshness doesnt work very often or doesnt develop,
and its also the way in which you can develop it.
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What the heck is it? What do you mean, oh Preacher, when you say two people
become something new, that theyre not just interspersed with each other, that they become
a third kind of chemical, that you really become a third kind of person and not really the
people you were? That is a complex subject, and we bridge into this whole subject of role
relationships between men and women in marriage.
I can do some introductory work this week and next week, lay the whole thing out. Let
me just suggest this one-fleshness develops especially in two ways, along temperament
lines and along gender lines. I know theyre not completely different things because very
often certain genders have certain temperaments, but let me explain it this way.
What is a temperament? The traditional temperaments the Greeks talk about are
sanguine, choleric, melancholy, and phlegmatic. Do you remember that? Temperaments are
habitual ways in which you deal with the world. Somebody once pointed out you have two
axes. At this end you have people who believe the world is basically a friendly place where
good things happen, and at the other end you have people who basically believe the world
is a dangerous place and an unfriendly place, where bad things happen.
Then take another: people who believe basically you need to get out there and act upon
the world before it gets to you. Over on the other end, you have people who really believe
the wisest thing to do is to sort of lay back and wait for things to happen, and then you react
to them. If you diagram, if you put those two axes against one another, you basically come
up with people who say the world is dangerous and also you need to get out there. Thats
the choleric person, the dominant personality.
A person, who says the world is basically kind of dangerous but you need to wait for the
world to come to you, is a melancholy person. A person who says the world is basically a
friendly place and you need to let the world come to you is a phlegmatic person. A person
who says the world is basically a friendly place and you need to get out there and do
something, is a sanguine person, an outgoing person, a very, very relationally oriented
person.
Im not trying to get into the temperaments much other than to say I dont think there
are only four, but thats a good way of putting it. What is a temperament? A temperament is
a habitual way to deal with the world that we develop because were not wise enough to be
versatile. Is the world a dangerous place where bad things happen? Or is the world a
friendly place where good things happen? Biblically, whats the answer to that? The answer
is its both.
The heavens are telling the glory of God. There are beautiful things in the world. Its
Gods creation, and yet its a wicked place, its a dangerous place, and its a broken place.
Should you get out there and act, or should you wait? If you go to the book of Proverbs,
what is the right thing to do in every situation? The answer is it depends. None of these
situations are always the wise way to be.
Jesus Christ had no temperament. He could not be classified. Why? He was perfectly
wise. An extrovert is somebody who says the best thing to do is walk out and introduce
yourself. The introvert basically says, Ill wait and see what happens. Ill see whos out
there. Ill wait for somebody to ask me. Whats the right thing to do? Whats the wisest
thing to do? Whats the best way to deal in a relationship? The answer is it depends.
Jesus was not an extrovert or an introvert. He was exactly what he needed to be that the
situation demanded, but none of the rest of us are. All of us develop temperaments, habitual
ways of doing things. If we happen to get into a condition, if we tend to be a sanguine
person, for example, and were in a situation that works very well for someone who
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basically is optimistic, basically feels people are going to like them, basically feels, If I
step out there and introduce myself, things are going to work out okay, everything is fine.
If you are in a situation that really calls for a phlegmatic or a melancholy response,
youll get your head taken off. When you get married, generally speaking, to some degree,
for sure, even if youre the same basic temperament, there are different degrees. You are
forced for the first time in your life to see the world continually through the eyes of
someone of another temperament.
Of course, the vice is versa. What that does is that has a profound impact on your
wisdom. After a number of years of marriage, there are two things that are happening
instead of one. The old way, because of your temperament you habitually would do
something without even thinking. You react to a situation because of your temperament.
Now two things happen. Theres not only the habitual thing, but you suddenly say, I
know what Kathy would do here. Its almost as habitual, not quite, to suddenly realize, I
know what my spouse would do. For an instant, you have the ability now, instead of one
option, of two.
You have the ability to realize it. You have the ability to slow yourself down and see
which of these two things would be better. Youve also had the experience of having your
spouse sort of forcefully push you into a situation that he or she knew was not the way you
would like to respond but that he or she knew was the wise way to respond, and you found
out it does work.
What happens is theres a kind of wisdom that can develop only through this kind of
intimate relationship. You really do become someone different. Your temperament actually
changes. Your wisdom and your ability to understand the world actually changes.
Secondly, the reason you become one flesh is because for the first time in your life you
have to relentlessly and continually look at the world through the eyes of another gender.
This is where Id like to say a few words of introduction. Because theyre introductory
words, I expect some of you will find them controversial. Fine. Thatll make you come
back.
Let me say this along those lines. The Scripture clearly states again and again that a
man and a woman in marriage are not reversible roles. Dont you see here? Only the
husband is told to love his wife. The wife is not told to love her husband. Only the wife is
told to respect her husband. The husband is not told to respect his wife. What does that
mean? Does that really mean wives arent supposed to love their husbands? Does that really
mean husbands arent supposed to respect their wives?
Of course not. Thats silly. You cant make the Scripture ridiculous like that. What does
it mean, though? It means, in the marriage, theyre both building each other up. Theyre
both changing each other in the ways weve been talking about, but they are not doing it in
the same way. The fact is the husband doesnt love his wife the way a wife loves her
husband. The husband does not build up his wife the way a wife builds up the husband,
because being woman and being a man are callings. Theyre different callings. You have
different gifts. You do it differently.
Theres nowhere in the Bible ever that you see when a husband and a wife are both
dealt with that theyre told to do the same things in the same words. The old wedding vows
used to have some differences. The modern wedding vows are absolutely reversible. Both
the wife and the husband are asked to do the very same things in the very same words. You
never see that in the Bible. Why? Because even though there is obvious mutuality, theres
obvious equality, there is not interchangeability. Theres not equivalency.
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Studies are showing this. Put a woman as a CEO in this job. Put a man as a CEO in the
same job. Give them the same goals. Ask them both to turn a $1 million profit this year.
What if they both do it? If they both do it, studies will show you almost 100 times out of
100 they will have done it different ways. A woman is not a manager the way a man is a
manager. In a sense, theres an asymmetrical mutuality even there, and you can see it.
When it comes to what I said is working through a different gender, what it means is
that for the first time in your life Being a male and being a female are two ways of being
human, and by themselves the Bible says, they are kind of unbalanced. Adam, when he had
no sin in his life, when he had a perfect relationship with God, there had been no fall, there
had been no Serpent, there had been no apple or orange or whatever the heck it was, there
had been no fruit none of that had happened he was alone; he was lonely.
When the woman was brought to him, he said, At last, I found myself. That means
theres a complementary nature, and it also shows Jesus Christ has not given all of his
attributes to both men and women in the same way. It doesnt mean, for example, that men
and women cant both be heroes and that men and women cant both be nurturers, but
whats very clear from the Bible is men will nurture differently than women and women
will be heroes in a different way then men.
The beauty of it is when the Bible says to the husband, Be men, what does it say?
Look at Jesus. It says that here. Look at Jesus. Look at his relationship with his church. See
how he died for his church. See how he manages everything in his life for the church. The
Bible says he manages all history for the church, and you, oh men, have to realize the same
thing. If you are going to be real husbands, its your job to take authority. Yes, well talk
about what that is, but its an authority that by no means is oppressive.
Who can be upset with Jesus authority when he went to the cross for you, when he was
willing to deny everything for you, and now does absolutely nothing, the Bible says in
Romans 8:28, except that which brings about your joy and perfection? Nothing. Is that
oppressive authority? Heres whats so beautiful.
When the Bible says, Women, look at femininity and what does it mean to be
feminine? the Bible says it means to be a help. What does the word help mean as well
see? The word help means to use your power in a way that enables and empowers
somebody else. Women do that better than men. To use your power in such a way that it
empowers someone else, that it enables instead of replaces him.
When I help my son with his algebra, its because On the one hand, I help him if I
know more about it than he does. A woman can only help her husband if she has resources
he doesnt have, if theres a deficiency in him thats not in her, if there are things she can do
that he cant do. I also, in order to help my son with his algebra, cannot do it for him. I can
enable him to do his algebra with my superior power in the areas I have power, but when I
enable him, I am not replacing him. I am not doing it for him.
Feminine power means the wife brings to bear on the husband things she can do that
she knows, that she sees he doesnt have, resources he doesnt have. Shes superior to him
in certain ways. Theyre very difficult to define biblically, but theyre there. However, what
she does with her power is she doesnt replace him. She enables him. She empowers him.
When those two things are happening in the life, the two become one flesh. Where does a
woman look for femininity? Where does a woman look for her model? She looks to Jesus
too.
Why? Its whats beautiful. There are two places in the Bible that say, The man is the
head of the wife like Here it says, as Christ is the head of the church. In 1
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Corinthians 11, it says, as the Father is the head of the Son. On the one hand, it means the
Son is the perfect example of masculinity. Look at him, and then youll know what
masculinity is, real leadership, real authority, no oppressiveness.
At the same time, the Son is the picture of femininity too. The voluntary subordination
of an equal to an equal. The putting his power under someone else, the glorifying of
someone, the enabling and empowering of somebody. He is just as much a paragon of
feminine power as masculine power. Therefore, of course, being a woman or being a man,
neither is more fundamentally divine. One is not higher than the other.
When two incomplete people are brought together in marriage and continually and
regularly look at the world through the eyes of the other, it is a heck of an experience. It is
an amazing experience. Youre no longer really what you were before. The two chemicals
have come together, and the reason the two chemicals have come together is because both
the power and the tenderness of Jesus have been united in your lives.
Look at the masculinity of Jesus. Look at the femininity of Jesus. Look at the authority
of Jesus. Look at the submission of Jesus, and you say look at that. If you understand the
gospel, you can understand the relationships within marriage. If you understand the gospel,
you can understand friendship. If you can understand the gospel, you can understand what
it means to affirm your spouse and what it means to be one flesh.
If you cant understand the gospel To me, the amazing thing is not why so many
marriages break up. In light of what this passage is saying and in light of the widespread
ignorance of what the passage is saying, the amazing thing to me is why so many marriages
stay together. Look to Jesus, and he will complete you.
One very last thing. Well mention this next week in some detail, but heres what I have
to say. Some people say, Im a single person, and youre talking about the need for
completion. This is discouraging. Id like to be married. Im not married. Does that mean
Im an incomplete person? In what way am I an incomplete person?
The answer is dont forget, just as a spouse can reprogram your self-image,
nevertheless, marriage is only an analogy of the great marriage of Jesus Christ with the
church. The real Sanctifier is not a husband, my dear ladies. Its Jesus. The real Helper, the
real Completer, is not a wife, my dear friend guys, but its Jesus.
Because we live in a fallen world, because all of us are sort of sub-men and sub-women,
and because even the best marriage is so far from what it ought to be, let me just tell you
the difference between marriage and being single is not as great as it ought to be. Marriage
is not nearly as sanctifying as it could be.
Its not nearly as completing as it could be. If God in his providence has kept you out of
a marriage up to now, then look to him. He is your Helper, guys. He is your Husband,
ladies. If you look at him, whether youre married or whether youre single, youll see in
him the completion and the perfection of your souls. Lets pray.
Father, we ask especially that youd help us to see the great power we have in marriage. I
pray the people here who are not married may not be scared of this power, that they might
not be intimidated, but recognize simply you would not call them into a relationship unless
you would give them the power and the wisdom to know how to use this great power.
Father, those people who are here in a married state, I pray you would show them how they
can use this tremendous power to create one flesh, to create new units, to create deep
oneness and unity. Most of all, Father, we pray, just as we learn from all this teaching on

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salvation about marriage, we would also learn even more from all this teaching on
marriage about your salvation.
Help us to see its only as we are in a relationship with you, oh Lord Jesus Christ, both
Husband and Helper, both authority and submission model. We pray, Father, its through
our relationship with Jesus we might truly become completed. Give us marriage or keep us
from marriage. Give us a great marriage or give us a mediocre marriage, but give us
yourself, oh Lord Jesus Christ, and we will have everything we need. We pray this in Jesus
name, amen.

