As Christians we are adept at looking at the culture around us and seeing how it is violating God’s good standards when it comes to sexuality. Not too long ago, though, I was asked to reflect on the ways in which Christians may compromise God’s standards for sexuality—some of those hidden or sanctified sins in which we allow compromise in our lives, our marriages, our churches. I came up with five ways that Christians may compromise God’s standards for sexuality.

We compromise God's standard for sexuality when we leave the gospel out of the marriage bed

Christians consistently have trouble extending the reach of the gospel from salvation all the way to sex. Yet the gospel isn't just about that one-time commitment; it's about how we live today and every day. It extends through every part of life.

The gospel says, Whatever my marriage is to be and whatever our sexual relationship is to be, it is to be a part of that portrait of Christ and the church. When I am considering sex in this way, I'm first asking, Would this look like an accurate portrait of Christ and the church? What reflects Christ giving up his life for his bride? What reflects the church joyfully submitting to Christ? This completely reorients us away from self, from self-love and self-service, and orients me toward my spouse. This portrait of marriage does not come to an end when we close the bedroom door.

When we compromise this standard we become bound by law instead of freed by the gospel; we have become self-focused instead of other-focused. Law is always focused toward self, gospel is always focused toward the other and, ultimately, toward God. If we allow ourselves to fall back into that age-old temptation of law, we will inevitably harm our relationship with the one we love most.

We compromise when we disobey the clear biblical command that in marriage we are to have sex, and that we are to have it frequently, willingly and joyfully

There is a difference between understanding the Bible and obeying the Bible. There is a difference between believing the gospel and living out the implications of the gospel. This is why so many of Paul's letters fall into two parts; in the first part he talks theology and in the second part he talks application. There is a reason for this: he knows that good theology needs to be worked out in life and he knows that we can’t do this without the right gospel foundation.

There are many couples that fully believe what the Bible teaches about marriage, and they may even believe what the Bible teaches about sex within marriage, but they do not have sex together. One has refused for so long that the other has stopped even asking or trying. One has given up and let himself go and the other has lost interest. Together they have become disobedient and their compromise grieves the Lord. They claim to believe what's true, but they refuse to practice it.

God places stipulations on the sexual relationship. You are allowed to stop having sex, but only for a limited time and only if that limited time will be devoted to prayer. That's it! And yet every marriage goes through seasons of sexlessness and too many marriages just abandon the sexual relationship altogether. There is something in 1 Corinthians 7:3 that has always jumped out at me. Paul talks about "conjugal rights." The Bible says very, very little about our rights. In most cases talk of rights is opposed to gospel. But in the marriage relationship we are told that a husband and wife have the right to one another, the right to one another's bodies. Sex is not a suggestion, it is not just a good idea or a nice gift to give. Sex is a right because in God's economy of marriage, it is a necessity.

What happens when we compromise God's standards here? Well right from 1 Corinthians 7 we see that we allow the possibility of sexual sin in our spouse. A husband who denies his wife is not protecting her from sexual sin. A wife who denies her husband is not protecting him from sexual sin. Abstaining from sex is selfish and unloving and compromising. Yes, it will be your spouses' fault if he or she falls into sexual sin because you have stopped having sex; but you will bear part of the responsibility. Have you ever considered that Satan's great plan for you is that you would have as much sex outside of marriage as possible and as little sex within marriage as possible? God's plan, of course, is just opposite to that--to have no sex outside of marriage and a whole lot of it within marriage.

There is another consequence: we are blatantly disobeying a clear command of the Lord and a command that flows from what is true of the gospel. The sexual relationship is not a little isolated pocket of Christian obedience, but something that flows right out of the gospel. Too many of us isolate sexuality from everything else in life.

And finally, when you compromise in this area you are denying your marriage a great means of grace. It can be helpful to look at sex as something like a marriage sacrament, something deeply symbolic that is far more than the sum of its parts. It's far deeper than the physical, far more than just the act. We trust that in this act God extends grace to our marriage. We obey him and are right to expect his blessing. The marriage that forgets sex is like the church that forgets Lord's Supper--it is weakening itself and denying itself one of the strange and unexpected ways that the Lord blesses it.

