The Meaning of Marriage: A Couple's Devotional

by Timothy Keller

  Reflection: Talk frankly to each other about how well each of you does in showing visible affection to each other. Tell each other two or three ways you enjoy receiving affection from the other.

  Prayer: Lord, you don’t just tell us you love us in the abstract, but you pour out your love in our hearts so we can feel it (Romans 5:5). Show us how to not just claim to love but to pour it out on each other so it affects our hearts. Amen.

  July 5

  Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. (Galatians 6:2)79

  HELPING. This famous text tells us both what we should do with our spouse and why we should do it. A “burden” can range from a practical problem (like caring for a child on a given day) to major illnesses and deep sorrows. And Paul does not merely say “help” but “bear” the burdens. The image entails coming very close to the burdened person, virtually standing in their shoes, and then allowing some of the weight of things to fall on you, thus lightening the load for the other. This implies both listening and understanding with deep sympathy (that is, letting the weight come upon you emotionally), as well as practically investing time and effort so that much of the inconvenience, cost, and trouble falls on you.

  Reflection: There are two aspects of burden bearing: real sympathy and practical help. Assess together how good each of you are at this in your marriage.

  Prayer: Lord, you told us to “cast our burdens on you” (Psalm 55:22), but it wasn’t until you came to earth that we realized what it would cost you to take on our ultimate burdens—of sin and death. In light of that, let me gladly bear burdens for others and my spouse. Amen.

  July 6

  Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. (Galatians 6:2)80

  BEING HELPED. There is a hidden reciprocity in this text that should not be overlooked. Notice it does not only say “bear others’ burdens” but “bear one another’s burdens.” It is possible for spouses to get into a pattern in which one person is always in difficulty and the other is always rescuing. It is not enough to help others—you must be willing to be helped. The gospel removes the proud self-centeredness that despises people who are in weakness. But it also removes the proud self-centeredness that despises and hates to admit any of your own weakness and need. Anyone who is afraid to admit weakness and accept help hasn’t really grasped fully the gospel of grace.

  Reflection: It can feed your pride to help others—but it takes real humility to allow yourself to be helped. In your marriage, is one of you more reluctant to be helped? What can you do to change?

  Prayer: Lord God, the gospel offers free grace and mercy through Christ, and only those who are too proud to be helped by it are lost. Hatred of being helped is eternally fatal. Don’t let it characterize my life—help me remove it. Amen.

  July 7

  Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. (Galatians 6:1)

  GENTLE CORRECTION. We are told to correct one another (Hebrews 3:13; Luke 17:3–4), but when? Every time we see someone do wrong? No. 1 Peter 4:8—“love covers a multitude of sins”—means that we should cover many or most sins with a forgiving, generous spirit rather than rebuking people constantly. We should correct when the person is “caught” or trapped in the behavior, that is, when we see them doing wrong in a habitual pattern that is harming them and others. But also, we should correct them with the utmost gentleness, in full awareness that we are flawed people as well with our own blind spots. Finally, we do it to restore them, never to just tell them off and make them feel bad.

  Reflection. Analyze the way each of you gives the other criticism in light of these three criteria. Where do you need to improve?

  Prayer: Lord Jesus, you fearlessly denounced sin yet you were “gentle and humble in heart” (Matthew 11:29). Help us to combine those qualities as we speak to one another. Amen.

  July 8

  It is a mistake to think that you must feel love to give it. If, for example, I have a child, and I give up my day off to take him to a ballgame to his great joy, at a time when I don’t particularly like him, I am in some ways being more loving to him than if my heart were filled with affection. (Hardcover, p. 99; paperback, p. 105)

  EMOTIONS AND BELIEFS. Emotions are not something we can just turn on or off, but our beliefs about our emotions are under our control. If we begin to resent someone, do we give in to that, or do we say, “That is not the person Christ is creating in me, the one who believes that I live only by God’s mercy and grace”? This changes our attitude. We can resist thoughts of superiority and resentment, and encourage thoughts of humility and forgiveness. So beliefs lead to attitudes, and attitudes lead to behavior and that can have an impact on the original emotion. We are not helpless in the hands of our emotions.

  Reflection: Think of a strong, negative emotion. How can you, through belief and behavior, change the hold that emotion has over you?

  Thought for prayer: Meditate on Psalm 77:12, where the distressed psalmist says to God: “I will . . . meditate on all your deeds.” Ask God for the same steely resolve to center your thoughts on his Word, especially when your emotions are high.