MARRIAGE AS COMPLETION;
GENDER ROLESPART 1
MarriageSeptember 29, 1991

Ephesians 5:2233
Were looking tonight at a subject that many of you are going to say, Why did you choose
that subject? Its just like the mountain climber. The same reason the mountain climber
climbs the mountain is because its there. Why are we choosing the subject were choosing
tonight? Because its there. Because the Bible is Gods self-disclosure. Its the written Word
of God, and everything that is stated there, whether or not it happens to be controversial at
this little point in time and space, we have to digest it, we have to understand it.
So tonight were going to look again at this passage on marriage that weve been
looking at for seven weeks now. Were looking at Ephesians 5:2133. Tonight were
especially going to look at this major issue, where it says, Wives, submit to your husbands,
and husbands, youre the head of the wife. What does that mean? Finally, tonight well
look at it. It is an immensely complicated subject, and were going to look at it. First of all,
lets read the passage, Ephesians 5:2133, and then well tackle it.
21

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit to your
husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the
head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits
to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

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25

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself
up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the
word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or
any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to
love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29
After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as
Christ does the church30 for we are members of his body. 31 For this reason a man
will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become
one flesh. 32 This is a profound mysterybut I am talking about Christ and the
church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and
the wife must respect her husband.
This is Gods Word
Were going to especially look tonight at verse 22, Wives, submit to your husbands as to
the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church
What does that mean? There are a couple of ways to put this. One of the ways is to ask the
question we are addressing in this verse, which is to say, Is there any differentiation
between the roles and obligations of a husband and wife in marriage?
I think we mentioned last week that years ago the marriage vows that were in the
average church ceremony were different. Usually, what the wife and the husband were
asked to do was different. Different words were used. Today, of course, those vows are
absolutely identical. The same words, and yet every single place you come to in the
Scripture you see theres a differentiation.
The first question: is there a differentiation? Is there an authority structure? What does
it mean when it says, Wives, submit to your husbands, and when it says, Husbands,
youre head of the wife? We tackle the issue because its there, but you have to keep
something in mind because all night, especially as we look at this thing, Christianity,
depending on the culture its sitting in, can be either radically liberal subversive or horribly
fascist reactionary in its appearance.
For example, in Communist countries, the church has always been considered radically
subversive. Why? Because the Communist state is very conservative, and the church was
something it tried to deal with. It was subversive because the church has always questioned,
not just questioned but challenged the idea that the state is the final arbiter of moral
issues and values. The church has always said the state is not the final author and arbiter of
moral values. Its God.
In those countries, we have super-conservative state governments and state. The church
looks radically subversive, but in this country, for example, very often Christianity looks
reactionary and conservative. Do you know why? Because in this country the church is also
challenging the idea that the individual is the final arbiter of moral values. The church has
always said, No, the individual feelings and conscience nor the state
The church looks right-wing to the left and left-wing to the right. Thats the way it is.
Thats the way it ought to be if Christianity is actual truth, if its absolute truth, if its
revelation from God. Christianity isnt to the left or to the right. Its from above. It doesnt
arise out of the human spectrum. It settles down into the human spectrum of thought. If its
true that its from above, then its natural that it doesnt actually fit any particular ideology,
and every ideology is going to be deeply suspicious of it.
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On the one hand, you have what Paul says about women who in many, many, many
cultures, in many societies are considered radically subversive, and certainly you know
that, in many societies. For example, Paul originally taught this divine teaching about the
roles of men and women into an Asian, an Oriental society. Thats what that area was. Of
course, because of the very rigid understanding of the roles of men and women in those
situations, the Christian truth was considered tremendously subversive.
Thats why when you go to 1 Corinthians 11, you see Paul saying to the women, When
you pray and speak in church, make sure you wear a veil. Hes talking to married women.
Why? In that time and place, when a woman was married, she was completely veiled. You
still see that in many Oriental countries and many Eastern countries. She was completely
veiled. That showed she belonged totally to her husband.
The idea of women participating in public worship like that, which was obviously the
way in which things were done in the early church, was so radically subversive in that
super-conservative society that Paul said, Look, women, just remember, you dont have to,
but wear a veil. Why? Because the equality the Christian gospel brings in a relationship
between men and women is so radical that in some situations people might forget that
though theres equality there, there still are distinctions. There are still role relations
between husband and wife.
Make sure, Paul says to the women, that you wear your veil because that is a
culturally appropriate signal to the world around that you have not thrown off your
obligation to your husbands. Thats how radical it was, and yet today many people,
especially in a place like New York, will read 1 Corinthians 11, 12, 13, and 14, and see
what Paul says about women and will say, This is incredible oppression.
Thats the way it ought to be. If its really true that this is truth, it doesnt arise out of
one side of the spectrum or the next, and if you come to the Bible saying, Really, is this
left or right or sort of halfway in between? youll always be disappointed because its not
from down here. Its not from here, here, or here. Its from there. Having said that, what Id
like to show you are three basic things tonight.
The basic thesis is being a male and being a female are overlapping but distinguishable
ways of being human. Theyre not identical. They are overlapping but distinguishable
modes of being human. Therefore, there are roles. There are distinct obligations and gifts
and callings that belong to women and belong to men. Id like to show you here the passage
teaches us really three things of sex roles, of gender roles. It teaches that there are roles.
Secondly, he teaches why there are roles. Thirdly, he teaches what those roles are.
1. The that of gender roles in marriage
Lets realize this text teaches just by the very way in which it lays there that there are
distinctive roles for men and women in marriage. It doesnt tell the wives to love their
husbands. It tells them to respect their husbands. It doesnt tell the husbands to respect their
wives. It says to love your wives. It tells the husbands to submit in verse 21 along with the
wives, but then it tells the wives to submit in verse 22 all by themselves. So the husbands
are asked to submit once, and the wives are asked to submit twice.
Theres no place where it says the wife is supposed to be working for the perfection of
the husband to present him before the throne spotless and without blemish. Does this really
mean by the Bible we can conclude, therefore, that wives arent supposed to love their
husbands, just respect them? That wives are not supposed to work for their husbands
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perfection? Is that what it means?

Of course it cant mean that, because there are plenty of other places where those things
are brought out again. Why is it, though, that Paul would lay out these different kinds of
directions? The only answer is because what men and women are good at and bad at are
different. There are different emphases. There are different things that have to be
emphasized for different ones because they have different gifts and they have different
roles.
Its a tough question. What are those roles? I would like to just start and under this first
heading say the Bible clearly teaches what those roles are but lays down the most general
kind of differentials between the two roles rather than a lot of specific differentials between
the two roles. Let me explain.
First of all, to this question: is there a difference in maleness and femaleness that
extends beyond the physical into the soul? Is there a maleness that goes beyond your
biology into your soul? Is there a femaleness that goes beyond your biology into your soul?
Ill put it another way. Let me be as stark, as graphic, as possible. Is there some uniquely
feminine way in which a wife needs to receive her husband emotionally and relationally, as
she receives him physically? Is it possible that the physical act of sex has more
ramifications than just the physical?
On the other hand, let me put it this way. Is there something uniquely masculine so a
man needs to move out and toward his wife emotionally and relationally the way he moves
out and toward his wife physically? Is there a maleness that goes beyond simply the
biological? Everybody intuitively knows there is and nobody wants to admit it in this
culture at all. As soon as people start to define it they feel like immediately that sticks
people into stereotypical roles. The Bible says there are roles, and yet as Im going to try to
show you, they arent stereotyped roles.
Research is beginning to show us what the Bible has said all along that there are some
very general ways in which men and women have different callings. I found it very
interesting When I was actually first in college in the late 60s, a lot of the research was
already showing up the fact that there are intrinsic physiological, emotional, intellectual,
cognitive differences, but nobody could add up what that was.
I remember taking a child psychology course, and every year they would get up and
theyd point out the fact, for example, that little boy babies, when they come up to an
obstacle, they tend to want to push it over. Girl babies, when they get near an obstacle, go
around it. Who teaches them that? Boy babies prefer a lower complexity of stimuli. Girl
babies prefer a higher complexity of stimuli.
Heres one. By the way, musicians, this is one, when I was looking at my old child
psychology book, do you know at 6 months old, when girl babies hear jazz, their hearts get
faster, and boy babies just ignore it? Did you know that? You didnt know that. Honest, its
there. I can show you. Its a proven fact. Everybody says, Well, what does that mean?
So anyway, there were a number of things that say, There are differences here. What
are they? To me the most interesting thing is to read what they call the second-stage
feminism books. One of the first ones was by Carol Gilligan. Some of you have heard of it
called In a Different Voice, written in 1982.
In there she did a tremendous amount of research to try to see is it true, for example,
when men and women have the same job, like a bank president, that they go about it
differently? Or when men and women have the same job that is basically a housekeeper
that they go about it differently?
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She says its true. This is the most interesting part of her book to me. She says
something to the effect of, My research shows that men see themselves as maturing as
they separate. Women see themselves as maturing as they attach. Men see themselves as
maturing as they separate and become independent and make impact. Women see
themselves as maturing as they attach themselves, as they invite one another into networks
as they become interdependent. Men, therefore, have the gift of independence. Women
have the gift of interdependence.
That fits in, as were going to see, virtually perfectly with what the Scripture says. You
dont need research to say, Well, gee, maybe the Bible is right. A Harvard sociologist said
thats not how it has to work, but the point is youre going to see when the Scripture talks
about these differences and the research says, Yeah, there are different callings, what are
those different callings?
Lets keep on going, and well talk about it. Let me get to my second point, but first of
all, let me remind you a lot of conservative people and a lot of evangelical Christians say,
Yes, of course, there are differences between men and women. There are differences
between the role of the husband and the wife, and here they are. They make a long list of
very stereotypical, very specific lists of details. For example, theyll say, For example,
because Im a Christian, I believe the Bible, and I uphold the traditional family, a lot of
people say.
I believe there is a difference between husband and wife, and I do believe there are
different roles. For example, the husband should work and the wife should stay home with
the children. Okay, where does it say that in the Bible? It doesnt say that in the Bible.
Well, the woman should be the one whos domestic. She should be the one who cooks.
Where does it say that in the Bible? The man should be in charge of the checkbook.
Where does it say that in the Bible?
Here is one of the problems. In the pre-industrial age, you didnt see the husband go out
to make his money and the wife stay at home with the children. In the pre-industrial age,
the husband and the wife both produced goods together. They worked together in whatever
the job was of the family. They either farmed together or they were tailors together or they
were shoemakers together. They both produced goods, and they both raised the children.
In the industrial age, for the first time somebody has to get up and leave the home and
go off and make money. For a brief period of time, we get into the position where the
husband leaves, and the wife stays at home, does not produce goods, and does childrearing. When you go to the Scripture, youll see the Bible is truth thats written for all time
and space. The Bible would never nail itself down to that kind of specific stereotypical way
of defining the differences between masculinity and femininity. You cant do such a thing.
Go to the book of Proverbs 31, where it talks about a woman of worth and see what she
does. Here is a wonderful wife. Shes into real estate. Have any of you ever read Proverbs
31? She does investments. She figures out, Im going to fund this particular voyage. When
it gets back, Ill make a return on my investment. Shes into real estate. Shes into
investments. Shes into sewing. Shes into child-rearing. Shes into everything. For all we
can tell, the husband was into everything with her.
To say, When the Bible talks about women submitting to their husbands, when the
Bible talks about differences between the husband and wifes role in the Bible, that means
the Bible supports a traditional family, I agree, but whats the traditional family? You cant
say traditional family is the family from 1880 to 1960. You cannot take the Bible and whet
it to one particular time in history. The Bible would never be so foolish. The Bible is truth.
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Therefore, it has to be true for people in every time and place.

