The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God

by Timothy J. Keller

The Christian teaching does not offer a choice between fulfillment and sacrifice but rather mutual fulfillment through mutual sacrifice.

Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God’s saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us.

The gospel can fill our hearts with God’s love so that you can handle it when your spouse fails to love you as he or she should. That frees us to see our spouse’s sins and flaws to the bottom—and speak of them—and yet still love and accept our spouse fully. And when, by the power of the gospel, our spouse experiences that same kind of truthful yet committed love, it enables our spouses to show us that same kind of transforming love when the time comes for it.

First, the picture of marriage given here is not of two needy people, unsure of their own value and purpose, finding their significance and meaning in one another’s arms. If you add two vacuums to each other, you only get a bigger and stronger vacuum, a giant sucking sound. Rather, Paul assumes that each spouse already has settled the big questions of life—why they were made by God and who they are in Christ.

Whether we are husband or wife, we are not to live for ourselves but for the other. And that is the hardest yet single most important function of being a husband or a wife in marriage. Paul is applying to marriage a general principle about the Christian life—namely, that all Christians who really understand the gospel undergo a radical change in the way they relate to people. In Philippians 2:2–3, Paul says bluntly that Christians should “in humility consider others better than [them]selves.”

To have a marriage that sings requires a Spirit-created ability to serve, to take yourself out of the center, to put the needs of others ahead of your own.

Some will ask, “If I put the happiness of my spouse ahead of my own needs—then what do I get out of it?” The answer is—happiness. That is what you get, but a happiness through serving others instead of using them, a happiness that won’t be bad for you. It is the joy that comes from giving joy, from loving another person in a costly way. Today’s culture of the “Me-Marriage” finds this very proposal—of putting the interests of your spouse ahead of your own—oppressive. But that is because it does not look deeply enough into this crucial part of Christian teaching about the nature of reality. What is that teaching? Christianity asserts, to begin with, that God is triune—that is, three persons within one God. And from John 17 and other passages we learn that from all eternity, each person—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—has glorified, honored, and loved the other two. So there is an “other-orientation” within the very being of God. When Jesus Christ went to the cross, he was simply acting in character. As C. S. Lewis wrote, when Jesus sacrificed himself for us, he did “in the wild weather of his outlying provinces” that which from all eternity “he had done at home in glory and gladness.”6

Paul applies this principle to marriage. Seek to serve one another rather than to be happy, and you will find a new and deeper happiness. Many couples have discovered this wonderful, unlooked-for reality. Why would this be true? It is because marriage is “instituted of God.” It was established by the God for whom self-giving love is an essential attribute, and therefore it reflects his nature, particularly as it is revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Therefore, when facing any problem in marriage, the first thing you look for at the base of it is, in some measure, self-centeredness and an unwillingness to serve or minister to the other.

And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. (2 Corinthians 5:15)

If two spouses each say, “I’m going to treat my self-centeredness as the main problem in the marriage,” you have the prospect of a truly great marriage.

The Christian principle that needs to be at work is Spirit-generated selflessness—not thinking less of yourself or more of yourself but thinking of yourself less. It means taking your mind off yourself and realizing that in Christ your needs are going to be met and are, in fact, being met so that you don’t look at your spouse as your savior.

“Fear” in the Bible means to be overwhelmed, to be controlled by something. To fear the Lord is to be overwhelmed with wonder before the greatness of God and his love.

What is it that most motivates and moves you? Is it the desire for success? The pursuit of some achievement? The need to prove yourself to your parents? The need for respect from your peers? Are you largely driven by anger against someone or some people who have wronged you? Paul says that if any of these things is a greater controlling influence on you than the reality of God’s love for you, you will not be in a position to serve others unselfishly. Only out of the fear of the Lord Jesus will we be liberated to serve one another.

“Why should I leave the ranks of the many women who make ‘family’ their whole life to join the ranks of the many men who make ‘career’ the same thing? Would I not be as devastated then by career setbacks as I have been by romantic ones? No. I will rest in the righteousness of Christ and learn to rejoice in it.

The only way to avoid sacrificing your partner’s joy and freedom on the altar of your need is to turn to the ultimate lover of your soul.

But when the Bible speaks of love, it measures it primarily not by how much you want to receive but by how much you are willing to give of yourself to someone.

To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.

raises a question: How could Adam be in a “not good” condition when he was in a perfect world and had, evidently, a perfect relationship with God?

the power of truth, the power of love, and the power of grace.

These three powers will do their best work in us during times when we find it hard to love the semi-stranger to whom we are married.

But now into your life comes someone who has the power to overturn all the accumulated verdicts that have ever been passed upon you by others or by you yourself.6 Marriage puts into your spouse’s hand a massive power to reprogram your own self-appreciation. He or she can overturn anything previously said about you, to a great degree redeeming the past.

Where?

To be highly esteemed by someone you highly esteem is the greatest thing in the world. This principle explains why, ultimately, to know that the Lord of the universe loves you is the strongest foundation that any human being can have.

So Jesus has the ability to overcome everything anyone has ever said about or to you. In a Christian marriage, you’re living that out in miniature.

So, more than any other human relationship, marriage has a unique power to heal all hurts and convince us of our own distinctive beauty and worth.

One of the greatest expressions of love is the willingness to change, to make a commitment to change attitudes and behaviors in yourself that trouble or hurt your spouse.