Once again I would like to take an opportunity to answer a question from a reader, and in this case, a question that deals with the frequency with which a husband and wife ought to engage in sexual relations with one another. Here’s the question, followed by my response.

In a recent book review you said that it’s not wise for a husband and wife to tell anyone else how often they have sex together. Can you explain this a bit more and maybe explain how a husband and wife can figure out how often they should have sex?

I believe it is generally unwise and unhelpful for a husband and wife to share details of their sexual intimacy or to read the details of another couple’s sexual intimacy. Of course there may be times and contexts in which a certain level of detail is genuinely helpful, such as when an older couple provides counsel to a younger couple who is struggling in an area. But to share details publicly and to share very intimate details, is usually unwise and unhelpful.  I am not saying that it is necessarily sinful, just that there is a better way to achieve the end result.

One of the details that is best kept between a husband and wife is the frequency with which they have sex. There are many places you can go to find statistics on this, and there are even many Christian authors who include such numbers in their books about sexuality. I have several concerns with the appeal to statistics.

In the first place, statistics necessarily provoke comparison. In this case, comparison may well generate either pride or discontentment, either a sense of superiority that you and your spouse have sex more often than the average couple, or discontentment that everyone else is enjoying sex more often than you.

Second, statistics of this kind do very little to take into account context and life stage and even the natural variances in desire between individuals and couples. What is clear about the sexual relationship is that it is always in flux, it is always changing, and every couple needs to give it regular attention if it is to keep from slipping into dysfunction or disregard.

Third, and most significantly, appealing to statistics short circuits the difficult but important process through which a couple can work out just the right frequency in their own relationship. An appeal to statistics may allow a couple to bypass the important matters of heart and character.

With that being said, let me share my thinking on one way a couple may go about finding the frequency that is best for them.

The general rule according to 1 Corinthians 7:1-5 seems to be that the person with the lesser desire should express love to the one with the greater desire by participating in the sexual relationship more often. The reasoning is simple: more sexual desire with less sexual fulfillment can lead to temptation. However, there is more to the equation than simply determining which spouse has the greater desire and encouraging the other to have sex that often.

Let’s consider a couple named Rob and Kelly (randomly-chosen names, I assure you). As with most couples, there is a significant variance in sexual desire between the two. As is typical, but certainly not universal, Rob, the husband, is the one who tends to initiate sexual intimacy and who does so significantly more often than Kelly. However you want to measure relative sexual desires, Rob’s is the greater of the two. Kelly is generally willing to respond to Rob when he initiates, though she needs more time to prepare, more time to warm up to the idea. She finds it easier to participate and to enjoy herself when a longer period of time has elapsed between their lovemaking. The two could easily find themselves at an impasse—an impasse most married couples have encountered at one time or another.

There is always a hot market for books on marriage, even among men. Every husband is aware of his inadequacies and every husband is genuinely eager to find solutions, especially if the solutions are simple and step-by-step (just like laying laminate flooring or changing oil). Writing a good and biblical book on marriage--now there is a challenge. Few have done it with excellence. Stepping into the fray is Justin Buzzard with his new book Date Your Wife. It's a great title, a good idea, and a helpful imperative that is, unfortunately, substantially flawed.

The book’s greatest strength is drawn straight from its title: Buzzard wants men to build dating into their marriage; he wants men to continue to romance their wives throughout marriage. Any man who reads this book will come away with a greater desire to pursue his wife and greater conviction of the inherent goodness of doing so. The book’s foremost application is valid and good, but there is quite a lot of weakness along the way.

The book is fueled by one core conviction: If you want to change a marriage, change the man. Looking first at the sexual relationship and then widening the scope to all of marriage Buzzard says this: "Your wife isn't the problem. You're the problem. I'm the problem. Men are the problem. If you want to change a marriage, change the man. If you want to change your marriage, you must first see that you are the main problem in your marriage." He goes on: "You are the husband. You are the man. And God has given the man the ability to be the best thing or the worst thing that ever happened to a marriage. Before you can be the best thing that ever happened to your marriage, you need to see that you have always been the worst thing that happened to your marriage."