  July 9

  [C. S. Lewis wrote:] “Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. . . . If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less. . . . The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he ‘likes’ them: the Christian, trying to treat everyone kindly, finds himself liking more and more people as he goes on—including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning. (Hardcover, pp. 100–101; paperback, p. 107)

  EMOTIONS AND BEHAVIOR: 1. C. S. Lewis argues that “The Germans, perhaps, at first ill-treated the Jews because they hated them; afterwards they hated them much more because they had ill-treated them.”81 Here Lewis is drawing on his reading of Aristotle, who taught that we become good not by feeling good but by practicing goodness. For example, a courageous man is not one who feels brave but who acts brave despite fears. If he wasn’t afraid, his action wouldn’t be courageous. So a loving person is not necessarily one who feels love for someone at the moment. Love is doing someone good, even if it means a sacrifice of your own interests. If you are filled with affection, there wouldn’t be much sacrifice in it. Feelings tend to follow actions.

  Reflection: Is Lewis saying we should pretend we feel loving and brave even though we aren’t? Have you ever seen what Lewis says work?

  Thought for prayer: Meditate on Hebrews 12:12–13, which say that just as we should exercise an injured limb though it hurts in order to heal it, so we should obey God and love and serve others whether we feel like it or not. Ask God to help you remember that and practice it.

  July 10

  Our culture says that feelings of love are the basis for actions of love. . . . But it is truer to say that actions of love can lead consistently to feelings of love. . . . Married love is a symbiotic, complex mixture of both [emotion and action]. Having said this, it is important to observe that of the two . . . it is the latter that we have the most control over. It is the action of love that we can promise to maintain every day. (Hardcover, p. 103; paperback, pp. 109–10)

  EMOTIONS AND BEHAVIOR: 2. Another example of how actions lead to feeling is found in Edmund Morgan’s classic historical study American Slavery, American Freedom. He shows how white colonial Virginians had shown little or no animus toward blacks until they began to enslave them. This was done originally for economic purposes, but once they had done so they began to feel and express increasing racial contempt for them.82 They did not, at first, enslave Africans because they despised them, but they came to despise them because they enslaved them. If you treat your spouse with respect, serve them in love, an
d act loving, in the long run, it is the most fruitful way to experience love.

  Reflection: Think of several ways that you have seen negative emotions (like disdain or animosity) grow from negative behavior (like mistreating or shunning).

  Thought for prayer: Ask God to save you from the vicious cycle of avoiding leading to despising leading to more avoiding, making the relationship worse and worse. Ask for the discernment and self-control it takes to avoid that human and sinful spiral.

  July 11

  I am not proposing that you deliberately marry a person you don’t like. But I can guarantee that, whoever you marry, you will fall “out of like” with them. . . . [O]ur emotions are tied to so many things within our physiology, psychology, and environment. Your feelings will ebb and flow and, if you follow our culture’s definition of “love,” you may conclude that . . . “[i]f this was the person for me to marry, my feelings wouldn’t be so up and down.” (Hardcover, pp. 103–4; paperback, pp. 110–11)

  EMOTIONS AND COMMITMENTS. Robert Bellah wrote that we now have a culture of what he called “expressive individualism.” We are taught that “each person has a unique core of feeling . . . that should unfold or be expressed if [identity] is to be realized.”83 Supposedly, our deepest authentic identity is in what we feel. But this makes a long-term marriage impossible. It means efforts to rekindle love are “inauthentic.” The fact is that our changing and contradictory emotions cannot be the deepest foundation of who we are. Our deepest identity is rooted in our commitments—our promises, trusts, and vows. Your wedding promise is a bigger part of who you are than your fluctuating feelings.

  Reflection: What are your most foundational commitments? How do they constitute a more stable identity than do your emotions?

  Thought for prayer: Ask God to help you look to your identity as a child of God, adopted by grace (John 1:12–13), rather than to your feelings when you are having trouble loving your spouse.

  July 12

  You must stick to your commitment to act and serve in love even when—no, especially when—you don’t feel much delight and attraction to your spouse. And the more you do that, slowly but surely, you will find your more ego-heavy attraction being transformed into a love that is more characterized by a humble, amazed reception and appreciation of the other person. The love you will grow into will be wiser, richer, deeper, less variable. (Hardcover, p. 105; paperback, p. 112)

  EMOTIONS AND HABIT. Anything we do once becomes easier to do again, since we are creatures of habit. It makes sense that you become brave by acting brave, not waiting until you feel brave.84 But is that also true for love? Yes, it is. If you serve someone to whom you are strongly attracted at the moment, your deeds are partially for yourself. You are inviting and stirring the other person’s affection, which is something you desire greatly. However, when you love and serve someone who at the moment you don’t even like, then you are doing it for their sake, not yours. In some ways loving someone you don’t like is more truly love and a way to become a more loving person.

  Reflection: Think of some ways in which this principle worked for you in a relationship outside of marriage. Think of some ways in which this principle worked for you inside your marriage.

  Thought for prayer: Be thankful to God for the situations in which you can serve your spouse when you don’t feel like it. Ask God to help you see these situations as opportunities for deepening your character, relationship, and love.