That means the differences that are there are more subtle. Theyre more profound.
Theyre more nuanced, but they are there. Youre not going to find them in a little list.
Youre not going say, Well, what does it mean to be a wife? It means I cook. It means I do
No, youre not going to find it that way. Its more profound. The roles are there, but
why are they there and what are they?
2. The why of gender roles in marriage
Why are there differences between wife and husband? The answer is the order of creation.
When Paul says, Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the
head of the wife whether you realize it or not, he is actually pulling us back into
Genesis because of this little important word head.
The Greek word head is just like our word authority, just like it. The word authority has
both a primal reference, you might say an etymological reference, and a usage reference.
Originally, the word authority came from the word author. If I wrote a poem, if Im the
author of a poem, then Im the authority. I can tell you what the poem is about. Why?
Because Im speaking out of my authorship. I am the source of the poem. Therefore, I have
authority.
Theres a primary meaning. The word authority means source. The secondary meaning
means power, influence, and sway. In the same way, this little Greek word head originally
meant source. It actually means the headwaters of a river. When Paul says, 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 he is referring to the fact of Genesis where Eve is taken out of
Adam. In a sense, Adam is the headwaters of Eve.
In the same way, when it talks about the head and the body, theres a sense in which you
see the head is here and the body grows out. The body is attached. From the head comes the
brain, and all the neurological system spreads out into the body. The picture is very, very
clear. Paul is saying, Wives, submit to your husbands because of the way things were set
up at creation. How were they set up at creation? This way.
There are two things you learn in the Genesis creation narratives, in Genesis 1, 2, and 3,
two things that are in those three chapters which are absolutely critical for you to
understand what it means to be married. Paul is saying you cant understand the
relationship between husband and wife in marriage unless you got back to creation.
Here is what the two things are. First of all, the man and the woman were created, one
to be a namer and the other to be a helper. The second thing is the man and womans
original nature was cursed. Their namership and their helpership were cursed. They were
created in a certain way, but because of sin, theres a certain kind of corruption. Those are
the two things we have to understand. They were created and they were corrupted in
Genesis 1, 2, and 3. Follow me.
First, men and women were created differently. When God comes to Adam and says,
Name the animals, why was God doing that? Had God just had a bad day, and he just was
out of labels? He was creating the universe, and he says, What are these things? [Audio
cuts off] I dont know what to call them, so let me see if Adam has some ideas. Thats
not the idea. That would be silly. To name someone in the Bible was something more than
just slapping a label on it. To name someone meant you were shaping, you were taking
charge of that person. You were shaping their character and their purpose.
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In the Old Testament, for example, when one king conquers another king, the victorious
king renames, gives a new name to, the defeated king. Why? Because naming is the
exercise of a superior to an inferior. Parents name their children. Why? Not just because,
Well, thats my favorite soap opera character. I think Ill give the name to my child, but
rather if you look in the Bible youll see a name was the way in which the parent decided,
This is the kind of child I want this child to be. I want this child to grow up like this.
When God changes someones nature, their name is changed, Saul to Paul, Abram to
Abraham, and so on. You know how that works. Therefore, when God comes to Adam and
says, I want you to name the animals, what hes saying is, I want you to bring order out
of something wild. I want you to have an impact. I want you to shape them. I want you to
take over. I want you to take charge of them. I want you to take charge of the world and
take the disorder and take the formlessness and bring order to it. Bring something orderly
out of something wild.
Thats what he created Adam to do. What did he create Eve to do? He created Eve to be
a helper. Now the trouble with this word helper It has done so much damage. The
English word helper is a bad way to translate this word. When we think of helper, usually
we think of weakness, Daddys little helper. Whats Daddys little helper? A helper is
someone who says, Well, look, honey, you cant really make this doghouse were working
on here.
I am building a doghouse.
Well, honey, you cant make the doghouse, but you can help me. You can go get the
nails. You can get the hammer. Thats what we think the word help means. No way.
Biblically, the word help is an extremely sophisticated term. First of all, the word help is
almost always used of God in the Bible. God is our help and our strength and our refuge in
a time of trouble.
When Eve was created to be Adams helper, a helper is someone who has power and
resources that the helpee does not have. Therefore, when Eve was created as Adams helper,
that absolutely implies deficiencies in Adam that Eve does not have. It implies a power and
resources Eve has that Adam doesnt have, clearly.
The word help means You cant help somebody unless you have something they
dont. For example, supposedly I can help my son with his algebra. Why? Supposedly, I
know more about algebra than he does. Thats why I can help. Suppose I never took
algebra. I cant help him. Dont you see? Thats the biblical sense of the word help. I have
to have something he doesnt have, but theres another side to the word help. This is the
secret to what femininity is.
If I know more about algebra than my son, I can help him, but there are two ways in
which I can use that power. I can use it by bringing myself under him to enable him, to
bring him along, to empower him so he is brought to the place where he can do it himself,
or I can replace him. I can help him with my power, or I can replace him; I can do it for
him.
If I do it for him, Im not helping him. Im using my power, but not in a helpful way.
Helping is a specific use of power. Its putting yourself underneath somebody else and in a
sense running your power through that person. Its an enabling. Its an empowering. The
word help implies, on the one hand, Eve has resources Adam doesnt have.
It also implies Eve has a gift, a way of using that power which is enabling and
ennobling and empowering. This interesting, important word helper then proves something,
I think. Now I have to be very careful. Give me about three minutes to walk a tightrope.
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This is very important because Im going to come back to the idea of giftedness.
Just as Carol Gilligan said, who was not by any means coming from an evangelical
Christian position, men see themselves maturing as they separate. They have the gift of
independence, and they want impact. Women have the gift of interdependence. They see
themselves maturing as they attach. They want networking. They want to be
interdependent, and they want to shape people that way.
Therefore, we can say a man looks to be completed by powerfully subduing the world
through work. A woman looks to be completed by receiving and becoming part of an
interdependent network. You see that not just in what the research says. You dont just see
that in the second-stage feminism books. Of course, you know the place I would part here
is most of the second-stage feminism books say, This is the difference between men and
women, and women are better.
Heres what I want to ask you. If youre the person who has the gift of independence,
the gift of separation, the gift of moving out without a team and just doing it, and heres a
person who has a gift of consensus-building and moving people together and moving
people into a team, which of those things always works? Which of those things is always
the wise way to go? Which of those things always is what is called for by the situation? The
answer is neither. The answer is both.
When we talk about the helpership of women, does that mean men are never supposed
to nurture? When we talk about the desire for impact of men, does that mean women are
never supposed to achieve? No, what makes you masculine or feminine is not what you do,
but why you do it. The men nurture in order to have impact. The women achieve in order to
nurture. Its there. Its very fundamental.
Its deep, and its part of what it means to be masculine and feminine. The only way you
find it is in creation. It does not mean that women dont name animals. It doesnt mean men
arent supposed to help their wives, but what it does mean is theres gift. Heres where you
have to walk this rope.
Can anybody remember when we talked about spiritual gifts? Weve been in the book
of Ephesians for something like 18 years now, so its a long time, but every spiritual gift is
also a duty. When the Bible says some people have the gift of evangelism, that means some
are especially good at it, but every Christian is supposed to witness.
When the Bible says some people have the gift of teaching, that means some people are
good at it, but everybody is supposed to communicate the Word. When we talk about
women having a giftedness of using their power in a way that enables, when we talk about
the gift of interdependence, and the man having the gift of independence, we do not mean,
therefore, the woman is never supposed to be independent or the man is never supposed to
be interdependent.
Were talking about gifts and duties. Were talking about things youre especially good
at. Why does the Bible say when the husband and wife come together they complete each
other? Because theres a dark side to your gift. If youre an evangelist type, if youre the
kind of person that your gift is to win new people into the faith, your gift is not to build
them up and train them and disciple them.
The dark side of your gift is youre always going to tend to be imbalanced, and youre
going to need somebody around who says, Wait a minute. Youre getting all these people
indoors, what are we doing to help them? If youre the kind of person who has a gift for
training and discipling, you have a dark side to your gift. There tends to be an imbalance.
You need an evangelist to complete you, and you need an evangelist to teach you how to
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evangelize when you do it, even though thats not your gift.
In the same way, the masculine gift of independence always has a tendency to become
autonomy and tyranny, and the female gift of interdependence always has the tendency to
become dependence. That leads us to the second basic truth. We said in the book of Genesis
the first basic truth is men and women are created differently.
The second basic truth is theyre both corrupted. They both, under the influence of sin,
have gone bad because in Genesis 3 after Adam and Eve rebel against God, God comes
down and says, You will sweat and work in the dust of the ground, and thorns and thistles
will come up. He says that to Adam. Then he says to Eve, You will have pain in
childbearing, and your desire will be for your husband, but he will rule over you.
If you want confirmation of this fundamental difference between husbands and wives,
between men and women, here it is. When God curses humanity, he curses different
aspects. When he curses Adam, he curses his work. He says, Your need and your desire to
have an impact on the world, to be independent, to achieve, is going to become an idol. Its
going to become too important to you, and you will always be frustrated because it will
never give you what you want.
He turns to the wife, and what does he curse there? He curses her relationships. He
says, You will want your husband desperately, but your husband will rule over you. Right
there we have such an important teaching. The teaching is the wifes interdependent gift
under the influence of sin will trip her up. She will become a dependent person. She will
want to be taken care of. The husband, whose independent gift is now under the influence
of sin, instead of being an independent person, will be a tyrant, and he will rule over and
master her.
Thats why whats so intriguing to me is when the feminist literature says, Heres the
macho man. Heres the Marlboro man. Here is the cowboy. Heres the Rambo. Heres the
guy whos really giving us the problems. Heres the guy who abuses women, if not
physically then in other ways. Over here is the Cinderella, the princess complex. Heres the
teen queen prom dream. Heres the woman who just wants someone to take care of her.
Heres somebody who just wants to be on the arm of somebody whos big and rich and who
can just take care of her and let her nurture away, and not have to stand on her own, the
feminists are right because in Genesis 3 it says that is whats going to happen.
When masculinity and femininity go bad, the independence becomes tyranny and
autonomy and the interdependence becomes dependence and masochism. Unless you
understand these two things, the traditionalist people, the people who are always stressing
the fact that, Yes, husbands need to rule over their wives. They need to take charge,
theyre forgetting the curse.
Theyre forgetting the fact that the Bible teaches men will tend to oppress women, and
women will tend to want them to make it easy for them. Thatll be a tendency, but the sins
of the men and the women will tend to feed on one another. Unless there are proper
safeguards, unless were very careful about that, were overlooking a clear teaching of the
Scripture.
Women, those of you who are in the workplace, especially in male-dominated fields,
look at whats happening to you. Whats happening to you is youre in a place where all the
rules are masculine. People dont work in teams. You get out there. You watch your back.
Youre independent. Youre cutthroat. Its a masculine approach to professionalism. You
stuff your feelings. You dont worry about that.
In that situation, whats happening though is because its not a Christian context,
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because its not a context in which theres this covenant of love, like in the marriage where
two people are committee to one another, in that situation, youll find youre continually
being pressed out of your femininity, but not in a way thats loving and not in a way thats
constructive. Youre being pulled away and say, Dont be dependent. Dont be a
Cinderella, but youre not being pulled away in a loving way.
The fact is women and men in marriage are supposed to learn to submit to one another,
and in marriage the husband is supposed to have a loving authority. In marriage the wife is
supposed to exercise her helpership. Why? Because the husbands independence will
become tyranny unless the helpership of the wife pulls him back, unless hes continually
being pressed to see what it really means to really be a man, which is not to be a tyrant, but
to be independent, unless she pulls him back.
In the same way, the wife will have a tendency to move toward dependence unless the
husband in his strength pulls her back. There needs to be a completion. The traditionalists
forget the fact that weve been cursed. They forget the fact that men tend to dominate
women; therefore, they have a tendency to just push the old traditional understanding.
The Bible does not support the old Victorian approach to women being owned by their
husbands, but on the other hand, the modernists, the egalitarians, forget the fact that there is
a distinction between masculine and feminine, and there it is. Its very deep. Its all the way
down. Theres more were going to cover next week. What I need to do is just press you
this far.
3. The what of gender roles in marriage
Marriage, I said, for a couple weeks is friendship, but now you see its a lot more than
friendship because no matter how deeply two men or two women grow into friendship, in
other words, two women becoming dear friends, two men becoming dear friends, whether
that is a completely platonic thing or even an erotic thing, the Bible teaches a man cannot
complete a man, and a woman cannot complete a woman, not in this fundamental way.
What happens is when you get married, and you are continually finding you are relating
to someone of the other gender, youre continually brought up against this very odd
mystery. The mystery is on the one hand this is a person who is utterly unlike you, utterly
different, thinks differently, and operates differently. In some cases its frustrating. In many
cases its scary, and sometimes its just downright incomprehensible.
On the other hand, at a deeper, deeper level, Im finding who I really am. This is my
other half. This is my completion. This is me. What the Bible is saying is that it goes a lot
deeper. Theres a mystery to the otherness of gender. One more thing: What is submission?
I just need to summarize it because next week we can get back and lay these things out in a
much more detailed way.
What then is submission? Its tie-breaking authority. If a husband and wife are friends,
and the Bible says as iron sharpens iron, friend sharpens friend. It is a complete
misunderstanding, its a traditionalist distortion of headship and submission, to say the wife
is the submitter and the husband is the head. That means the husband gets his way. The
husband makes the decisions in the family.
Thats ridiculous because if marriage is the ultimate friendship and iron sharpens iron as
friend sharpens friends, if in good friendships you have this clash, you have this consensusbuilding, you have this debating going on, then in marriage there also has to be this
equality, this contention, this sharpening each other. How else are you going to be grabbing
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each other and pulling each other away from the dark side of your gifts? You have to have
the right to do that.
Therefore, most all the time, the way a husband and wife make decisions, especially
since the Bible says as Jesus Christ died for the church; therefore, the husband would never,
ever, ever, have the right just simply to use his authority to simply please himself, ever. So
what you do is youre sitting there trying to figure out whats best, but what happens when
you cannot agree?
The egalitarian marriage people say you just dont make the decision if you cant agree.
That doesnt always work. What if you cant agree on where to put your kids in school?
Public or private or this private or that private school? What if you cant agree? You have to
put them somewhere. How do you break the tie? The Bibles answer is let the husband do
it. Why?
The Bible says when you let the husband initiate, when the wife defers, youre getting
in touch with something deep inside you. Youre getting in touch with your masculinity and
your femininity. Youre getting in touch with something very deep, something very real. It
glorifies God, and its in accord with your particular modality of humanity. It will not
necessarily fit what youve been taught to believe in your English courses in college.
It will not necessarily fit even your feelings, but you will find it actually fits the reality
of who you are. When the Bible talks about let the husband lead in the final analysis. Let
him have tie-breaking authority, which formally is not something that is used very often. In
my own marriage, you can count on two hands how many times that has actually happened,
the formal exercise of authority.
What the Bible is actually saying is at this point, in this place where you let the husband
initiate, where you let the wife defer, you will find you are getting in touch with something
very deep inside yourself. What youre actually doing is youre becoming more masculine
and more feminine and together more complete and more restored into the image of God.
The perfect case is here is a person who wants to plant a church in New York, and hes
married to a person who doesnt want to. Listen, heres how it goes. He says to her, Hey, I
want to go. You dont want to go. If you dont want to go, Im not going to force you. Of
course, not. So we wont go.
She turns around and says, Wait a minute. You just let me break the tie. Whats the use
of you being the man anyway here? If you see God calling you into the wild, if you see God
calling you out to do something wild Look, I dont like to take risks. I dont like doing
that. Its bothering my nesting instinct, but if God is calling you to do that, for gosh sakes,
be a man. Break the tie.
Is that wimpy? Thats helping. At that point, the husband and the wife are submitting to
a role they didnt really want. The husband doesnt really want to take the responsibility,
but the wife is actually pressing him. In a wimpy way? No, to be a helper takes a terrific
amount of strength. She presses him into the most masculine thing he has ever done.
On the other hand, by her deferring to me and saying, I will support you no matter
what, and I wont say I told you so no matter what happens, shes doing the most feminine
kind of keeping her strength and her power under me and enabling me with it. Dear friends,
you come to find out who you really are.
We know tons of people who for years were homosexual but who now are in Christian
heterosexual marriages. We even know one guy who was two weeks from a sex change
operation, having lived as a woman for two years in Washington, DC. Theyll tell you the
same thing.
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When you actually begin to submit to what the Scripture says the fundamental
differences are between husband and wife, its not oppressive by any means. Oh no, the
husband cannot demand headship. He can only earn it. The wife can give it, and when that
happens you get in touch with a fundamental difference between maleness and femaleness
in you that only submission to the rulebook of the Designer will help you to discover.
Next week we come back because I know it raises a lot of issues, and the time is up.
The issues are, Im single. Does that mean I cant get completed? The answer is
unfortunately were sub-men and sub-women. Marriage is for sinners, and the trouble is
marriage between sinners, as good as it is, is nowhere near as good as its supposed to be or
good as it ought to be. The sanctification differential between being married and being
single according to the Scripture is a trade-off.
If God calls you into marriage, thats the way God wants you to grow into
completeness. If God doesnt want you right now to be married Listen, men. Jesus is the
Helper. Listen, women. Jesus is the Head. He is the paragon of both masculinity and
femininity. He is so masculine he makes us men feminine in relationship to him. Thats why
hes the head and were the church and the bride.
Theres another place where Jesus Christ says, Can a mother forget the baby that sucks
at her breast? She may forget, but I will not forget thee. What God is saying is, I am so
nurturant. I am such a Helper that I even make you women look masculine in comparison
to me. Do you want to be completed ultimately? Come to me. Do you want to know what it
means to be a man? Look at me. Do you want to know what it means to be a woman? Look
at me.
God says, Im more of a man and more of a woman than you are. Therefore, regardless
of where you are, come to me, and I can complete you. If youre being called into
marriage, stop being scared of it. If youre not being called into marriage, stop wanting it so
badly, because its God who provides the sanctification. Its God who provides the
restoration of unity. Its God who provides the completion.
Were going to finish up on this next week. Im going to pray, but then when we sing
this final little hymn
Oh Lord, youre beautiful,
Your face is all I seek,
For when your eyes are on this child,
Your grace abounds to me.
thats the completion of which even the best marriages are only a dim hint. Lets bow in
prayer.
Our Father, we ask now that you would help us to see this complicated and yet wonderful
and mysterious subject is again nothing but a beautiful parable, a beautiful picture of the
way in which you complete us. Father, we thank you that your Son is our Husband. We
thank you that even the best marriages are just dim hints of the joy and the rapture of being
one with your Son.
We pray, Lord, everyone here will be more equipped to understand the glories of their
salvation because they begin to understand youve called us to be men and women as well
as people under God. We thank you for this teaching, and we pray, oh Lord, complete us
now as we lift our souls to you. We ask it in Jesus name, amen.
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MARRIAGE AS COMPLETION;
GENDER ROLESPART 2
MarriageOctober 6, 1991