These are strong and near-universal statements for which he allows no meaningful exceptions. To prove them he goes in an unexpected direction: Genesis 2:15. "The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it." He says this:

Fundamental to his manhood, God gave Adam this double calling: work and keep. These Hebrew verbs can be better translated: cultivate and guard. God commissioned the first man to cultivate the garden and guard the garden. God gave the first man immense responsibility, immense power, to cause the garden to flourish or to fade. ... God gave Adam a job before he gave him a wife. So, when God presented Adam with his bride, what did Adam know he was called to do as a husband? If you had to summarize it in a sentence, what was Adam called to do for his marriage and for his wife? Cultivate and guard it. ... After giving Adam a calling, God gave Adam a wife—the crown jewel of his calling. "Cultivate and protect this woman I've given you; cause life to flourish. Take the raw materials of this marriage and develop them—build, invent, create—so that your wife will flourish and thrive in this environment. Develop and protect what I'm entrusting to you," God said to Adam.

This is an unusual interpretation and application of Genesis 2:15. Certainly this is a text that gives man his job description in this world, but it is quite a stretch to take that same description verbatim into the marriage relationship. It would have been far more helpful, I think, to look to Ephesians 5 where a husband is told to nourish and cherish his wife and where he is told to wash her in the water of God’s word. What Buzzard wants the husband to see is that if your wife is not flourishing, it must be because you, the husband, are not cultivating and guarding her. The key to fulfilling your mandate as a husband is an ongoing dating relationship that continues well past the wedding day.

A couple of weeks ago I offered a series of bullet points on the subject of death. I guess it’s no less strange to equate bullet points with marriage. Nevertheless, according to the Bible, marriage is…

…Instituted by God, Uniting One Man and One Woman

Matthew 19:4-6 - “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh' [Genesis 2:24]? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

…A Portrait of Christ and His Bride, the Church

Ephesians 5:31-32 - “‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’ [Genesis 2:24]. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”

…To Be Honored

Hebrews 13:4 - “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.”

…A Source of Trouble, Divided Interests, and Anxiety

1 Corinthians 7:28, 33-34 - “But if you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that. … But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband.”

…Not Every Person’s Calling

1 Corinthians 7:7-8 - “I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am.”

…Meant to Be Permanent in This Life

Mark 10:11-12 - “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” (cf. Luke 16:18; Matthew 19:8-9; Romans 7:2-3)

…Impermanent in Eternity

Matthew 22:30 - “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” (cf. Mark 12:25; Luke 20:35-36)

…Fulfilled In Christ’s Return

Revelation 19:6-9 -

“Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,

‘Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God
the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure’--

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, ‘Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’ And he said to me, ‘These are the true words of God.’”

There is a lot of talk about what complementarianism actually looks like as it works itself out in marriage. There are endless caricatures that make it little better than slavery, but Wayne Grudem shows something very different as he offers a very helpful glimpse into the inner workings of his own marriage. He leads in love. 

Wayne Grudem: Someone might say, “Well, okay, fine. There’s a leadership role for Adam, and I guess that means husbands should have a leadership role in their marriage of some sort. But how does it work? How does it work in practice?”

In our own marriage, Margaret and I talk frequently and at length about many decisions. I can tell you that I wouldn’t be here tonight unless Margaret and I had talked about this and asked the Lord about it, and she had given blessing to it, and said, “Yes, I think that’s right.” Sometimes we make large decisions such as buying a house or a car, and sometimes they are small decisions like where we should go for a walk together. I often defer to Margaret’s wishes, and she often defers to mine because we love each other.

In almost every case, each of us has some wisdom and insight that the other does not have. Usually, we reach agreement on the decisions that we make. Very seldom will I do something that she doesn’t think is wise—I didn’t say never. She prays; she trusts God; she loves God. She is sensitive to God’s leading and direction, but in every decision, whether it large or small and whether we have reached agreement or not, the responsibility to make the decision still rests with me.

