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

by Timothy J. Keller

No wise person rejects a gift from someone who loves them without at least giving it a look.

In Jesus we see all the authoritarianism of authority laid to rest, and all the humility of submission glorified. Rather than demeaning Christ, his submission leads to his ultimate glorification, where God “exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name.” By analogy, does that mean that a husband is grooming his wife, in her submission to him, to be lifted in glory above himself? I don’t know, but I do know that if a wife’s role in relation to her husband is analogous to the church’s submission to Christ, then we have nothing to fear.

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.

However, the main point—that men and woman approach the same task in significantly distinct ways—has been verified by a great wave of empirical studies in the last twenty years that support the depth of gender differences in the way we think, feel, behave, work, and conduct relationships.

Using all the qualifiers in the world, in general, as a whole and across the spectrum, men have a gift of independence, a “sending” gift. They look outward. They initiate. Under sin, these traits can become either an alpha male individualism,

Using all the qualifiers in the world, on the whole and across the spectrum, women have a gift of interdependence, a “receiving” gift. They are inwardly perceptive. They nurture. Under sin, these traits can become either a clinging dependence, if attachment is turned into an idol, or individualism,

To love the Other, especially an Other that is hostile, entails sacrifice. It means sometimes experiencing betrayal, rejection, and attacks.24 The easiest thing is to leave. But Jesus did not do that. He embraced and loved us, the Other, and brought us into a new unity with himself. Knowing this kind of gracious, sin-covering love gives believers in the gospel of Christ the basis for an identity that does not need superiority and exclusion to form itself. In Christ we have a profound security. We know who we are in him, and that frees us from the natural human impulse to despise anyone who is significantly different from us. This enables us to embrace rather than exclude those who differ from us, and that especially goes for our spouse, with all his or her mysterious and often infuriating differences.

This all may sound inspiring on paper, but how does this idea work itself out in the actual life of a marriage? 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.

What does that mean for us? It means that rigid cultural gender roles have no Biblical warrant. Christians cannot make a scriptural case for masculine and feminine stereotypes.

We must find ways to honor and express our gender roles, but the Bible allows for freedom in the particulars, while still upholding the obligatory nature of the principle.

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.

But some women might chafe under the idea of male headship: “I agree that men and women are profoundly different according to their sex, but why does the man get to lead? If men and women are equal in dignity but different, why is the husband the head?” I think the truest answer is that we simply don’t know. Why was Jesus, the Son, the one who submitted and served (Philippians 2:4ff)? Why wasn’t it the Father? We don’t know, but we do know that it was a sign of his greatness, not his weakness.

One of the pillars of wise counseling is the statement, “The only person over whom you have control is yourself.” You can change no one’s behavior but your own. If a man or a woman wishes to bring him- or herself more fully into the biblically defined gender roles, it does not actually require assent from the other person.

What does this mean for our attitude toward marriage and family? Paul says it means that both being married and not being married are good conditions to be in. We should be neither overly elated by getting married nor overly disappointed by not being so—because Christ is the only spouse that can truly fulfill us and God’s family the only family that will truly embrace and satisfy us.

The Christian church in the West, unfortunately, does not seem to have maintained its grasp on the goodness of singleness. Instead it has labeled it “Plan B for the Christian life.”

But this high view of marriage tells us that marriage, therefore, is penultimate. It points us to the Real Marriage that our souls need and the Real Family our hearts were made for. Married couples will do a bad job of conducting their marriage if they don’t see this penultimate status. Even the best marriage cannot by itself fill the void in our souls left by God. Without a deeply fulfilling love relationship with Christ now, and hope in a perfect love relationship with him in the future, married Christians will put too much pressure on their marriage to fulfill them, and that will always create pathology in their lives.

This doesn’t mean that if I am Asian I cease to be Asian and become something else. If I am Asian when I believe in Jesus, I become an Asian Christian, not a Latino Christian.

How different seeking marriage would be if, as we argued earlier in this book, we were to view marriage as a vehicle for spouses helping each other become their glorious future-selves through sacrificial service and spiritual friendship.

Paul teaches that attraction is an important factor in choosing to be married.21

But the practical fact is that sexual activity triggers deep passions in you for the other person before you have gotten a good look at him or her. Put friendship development before romantic development.23

Sex is for whole-life self-giving. However, the sinful heart wants to use sex for selfish reasons, not self-giving, and therefore the Bible puts many rules around it to direct us to use it in the right way.

If sex is a method that God invented to do “whole life entrustment” and self-giving, it should not surprise us that sex makes us feel deeply connected to the other person, even when used wrongly.

To resist temptation, we have to speak the truth to our hearts. We must remind them that sex simply cannot fill the cosmic need for closure that our souls seek in romance. Only meeting Christ face-to-face will fill the emptiness in our hearts that sin created when we lost our unbroken fellowship with him.

Martin Luther, for example, was reputed to say about sexual desires, “You can’t stop birds from flying over your head, but you can stop them from making nests in your hair.” By that he meant that we can’t stop sexual thoughts from occurring to us—they are natural and unavoidable. However, we are responsible for what we do with those thoughts. We must not entertain and dwell on them.

But see how she actually does resist. She does not look into her heart for strength—there’s nothing there but clamorous conflict. She ignores what her heart says and looks to what God says. The moral laws of God at that very moment made no sense to her heart and mind at all. They did not appear reasonable, and they did not appear fair. But, she says, if she could break them when they appear inconvenient to her, of what would be their worth?

If you only obey God’s word when it seems reasonable or profitable to you—well, that isn’t really obedience at all. Obedience means you cede someone an authority over you that is there even when you don’t agree with him. God’s law is for times of temptation, when “body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour.” On God’s Word then, not her feelings and passions, she plants her foot. I’ve never seen anywhere a more clear or eloquent example of what a Christian single person’s inner dialogue should be with regard to temptation. Learn how to plant your foot.

In other words, Paul is telling married Christians that mutual, satisfying sexual relations must be an important part their life together. In fact, this passage indicates that sex should be frequent and reciprocal. One spouse was not allowed to deny sex to the other.

In short, the greatest sexual pleasure should be the pleasure of seeing your spouse getting pleasure.

Romans 7:1ff tells us that the best marriages are pointers to the deep, infinitely fulfilling, and final union we will have with Christ in love.