Ephesians 5:2233
Were looking at a subject thats controversial, and yet on the other hand I find I hate
most controversial subjects, as a lot of you know. I dont enjoy getting after things that
divide people. Yet this is not a controversial issue thats intellectual. This is a very, very
personal one. In most controversial issues its very hard for me to preach with a lot of
conviction because I say, Who knows? There are a lot of wonderful, godly, intelligent
people who believe differently. How do I get off preaching from Mount Olympus and
saying this is the way it is?
In this area, though, I think its biblically clear, and I also know Im going to try
tonight especially to speak as personally out of my own experience as I possibly can. Yet
its still an area where I have to tread lightly. I have to think very carefully, and so tonight
well continue for one more week the subject of looking at the passage (verse 22) of,
Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as
Christ is the head of the church
What does this mean? The answer is it means a whole lot. Lets just read the whole
passage as usual, because I like you to keep on thinking of the whole passage. Ephesians
5:2133.
21

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit to your
husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the
head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits
to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself
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up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the
word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or
any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to
love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29
After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as
Christ does the church30 for we are members of his body. 31 For this reason a man
will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become
one flesh. 32 This is a profound mysterybut I am talking about Christ and the
church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and
the wife must respect her husband.
This is Gods Word
Now, Ill recap, elaborate, and work out the implications. What is it that Paul is teaching?
First of all, lets take a look at this word head. For the husband is the head of the wife as
Christ is the head of the church This means two things, and I dont know if you can
Those of you who were here last week might not remember since I, as usual, was verbose
and spent a lot of time developing the themes.
Let me boil the teaching of the passage down to you. First of all, head means the
husband and the wife complete one another. Secondly, head means there actually is an
authority structure inside marriage. Those are the two things. Lets look at them again, and
let me try to elaborate as well and make it as clear as I can.
1. Headship means completion
When it says the husband is the head of the wife, we said the word head means Its just
like the word authority. I didnt say this last week. The word authority has actually two
parts to it. Inside the word authority is the word author. Therefore, the word author means
source. Something has authority if youre the source.
The illustration I like to use, and some of you have heard it, of course, is if youre
having a debate in your English class over what this poem means, and everybody is saying,
I think this means this. Somebody else says, I think it means this. Somebody says, No,
it means this. In comes the poet
Now I know deconstructionists dont care what he thinks, but the normal logical person
realizes in comes the poet, and the poet says, I wrote this thing. Ill tell you what it
means, and everybody shuts up. Why? This is the author speaking. Because hes the
author, he alone can tell you what it means. Hes the source; therefore, he has authority.
The idea of authority and source go together. Even in the English word because inside
the English word authority you have the word author. Inside this Greek word for head, you
have both the idea of source as well as the idea of authority structure. First, you have the
idea of source. When Paul says, The wife submits to the husband, for the husband is head
of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, he is talking and thinking about the Old
Testament.
Hes talking about Genesis where were told Eve was created out of Adam. The two
actually were part of one another. You dont have two separate creations ex nihilo. You
dont have Adam created out of the ground and Eve created out of the dust, but you have
Adam created out of the ground and Eve created out of Adam. What is the significance of
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that? Very, very great.

In Genesis 1:27, were told, in the image of God created he him; male and female
created he them. When in Hebrew you put two statements back-to-back, theyre usually
parallel. That means one is the restatement of the other. First of all, it says, So God created
man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he
them, which is pretty clear.
What that means is when God says, Im going to create a human being. That human
being is in the image of God, the human being is like a little mirror that reflects to God his
own being, his own rationality, his own personality, his own creativity, his holiness, and his
righteousness. Being in the image of God means we are persons, and we have the ability to
reflect to God his nature in a way the animals dont, in a way the rocks dont and the trees
dont.
Then it says, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he
them. The clear implication is when God created human beings to reflect him, he created
human beings in two modalities, that together the male and female were built to stand there
and reflect back to God his being in a way the male alone or the female alone cant do.
Maybe youre thinking about kind of an illustration of that like two pieces of a mirror,
and you put them together and they show forth the image of God. That doesnt quite work
because if you have a mirror and you sort of crack it down the center and you have two
mirrors, the fact is that both mirrors can completely reflect the totality of your being. Isnt
that right? You dont need a large mirror or a small mirror. The small mirror can do it.
I think its more like heres a piece of aluminum foil, and that aluminum foil reflects
you fitfully. Heres a piece of clear glass, and the clear glass reflects you fitfully too. The
aluminum foil reflects you in kind of a distorted way. The glass reflects you, not in a
distorted way, but in a shadowy way. If you stick the aluminum foil behind the glass, if you
back the glass with the foil, what do you have? You have a mirror, and the mirror perfectly,
by putting those two elements together, reflects the person who is looking into it.
The Scripture in so many ways says male and female together reflect God in a way
male alone or female alone cannot. This may sound like common sense to you. This may be
something you thought you know the Bible has taught for years, maybe, but I want you to
realize its an amazingly controversial topic. Our entire society is moving completely away
from the idea. The ramifications are huge. I guess we ought to think about some of them
tonight.
Lets show another place in which that comes up. When Adam is naming the animals in
Genesis 2, were told at the end of all of his naming of the animals, But a suitable
companion was not discovered for him. That tells us Adam was created with certain
design deficits. He needed a companion. He needed something to complete him.
You go back into the Old Testament, and youll see in the early stages of the book of
Genesis you have nothing but benediction. The word benediction means a good word. Bene
is right, and dict is like dictionary: a good word. All you see is God created the light and the
darkness, and he saw the light was what? Good. Its a good word, benediction. He created
the flora and the fauna, and it was good. He created the fishes and the animals, and it was
good.
Hes creating all these things, and its good. Benediction. Suddenly, it says it was not
good for man to be alone, malediction, a bad word. Yet theres no sin in the world yet.
There has been no fall. Theres no entrance of evil. How could it be bad unless God
actually went ahead and created Adam in such a way that he was not able to reflect the
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image of God in totality?