Now, I am not talking about every decision they make individually. Margaret controls a much larger portion of our budget than I do because all the things having to do with the household and food and clothing and house expenses and everything … she writes the checks and pays the bills. I take care of buying books and some things about the car. I have appointments during the day with students. She doesn’t get involved in that. She has her own appointments. She has her own calendar. I don’t get involved in trying to micromanage all of that. We have distinct areas of responsibility. I am not talking about those things. I don’t get involved in those things unless she asks my counsel.

But in every decision that we make that affects us together or affects our family, the responsibility to make the decision rests with me. If there is genuine male headship, I believe there is a quiet acknowledgement that the focus of the decision making process is the husband, not the wife. Even though there will often be much discussion and there should be mutual respect and consideration of each other, ultimately the responsibility to make the decision rests with the husband. And so, in our marriage the responsibility to make the decision rests with me.

This is not because I am a wiser or more gifted leader. It is because I am the husband. God has given me that responsibility. It is very good. It brings peace and joy to our marriage, and both Margaret and I are thankful for it. Now, I need to add very quickly, men, this does not mean that a husband has the right to be a selfish leader.

Just about three years ago, maybe four years ago now, we started the decision making process. Margaret had been in an auto accident in Chicago. As part of the aftermath of that accident, she was experiencing some chronic pain that was aggravated by cold and humidity, and Chicago is cold in the winter and humid in the summer. Chicago was not a good place for that. Some friends said to us, “We have a second house in Mesa, Arizona, if you would ever like to go there and just use it as a vacation place, we would like you to do that.”

So we did. We visited Arizona. Mesa is a suburb of Phoenix. Margaret felt better. It was hot, and it was dry. And so I said, “Wow, Margaret I would love to move here, but I am only trained to do one thing; I can teach at a seminary and that is it. There aren’t any seminaries here.” The next day Margaret was looking in the yellow pages—literally. She said, “Wayne, there’s something here called Phoenix Seminary.” One thing led to another and God was at work in that seminary, and it was starting to grow.

Then we went through a decision making process. When we were in the middle of that decision making process, on the very day that we were focusing on that, I came in my normal custom of reading through a section of scripture each day, I came to a Ephesians 5:28, “Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.”

I thought if I would move to take a job in another city for the sake of my body, if I were experiencing the pain that Margaret had, and husbands should love their wives as their own bodies—then shouldn’t I move? Shouldn’t I be willing to move for Margaret’s sake? That was really why we moved to Phoenix.

I just say that by way of illustration, husbands, headship doesn’t mean selfishness. It means being willing to give of yourself for your wife and care for her as well. God has brought … I think that was obedience to Him and God has brought blessing. But there are dangers, there are dangers of distortion in male headship and female submission to or support of that headship.

There are dangers of distortion in one direction or another. There are errors of passivity and errors of aggressiveness. I put this on a chart of husband and wife. In the middle is the biblical ideal for a husband as loving, humble headship. That’s the ideal. For a wife the ideal is joyful, intelligent submission to that headship. Intelligent, that means she is contributing her wisdom and her counsel to the decision making process.

On the right side of the chart there are errors of aggressiveness. A husband can be a tyrant. “Everybody serve me.” He’s selfish; he’s harsh, and he’s abusive. That’s an error of aggressiveness. Or a wife can be a usurper, resisting and rebelling against and being hostile toward her husband’s leadership time and again and challenging for it. When a tyrant is married to a usurper there is conflict all the time.

But there are opposite errors. There are errors of passivity. A husband can be entirely passive. He comes home from work; he clicks on the TV; he plops down in his chair, and he wants everyone to wait on him. The children are disobedient; he does nothing. He’s entirely passive. There is a hostile neighbor that needs to be dealt with and addressed, but his wife is dealing with the conflict all by herself. He is a wimp. That’s an error of passivity.

