Reflections on marriage – both kinds.

April 14, 2013

Maria Christ's work on the Cross, Ephesians, Marriage , 2 Comments

"I know what I'm getting into, Mother!"

“I know what I’m getting into, Mother!”

 

It was our anniversary last week. Mike and I have been laughing and smiling through memories, all of them bathed in deep gratitude to the One who has kept us faithful to our covenant.  Holy Spirit super glue comes highly recommended.

There was that 20th anniversary cruise to which months earlier we had blithely invited MY dad, our boys Graham & Wes and Graham’s classmate & good  friend Rob. By the time we set sail in April of 2000, deep fissures in our marriage had surfaced. Walled-up tight, we barely talking to one another.  We slept in separate bunks in our cabin, keeping up the charade of a happy anniversary celebratory cruise.  It was awful.

But thanks be to the God who can heal marriages and who preserves the best for the 2nd half! (Here’s to 33 more years!)

While cleaning yesterday, I gained a deeper insight into marriage and the church.  Following my routine for manual labor, my ears were glued to a podcast.  Two Christians were ironing out the actual significance of Christ’s work on the cross.  Between dusting and scrubbing,   I caught a new understanding of something called ‘penal substitutionary attonement’.  That’s the doctrine that holds to Christ dying in our place, submitting to the legal punishment due us and absorbing God’s justifiable wrath toward sin.

The Christian opposed to ‘PSA’ advocated ‘Christus Victor’ as the label for what Jesus accomplished.  This view holds that Christ defeated the evil powers of darkness arrayed against God, but that no punishment was meted out.  He explained further that far from holy justice, actual INJUSTICE would be done were an innocent man punished for something he didn’t do.

The orthodox Christian explained that it was FITTING and APPROPRIATE for Christ as both head & husband of the Church (the called-out believers are the bride of Christ) to die and pay the penalty for her sins.  We are one with Christ if we are IN CHRIST.  No innocent 3rd party was pulled in off the street and made to suffer this sentence.

All of a sudden I SAW why Christian marriage is such a big deal.  It is the down-to-earth illustration of Christ’s relationship to us as Church. I had always known Paul to say that explicitly, but never understood it.

          Eph 5:31-33 – “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

New realizations flooded me as I saw more clearly what Mike does for me as my husband. HE actually is responsible for me.  If I err in any way, in one sense, he takes the blame.  We are one; what I do affects him and vice versa.  Only God holds HIM accountable.

What woman wouldn’t want to tuck herself safely under that kind of God-appointed covering?  If God describes that as submission, I happily submit and will pray all the more for my dear husband.

Jeff, our pastor, preached on the role of husbands today, taken from 1 Peter 3:1-7.  I love his quote attributed to Matthew Henry:

          Eve was not taken out of Adam’s head to top him, neither out of his feet to be trampled on by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by him, and near his heart to be loved by him.

Since husbands are called to serve & die for their wives as Paul explains, it seems a little thing to respect and honor them in return. Thank you, Father, for your planned protection.  I DO plan & carry out silly, stupid things occasionally.

Sex and Sacraments

February 18, 2013

Maria Marriage, sacraments, Uncategorized , , Leave a comment

  I love the concept of ‘category error’. That’s when someone criticizes something for lacking an attribute impossible for it even to have.  Like saying that there is something wrong with water because it doesn’t provide fiber.  Or the Russian cosmonaut saucily boasting that he had been to space and not seen God.  (Silly, God is not a material/ physical being.  There’s no WAY you could have seen Him!)

So in thinking about categories, I want to make the boast that Tim & Kathy Keller’s book, The Meaning of Marriage, is in a category of books unparalleled.  It is NOT at all like any book on marriage that you might have read or heard about. 

This is a book that will bless you, whether you are a teenage girl or guy thinking you might want to marry someday….or you are engaged to be married…..or you are in an unhappy marriage and are searching for a helpful paradigm …or you are like us, coming up on 33 years of married life.

I know I’ve talked about their book before.  My enthusiasm has not waned.

Mike even read it and he has NEVER picked up ANY book on relationships, whether on parenting or marriage or how to live with Felines.

Here’s what spiritual gem I reaped yesterday as I was finishing it.  (Mike zipped through in a week; I’ve been savoring it slowly, just on Sundays at breakfast.)

The Kellers describe married sex as a “Covenant Renewal Ceremony”.  I like that.  They say that when you experience that ultimate physical pleasure in that totally safe & secure place with your spouse, you bubble over enthusiastically with verbal expressions or thoughts like:  “I love you SO much!  I feel SO close to you!”   For a few moments afterwards you both bask in contented affection and oneness.

