The Meaning of Marriage: A Couple's Devotional

by Timothy Keller

  CHOOSE WISELY. The first of the curses to be visited on human beings after sin entered the world was the blighting of the relationship between men and women (Genesis 3:16), but the Bible gives us tools for healing the relationship. We have the toolbox of truth, love, and grace that is made operational in repentance and forgiveness. This bridges the gap between any two sinful people. We also have the tools of biblical gender roles. We are neither to adopt the stereotyped roles of traditional culture that diminish the equality of male and female nor the view of modern culture that gender is just socially constructed and there are no roles in marriage. What does this mean? It means we must choose our spouses wisely. Unite with someone who wants the same thing, who has the same vision.

  Reflection: Discuss how much more work the “biblical toolbox of gender roles” entails, since you must work out the details of your roles for yourself. Have you done this work? How much of it?

  Thought for prayer: In each other’s presence, thank God for the gifts of your genders, and ask him to help you receive those gifts. Ask for help to understand what it means for you in particular to be a man or a woman in your marriage, and in your time and place.

  October 31

  No human being should give any other human being unconditional obedience. As Peter said, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29) . . . [A] wife should not obey or aid a husband in doing things that God forbids, such as selling drugs or physically abusing her. If . . . he beats her, the “strong help” that a wife should exercise is to love and forgive him in her heart but have him arrested. It is never kind or loving to anyone to make it easy for him or her to do wrong. (Hardcover, p. 242; paperback, p. 278)

  ALL OR NOTHING. Nuance is often lost in a culture that only sees Them or Us, Good or Bad, Woke or Oppressor. We really do not believe in something that can be good and yet misused. If something can be misused, well, we should have nothing to do with it. But everything is capable of being used wrongly. The teaching that there are distinct roles to which the genders are called is routinely blamed for encouraging oppression and abuse. I (Kathy) have no doubt that in the name of “biblical teaching” there have been abuses and evil. Nevertheless, God’s gifts to us are good and meant for our joy. When those gifts are put to use in the service of sin we must never believe the lie that it was the fault of the gift, rather than the wrong use of it.

  Reflection: Is your view of gender roles more determined by your past experiences (either good or bad) or more determined by the Bible?

  Thought for prayer: Meditate on Colossians 3:16, on having the message of Christ—the biblical gospel—“dwell in you richly.” Ask God to show you what that means for you, how to have his Word shaping not only your thinking but your desires.

  November 1

  “[She:] Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth—for your love is more delightful than wine. (Song of Solomon 1:2–3)

  THE BIBLICAL LOVE SONG. Paul McCartney noted that people “want to fill the world with silly love songs.”124 A love song is more of an outburst than a teaching. It celebrates love and romance. It is notable that the Bible contains a book that is one sustained love song. The Song of Solomon tells us the story of two lovers who seek and find one another, and then consummate their love in marriage. Many interpreters have sought to find “deeper meaning” in the story. Of course every loving marriage points to our union with Christ through his love. But this book in itself is a celebration of love and marriage as a good in itself. And that tells us a lot. “The Song intends to teach us that sex is good and pure within marriage and is the appropriate object of longing and desire before marriage.”125

  Reflection: What does the Bible tell us about marriage when it gives us one book that is a love poem and romantic story? What are the implications for your marriage?

  Prayer: Lord, how wonderful that your Word does not only regulate sex and romance—it powerfully celebrates it, and calls us to enjoy it. I praise you that you are a God of joy who wants us to have it too. Amen.

  November 2

  [She:] Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth—for your love is more delightful than wine. Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes; your name is like perfume poured out. No wonder the young women love you! Take me away with you—let us hurry! Let the king bring me into his chambers. (Song of Solomon 1:1–4)

  COUNTERCULTURAL ROMANCE. Biblical scholar Iain Duguid writes: “The Song sketches a paradigm for male-female relationships that is neither traditionalist nor radical.” She urges him, “Take me away with you,” a term that sounds very traditional. Yet she is not “emotionally dependent . . . waiting forever for the man to make the first move.” She takes her own initiative. There is no “macho model of male-female relationships” in which the only sexual desires are his, and she merely acquiesces to them.126 Biblical figures in some ways, of course, reflect the cultures of their time, but in important ways they also subvert cultural norms and provide readers of God’s Word with directions for all times and places. The woman here is not just the object of male attention. She has her own designs.

  Reflection: How could this paradigm both challenge and yet fit into various cultural models for male-female relationships?

  Prayer: Lord, thank you for the abiding truth and profound insight of your Word. Thank you that it is not the product of any one culture but rather it critiques every culture and my own heart, too. Amen.