There is an error of passivity on the wife’s part. Day after day, month after month, year after year in their marriage, “Yes dear, whatever you say … yes dear, whatever you say.” She doesn’t contribute at all to the decision making process. She has no preferences, no desires. She’s a doormat. That is an error as well. That’s not the biblical pattern.

If a tyrant gets married to a doormat you get all sorts of abuse, and it’s dehumanizing for both of them, but particularly for the wife. If you get a wimp married to a usurper, well, he follows her around all day long, six steps behind just doing what she takes the leadership in. If you get a wimp married to a doormat, everything runs like the energizer bunny running out of batteries, finally. It just all goes downhill and everything goes wrong in the family. There’s nobody taking responsibility. The biblical ideal is loving, humble headship and joyful, intelligent submission.

Now, you have personalities and backgrounds that predispose you to make mistakes on one side or the other of this chart. For those of you, you could think perhaps about marriages you know or relationships you know. You can see people making errors in both sides of this, but those are distortions. Those are distortions of the biblical pattern.

Last week I shared three articles titled A Picture-Perfect Marriage. That short series looked to Ephesians 5 and the great mystery that is marriage. I showed from that text that marriage is, and always has been, a portrait of Christ and his church. But at the end of it all I was left with a question: What is the role of the sexual relationship in this great mystery? I had to take a shot at answering that question at a recent conference and want to share today how I understand it.

We have established that marriage is a portrait of Christ and the church and that both husband and wife have a part to play in this portrait. The wife completes her part when she joyfully submits to the leadership of her husband and the husband completes his part when he joyfully and lovingly gives himself up for his wife. But how does the sexual relationship fit into God’s good design for marriage? I will admit from the outset that the answer isn’t quite as clear in Scripture as I might have expected, but I will give it a try and eagerly await your feedback.

God’s Good Design

It ought to go without saying that the Bible knows no good in sex outside of the marriage relationship. In love God says that within marriage sex is to be enjoyed and to be enjoyed freely and regularly; in love God says that outside marriage, sex of any kind is strictly forbidden. Why? Because God designed sex for a specific purpose and that purpose can only be expressed within marriage. Any other expression of sexuality, whether that is adultery or fornication or any kind of self-centered sex--all of these things ignore God's design for sex and reinterprets it according to our sinful designs.

To understand why God says that sex is to exist only within marriage, we need to look at the covenantal nature of the marriage relationship. Marriage is a covenant that a husband and wife enter into, a covenant in which they come together before God and before other people and are made one. It is not the rings or the white dress or even the sexual union that makes marriage, but the covenant (which is why, in older times, betrothal was considered as unbreakable as marriage). While husband and wife obviously remain two individuals, two independent life forms, there is now a sense in which God regards them as one entity. Each is now responsible to the other and joined to the other to such an extent that in some mysterious way God now views them as being one. In Ephesians 5 Paul goes all the way back to Genesis 2 and reminds the reader that “a man shall leave his mother and father and be joined to his wife and the two shall be one flesh.”

Over the past two days I have been writing about Ephesians 5 and the great mystery of marriage—that in some way marriage is a portrait, a reflection, of the relationship of Christ to his church. In the first article I introduced this metaphor and in the second I spoke about how the wife completes her part of the picture.

Paul now speaks to husbands and here is what he says (in Ephesians 5:25:32): Husbands, you make your marriage an accurate portrait of the real marriage when you give up your life to your wife. You have the unique task of displaying the gospel in your willing, joyful, loving leadership of your wife. In this relationship that is meant to be a portrait of the relationship of Christ to the church, the husband is called to be an accurate portrait of Christ. Husbands, you are to be toward your wife as Christ is toward his church. That is a little bit abstract so let's see how it takes shape by asking three questions: What, how and why?

What?

What is a husband to do to? Husband, love your wife and give yourself up for her. Notice that Paul does not exactly parallel what he has said to wives. He does not immediately command you to be the head of your wife. He has told your wife to submit to your leadership, but he doesn't begin by saying, "Husbands, lead!" Instead, he tells you to be filled with love for your wife. You are to lead in love, to give yourself up. This is not love as we may think of it in our culture--love as an emotion or love as something that is purely physical. True love is an act of will. It requires action. You are not commanded to be romantically warm and fuzzy with your wife, though hopefully you have that too, but you are told to act in love toward her. 