Therefore, literally when Eve was created, it says Eve was created as a companion
opposite to him or corresponding to him. She was opposite to him, and when he discovers
her (I guess we mentioned this a couple of weeks ago), when he first sees Eve, what does
he say? He breaks into poetry, the first poetry in the Bible and, therefore, the first poem in
history.
When you think of poetry, you think of rhyme if youre not really sophisticated. You all
know poetry is more than that. In Hebrew theres a particular poetic form, a poetic couplet,
that Adam breaks into when he sees Eve. He says, This at last Theres been a longing.
Theres been a yearning. Theres been an incompletion. You dont yearn for something
unless theres an incompletion. This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh
What is he saying?
He is saying, This is really weird. Youre really different than me. I mean, youre
opposite to me. It says she was a helper opposite. Youre opposite to me, and yet youre
me. Youre opposed to me. Youre against me, and yet youre me and yet I find myself in
you. Youre the missing part. At last, bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. You shall be
called Woman, for you were taken out of man.
How many times does the Bible have to put it to show there is a fundamental
incompletion each gender has in itself but that together form a whole and enables humanity
together to reflect the image of God? Were told in verse 25 of Genesis 2, immediately after
he meets his wife, it says, And they were naked and unashamed. What happened to him
when he was completed? Again, this is profound. This is deep.
This is the thing Im going to start to wrestle with a little bit for the next five minutes. I
probably wont do justice to it, but we can see the results of completion, personal ease, an
at-easeness. They were naked and unashamed. Theres no anxiety left. Theres no hiding.
Theres a primordial and ancient unity and accord that Adam and Eve had that weve never
had since, because sin entered in and disrupted the unity they were able to have. They were
naked and unashamed, nothing to hide, complete at-easeness with themselves and with each
other.
The Scripture says, and I dont know how many ways you can say it, literally, that there
is a complementary, nonreversible unity between the genders. When I say nonreversible, it
means male and female are different. In some senses theyre opposed to each other. They
complete each other. Theyre nonreversible. Theyre equal but not equivalent.
Now what I was trying to say last week was this is a very, very difficult thing to
articulate. Actually, millions of husbands and wives have experienced this completion, but
they cant articulate it either. As soon as you try to sit down and explain what it is and give
incidence of it, youll see you can always say, Well, couldnt someone else besides a
spouse do that for you? Therefore, the actually experience of completion that comes
through a decent marriage is always bigger than the sum of its parts, but essentially the
completion goes along this line.
I mentioned last week, for example, Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice, is part of a
whole new generation in a sense of researchers who are saying, Do you know what? When
it comes right down to it, even though theres a spectrum of differences inside each gender,
and even though there are all sorts of permeations and variations, essentially male and
female brains and hearts operate in somewhat different ways.
If you remember, the basic summary she came up with was men feel theyre maturing
as they become separated and independent, and women feel theyre maturing as they
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become attached and interdependent. What that boils down to is something pretty
interesting. When two people get together and start to complete each other, that means start
to live together, that means get convinced that each person
How did we put it a couple of weeks ago? You get committed to the glory self of that
person. That means you look into that persons hear, and you see the great potential they
have. You see the great human being God wants to make them. You say, Im committed to
getting that person there. So theres love, theres affirmation, and theres confrontation.
Theres mutual service and all that great stuff that happens, which is hard work, but what
youre doing is youre not battling this out with a person of the same gender.
The confrontation and the criticism and the affirmation and the building up, all this stuff
is not happening with somebody of the same gender. Its someone who is opposite to you,
someone who was created to both oppose you and complete you. Its a hard thing to
describe when you get into it. It doesnt happen with your parents. It doesnt happen with a
friend of the same gender, and it doesnt happen even with a friend of the opposite gender
with whom you dont have this depth of commitment.
In marriage you give people the right to come right on inside. We talked about this
before, to see your dirty parts, to see the most intimate things. Therefore, when you get
someone of the opposite gender in there, the completion work goes on. Its very hard to
describe how something can be opposite to you and at the same time enhancing you.
Musicians know, if heres a musical theme, the right kind of counter theme, which in a
sense opposes the theme, just creates incredible beauty. The wrong kind of counter theme
creates incredible ugliness, and dont ask me how to describe the difference. Everybody
knows that. Everybody knows all by itself a simple melodic line, as beautiful as it is, can be
filled out and furnished and enriched and, in some ways, the beauty of it brought out
because of opposing themes that are being played at the same time.
We also know those opposing themes can be played in such a way as to create
incredible ugliness and just plain noise. Ive heard people try to do it. I took a music theory
class once. Nobody really knows why ugliness happens and why beauty happens, but we
know it happens. So dont try to press me too far on how this completion happens. We just
know it does.
Basically, the completion happens because youre forced for the first time in your life to
continually look at the world through the eyes of someone of another gender. What does it
do? It creates a wisdom and fills you out, just like the opposing theme fills out the melody.
For example, Im thinking of one kind of example. Hear me out before you jump on me for
this.
Here are Kathy and I, and we have two different approaches to emotions. My approach
goes like this. Kathy will one day say to me, Youre mad, arent you? Youre really mad.
Ill say, No, Im not mad. Im fine. I can tell you Im just fine. Three days later, Ill come
back and say, Youre right. I was just really mad.
Shell look at me and say, How can a human being with more than a second-grade
education really live in this world and not know whether theyre mad? How can that be?
How could you stuff your feelings? How could you be so out of touch with yourself?
What shes upset about is my non-completed masculinity. I separate. Im moving out. Im
looking at impact. I dont look inside. I dont look at relationships. I dont care about
attachment.
She has to teach me that, in a sense. She has to furnish that. She has to bring it out.
Shes upset, in a sense, at that point about my uncompleted masculinity. Then later on, I
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may sit down with Kathy, and we both agree theres a person we need to work with, we
need to be civil to, and we need to be courteous to because of a number of situations. That
person has been dirty, has been a louse, so she says, Youre going to have to lead on this
one. I say, Why? She says, Because you know how to stuff your feelings.
By the way, have you ever figured out, women who are in the professional world
The definition of professional behavior is an unrelentingly masculine approach. Because
men were out in the workplace for so long and women were excluded, now that they get in,
all the standards of professional behavior have all been worked out along with masculine
gender types.
What it means to be professional is to stuff your feelings, to be absolutely unwilling to
say to a person youre dealing with how you feel about them, to be completely cool and
completely civil and completely courteous. Now the fact is sometimes thats the right thing
to do. Sometimes thats the servant thing to go. Sometimes thats the mature thing to do, but
very often its not.
Very often when that has to be done, she looks to me, and she says, You help me
because you know how to stuff those feelings so deep you dont even know what the heck
youre feeling for three days. Somebody says, Wait a minute. This is unfair. These are
sexual stereotypes: the insensitive male and the emotional female. Im sorry. Theyre not
stereotypes. Theyre us. What do you think stereotypes are? Uncompleted masculinity,
unredeemed masculinity, and unredeemed femininity.
What happens when you get two people together who are completing each other, who
are pressing each other, who are confronting each other, who are loving each other into the
kingdom of God, what you are continually doing is you are furnishing out and completing
to keep the independence from becoming tyranny, to keep the interdependence from
becoming dependence. We pull it together.
In fact, heres whats interesting. If I am, as a man, over gender-typed, overly
independent, and overly autonomous, my spouse calls me on it, because she sees it, because
shes so sensitive to it. On the other hand, if Im under gender-typed, if Im not independent
enough in a situation that calls for it, she can call me on that, and vice versa. Were
completing each other. Were pulling each other together. Were bringing it together.
Its a mystery that at some deep level you realize, when youre dealing with somebody
of the other gender, Heres a person whos different than me and at the same time who is
me, whos restoring me, whos healing me, whos turning me more and more and restoring
me into the image of God.
male and female created he them. This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of
my flesh
2. Headship means authority
I did mention one thing last week, but I think Id better be as clear as I possibly can. When
in this place the Bible says, Wives, submit to your husbands. Husbands, love your wives,
what is it requiring? Let me give you a kind of little readout. I talked all week to people
about this thing, and most everybody says, I think I got you, and I think I can live with it.
Even if I dont like what you said, at least its in the ballpark, and so let me try to work
this out.
What does it mean when the Bible says, Wives, submit to your husbands ? First, it
does not mean the wives give the husbands unconditional obedience. It does not. Ill get in
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trouble with somebody here. Here we go. In Acts 5:28, the civil magistrates tell the
disciples to stop preaching Christ. Go to Romans 13, and you will see it says the Christian
must always obey the civil magistrate, must always obey the government. Thats what it
says in Romans 13.
In Acts 5:29, what does Peter say? He says, God should judge whether we should obey
you rather than him. The point is any human authority you defer to, any support of human
authority, must never be unconditional. You give Christ unconditional obedience, but your
obedience to any human authority is conditioned on this. You are free from human authority
if to support that human authority you have to forbid what God enjoins or enjoin what God
forbids.
If youre supporting a human authority that is pressing you to sin, that is supporting sin,
at that point your obligation to that human authority goes. You cannot read Romans 13, that
says obey the civil authority as something absolute. In light of Acts 5:29, where the apostles
look at the civil magistrates and say, Youre telling us to no longer preach the gospel. God
says we have to preach the gospel. At that point, we are no longer under your authority.
This would mean certainly for a wife to support the authority of her husband when that
authority is supporting those things which God forbids If he says, Youre going to help
me sell drugs, if hes beating her, in other words, to support authority thats actually
supporting that which God forbids, of course, thats silly. Thats ridiculous. It goes against
Acts 5:29. You must never, ever, ever read that verse
That verse where it says, Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, does not
mean, In the same way you obey the Lord. Its saying as you obey the Lord, you will
obey your husband. You will obey your husband because you obey the Lord. It doesnt say
obey your husband in the same way, to the same dimensions, that you obey the Lord.
I know people have taken it that way. I know the church has twisted it that way. I cant
help that. Im not defending the church. Im defending the Bible here tonight. So it doesnt
say when it says submit to your husbands that means theres some kind of unconditional
obedience, some kind of unconditional servile total authority the wife is supposed to give
herself to.
Secondly, I think I did say this last week to some degree. When it says, Wives, submit
to your husbands it does not mean wives do not take part in the consensus form of
decision-making. The Victorian model of family authority, the little wifey model of
authority, says, Wives, submit to your husbands. That means let your husbands make the
decisions, and you just run errands, you just smile, and you just demurely submit to him.
They never thought about what it means to complete one another.
When the Bible says friends are supposed to sharpen each other as iron sharpens iron,
how much more the ultimate friendship! If submitting to your husband means your husband
makes the decisions, that you never argue, you never go at it hammer and tongs, theres no
completing going on. How does completion work? Completion is hard word. Completion is
conflict. Completion is going at each other. Completion is arguing. Completion is beating
one another up in love. Im talking, of course, metaphorically.
Completion has to happen that way. Therefore, its really clear from the Scripture, just
by all this talk about how youre supposed to sanctify each other, youre supposed to be
washing each other, and youre supposed to be dealing with each others blemishes and
confronting each other Its extremely clear that means decision making is always by
consensus. You fight it out. You duke it out. You spend a long time sharpening one another.
That has to happen or theres no completion.
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Then somebody says, All right. What does it mean? We did say this last week, but Ill
show you again why. What does it mean for us to say, Wives, submit to your husbands
? What it means is when you cant agree after lots of completion, after lots of
consensus, somebody has to break the tie. Let the husband do it. Why? Because the Bible
says when that happens, when the husband breaks the tie, when the wife defers, then youre
getting in touch with your masculinity and femininity even though you may not like it. You
will. Youll find it. Its there.
I have lots of friends who believe very much in something that is a completely new idea
in the whole history of the world, and that is egalitarian marriage. It might be right, but at
least you realize how incredibly innovative the whole thing is. In an egalitarian marriage
they say decision making has to happen, and no one breaks the tie. You work it out. If you
cant come to agreement on it, nobody has the right to break the tie and take the authority.
Nobody has been able to argue me out of this. My experience is thats impossible. There
are just too many places where you have to make a decision, and then not to make a
decision means youre actually giving one person their way. The perfect example, which I
used last week and I didnt use our names, but of course, you knew what it was all about.
Heres Tim Keller who wants to go to New York to start a church, and heres Kathy
Keller who doesnt. I mentioned this, but I dont think I brought this out so clearly. At one
time during all of this battling, we suddenly realized there was no way we could decide not
to decide. At one point, I said to her, Well, if you dont want to go, were not going to go.
She pointed out to me, That means I get to break the tie. We suddenly realized, Oh
my gosh, theres no way out. Either I got to break the tie, or she got to break the tie. There
was no third way. There were no alternatives. There is no such thing as an egalitarian
approach here. No way. I can think of dozens and dozens of other situations, like Do you
put your kids in private school or public school or what school? and so forth.
Not to decide is to decide. Whos going to break the tie? At that point, my wife says,
You break the tie. Do you see what happened? My wife and I are not from the Midwest.
Were not from the South. Were from the Northeast, raised in public schools, and went to
private schools. We dont have any ideological prejudice toward this approach. Not only
that, neither of us, as most of you know, are very overly gender-typed.
Therefore, why did we do it? Why did we decide in this marriage, when we cant come
to a consensus, when we really are kind of at loggerheads, weve done all the completing
we possibly can, we cant bring ourselves around, why let Tim make the decision? I want
you to realize this has happened less than 10 times in our marriage. In fact, we can only
name about six, but were sure there must be some other ones.
Why? We did it as unto the Lord. We did it simply to obey, simply because somebody
has to do it. If you dont decide who its going to be on the basis of what the Bible says, on
the basis of revelation, what are you going to do? Whoever has the loudest mouth, whoever
is the best at manipulation? What are you going to do?
I think thats the only alternative. If somebody has a better alternative, show me. As you
can tell, Ive been talking about this for 17 years to people, and nobody has even come
close yet to showing me what that third way is. You have to decide whos going to do it. We
have found even though ideologically and emotionally and every other way, it doesnt
really make much sense to us, we found out it did bring out something in us.
It did get us in touch with the male and the female form of our humanity. It did make us
fit. It did complete us in a way we never, ever would have thought of. Heres the other
wonderful thing about this teaching you must never, ever miss. It says wives, respect your
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husbands. It does not say, Husbands, get the respect of your wives. Take the respect of
your wives.
The only thing husbands are commanded to do in a biblical marriage is love. I want you
to think about the implications of this. One of the guys I go to all the time, because I respect
him so much as a teacher, as a scholar, and as a preacher was a Welsh pastor preacher,
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones. I got out his sermon on this text.
Lloyd-Jones was a man from the old school. He was raised in Wales in the early part of
the twentieth century, and he was by no means what you might call a modernist. He tended
to be very, very old school in many ways. It was amazing what he said. He says, The clear
implications of this text where wives are told to respect their husbands, but husbands are
not told to exert their headship, but only told to love, the clear teaching is husbands are not
at all entitled to headship unless they are loving their wives sacrificially.
Ill put it another way. Headship is never, ever something you demand or take. Its only
something you can receive. If there are any women in this audience who feel like, I hate
this idea of headship, you have to see the Christian understanding of headship is incredibly
realistic. It says a husband never, ever, ever has the right to take it, only to receive it, never
has the right to demand it, only to earn it.
If hes not earning it, if you dont trust him Husbands, if she doesnt trust you, if
youre not living such a sacrificial life for her, putting her needs ahead of yours so she
trusts you, shes not going to give you headship, and you dont deserve it. You dont even
have any right to have it, nor can you ever demand it. Do you want headship? You love her
until she finds its something she wants to do. Thats what the Scripture says, clear
implications. It never says, Rule your wife. Never. It says, Love your wife.
Yet, on the other hand, it turns around to the wife and says, Respect and give the
headship to your husband. The realism of this thing is overwhelming. Why? Do you
remember? We said Genesis 2 and 3 tell us sin has changed the headship principle and
twisted it so men will naturally oppress women. Itll always be a tendency. It will always be
there. It doesnt eliminate the headship principle. Plenty of people say because of that
oppression, we have to eliminate it totally in marriage; its just too dangerous.
If it was too dangerous, theres wisdom to that, but the Bible doesnt give you that
wisdom. We cant try to be wiser than the Scripture. What the Scripture does, though, is it
hedges it about with all kinds of marvelous and wonderful safety catches, and heres one of
them. Husbands, youre never allowed to take the headship. Youre only allowed to receive
it. Youre only allowed to earn it.
Theres no oppression here. Theres not even any chance of oppression if two people
who sit down go in and understand what the Scripture teaches. People can twist Scripture.
They can twist anything if they want to. If you look at the Scripture and see what its
saying, its impossible with a decent understanding of it to use it to kill each other with.
People do it all the time. Its because they dont understand it.
Somebody says, Well, look, if this is really true that male and female are that different,
and they complement one another, if thats really the basis for this unity, why is it the Bible
doesnt command all women to submit to all men? Why is it theres only a command inside
a covenantal relationship?
The answer again is the realism of the Bible. The realism of the Bible is it knows
because of the influence of sin just what havoc that would wreak and why the Bible does
not say all women are supposed to submit to all men. It simply says in a covenantal
relationship which is hedged about by all these safeguards of this commitment to absolute
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love, there and only there with all these qualifications can you begin to practice the
headship principle and get back in touch with the primordial unity Adam and Eve
experienced.
Well never get all the way there. There are only flashes of it. Its the only safe place to
try it, inside a covenant, inside a commitment, inside a legal bond, but in there work on it,
and wait till you see how wonderful it is occasionally in splashes to really be at ease. This
at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh
The other part of this verse is actually something thats just too wonderful, and its
always missed because everybody is so busy arguing over what the heck it means for wives
to submit to their husbands they overlook the fact that it says, For the husband is the head
of the wife as Christ is the head of the church This is actually teaching us something
marvelous about a relationship with Christ and also saying if you dont understand the
glory of your relationship with Christ, youll never be decent in your marriage.