The English word “helper” is not the best translation for the Hebrew word ’ezer. “Helper” connotes merely assisting someone who could do the task almost as well without help. But ’ezer is almost always used in the Bible to describe God himself. Other times it is used to describe military help, such as reinforcements, without which a battle would be lost. To “help” someone, then, is to make up what is lacking in him with your strength.6 Woman was made to be a “strong helper.” The word “suitable” is just as unhelpful a translation. This translates a compound phrase that is literally “like opposite him.”7 The entire narrative of Genesis 2, in which a piece of the man is removed to create the woman, strongly implies that each is incomplete without the other.8

In this passage we see taught both the essential equality of the First and Second Persons of the Godhead, and yet the voluntary submission of the Son to the Father to secure our salvation. Let me emphasize that Jesus’s willing acceptance of this role was wholly voluntary, a gift to his Father. I discovered here that my submission in marriage was a gift I offered, not a duty coerced from me.

Nevertheless, when I first heard Christians talk about male and female as “different but equal,” it sounded a little too much like the “separate, but equal” motto of segregation. So my first encounter with the ideas of headship and submission was both intellectually and morally traumatic. But fortunately I had some gifted teachers who steered me to the Philippians 2 passage. And then I saw it. If it was not an assault on the dignity and divinity (but rather led to the greater glory) of the Second Person of the Godhead to submit himself, and assume the role of a servant, then how could it possibly injure me to be asked to play out the “Jesus role” in my marriage?

The Son submits to the Father’s headship with free, voluntary, and joyful eagerness, not out of coercion or inferiority. The Father’s headship is acknowledged in reciprocal delight, respect, and love. There is no inequality of ability or dignity. We are differently gendered to reflect this life within the Trinity. Male and female are invited to mirror and reflect the “dance” of the Trinity, loving, self-sacrificing authority and loving, courageous submission. The Son takes a subordinate role, and in that movement he shows not his weakness but his greatness.

But in the dance of the Trinity, the greatest is the one who is most self-effacing, most sacrificial, most devoted to the good of the Other. Jesus redefined—or, more truly, defined properly—headship and authority, thus taking the toxicity of it away, at least for those who live by his definition rather than by the world’s understanding.

Both women and men get to “play the Jesus role” in marriage—Jesus in his sacrificial authority, Jesus in his sacrificial submission. By accepting our gender roles, and operating within them, we are able to demonstrate to the world concepts that are so counterintuitive as to be completely unintelligible unless they are lived out by men and women in Christian marriages.

Gilligan argued that while men seek maturity by detaching themselves, women see themselves maturing as they attach.18

I have had homosexual friends, both men and women, tell me that one of the factors that made homosexual love attractive to them was how much easier it was than dealing with someone of a different sex. I have no doubt this is true. A person of one’s own sex is not as likely to have as much Otherness to embrace. But God’s plan for married couples involves embracing the otherness to make us unified, and that can only happen between a man and a woman.

Inside a real marriage there will be conflicts rooted in gender differences that are seismic. It is not simply that the other gender is different; it’s that his or her differences make no sense. And once we come up against this wall of incomprehensibility, the sin in our heart tends to respond by assigning moral significance to what is simply a deep temperamental difference. Men see women’s need for “interdependence” as sheer dependence, and women see men’s need for independence as pure ego. Husbands and wives grow distant from one another because they allow themselves to engage in a constant, daily drumbeat of thoughts of inner disdain for the gendered difference of their spouse.

The family model in which the man went out to work and the woman stayed home with the children is really a rather recent development. For centuries, husband and wife (and often children) worked together on the farm or in the shop. The external details of a family’s division of labor may be worked out differently across marriages and societies. But the tender, serving authority of a husband’s headship and the strong, gracious gift of a wife’s submission restore us to who we were meant to be at creation.

First, you have to find a very safe place to practice headship and submission. I say this because I am not unaware of God’s warning that sin will lead men to try to dominate women (Genesis 3:16).25 Therefore it is crucial that women who want to accept gender-differentiated roles within marriage find a husband who will truly be a servant-leader to match her as a strong helper.

The home, then, can become a window into a restored and redeemed human society in which our different gender roles lead to a deeper understanding of ourselves and a deeper melding with the Other.

the Bible gives almost no details about how that is expressed in concrete behavior. Should wives never work outside the home? Should wives never create culture or be scientists? Should husbands never wash clothes or clean the home? Should women take primary responsibility for daily child care while men oversee the finances? Traditionally minded people are tempted to nod yes to these questions until it is pointed out that nowhere does the Bible say such things. The Scripture does not give us a list of things men and women must and must not do. It gives no such specific directions at all.

The basic roles—of leader and helper—are binding, but every couple must work out how that will be expressed within their marriage. The very process of making these decisions is a key part of what it is to think out and honor your gender differences.

The qualities of the other sex “rub off” on you, making you each strong and tender, serving each other in distinct ways. Tim likes to say that after years and years of marriage he often finds himself in situations where he is about to respond, but he knows instinctively what I would say or do if I were there. “In that split second, I have the opportunity to ask myself, ‘Would Kathy’s typical reaction be more wise and appropriate than mine?’ And I realize my repertoire of possible words and actions has been greatly expanded. My wife has taught me how to look at life as she does, and now I have a greater range of responses and a greater likelihood of doing the right thing.”

One of the pillars of wise counseling is the statement, “The only person over whom you have control is yourself.”