The model for your love is Christ's love for his people. How did Christ love his people? How much did he love his bride? He loved in action, not just in words or feelings. He gave himself up for her. He gave up his life. Christ gave himself up, he did not get given up. He was active and deliberate. Christ may still have shown love for us if he went to the cross kicking and screaming and protesting his innocence and begging to be let go. But how much more is his love displayed in his willing sacrifice, in going to the cross of his own volition. You display your love for your wife when you willingly, joyfully give yourself up for her.

Yesterday I began a short series called A Picture-Perfect Marriage. This is my attempt to study what Paul says about the marriage relationship being a picture, a portrait of Christ and the church. Having laid that foundation, I now want to look at how the wife fulfills her part of that portrait.

Here is what Paul says to wives: You make your marriage an accurate portrait of the real marriage when you willingly submit to your husband's leadership. You have the unique task of displaying the gospel in your willing submission to your husband. Here is the text I am drawing on:

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. (Ephesians 5:22-24)

In this relationship that serves as a portrait of Christ and the church, it is the wife who is called to be an accurate portrait of the church--at least an accurate portrait of what the church is called to be. Wives, this is your calling from God. It is your duty and your privilege. As you relate to your husband, you are to be toward him as the church is toward Christ. That is a little bit abstract so let's see how it takes shape by asking three questions: What, how and why?

What?

First, the what question: What are you to do to complete your part in this portrait? The answer is, You are to submit to your own husband in everything.

Paul says, "Wives, submit to your own husband." Let's not miss your own. A woman is not to submit to every man, as some people may teach, but to her own husband. The Lord has determined that there should be a leadership structure within marriage but this does not mean that women are to submit to men in general. The head of the church is Christ and the church is to submit to him; the head of a wife is her husband and she is to submit to him.

She is to to submit in everything. That is an intimidating statement and we need to deal with that word everything. We need to be careful that we don't make it mean more than it says. If you want to be ridiculous you could say that I could now order my wife to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge and she would have to obey me. But of course we know that a wife is to submit to a higher authority before a lesser one. The whole idea of a hierarchy of authority is that there are levels of authority; if a lesser authority tells you to disobey a higher authority, your submission needs to be to the higher authority. So let's not make in everything more than it says.

Yet let's not make it mean less than it says either. It is an all-encompassing phrase which means that you really are to obey your husband in everything that isn't directly contradictory to what a higher authority says. You are not free to follow his leadership or ignore it as you see fit. Really, the only time you are to refuse to follow your husband’s leadership is when you can come to him with your Bible and say, "Here is where God says that I may not submit to you." You don't have to believe in what he says and you don't have to like what he says, but you do have to follow him. This will not always be easy and yet the Lord calls you to submit to his leadership. This is the role God has given you--a role in which you can beautifully display the gospel. You aren't submitting to your husband for your own happiness or peace, but to be that display, that portrait.

How?

So that is the what question: you are to submit to your own husband in everything. But how? How is a wife to submit?

This morning I am going to begin just a short series of articles on marriage. Having read several books on marriage in the past few months, I found myself really intrigued by what Paul says about the topic in his letter to the Ephesians. I’ve since had the opportunity to study it and wanted to share what I’ve learned along the way.

I am going to cheat a little bit at the start of this series by going to the end of the story before the beginning. There are a couple of members of my family who do this if they are reading a tense or scary novel—they will flip to the end, figure out how things conclude, and then go back and read the middle. Once they know that everything works out well, they can go back and read the rest without getting too wound up. I am going to do that here because any discussion of biblical marriage involves some scary words and ideas like submission and headship and leadership. This makes it very tense for a lot of us, so we're going to go to the end of the story and see that it all turns out okay. Then we'll go back to the rest of it.

Here is where we will begin:

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:31,32).

