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

by Timothy J. Keller

Unless you’re able to look at marriage through the lens of Scripture instead of through your own fears or romanticism, through your particular experience, or through your culture’s narrow perspectives, you won’t be able to make intelligent decisions about your own marital future.

The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.39

The Holy Spirit’s ministry is to take truths about Jesus and make them clear to our minds and real to our hearts—so real that they console and empower and change us at our very center.

When you point out selfish behavior to a wounded person, he or she will say, “Well, maybe so, but you don’t understand what it is like.” The wounds justify the behavior.

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.

“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. It means that, because of his bright holiness and magnificent love, you find him “fearfully beautiful.”

Only out of the fear of the Lord Jesus will we be liberated to serve one another.

This does not mean that every time you are criticized you are consciously, deliberately thinking, “What does Jesus have to say about this?” You won’t have to think it out like that, because if Jesus and his Word are so deeply in there, they will just fortify you, lifting you up. They will be part of you. You look at yourself through his eyes; you look at the world through his eyes. It becomes the cast of your whole mind.

I am the vine, you ARE the branches

The paradox is that friendship cannot be merely about itself. It must be about something else, something that both friends are committed to and passionate about besides one another.

Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth?—or at least, Do you care about the same truth?

God’s calling and love are more foundational to who we are than any other thing.

In this view of marriage, each person says to the other, “I see all your flaws, imperfections, weaknesses, dependencies. But underneath them all I see growing the person God wants you to be.”

The mission!!

A strong marriage between parents makes children grow up feeling the world is a safe place and love is possible.