3. Headship teaches us about our relationship with Christ

Do you know what it teaches you? This is how were going to close up. First of all, it
teaches you this about your relationship with Christ. It teaches you that he is ravished with
you. This is so bold. When it says that when you look at how a man falls in love with a
woman and marries her, you begin to get a little bit of an insight into how Jesus Christ
relates to you in terms of your salvation.
The first thing it proves in our relationship with Christ is that Christs love for us is not
indifferent. Its not abstract. He sets his heart on you with probably considerably more
passion and intensity than anybody in this room has ever set their heart on anyone else. He
is ravished with you. He is triumphant in you. He glories in his relationship with you.
I dont know what a more daring image than that is. I dont know what a more
incredible promise than that is. Partly, its just almost so daring you really dont let yourself
bear the full brunt of it. The man is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.
What an incredible thing! There is a love that goes beyond any kind of passion you will
ever experience, that love for you. He sets his heart on you. He sets his love on you. He
delights in you. He sings over you in his love, he says in Zephaniah. about Jesus love for
you.
Secondly, Jesus love for you is in spite of love. Havent you ever noticed how people
often will say, Oh, theyre in love. Theyre getting married. I wonder what she sees in him.
I wonder what he sees in her? I want you to know the most immature love and the most
mature love look a lot alike.
Theres an immature kind of love that basically gets a crush on somebody, and in spite
of all those flaws, that person In immature love, you dont see the flaws. Everybody
comes up to you and says, Honey, youre going to marry him. Do you realize what he does
to people? Do you realize these flaws? I mean, youre in trouble. She says, But you dont
understand. I see his heart. I see who he really is. The problem is with immature love she
sees the heart but not the blemishes, not the rags.
In mature love, you see the heart, and you see things nobody else sees. You see the
jewels under the earth. You see the ore inside all dirty rock, but you see the blemishes, you
see the rags, and this is how Jesus looks at you. He sees all of your blemishes. He sees all
of your unworthiness. He sees all of your undeservedness, and he says, I dont care. Im
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going to cover it. Im going to deal with it because I see the glorious person youre going to
be in me.
Thats how he regards you, and thats how he looks at you. It says as the husband looks
at the wife and wants to present her to himself spotless and pure, and all that kind of stuff.
Thats in spite of love. What does he see in you? Ill tell you something. Its pretty hard. It
doesnt happen that much in New York because we are so image-conscious that almost
none of us will be caught dead with somebody whose glory is not seen by everybody else
around.
Thank God Jesus is not like us. Thank God Jesus is not at all like us. He sees the jewels
under the earth, and he says, Im committed to that. He loves you in spite of all the lack
of glory and the lack of beauty and the lack of purity.
Thirdly, whenever you fall in love with somebody, you do everything for them. Before
you used to enjoy going fishing, but now, frankly, you dont enjoy fishing unless hes along
or shes along. Before you made money, now you really make money for her or for him.
Now you think about what you can do together. What happens is when youre really in
love, you cant imagine and you cant enjoy anything without that person.
Did you hear about the artist who was absolutely ruined as an artist? He was a
landscape artist, and he fell in love. Unfortunately, no matter what he drew, he stuck her.
Every single painting he put her. He couldnt get his mind Everything was done for her.
Jesus Christ did not die for justice. He does not live for abstract holiness. Its for you. The
Bible says he does everything for you.
Romans 8:28 says, all things work together for good to them that love God
Ephesians 1 says hes governing all history, all of circumstances. Everything is happening
for you. How does Jesus regard us, the church? You send a prayer up there, and he gets it.
He opens his mail, and he says, Ah, a letter from the church. Lets see, the church. Yeah, a
little organization I left down on earth 2,000 years ago. I wonder how theyre getting
along.
No, the Scripture says he does everything for the church. He lives for the church.
Everything that happens is done for the church, for you and me. He doesnt govern the
universe on the basis of abstract principles of righteousness or justice. Its all for you, just
like a man in love. Can you believe that? Can you understand that? Can you think about
that? You wont ever have a good marriage if you cant be ravished with the love with
which hes ravished with you.
Lastly, Christs love is authority. The big problem, the reason a lot of you are scared to
death to get married, and were going to talk about that finally next week Youll say,
What if Im divorced? What if Im homosexual? What if Im single? What does all this
have to do with me? It has a lot to do with you. Thats next week.
Ill tell you one thing. One of the reasons why Somebody says, I want to hear this.
Actually, I dont know what the heck youve been doing for the past eight weeks. You
might as well come next week. Why you were here for the last eight weeks, I dont know.
One of the reasons a lot of people are so scared about marriage, and rightly so, is when you
fall in love, you fall under the authority of that love.
Were not talking now about wife or husband. You know darned well how hard it is to
actually be in love with somebody because now youre not your own person. You have to
make decisions with them. You cant decide, Hey, I want to move to L.A. You have to
find out whether she wants to move to L.A. too. Theres an authority under which you
come. You lose control when youre in love. You have to lose control if youre in love.
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Otherwise, youre using people.

If you let a person into your life, and that person loves you, then you cant treat that
person as a thing. Youve lost control to the degree you have a person in your life who loves
you. When the greatest Person in the whole universe, in the history of the world, comes into
your life, you really lose control.
Just as you lose control when you enter into a beautiful, loving relationship, you also
find yourself, you get completed, so theres nothing like the completion that comes from
losing total control by giving yourself to the Lord Jesus. He is ravished with you. He loves
you in spite of you, in spite of your flaws. He is absolutely doing everything for you. He
wants you to come in under his authority.
Just remember, Jesus is the Helper, and he is the Head. Those of you who say, I want
that completion, Ha! If I had a great marriage, I would be complete. Ha! Those of you
with great marriages, meet me up here and maybe we can talk to these people afterwards
and say a great marriage is not enough. The best marriage in the world is not enough. It
doesnt complete you. Youre not restored into the image of Christ.
Its Christ who completes you. He comes in as the ultimate Helper. He comes in as the
ultimate Head. He comes in as the ultimate Spouse. This text says, whether youre married
or not to a human being, you are married to Christ, and hes ravished with you. He loves
you. Come in under his authority and let him complete you. Lets pray.
Now Father, we thank you that you have given us the right to boldly come before you and
say because you love us we know you will enable us, you will glorify us, you will do all
things for us. We thank you that, whats so odd, the more we give up our authority, the more
we give you control, the more power, the more freedom, the more authority we feel, and the
more we become ourselves. Help us to take all these words we have read tonight and weve
studied and listened to tonight and apply them to our lives by your Spirits power. In Jesus
name we pray, amen.

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MARRIAGE SUPPER OF THE LAMB

MarriageOctober 13, 1991

Ephesians 5:2133
21

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit to your
husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the
head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits
to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself
up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the
word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or
any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to
love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29
After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as
Christ does the church30 for we are members of his body. 31 For this reason a man
will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become
one flesh. 32 This is a profound mysterybut I am talking about Christ and the
church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and
the wife must respect her husband.
This passage in Ephesians 5 on marriage is the ninth sermon on Marriage, and this is the
last one. I want to start off right now by saying, unfortunately, there are a lot of people Ive
talked to over these nine weeks whove said, Are you going to say this? Are you going to
get to this? and I said, Yes. I dont know if Im going to do it. I have to be done tonight.
Were done. Im tired, youre tired, of marriage. I just have to finish tonight.
From here, Ive said, Well, Ill say this or Ill address this person. Im not sure if
Im going to get to it all tonight. I want to apologize ahead of time. Dont be too mad. If
you are somebody I talked to somewhere in the last few days or few weeks and said, Yes, I
will definitely address that, Im just not going to get to it all.
Tonight I would just like to talk about, in some ways, the peak verse of this entire
passage. I wont even read the whole thing again, but its Ephesians 5. I just want to read
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verse 32. Weve been going in these evening services through the book of Ephesians.
Weve come to this passage on Marriage, and were going to look for the last time at it.
The whole passage runs from 5:21 to verse 33, but I would like to just read you one
verse and expound it and try to pull the meaning out of it. Its verse 32, where Paul says,
This is a profound mysterybut I am talking about Christ and the church. Hes able to
say all this stuff Ive been talking to you about husbands and wives and love and
submission and relationships. Its all been about Christ and the church as well.
If I was going to name this sermon, and maybe I should someday, I would call it
something besides Marriage #9. Id call it The Marriage Supper of the Lamb. What Paul is
saying is, Everything Ive said in these verses you can say about the married state and
about the gospel state, about your relationship between you and Christ.
Ill put it this way. This verse is teaching us there are some things we would never know
about marriage if we dont know about how you relate to Christ by faith. Conversely, there
are things we would never know about our relationship with Christ if we didnt know about
marriage. When you look at marriage, you see things you would never know about a
relationship with Christ otherwise.
When you look at Christ in a relationship with him, you learn things about marriage you
wouldnt know otherwise. Did you catch that? Theres two sides. In some ways, what Paul
is saying is if you dont know both marriage and a relationship with Christ, you dont really
know either. In a sense, one teaches you about the other, and you cant completely
understand one without understanding the other.
All I would like to do is lay out those two headings, though you could go on infinitely
thinking and reflecting about this. What does marriage teach us about our relationship with
Jesus and what does our relationship with Jesus teach us about marriage? I would just like
to take those two headings, and I would just like to say there are two things Id like to
mention under each heading. Two things we learn.
1. What does marriage tell us about our relationship with Jesus?
What do we learn from marriage? What do we learn from being married? What do we learn
from what the Bible teaches about marriage that teaches us what it means to be a Christian?
Here are the two things. Lets look at them.
First of all, I believe marriage teaches you about repentance and grace in a way
nothing else on earth can. It teaches you why your relationship with Christ has to be based
on repentance and grace, not on works, not on good deeds, not on performance, because
your marriage relationship could never be based on your good deeds and your performance.
Secondly, marriage teaches us about the relationship of intimacy to fruitfulness. Ill go
back over both of these.
A. Marriage teaches us about grace and repentance. A lot of us think we know about it.
We think we know what it means to repent and believe. Until you get married, you realize
you dont know much about it. It was pretty interesting yesterday, for example, for me just
to hear briefly a place where Orrin Hatch at the hearing said sexual harassment is
unforgivable.
Does he really mean that? Does he know what hes saying? Whats interesting to me is
he does know what hes saying because in the public realm, from what I can tell, generally
speaking people dont believe in forgiveness. They believe if you forgive people for things
they have done, youll be crushed. You cant forgive people.
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When Lee Atwater, conservative republican official who recently died of cancer
Maybe some of you saw this. It just didnt get the press I thought it probably deserved. Lee
Atwater was a dirty politician, a backstabber, somebody who went and dug up dirt and used
it against his opponents in campaigns. He got cancer. Before he died, he was converted.
From what I can tell, he became a born-again Christian.
What he began to do is to confess and ask forgiveness. He began to confess his sins to
people. He said, I was a dirty politician. I was a dirty dog. It was interesting to see how
people responded. It was interesting to see what the writers and the pundits and the
columnists said. Basically, they had to be a little bit careful because the man was dying, and
they liked the fact he was admitting he was a dirty dog.
Basically, you could tell what they were saying was, What do you mean forgive? How
do you forgive somebody for something like that? What do you mean wipe the slate clean,
and everything is okay? Come on. Nobody believes in that really. You dont forgive groups
of people for sins against other groups of people. You dont do that. All you do is remind
them about it forever. You never, ever, ever, ever forgive. Somebody decides to ask
forgiveness. Good. Im glad he has admitted the kind of person he really is, but forgive
him? Come on.
Chuck Colson, who worked in the Nixon administration, whos a very famous bornagain Christian type, the way in which he was regarded from what I can tell basically by the
media is with absolute scorn. The idea that somebody who did the things he did Now
he gets converted, and he says, God has forgiven me, and he expects us to forgive and
forget, to wipe the past clean? Come on. Thats the attitude.
The attitude is to forgive means you put yourself in a place of weakness, and you will
be absolutely crushed. When you get married, you find its actually the opposite. If you
dont forgive, if you dont put the past behind you, if you dont start clean, you will be
crushed. Its exactly the opposite.
Out in the world, people say, Hey, you achieve or you dont. If you fail, if you blow it,
dont ask us to forgive. Dont ask us to wipe out the past. If you sin, itll be on your blot
forever. We will always consider you that way. Give me a break. Wipe out the past.
Forgiveness. Come on. Youll be crushed if you forgive people.
In marriage youll be crushed if you dont. What you see in marriage for the first time is
you cant be saved by your works. You cant be saved by your performance. You have to be
saved by sheer grace, by constant forgiveness, and by constant repentance. In fact, in a
good marriage, what you have is the drama of salvation continually and constantly played
out.
If fact, sometimes it goes through the cycle. I call it the gospel cycle. The gospel cycle
happens actually several times a day in a very, very, very small way, and then sometimes a
couple of times a month in a large way, and actually a couple of times in a lifetime in a
very, very large way. The drama basically is you have peace and you have harmony until
somebody decides to live for their own glory. Somebody decides to put his or her own
glory and happiness above the other one. Because that person sins, that person decides to
go his or her own way, decides to live for his or her own glory, theres estrangement and
alienation.
Heres peace and harmony, and then theres sin. Then theres estrangement, alienation,
and hostility. Then somebody reaches out, and theres redemption. Theres reconciliation,
and theres peace and harmony. Thats the cycle. In every good marriage that sort of thing is
happening constantly at various degrees of seriousness. Let me give you an example of
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what I mean. That redemption part is really critical.

