What Is Marriage For?

This Valentine’s Day, if you’re looking for enrichment in your marriage, check out Tim & Kathy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage (2013).  They strike a wise balance between naïve dreams of sheer “wedded bliss” and a bubble-bursting realism that dashes all hope.

The Kellers ask what marriage is for.  “It is a way for two spirit­ual friends to help each other on the journey to become the persons God designed them to be” (p. 9).  Notice they do not say it’s for “bearing children” or “finding companionship” or “sexual fulfill­ment.”  Now they’d agree that all those are positive purposes of marriage.  But the primary aim is that spouses would eagerly help “one another know, serve, love, and resemble God in deeper and deeper ways” (145), encour­aging each other to trust in Jesus more and more.

Their book is built on Ephesians 5:21-33, a profound passage that unlocks the “secret of marriage,” which is “that the gospel of Jesus and marriage explain one another.  That when God invented marriage, he already had the saving work of Jesus in mind” (43).  And so, marriage is a key means “for the gospel’s remaking of your heart from the inside out and your life from the ground up” (44).

The gospel tells us we’re more sinful than we ever dared to believe and more loved and accepted in Jesus than we ever dared to hope.  In a gospel-infused marriage, our hearts can be filled with God’s love so we can handle it when our spouse lets us down.  “That frees us to see our spouse’s sins and flaws to the bottom … and yet still love and accept our spouse fully” (45).  So, “Through the gospel, we get both the power and the pattern for the journey of marriage” (45).

Husbands and wives are called to live for each other.  “And that is the hardest yet single most important function of being a husband or a wife in marriage” (50).  Our proud, self-serving hearts bristle at this charge, and yet Christ-like love is the very opposite of self-seeking.

Strong words—the Kellers pose a lofty challenge.  Yet their Bible-based vision of self-giving love is the pathway toward God’s honor and our genuine happiness.  So if you’re married or if marriage may be in your future, get this book and read it:  highly recommended.