  November 3

  [She:] Dark am I, yet lovely, daughters of Jerusalem, dark like the tents of Kedar, like the tent curtains of Solomon. Do not stare at me because I am dark, because I am darkened by the sun. My mother’s sons were angry with me and made me take care of the vineyards; my own vineyard I had to neglect. (Song of Solomon 1:5–6)

  BEAUTY FEARS. The woman’s fear is that she will be rejected because she does not match the culture’s view of beauty. The rich were able to stay indoors and the poor had to work out in the fields—so darker skin in that culture represented the working class. So did slenderness because it meant you did not eat well. The fact that today slenderness and a nice tan mean the opposite should remind us how fleeting and ultimately unimportant cultural views are! Instead, the Bible speaks of inward character as the only “unfading beauty” (1 Peter 3:3–4). Breaking stereotypes, the woman asserts that she is lovely. This is not shyness. She calls for her lover to find her attractive. Yet the text reminds us of how we wrestle with conformity to the culture’s image of beauty. We should not.

  Reflection: In your marriage, how can you help each other in this area? How can you both support stewardship of the body but also reinforce the concept of “unfading beauty”?

  Prayer: Lord, there is such a thing as ugliness and as beauty, but your Word shows me that it is more a matter of spirit than of body. Help me not to be captive to any other definition of beauty than yours. Amen.

  November 4

  [Friends:] [M]ost beautiful of women. . . . [He:] Your cheeks are beautiful with earrings, your neck with strings of jewels. We will make you earrings of gold, studded with silver. (Song of Solomon 1: 8, 10–11)

  MUTUAL ATTRACTION. For the first time we hear the man speak. He answers her call, naming her the “most beautiful of women.” Such a statement is always, literally speaking, an exaggeration, but subjectively it is absolutely authentic. It is the way one feels in love. “If the only biblical advice on seeking a spouse were Proverbs 31:30 (“Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised”), we might not think that chemistry matters in relationships.” The point of Proverbs is that physical attractiveness must not be the decisive factor in choosing a mate. If it is, and you inevitably change and lose your looks as you age, then your marriage will be in a bad way. But the Song of Songs brings us the balance, that “mutual attraction is important.”127

  Reflection: How can you honor the Proverbs 31 principle and the Song of Songs 1 principle togeth
er?

  Prayer: Thank you, Lord, for making it possible to be “outwardly wasting away” while being inwardly renewed in the likeness of our Savior (2 Corinthians 4:16). Give me eyes to see this inner person in my spouse and be attracted to it. Amen.

  November 5

  [She:] Dark am I, yet lovely, daughters of Jerusalem, dark like the tents of Kedar, like the tent curtains of Solomon.” [He:] Your cheeks are beautiful with earrings, your neck with strings of jewels. We will make you earrings of gold, studded with silver. (Song of Solomon 1:5, 10–11)

  GOD’S EYES. “There is more of a hint of insecurity in the woman’s defiant claim to be beautiful.” But the man responds . . . “by affirming her beauty and enhancing it through his gifts of jewelry.” There is an echo here of the nakedness and shame that both Adam and Eve felt when they fell. Deep down we know that to God’s eyes we are not spiritually beautiful but disfigured by sin. Yet like this man—though with infinitely more power—God “chose us, in spite of who we are, and disfigured his own Son on the cross in order to pay for our sins. He now clothes us in the glorious royal robes of his righteousness, adorning us with a breath-taking beauty.”128 Some of our insecurity about our looks will be lessened by the knowledge that we are beautiful, in Christ, to the only eyes in the universe that count.

  Reflection: Do you affirm each other’s inner and outward attractiveness? How would you be different if you believed and grasped more deeply how you look to God in Christ?

  Prayer: Lord, it overwhelms my reason and even my imagination that you love us even as you love Jesus, so that in your eyes we are more beautiful than all the jewels beneath the earth. But help me to grasp even a small part of this truth, that I might be forever changed by it. Amen.

  November 6

  [She:] “I am a rose of Sharon and a lily of the valley.” [He:] “Like a lily among thorns is my darling among the young women.” [The woman] “Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my beloved among the young men.” (Song of Solomon 2:2–3)

  AFFIRMING UNIQUENESS. When the woman calls herself a “lily of the valley” she describes a very common wildflower that blooms widely in the desert. It is like saying, “I’m no one special.” But the man counters that “she is uniquely attractive” and compared to others around her she is like a flower “among thorns.” The woman responds in kind, saying he is like a unique apple tree among the ordinary trees of the wood. This is how it should be. “One way of keeping the flame burning in our marriages is to affirm repeatedly what it was about the other person that drew us to them uniquely in the first place and that we continue to see in them now.”129

  Reflection: Do you do this? Take time to speak to your spouse about what you find unusually or singularly attractive about him or her.

  Prayer: Lord, all things work together for our good (Romans 8:28) and that includes the spouse you have given me. Help me to regularly affirm my spouse’s distinct and unique gifts and qualities because that will honor you as well, and will enhance our joy. Amen.