In the Bible were told redemption happens because two things are happening. On
Gods side theres electing love. That means God, who has every right to be angry at us
because he has been offended, is the one whose glory has been impugned. Hes the one who
has been trampled upon. God puts away his wrath, covers the sin, reaches out, puts his love
on people, and says, I want you. I know what youve done, but Ive put that behind me.
Ive dealt with that. I want you. Open your heart to me. Thats Gods part, electing love.
The human part is repentance.
Lets talk about it. You see, these two sides The offender repents. The offended
elects in love. Both of those things have to happen, but actually, though we know biblically
they happen in this order, God is the one who comes after us, and we repent, In marriage
the fact is it can happen either way, but they both have to happen. What happens if your
spouse has wronged you? If youre the offended one, what can you do?
You can say, Im going to put away my wrath. Im going to lay it aside. Im going to
deal with the sin. Im going to cover it. I open myself to you. I want you. How do you do
that? Generally speaking, of course, youre not very verbal. In fact, if you sit down and say,
Im the offended one, but I lay aside my wrath. I put away the sin, and I am open to you
coming back anytime you want to grovel, youll see what youve actually done is not
electing love. Youre punishing the person.
Let me tell you what it means to truly elect somebody, to truly choose somebody freely.
What you basically say is, I know youre under a lot of pressure. As soon as you say that,
as soon as you dont revile even though youve been reviled, as soon as you dont pay back
even though youve been hit, as soon as you just say, like Jesus says in the garden, The
spirit is willing. I know you meant well. I know youve been under a lot of pressure, what
that does is it gives the other person the open door.
Its a way of saying to the other person, Im not going to pay back. I really want you.
Ordinarily, just that kind of thing, just to have the other person know, Youve just
slammed, but youre not getting slammed back, and the offended says, I know youre
under a lot of pressures, or something like that, that convicts you of sin. It convicts the
offender of sin, and the offender says, Well, yeah, but its no excuse for what I just did,
and theres the cycle. Theres the gospel cycle, election and repentance. It happens. Thats
the one side.
The other side is the offender has to actually repent. Now repentance is the thing you
learn in marriage. If you want to understand repentance biblically Its so important. Ill
just spend a moment or two on it. You dont really understand it until you get into marriage,
until you learn all this in marriage.
Repentance you can see in the parable of the prodigal son. There, the Prodigal Son
comes to his sense, and he says, Im not going to make any excuses. I come back to my
father, and I say, Father, Ive sinned against you and in heavens sight, and I make no
excuses. Not only that, I dont make any demands from you. If you want to take me back,
you can. If you dont want to take me back, you dont have to. If you want to take me back
partially, fine. Your schedule is fine. I deserve what I get. Ill do anything to make it right,
and Ill take whatever you give me.
Thats repentance. Its not penitence where youre trying to sort of pay for your sins by
groveling deep enough and flagellating yourself, nor is it explanation. A lot of people think
theyre saying Im sorry, but theyre explaining. Theyre making excuses. Theyre saying,
Father, you know, but I was rebelling. I was 18 years old, Father. Thats why I was in the
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pig sty, but Ive been reading books about this. All kids need to separate to come to
maturity. So I would like my place back, maybe not the room I had before.
Thats not what he does. In repentance what you say is, No excuses, no defenses, I will
take whatever you can give me, in your time, at your discretion. That is what reinstitutes
the relationship, and nothing else. Its one of my favorite illustrations, and when I saw this
movie I dont remember much else about the movie. It wasnt a terribly remarkable
movie, but it was the movie with Ted Danson and Jack Lemmon and Ethan Hawke. It was
called Dad. It wasnt a big splash. It was probably last year.
Theres this one place where the college-age son talks to his father, Ted Danson, and
says, Dad, why did you leave us? He divorced the family, and he left the mother with the
kids. The kid looks at the father, and theyve always been estranged. He says, Dad, why
did you leave us? Ted says, Well, we had irreconcilable differences. We had two different
views of life. We were both really young. Neither of us really knew what we wanted to do.
The son is looking at him. Finally, Ted puts his head down, and he says, Let me tell
you why I left, because I loved the powerful feeling I had when I made money and I
couldnt make money and have the job I wanted to have and still have that family, because
your mother was always making me feel guilty. I loved the power. I wanted that more than I
wanted to raise you, and thats why I left.
When he did that, he moved from explanation to repentance, and instantly you could
sense the relationship was resurrected instantly. The director knew the way human beings
were. The gospel was happening. There was real repentance, and so there was real
reconciliation. What was so funny was as soon as he was willing to admit just how bad the
past was, you could see the son was sitting there ready to say, Im ready to forget the past
if youll just admit it. What has come between me and you is your pride, Dad.
Repentance is something you learn. Everybody thinks repentance and forgiveness and
admitting youre wrong and confession will crush you out there, but in marriage itll crush
you if you dont do it. In fact, let me go this far. If you dont understand the important of
repentance, you dont understand the gospel. When youre depressed, the best thing you
can do for yourself is repent. When youre bitter, the best thing you can do is repent. When
youre being accused falsely and persecuted, the best thing you can do is repent.
If you say, What? I admit when youre trying to help somebody whos depressed or
whos bitter or who has been falsely accused, you shouldnt call them to repent because
theyre going to say, I feel bad enough as it is. How can you put a guilt trip on me? If you
have any kind of maturity and any kind of understanding of the gospel, you will know the
best thing you can do when youre depressed or bitter or persecuted is repent.
Find something to repent of. Why? Because when you get depressed, you put yourself
back in control. Here you are depressed, and youre saying, Whats all this happening to
me for? Find something to repent of. Dont say, Well, maybe the reason I lost my job or
maybe the reason this sickness has happened is because Im a bad person. Thats not what
I mean.
What I mean is you can start to say, Wait a minute. Why dont I trust God to be
working in this? Whats the matter with me? Why have I stopped praying just because it
doesnt seem Im getting answers to my prayers? You start repenting for what you can
repent of, and you find yourself getting back in control.
You begin to realize whats making you depressed is not your circumstances but your
responses to your circumstances, and you have control over that. When you start to repent,
you start to say, Wake up. Whats going on here? You stop being a victim. It doesnt get
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rid of the circumstances that are so bad, but it puts you back in control.
For example, what if youre bitter? The best thing you can do for yourself is repent, of
anything, because what makes you bitter is the fact you dont think youre a sinner. What
makes you so miserable is you cant forgive. Youre so angry because youve forgotten
youre a sinner. We were mentioning this in the 4:00 service. The Bible clearly says the way
you know you are a forgiven sinner is you can forgive.
Why do you think so many men are willing to forgive sexual harassment and why so
many women are not? Because an awful lot of men know theyve done it. Thats why
theyre saying, Come on, you have to forgive a person for something like that. The
reason the women arent doing it is because they say, Well, Ive never done such like
thing. I think thats awful. Ive been abused in that way. I think its terrible.
Away, if you can for a moment, from the sexual harassment thing to the principle. The
principle is the way you know you are a forgiven sinner is you can forgive. If you cant
forgive, its because youve forgotten youre a forgiven sinner. If you are bitter and you are
under the thumb of bitterness, its because youve forgotten about all the other areas where
you have sinned and where God has forgiven you and where other people forgave you or
needed to forgive you.
Do you want to get back in control of your life? Repent. If somebody says, Wont that
just make you more upset and terrible? Only if you forget the gospel. The gospel is if
Jesus Christ has died for you, if youve received him as your Savior, then you are
completely accepted by God. Youre never going to ever be cast away. He loves you in
Christ.
One old Puritan put it this way. The way you can tell the difference between a Christian
and a Pharisee is when a Christian sees his sin and begins to repent, he feels closer to God.
When a Pharisee sees his sin and begins to repent, he feels further from God because the
Pharisee has based his acceptance with God on his works. When he sees hes a sinner, he
feels like, How could God possibly accept me? which reveals the fact that he is a selfrighteous, moralistic Pharisee.
A Christian is somebody who, every time you repent, you get back in touch again with
the fact that its all of grace. Its all of grace. The best thing that can possibly happen to you
is to repent. In marriage its absolutely critical, real repentance and real electing love. Do
you see how that works? Youre just continually replaying the gospel again and again and
again.
I dont want to trivialize it, but what Im saying is it happens in the large, of course, for
the big ones, the places where one person in the marriage has really betrayed the other one.
That happens every few years, and theres a major conflict. You go from peace and
harmony to estrangement and alienation and to repentance and election and reconciliation,
and its hard. There are a lot of tears, and everybody falls apart. Then its joy in heaven
when its all done.
It happens in the little. I remember years ago we had a little one of these cycles, and I
refused because I didnt understand what repentance meant in the little things. Theyre not
little in the end because they add up. I used to sit on my bed in Virginia at night. I would
take my shoes off, and I would throw them into the closet. My wife certainly found out
pretty soon that by throwing my shoes into the closet I was making all these scuff marks all
over the inside of the closet and the door lintel into the closet.
A couple of nights after I was doing that, she said, Dont do that. Youre just scuffing
up everything. I said, Oh, Im sorry. I wont do it anymore, but I hardly thought about it.
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What happened is I forgot. It was a habit. So the next night I threw them in again. She said,
You said you werent going to that.
Oh, yes, Im sorry. The third night I did it again. What did she start to think? She
says, Obviously, my concerns are really important to him, so she just stuffs it. Im not
going to keep humiliating myself and nagging him. Hes not going to turn me into a nag.
Im just going to sit here. Thats okay. What happened is every night she would hear a
clump, there would be this little, teeny bit of anger stored up.
Forty clumps later, maybe were having a bad night, or maybe something else is wrong.
I throw my shoe in, and she goes, There you go again. Shes 40 clumps angry, but Im not
even thinking about the 40 clumps. Im just thinking about this one. Im saying, This is
inappropriate anger. I just threw my shoes in. Youre right. I admitted it. I shouldnt have
done it, but come on. Instead of repenting, I defended myself because I said, This is
inappropriate anger. What does she do? She says, Oh, great.
One day, what actually happened was I began to realize what was wrong. I said, What
can I do? That was the beginning of repentance. She said, I dont know. Something to
remind yourself. What I did was, right at the place on the door where I threw the shoes in,
I made myself a sign. I wrote down, Stupid, stop throwing your shoes and hurting your
wife. Signed, God.
I put it there. Did that mean sometimes I forgot and threw my shoes? Of course,
sometimes I forgot, but that sheet represented, in my wifes eyes, repentance because I was
saying, What will it take? What do I have to do? I will take the steps. It is hilarious. As
funny as it is, lousy marriages are made, as they say What is a seashore? Its made up of
little, tiny grains of sand. Those are the grains of sand. They come there. Marriage will
teach you about grace.
Secondly, I will be brief on this, because like I said, I have to finish this thing tonight.
Thats what marriage teaches us about Christianity. Marriage tells us about a relationship
with Christ. Marriage says its all of grace. Its a perfect example of it. Secondly, marriage,
the idea that my relationship with my wife is a picture of Christs relationship with the
church, also tells me about the relationship of intimacy to fruitfulness.
B. Marriage teaches us about the relationship of intimacy to fruitfulness. The fact is the
Bible says when you become a Christian, the first thing that happens is your relationship
with God is changed. You become the child of God. The Bible also says right here, when
you become a Christian, your relationship with Christ changes. You become the bride of
Christ. All of us, male and female, were all brides of Christ. Were all his spouse. There are
some places in the Scripture that talk in some of the most fairly incredible and risqu ways
about that.
For example, in Romans 7, it says, Do you not know, brothers that the law has
authority over a man only as long as he lives? For example, by law a married woman is
bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the
law of marriage. [] So, my brothers, you also died to the law that you might belong to
another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God.
That is saying all human beings, in a sense, are like a woman. If youre married to this
particular man, and you put yourself in his arms Lets say youre Miss C, and you marry
Mr. A. You put yourself in his arms, and you bear fruit into the world through your body:
children. Those children, if youre in the arms of Mr. A, are AC children. If you put
yourself in the arms of Mr. B, then the fruit of that union is born into the world, and those
arent AC children. Those are BC children.
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The point is, and this is amazing, it says the difference in your life when you become a
Christian is before you had yourself in the arms of another. You were trying to earn your
salvation in a different way. There was something else that drove you. You had a different
god. The fruit of that was coming into the world through your body. Now you must put
yourself into the arms of Jesus Christ, and he will bear his fruit into the world through your
body.
What is the fruit? We can be pretty honest about this. For example, Galatians 5 says,
The works of the flesh are adultery, uncleanness, idolatry, hatred, bitterness, strife, envy,
drunkenness, and party spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, meekness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
Here is the point. Once youre married, that doesnt mean youll have any children.
Being married is nice, but you have to continually have the kind of relationship so youre in
each others arms so you will bear children. Not only that, its possible to be married to Mr.
A and be sleeping with Mr. B. What this is telling you is take a look at your life.
What is being born out into the world through your life? Hatred, envy, bitterness,
drunkenness, party spirit? Then youre not in the arms of Christ. Youre in the arms of
someone else, something else thats driving your life, something else youre worshiping,
something else thats more important to you, something else which is your lord, something
else which is your husband. Thats what the imagery is saying.
On the other hand, do you see yourself actually growing in grace, growing in love? Are
you more loving than you were last year? Are you more self-controlled than you were last
year? Are you more peaceful than you were last year? Are you a happier person than you
were last year? If not, if that fruit isnt being born out into the world through your body, if
that isnt happening in your life, if that fruit isnt being born, then you are not putting
yourself moment by moment into the arms of your true Husband.
Its one thing to be married to Christ. Its one thing to become a Christian. Its one thing
to be baptized. Its one thing to make your commitment to him, just like its one thing to be
wedded. Its another thing to actually have an intimate relationship that bears fruit. Are you
day in and day out putting yourself back into your husbands arms?
Im going to show you why, as risqu and as daring as this imagery is, this is the
imagery God uses for good reasons. Im coming to that in a moment, but the point is you
are not going to have a very good marriage if all you ever do is talk to one another on the
way to something else. There have to be times in which you sit down and actually
concentrate on each other. Thats what sex is.
You cant always be saying, How do I look? on the way to something. You cant
always be saying, I need something, on the way to something. I need some money, on
the way to something. I need you to go pick up the kids, on the way to something. Youll
never have any children that way, and the fact is a lot of you are living a relationship with
Christ just like that.
All youre ever doing is calling up when youre in trouble. All youre ever doing is
asking for help when youre in need. Are you setting aside time to look at him and to
rejoice in him and to listen to him and pay attention to his Word and to commune with him
and to pray with him? Do you see what were saying? The relationship of intimacy to
fruitfulness is so obvious in the illustration and so convicting when you think about it.
Marriage teaches us about grace. Marriage teaches us about the relationship of intimacy to
fruitfulness. Then lets switch things around.

