Sessions Include:

The Meaning of Marriage, Lesson #1
The Secret of Marriage

The Meaning of Marriage, Lesson #2
The Power for Marriage

The Meaning of Marriage, Lesson #3
The Essence of Marriage

The Meaning of Marriage, Lesson #4
The Mission of Marriage

The Meaning of Marriage, Lesson #5
Loving the Stranger

The Meaning of Marriage, Lesson #6
Embracing the Other (Navigating Gender Roles)

The Meaning of Marriage, Lesson #7
Singleness and Marriage

The Meaning of Marriage, Lesson #8
Sex and Marriage

I remember some years ago watching a television drama in which a man and a woman who were living together were having an argument over whether to get married. He wanted to go ahead and do it, but she did not. At one point she blew up and said, “Why do we need a piece of paper in order to love one another? I don’t need a piece of paper to love you! It only complicates things.”

That statement stuck with me, because as a pastor in New York City, I have heard essentially the same thing from younger adults for years. When the woman said, “I don’t need a piece of paper to love you,” she was using a very specific definition of “love.” She was assuming that love is, in its essence, a particular kind of feeling. She was saying, “I feel romantic passion for you, and the piece of paper doesn’t enhance that at all, and it may hurt it.” She was measuring love mainly by how emotionally desirous she was for his affection. And she was right that the marital legal “piece of paper” would do little or nothing directly to add to the feeling.

But when the Bible speaks of love, it measures it primarily not by how much you want to receive but by how much you are willing to give of yourself to someone. How much are you willing to lose for the sake of this person? How much of your freedom are you willing to forsake? How much of your precious time, emotion, and resources are you willing to invest in this person? And for that, the marriage vow is not just helpful but it is even a test. In so many cases, when one person says to another, “I love you, but let’s not ruin it by getting married,” that person really means, “I don’t love you enough to close off all my options. I don’t love you enough to give myself to you that thoroughly.” To say, “I don’t need a piece of paper to love you” is basically to say, “My love for you has not reached the marriage level.”

One of the most widely held beliefs in our culture today is that romantic love is all important in order to have a full life but that it almost never lasts. A second, related belief is that marriage should be based on romantic love. Taken together, these convictions lead to the conclusion that marriage and romance are essentially incompatible, that it is cruel to commit people to lifelong connection after the inevitable fading of romantic joy.

The Biblical understanding of love does not preclude deep emotion. As we will see, a marriage devoid of passion and emotional desire for one another doesn’t fulfill the Biblical vision. But neither does the Bible pit romantic love against the essence of love, which is sacrificial commitment to the good of the other. If we think of love primarily as emotional desire and not as active, committed service, we end up pitting duty and desire against each other in a way that is unrealistic and destructive. How these two fit together is the subject of this chapter.

Timothy Keller and Kathy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God, 1st ed. (New York: Dutton, 2011)

We have just released a new Bible Study on the book The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller

These lessons are available on Amazon, as well as a part of my Good Questions Have Groups Talking Subscription Service. Like Netflix for Bible Lessons, one low subscription gives you access to all our lessons--thousands of them. For a medium-sized church, lessons are as little as $10 per teacher per year.

Each lesson consists of 20 or so ready-to-use questions that get groups talking. Answers are provided in the form of quotes from respected authors such as John Piper, Max Lucado and Beth Moore.

These lessons will save you time as well as provide deep insights from some of the great writers and thinkers from today and generations past.  I also include quotes from the same commentaries that your pastor uses in sermon preparation.

Ultimately, the goal is to create conversations that change lives.