  November 7

  Strengthen me with raisins, refresh me with apples, for I am faint with love. His left arm is under my head, and his right arm embraces me. Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the does of the field: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires. (Song of Solomon 2:5–7)

  THE POWER OF LOVE. The woman is overwhelmed, literally sick with love. Love has often been described as an experience of insanity or drunkenness, in which we do things that afterwards we regard with horror or shame. So the woman warns “those who are as yet unmarried about the dangers of stirring up such feelings before their time.” Here then is another perspective on not having sex before marrying. She urges them not to allow such feelings to rise to great height before marriage “not because sex is dirty or insipid, but precisely because it is so beautiful and potent” and is “intended to bond two people inseparably together for life by its unique and overwhelming power.”130

  Reflection: Considering either your own experience or those of friends, think of ways that the unleashed power of sexual love led to foolish behavior or other wrong decisions.

  Prayer: Lord, you made our feelings, yet they often cloud judgment. Don’t let my feelings and attractions—and repulsions—keep me from loving and serving you and my spouse. Amen.

  November 8

  While the principle is clear—that the husband is to . . . have ultimate authority in the family—the Bible gives almost no details about how that is expressed in concrete behavior. . . . Should women take primary responsibility for daily child care while men oversee the finances? [Some] are tempted to nod yes . . . 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. (Hardcover, pp. 185–86; paperback, pp. 209–10)

  A MIXTURE. The Proverbs 31 woman is often held up as a model for “biblical womanhood,” either in approval or in mocking rejection. She makes real estate investments and launches a clothing business (verses 16–19). Yet she cooks and clothes her family, decorating the home (verses 15, 21–22). She also does this under her husband’s authority (verses 11 and 23). This is a mixture of both traditional and progressive visions for activities appropriate for women. Again we see that what the Bible says about gender roles is basic enough to apply to all cultures, pointed enough to critique every culture, and flexible enough to have different expressions in each. The Bible provides no one-size-fits-all list of pursuits that women can and cannot do.

  Reflection: Christian married couples today reflect a “mixture of traditional and progressive” ways to live. How does your marriage reflect this?

  Thought for prayer: Pray that God would give you the spiritual freedom to devise patterns of married life that are not constrained by cultural prejudices but are informed by your own gifts and the Scripture.

  November 9

  [R]igid cultural gender roles have no biblical warrant. Christians cannot make a scriptural case for masculine and feminine stereotypes. Though social scientists have made good cases about abiding gender differences . . . different individual personalities and different cultures will express those distinctions in somewhat different ways. . . . We must find ways to honor and express our gender roles, but the Bible allows for different freedom in the particulars, while still upholding the obligatory nature of the principle. (Hardcover, p. 186; paperback, p. 210)

  FLIPPED TASKS, NOT ROLES. Elisabeth Elliot reported about her time living among the Waorani people, a small, isolated body of people who lived deep in the Amazon rain forest, completely cut off from modern civilization. There “everyone knew” that it was women’s work to go out into the field to plant and harvest food, while it was men’s work to make poetry and decorative objects. Nevertheless, the basic idea of a husband’s leadership was still discernible.131 The roles were there, but the cultural incarnation through tasks can differ widely. God has made us to bear his image, and we do so with glorious variety.

  Reflection: Are there any ways our culture still acknowledges gender roles as good? Think of some. What evidence do you see that Western culture would rather erase gender distinctions?

  Thought for prayer: Meditate on Revelation 7:9, which shows that racial and cultural differences are so important that they will extend into God’s renewed universe. Now thank God for the cultural flexibility of our faith, its wise and gracious openness to difference, even while affirming truths that are true for everyone.

  November 10

  [S]ome women might [say]: “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. (Hardcover, p. 187; paperback, pp. 211–12)

  ACCEPTING GOD’S ASSIGNMENT. There comes a time when parents give their children an assignment they don’t want and the parents know there is no way to explain it in a way that they will understand. The child has nothing to go on but to trust the parent’s heart and authority. Has God given us a full explanation of why the husband gets to lead? No. But acceptance and thanksgiving are the appropriate responses, even when he sends us assignments we don’t understand and/or don’t want. Even difficult “assignments” such as illness or loss will one day be revealed as God’s wisdom operating in love for our glory. Fixing our eyes on Jesus is the only way I know to calm my heart when I would rather struggle and fight for “MY will” to be done rather than “THY will be done.”

  Reflection: Is there anything God has shown you about your life, or altered in your life, that you find mysterious or upsetting? Has Jesus, with his death, earned your trust that he has your best interests in view at all times?

  Thought for prayer: Meditate on Luke 22:42, in which Jesus accepts a painful death that he doesn’t want, but embraces it in full trust. Remembering Jesus saved you by embracing hard things from God as gifts of his wisdom, ask the Father to give you the same mind and spirit toward your own hard assignments.