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2. What does our relationship with Jesus teach us about marriage?

Our relationship with Christ teaches us two things about marriage we have to look at, and
theyre both very, very important and have a lot of practical ramifications.
A. Our relationship with Christ relativizes marriage. The first thing is the relationship
with Christ as our Husband, as our Bridegroom, sheds a lot of light on a relationship in
marriage in this way. First of all, it relativizes marriage. Marriage is penultimate. It shows
us marriage is only an image of the relationship with Christ. The relationship with Christ
shows us thats the true relationship that completes us. Weve talked about this.
For eight weeks, weve been saying human beings were built with a sense of deficiency.
The reason we seek out someone else to love and to get into their lives, the reason we seek
out someone to couple with and someone to commit to us and commit to, is because we
sense were incomplete. We sense theres a deficiency in us. We sense we need relationship
in order to find ourselves.
As a quick recap, we said in marriage theres this marvelous ability to reprogram the
self-image. Do you remember this from about three weeks ago? In a nutshell, it goes this
way. The divine institution of marriage gives your spouse the ability to overturn everything
you have ever believed about yourself and everything anyone else has ever said to you
about yourself. Your self-image comes from all these different things people have been
saying about you for years.
Now, to put it in a nutshell, if your spouse says youre beautiful and everybody else
says youre ugly, youll feel beautiful. If your spouse says youre ugly, though, and
everybody else says youre beautiful, youll still feel ugly. You have that power in a
marriage to reprogram the self-image.
Heres the danger. That is only an image of the divine marriage you have with Christ.
Ultimately, your self-image, your understanding of yourself, your completion, has to come
from his love for you in your life. Therefore, unless you see your relationship with Christ is
the real marriage, youre going to make an idol out of marriage, and there are two ways you
can do it.
The first way you can do it is by being married. In the marriage you can make an idol
out of marriage. I found this out by reading my old friend, John Newton, the guy who wrote
all the great hymns. He was a tremendous pastor. He wrote lots of letters. Whenever he
wrote letters to people about marriage, he always said the biggest problem in marriage is
idolatry. That is you make the other person your salvation.
Instead of Jesus being the one who really is your strength, the other person is the one
whos your strength. Instead of saying, I know Im okay because Jesus says Im okay, we
put tremendous pressure on our spouse to love us perfectly and to not be bad and not fall
apart and not be too weak. We need someone in our marriage to love us perfectly, and so we
put tremendous burdens on that marriage to make us completely happy.
John Newton says unless you understand the fact that the real Bridegroom is Christ and
the real marriage is a relationship with Christ, unless you see even the best possible
marriages can never satisfy, youll always be demanding more out of your spouse than that
person can ever possibly give. That person is a sinner, and that person is just as upset with
you.
If you dont see that marriage is penultimate its relative youll make an idol out
of marriage. Thats what happens when youre inside marriage, but how do you make an
idol of marriage when youre outside of marriage? Thats easy. Most of you are single, and
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a lot of you know exactly how that works because you say, I have to be married, or Im
going to jump off a bridge.
With the same attitude, if you were married today, youd be wanting to jump off a
bridge anyway. Its not funny, because the attitude that makes you feel like, Life isnt
worth living unless Im married, is the same attitude that will wreck the marriage because
you will be sure that person, that spouse, that marriage has to be the source of all of your
happiness. You say, I wouldnt make that mistake, but youre making it now.
You can easily conclude by reading Genesis 1 and 2, and I think Ive pretty much
concluded, if there was no sin in the world, marriage would be the ideal, and all human
beings would be married. The Bible tells us something happened after Genesis 2,
something called sin, something called the fall. Its very clear from 1 Corinthians 7 and
Matthew 19 that now marriage is only the ideal if youre called to it and when youre called
to it.
Marriage and singleness are trade-offs. There are advantages and terrible disadvantages
to marriage, and there are advantages and terrible disadvantages to singleness. Theyre both
full of glories, and theyre both full of burdens, and they trade off. I remember when I was
a younger minister; I had a friend who was in the ministry. He was single, and I was
married.
We used to argue with each other because when we got under the gun and when we
were under tremendous pressure to produce and we had all these ministry opportunities, we
used to envy the other because he would say, I am so tired. I am so stressed out. I wish I
was married. When Im overworked, all I am is lonely, and I have no comfort.
I would say, Yeah, when youre overworked and youre married, all you get is guilt
because you know youre short-changing your marriage. Youre short-changing your
family. Its true theres a consolation, but theres tremendous guilt too. We began to realize
there were trade-offs here. So is it better? If you go to Ephesians 5, is Paul saying its better
to be married or single? If you go to 1 Corinthians 7, does Paul say it looks like its better to
be single than to be married?
The fact is if you put them together what Paul is saying is it depends on your calling. A
Christian is somebody who says, If Im single today and I dont want to be single and I
dont want to stay single, thats fine. Im going to pray to God for a spouse, but meanwhile,
today Im going to offer up my singleness to him. Im going to ask him to help me with the
burdens, and Im going to ask him to help me capitalize on the opportunities.
E.B. White, who wrote that very famous essay some years ago on New York, says, On
any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and
the gift of privacy. [] It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good
deal on luck. Hes right except about the luck part.
What hes trying to say is as a Christian your singleness means you can do things. You
have a flexibility. You have an ability to make changes. You have certain things you can do,
ministries you can do, and people you can serve a married person cannot. Its also true you
can take this gift of privacy and singleness and strangle yourself with it because as a single
person, you can do things, you can indulge in things and get away with things, you could
never get away with if youre married.
Theres an accountability. Theres an authority youre under when youre married. Its
much harder in some ways to lose self-control when youre married. Oh, its possible, but
theres a certain accountability. It can either destroy you, or it can fulfill you, depending a
good deal on commitment, not luck.
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By the way, some of you are saying, Well, this is pretty interesting. Marriage is
penultimate to the divine marriage. I want you to see that also applies to those of you who
are divorced. A lot of people out there who are divorced have been sitting there saying,
Here Im hearing eight or nine weeks of sermons on marriage, and all it does is make me
feel kind of bad. What does all this have to say to me? Heres what it has to say to you.
The Bible teaches, first, marriage is an amputation. Its not like taking a shirt off; its
like taking an arm off. All this stuff weve been reading about the fact that two people
become one flesh the head, the body, all this sort of thing proves why you have felt as
maimed as you have. If we ever get to the place where our society and our laws try to treat
divorce as if its a light thing, as if its a casual or routine thing, we will know theyre lies
because everybody who goes through it knows its like an amputation.
The Bible also teaches, just like doctors know, sometimes amputation is necessary to
live. Nobody wants to take a leg off. Sometimes its take the leg off or lose everything.
Thats the reason the Bible allows for divorce and prescribes it, and heres why. Marriage is
a high-risk, high-gain thing in the world of sin.
When you get married, youre going be either a lot better off than you were when you
were single or a lot worse off, but you wont be where you were. In marriage you are so
vulnerable that if a villain gets in there and starts to tear things up, you can be destroyed
unless theres a divorce. Thats why God allows for divorce on two grounds: adultery and
willful desertion that cannot be remedied.
Then somebody says, But what if I was the villain? What if looking back Im the one
who blew it? Dont you forget that Jesus Christ is married to you. The real marriage is
intact if you belong to him. Youre his bride, and he sees you through the rags and says,
Im going to make you pure and spotless. I am devoted to you. I love you.
David and Bathsheba, do you remember them? David has an affair with Bathsheba and
gets Uriah killed so he can marry Bathsheba. How do you like an unbiblical divorce? Thats
a pretty bad one. What does God do? Does God say, Okay, Ill forgive you, but your life is
on plan B? No, he not only forgives David and Bathsheba from that incredibly unbiblical
divorce, but he also brings them into a relationship with him so the Messiah is descended
out of their children.
David had a couple of other wives, and God couldve said, Hey, why should I bring
the Messiah out of this terrible relationship? God believes in grace. God believes in
repentance. God believes in wiping the slate clean. God says, You are my spouse even if
you have no other one. I will complete you. I will love you. I will give you the things you
need. I will meet the deficiencies.
B. Our relationship with Christ shows us why sex belongs in marriage only. Its our
relationship with Christ as the Bridegroom that shows us why the Bible teaches that sex
belongs in marriage only. Unless you understand you are married to Jesus, you will never
understand why the Bible has the sex ethic that it does. I want you to know Im just mildly
irked at the fact that I hear people say, I like Redeemer even though they take a hard line
on this chastity thing.
Do you want to know something? What the Bible says is sex belongs in marriage only.
Do you know that all three branches of Christianity have always taught that for centuries?
Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants. Do you know that Judaism has taught that? Do you
know that Islam has taught that? Can you think of many things all those religions have all
agreed on?
If you are an adherent, if you are a believer in any one of those religions and you dont
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believe you have to keep sexual intercourse inside marriage I probably might not be able
to convince you tonight, but I want you to know dont you think of me or us as weird.
Youre the novelty. Youre the blip. There has been complete consensus on this thing. If you
dont understand about the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, you will never understand why
the Bible says keep sex inside marriage. Youll say, Well, thats just a rigid thing. No,
listen to this.
Can you imagine going to Jesus and saying, Lord, I want you to complete me. I want
intimacy with you. I want you to love me. I want you inside me. I want you to come into
my life, and I want you to complete me. I want you to support me. I want you to help me. I
want you to lead me. I want intimacy with you. I want the beatific vision. I want your love
in my life, but I do not want a covenant with you.
I dont want to get up publicly and be baptized. I dont want to be publicly identified
with you. I dont want to make you the number one thing in my life. I dont want to forsake
all others and follow you alone. I want to be able to make my own decisions sometimes. I
dont want to be that vulnerable or committed to you. I want your love. I want your
intimacy, but I dont want a covenant.
How would Jesus Christ react to that? He would say, Come on. Everybody here
realizes how silly that is, but when you decide to say, I want sexual intimacy with you, but
I dont want a covenant with you, youre doing the same thing. You want intimacy without
commitment. Somebody says, Oh, I dont sleep around. I only sleep with people Im
committed to. No, you dont. Physical nakedness and vulnerability has to go with spiritual
and personal nakedness and vulnerability.
Weve said all along the way a man fits into a woman physically is supposed to be a
picture of the way they complete each other personally. When you tell me, Im committed
to that person but not enough to be married, what you mean is, I want to still be able to
make my own decisions. If I want to move here, if I want to go over here, if I want to
change jobs, I want to do it on my own. I dont want to be accountable to somebody else. I
dont want to have to work through consensus with somebody else. I dont want to be that
vulnerable.
So you want a physical nakedness and you want intimacy, but you dont want personal
nakedness or vulnerability, do you? I tell you something. Theres a huge difference between
two people who are having sex and two people who are having sex in the context of a
covenant to complete each other over the years.
If youre really completing each other, the completing comes through hard work, comes
through confrontation. It comes through a commitment where you get up and make a
binding, permanent, exclusive covenant to say, Youre mine, Im yours forever. That
gives you the right to come into me and to talk to me about my sins. Not only that, I am no
longer independent. Im under the authority of the relationship. I cant decide where to go. I
cant decide what to do unless I work it out with this person. Im vulnerable now. Im
committed now.
Intimacy always goes with commitment. It goes that way with your commitment with
God. Why would it be different in a commitment between a man and a woman? Dont you
see how dangerous this is? Because the Christian understanding of sex is not a dirty one
Its not like sex is kind of dirty, so lets keep it inside marriage. The Christian understanding
of sex is so glorious. The Bible goes this far. Weve been hinting at it all along.
The greatest, most rapturous sex between a man and a woman is just a dim hint of the
incredible joy of your marriage and union with Christ. Its actually a foretaste of the great
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day in which we see him face to face, and were in complete union and knowledge with
him. Theres almost no way in the whole world youre ever going to, therefore, understand
the greatness of marriage unless you understand what it points to.
It points all the way to the ceiling. It points all the way to God. Therefore, you cannot
conduct your relationship between a man and a woman differently than you conduct your
relationship between God and yourself. It just doesnt go any other way. Sexual completion
and personal completion are supposed to set each other off.
The reason sex is wonderful between two people who are committed to each other and
working day and night to complete each other and to confront each other and to elect and
repent with each other Let me tell you, sex in that condition is laughter, and its tears.
The sexual completion enhances the personal completion process. The personal completion
process enhances the sexual completion process. You know it to be true.
Do you remember the first time you had sex and you werent married? You were totally
uncovered. You were totally vulnerable. You were totally unified. Dont you remember how
incongruous it was to get up and to walk away and realize that unity did not flow out into
the rest of your life, that that person could go off and make any decision he or she wanted
to make without consulting with you?
To be vulnerable, to be unified physically and not in any other way is a monstrosity. Its
not natural. Its not the way it was supposed to be. That great union with Christ were going
to have on the last day, is that going to be fun? Sure, if you can use the word fun for it. Then
dont you think its earthly analogy, sex, should be fun? Of course, but it points to that. You
have to follow the sign. You dont camp underneath the sign. You take the sign, and you
follow it to the place its showing you to go.

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