  July 13

  It is not surprising, then, that after the children leave home, many marriages fall apart. Why? Because while they treated their relationship with their children as a covenant relationship—performing the actions of love until their feelings strengthened—they treated their marriages as a consumer relationship and withdrew their actions of love when they weren’t having the feelings. As a result, after two decades, their marriages were empty while their love for their children remained strong. (Hardcover, p. 108; paperback, p. 116)

  THE PARENTING TEST CASE. When children fail to be grateful or to reciprocate friendship and service, we remain faithful parents because of their dependent condition. And as the years go by our love for them gets stronger. But if your spouse fails to be grateful or to reciprocate actions of love, it feels fair to draw back from your spouse and to think, “If you aren’t being the spouse you should be, don’t complain if I am not being the spouse I should be.” It has the appearance of justice, but that attitude has deadly consequences. While your love for your children grows because you love them unconditionally, your marriage is dying the death of a thousand cuts. Parenting is a “test case” that proves that the feelings of love follow the actions of love.

  Reflection: Think of various ways that a marriage can die through “a thousand cuts”—small, barely perceptible ways of compromise or withdrawal.

  Thought for prayer: Thank God for being the perfect Father—just yet merciful; and thank Jesus for being the perfect spouse—infinitely loving yet insisting we change for the better. Ask the Lord to renew you in his image.

  July 14

  [W]e must say to ourselves something like this: “When Jesus looked down from the Cross . . . [and saw us] denying him, abandoning him, and betraying him . . . in the greatest act of love in history, he stayed. . . . He loved us, not because we were lovely to him, but to make us lovely. That is why I am going to love my spouse.” Speak to your heart like that, and then fulfill the promises you made on your wedding day. (Hardcover, p. 109; paperback, pp. 116–17)

  EMOTIONS AND MEDITATION. What do you do when you find your feelings for your spouse flagging? Look at the various “languages” of love that will be covered later in this devotional and in The Meaning of Marriage. Be sure to use them all, and to especially use the one(s) most valuable to your spouse. But as important as the behaviors are, work on the heart itself. Here is a simple, practical proposal. Meditate on Christ’s love for his disciples when they were abandoning him. Meditate on his love for you over the years when you ignored him or at least did not love him back as you should have. Think of his unflagging love for you despite all that, and what it cost him. Let that stir you to love your spouse.

  Reflection: What things do you do that makes it harder for your spouse to love you? Share them with each other.

  Thought for prayer: Meditate on Psalm 1:1–6, which is a meditation on meditation. Then ask God to show you how not to simply pray but to meditate to the point of delight (Psalm 1:2).85

  July 15

  It is striking, then, that after God creates the first man, he said, “It is not good that the man should be alone.” (Genesis 2:18 ) . . . The Genesis narrative is implying that our intense relational capacity, created and given to us by God, was not fulfilled completely by our “vertical” relationship with him. God designed us to need “horizontal” relationships with other human beings. That is why even in paradise, loneliness was such a terrible thing. (Hardcover, pp. 110–11; paperback, p. 120)

  FRIENDSHIP OR PERISH. Our individualistic culture promotes the illusion that what we are and will be is mainly the result of our personal decisions. When we come to faith, we likewise assume that our new connection with God and his power will give us all the resources we will need to be happy and reach our goals. In reality, we are irreducibly relational beings. We are perhaps more the product of our family and social relationships than of our own conscious choices. And so, after getting a new relationship with God through Christ, it is only through a whole community of believers that God changes us, “for we are members of one another” (1 Corinthians 12:12–27). We were built to have friends or perish.

  Reflection: Do you have three kinds of friends: Among neighbors whom you live and work with? Among Christian brothers and sisters? Is your spouse your friend?

  Thought for prayer: Spend some time thinking of two or three people who have had an enormous impact on you—who were almost literally (or literally) lifesavers
for you. Thank God for them heartily, and then ask him to provide more of the same in your life.

  July 16

  While erotic love can be depicted as two people looking at one another, friendship can be depicted as two people standing side by side looking at the same object and being stirred and entranced by it together. . . . 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. (Hardcover, p. 113; paperback, pp. 122–23)

  FRIENDSHIP AND PRAISE. After you’ve watched a movie you really loved you will find that your pleasure is exponentially enhanced if you can watch it again with someone who hasn’t seen it yet. Your joy in the story is deepened by the wonder and praise of the other person. This is true of everything. You remember, understand, and appreciate things better when you do them with someone else. Not only that, but their enjoyment enhances your own. The experience deepens the relationship and the relationship deepens the experience. That’s one of the ways friendship enriches our lives. At the root of friendship is our need to complete our enjoyment of things through others.

  Reflection: What activities that bring real joy to you can you do with your spouse? How can you increase the amount of time you spend in such activities?