I think I understand the sacrament of Communion better now after reading the Kellers describe the role that sex plays in married life.  If sex is the covenant renewal ceremony reinforcing one’s marriage vows, then the Eucharist serves the same purpose.  I have always struggled to see what is some find deep and meaningful about the actually sacrament of Christ’s body & blood.  I’ve asked myself,

“Just how does the Eucharist administer God’s grace, sustaining and empowering Christians?”

Is it in the power of remembering and reenacting? Is it reflecting on how much it cost God to send His son Jesus as a representative human?  Is it being mindful of how bad we are, and how much we deserve Hell?

In comparing how ‘loved & at one’ I am with my husband after an especially powerful ‘Covenant Renewal Ceremony”  in our bedroom, I think I see a bit more clearly how Grace might come to me through participating in Communion.

What I REALLY love at our PCA church is how the pastor tailors to us his biblical explanation of what this institution of a New Covenant means.  Each time we celebrate Communion, whether it is Pete or Jeff, they link their sermon TO the Eucharist and set it in context, making it really meaningful.

I’m getting a better sense of what a great gift it is to be part of God’s forever family.  And just like in those afterglow minutes with Mike where I am SO grateful to be married to him, I now leave Church more in love with Jesus, the bridegroom. It’s definitely a maturing process, but I think I’m growing and cultivating a deeper and truer appreciation of the Trinity along with a desire to protect, honor and love the Body of Christ.    

Best Book on Marriage

December 3, 2012

Maria Love, Marriage, Sanctification, Uncategorized , Leave a comment

I avoid most books on parenting.  They make me feel guilty.  They remind me of all the things I don’t do right. And as a parent of adult children, I still don’t read them.

I also never read any marriage books until our union showed signs of unraveling  at year 20.  Then I hungrily sought them out.  Christian girlfriends guided me toward Biblical books which protected me from the “You deserve better” pabulum.  Dipping into new paradigms for Christian marriage was eye-opening and gave me hope that I could perhaps help to heal our relationship. I learned to be gentler, to seek to please Mike and pray for him more effectively.

God’s grace, not any book or counseling brought Mike and me back together to grow stronger as ‘one flesh’ and we have enjoyed 12 sweet years since that painful upheaval.

Recently I started reading Tim Keller’s book The Meaning of Marriage.  We are fans of Keller’s clear exposition of biblical teachings both in sermon and other books.  So I knew I would enjoy reading what he & his wife Kathy had to say.   But I didn’t expect anything new or different than the other biblically-based treatments of Christian marriage.

*****Get ready for some über-gushing******

This is THE best book on marriage I have EVER read!!

What is startling is that TK throws on its head both the Western and Eastern views of marriage.

Western – romantic, physical, sexual optimization in a partner

Eastern – communal, economic and social optimization through the marriage

Instead he presents marriage as a signing on to a life-long journey with this other person toward Christ- likeness, via God’s sanctifying work.

From page 121 –

Within this Christian vision for marriage, here’s what it means to fall in love.  It is to look at another person and get a glimpse of the person God is creating, and to say, “I see who God is making you, and it excites me!  I want to be part of that.  I want to partner with you & God in the journey you are taking to his throne.  And when we get there, I will look at your magnificence and say, ‘I always knew you could be like this.  I got glimpses of it on earth, but now look at you!’”  Each spouse should see the great thing that Jesus is doing in the life of their mate through the Word, the gospel.  Each spouse then should give him-or herself to be a vehicle for that work and envision the day that you will stand together before God, seeing each other presented in spotless beauty and glory.

*

Now THAT’s an institution worth celebrating and promoting. Buy the book and enjoy the adventure.  It’s perfect for us already-marrieds, the newly-weds and those who are engaged.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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But it wasn’t until I started reading Tim Keller’s book on marriage that I felt excited about how great marriage can be.  My husband and I are long-time Keller fans and have read most of his books.  So when The Meaning of Marriage came out last year I bought it.  I just hadn’t gotten around to reading it until now.   Warming!  Get ready for some über-gushing:  this is THE best book on marriage.

Although I haven’t finished reading it, I am writing now, this first weekend in December, in case you haven’t completed your Christmas shopping and are looking around for a gift to give seasoned couples, newlyweds or the engaged.  This book provides a hope-filled vision of what Christian marriage is meant to be.  I am finding my joy and gladness in being married to Mike topped off and refreshed.  And what I sensed all along about the blessing of Christian marriage is being reinforced.

What makes Keller’s book different is that he turns on its head both

– the ‘old-world’/ Middle Eastern/ African view of 8/

nstead he describes the ideal mate/best friend as the one whose spiritual end-product you glimpse and are excited to be part of.  A kind of “ I see what God is doing in your life to sanctify you and I want to be part of that spiritual adventure.”

Both partners are looking to Jesus and being transformed into His every-increasing likeness.  Partners are NOT looking at each other to fulfill them.

Buy the book, read and discuss it together and be excited about the journey.

 

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