Having officially been married to my wife Sarah for 36 years on August 15, I think I know a thing or two about the institution, and when I read the thoughts on marriage by these two men of God they instantly become fodder for a blog post. It so happens when I went to Seminary at Westminster in Philadelphia, having driven all the way from my home in southern California, the last thing I expected to find, to say the least, was a wife. But there she was! We got engaged, and it so happens that our pre-marital counselor was the late Tim Keller, a professor there at the time before he moved to New York City to found Redeemer Presbyterian Church and become, well, Tim Keller. I’ll never forget two things he said among many, but these two stand out as especially true in our experience. We sat down in his office in chairs in front of his desk and after some initial niceties he got right to the point:
The only sinner worse than the one you’re marrying is you.
Well, ok. That took a while to sink in, but I can report after all these years . . . . it is absolutely true! Sometimes we argue about who the worse sinner is, but I always win. It’s too obvious! The other thing is related, flowing out of the depth of our sin. I guess we did a personality test and he got to know us a bit, then said this:
You guys are so different you can either destroy one another or sanctify one another.
Keller was not the kind of guy to pull his punches; he was a straight shooter, and this truth was sobering. I believe it’s true in any marriage even if the spouses are more similar in personality. Two self-centered sinners living in such close proximity 24/7/365 is a recipe for conflict, but in understanding and accepting that we are self-centered sinners allows the promise of sanctification and reveals the genius of marriage. It’s not only God’s chosen instrument to sanctify His people and build his kingdom on earth, but also the ultimate redemptive biblical metaphor for the salvation of His people. The significance and profundity of marriage is beyond the ability of mere words to convey, but that’s all we have. It is the most important God ordained institution for extending Christ’s reign on earth, advancing His kingdom, and building His Church, and in that I do not exaggerate. I will explain below.
When I read these two quotes in Vishal Mangalwadi’s book, The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization, I knew I had to share them here. First from the great Reformer, Martin Luther, who is a more pessimistic than I am, but the point is well taken:
There is no estate the Devil is so opposed to as marriage. The clergy have not wanted to be bothered with work and worry. They have been afraid of a nagging wife, disobedient children, difficult relatives, or the dying pig or a cow. They want to lie abed until the sun shines through the window. Our ancestors knew this and would say, “Dear child, be a priest or a nun and have a good time.” I have heard married people say to monks, “You have it easy, but when we get up we do not know where to find our bread.” Marriage is a heavy cross because so many couples quarrel. It is the grace of God when they agree. The Holy Spirit declares there are three wonders: when brothers agree, when neighbors love each other, and when a man and a wife are at one. When I see a pair like that, I am glad as if I were in a garden of roses. It is rare.
Mangalwadi adds perspective as to why marriage is so great and essential to life in a fallen world:
Marriage brings out the worst in both husbands and wives. They must choose whether to stay in that school of character, or to drop out. The Bible made divorce difficult because one does not learn much by quitting a challenging school. The only way to make monogamy work is to value love above pleasure, to pursue holiness and humility rather than power and personal fulfillment, to find grace to repent rather than to condemn, to learn sacrifice and patience in place of indulgence and gratification. The modern world was created by countless couples who did just that. In working to preserve their marriages and provide for their children, they invested in the future of civilization itself.
I’ll never forget before we got married telling other young people we were getting married, and watching the disapproval on their faces while disparaging marriage. Phrases like, “Poor guy” were common. Given my nature, I would get right back in their face telling them how great marriage is, how important, how I can’t wait, and that they should get married too! I was basically telling them how wrong they were. I remember several, specifically the young women, get kind of a quizzical look on their face seeming to say, that’s refreshing to hear! I think some even said that.
And the reason these people all felt that way? Marriage is hard! But I must cut them some slack because examples of successful marriages are not bountiful, nor were they in the mid-80s. When California, no surprise, got the no-fault divorce laws-band wagon rolling in 1969, divorce became common in America; when the going got tough, as it will in every marriage, this gave people the idea, and the legal right, to think they could easily get out of a marriage, and that unilaterally. They think, why be miserable if I can just be rid of it, and the problem, as if the problem was the other person. Yes they can be, but as we say, it takes two to tango. In fact, second marriages fail at a higher rate than first marriages because the person who failed at the first one is the same person in the second, and bring all their problems, and sin, with them.
The other reason is the secular culture that bought into the arguments of feminism, among the many other evils of secularism. However, feminism all along its historical development from the 19th century on had a point. Because of the fall, the relationship between men and women was distorted. After telling Eve her pain will increase in childbirth, the Lord tells her, “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (Gen. 3:16, and here is an excellent explanation of this from the ESV study Bible). Men and women were created different, shocking I know, with different roles and responsibilities within a marriage. All of that become complicated by the fall, and thus the thoughts on marriage of Luther and Mangalwadi about how difficult marriage is. I was going to write, “can be,” but that would not be right. The very nature of the unique consequences of the fall for specifically men and women make every marriage, every single one of them, hard by definition.
The fundamental distortion is what this verse describes, and what makes marriage so difficult. Women will seek to usurp the man’s rightful role as the leader and ultimate authority in the family, and the woman is rightfully commanded to submit to her husband in this, but the man will overplay his role as leader and become a domineering authoritarian. This plays out in every marriage over a continuum, but the dynamic in every marriage is the same. How do marriages not only survive but also thrive in the face of such relentless headwinds? Jesus! God has revealed “the secret” in Ephesians 5:21-33. The analogy Paul uses is Christ and the Church, and the good news is it’s not a secret!
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