As he comes to the end of his teaching on marriage, Paul springs a giant surprise. He says that marriage is a mystery, that there is a hidden meaning in it and that until now this meaning has been hidden. The surprise is that marriage is a type or a picture or a display. Marriage is meant to be a portrait of something else. To show this he goes to the Old Testament, to the very first marriage of the very first man and woman. Let me give you some context.

The Mystery

God had created Adam and then allowed Adam to live by himself for a time so he could come to this understanding that in all of creation there was not a helper that was suitable to him. All the animals God had created paraded in front of Adam. Adam gave them names but saw that they were all very different from him. It’s not that he was lonely and pining away, but that God had him see that there was nothing or no one who was equal to him, no one who could help him carry out his God-given mandate. Adam had received his mandate from God, that he was to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. But he knew that he could only do that with the help of something or someone that was like him.

Then God said, "It is not good for this man to be alone." He caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep and he took one of his ribs and he fashioned a woman from it. He presented this woman to Adam in the first-ever wedding ceremony and the man immediately broke into a song of praise. Now he saw his helper, the one who would complement him and complete him and he sang out:

This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.

And then we read these words: "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." Now here, thousands of years later in this letter to the church in Ephesus, Paul returns to these words and says this: "This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church." Just like that, Paul gives a whole new meaning to marriage, a whole new purpose. He says that for all this time the joining of husband and wife in marriage has actually been a mystery, that it has been pointing to something else, something greater. Only now after the death and resurrection of Jesus are we able to see what it has been pointing to. The mystery is that the marriage relationship is a portrait of the relationship of Christ to his church. This relationship is the ultimate marriage, the real marriage.

It must be intimidating to write a book on marriage. Store shelves are groaning under the weight of titles that claim to have the key to a happy marriage, or a biblical marriage or a gospel-centered marriage. To rise above such a crowded field a book needs to offer something different, something unique, something that distinguishes it from the pack. Tim and Kathy Keller have jumped into the fray with their new book The Meaning of Marriage and the distinguishing feature of their book is a deep gospel-centeredness. This leads the Kellers to invite the reader deep into the gospel of Jesus Christ and also compels them to show how the gospel extends to every part of marriage.

Though The Meaning of Marriage is written primarily by Tim Keller, his wife Kathy contributes in several ways, and most notably by contributing one of the chapters and by being the wife to whom Tim has been married for almost four decades. Tim explains that the book has three deep roots. The first of these is his marriage to Kathy, the second is his long pastoral ministry, particularly in New York City in a church dominated by singles, and the third and most foundational is the biblical teaching on marriage as found in both the Old and New Testaments. "Nearly four decades ago, as theological students, Kathy and I studied the Biblical teachings on sex, gender, and marriage. Over the next fifteen years, we worked them out in our own marriage. Then, over the last twenty-two years, we have used what we learned from both Scripture and experience to guide, encourage, counsel, and instruct young urban adults with regard to sex and marriage." They speak from the powerful combination of Scriptural grounding and real-world experience.

The book is comprised of eight chapters that flow logically from the biblical basis for marriage all the way to the sexual relationship within marriage. In chapter 1 they offer the very basic biblical teachings on marriage, showing how marriage is God's idea and that it is meant to reflect the saving love of God for us in Jesus Christ. In chapter 2 they show how the work of the Holy Spirit is fundamental to battling the main enemy of marriage: sinful self-centeredness. Chapter 3 is about love, looking at how the feeling of love relates (or doesn't relate) to actions of love. Chapter 4, "The Mission of Marriage," turns to the purpose of marriage and offers a long discussion of spiritual friendship while chapter 5, "Loving the Stranger," teaches three skills that every husband and wife ought to pursue.

Chapter 6, written by Kathy, celebrates the differences between the sexes, looking to the tricky subject of gender roles and complementarity. Singleness and wise thinking about pursuing marriage are the subjects of chapter 7 and the final chapter looks to the sexual relationship, showing why the Bible roots sex in marriage and how this relationship can best be celebrated within marriage.