This document discusses marriage as a covenant relationship rather than a consumer relationship based on feelings. It notes that people change over time, so there is no perfectly compatible "right person" to marry. Instead, marriage requires loving your spouse through your actions, such as serving them and meeting their primary emotional needs, rather than just relying on feelings. This builds feelings of love over time through living for your spouse's benefit as Christ did for us.

1. Marriage ( 2 )
Covenantal Love
Slides by: Timothy Chan, based on
John Piper’s “This Momentary Marriage”
& Tim Keller’s “The Meaning of Marriage”

2. Popular Opinions On Marital Happiness
❖ An increasingly common view on marriage:
❖ “Marriage is when two people love each other so
much that they commit to spending the rest of
their lives together, building a family together.”
❖ (Q) Do you agree with this? Why or why not?
❖ Kim Kardashian, explaining her quick divorce, said:
“I love with all of my heart and soul. I want a family
and babies and a real life so badly that maybe I
rushed into something too soon. I believed in love
and the dream of what I wanted so badly.”

3. Popular Opinions On Marital Happiness
❖ A HubPages entry entitled “How do You Know If
You Married the Wrong Person” lists a few points:
❖ Incompatibility: ... Marriage is not only about
commitment and responsibility. Couples must also
be compatible in order for the marriage to work.
❖ No “Spark”: ... If you kiss your partner and you
feel nothing then you know that you married the
wrong person.
❖ Opposites: ... You married the wrong person if
your partner loves clutter while you are a well
organized person.

4. They broke up within months...

5. Falling In Love
❖ Some might say: ”Love shouldn’t have to be hard. If
two people are truly soul mates, then love should
come naturally!”
❖ (Q) Do you think that if you marry the right
person, then love would be natural and not require
that much work? Why or why not?
❖ Real love takes time and sacrifice.
❖ “When you first fall in love, you think you love the
person, but you don’t really. ... You actually love your
idea of the person – and that is always, at first, one-
dimensional and somewhat mistaken.” (Tim Keller)

6. You Never Marry The Right Person
❖ “We always marry the wrong person. We never know
whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we
first marry the right person, just give it a while and
he or she will change.” (Stanley Hauerwas)
❖ “You don’t know, you can’t know, who your spouse
will actually be in the future until you get
there.” (Tim Keller)
❖ In other words, we have to see our spouses not
simply as who they are now, but in terms of who
God is shaping them to become in the future.

7. You Never Marry The Right Person
❖ “Over the years you will go through seasons in which
you have to learn to love a person who you didn’t
marry, who is something of a stranger. You will have
to make changes that you don’t want to make, and so
will your spouse. The journey may eventually take
you into a strong, tender, joyful marriage. But it is
not because you married the perfectly compatible
person. That person doesn’t exist.” (Tim Keller)
❖ (Q) What tough changes have you had to make
over the years that resulted in a stronger marriage?

8. Two Types Of Relationships
❖ Consumer relationship
❖ It lasts as long as the “vendor” meets your needs at
a cost acceptable to you – if another vendor offers
better services or value, you’re free to switch
❖ Marriage = experience of romantic fulfillment
❖ Covenant relationship
❖ The good of the relationship is more important
than the needs of the individual
❖ Love is more action than emotion

9. Two Types Of Relationships
❖ Parent-child relationship is a covenantal relationship
❖ Parents have a binding obligation to take care of
their children, even when it’s thankless hard work,
even when it’s not emotionally satisfying.
❖ “[When] children leave home, many marriages fall
apart. Why? Because while the parents treated their
relationship with their children as a covenant
relationship ... they treated their marriages as a
consumer relationship and withdrew their actions of
love when they weren’t having the feelings.”
(Tim Keller)

10. Covenantal Love
❖ “Wedding vows are not a declaration of present love
but a mutually binding promise of future love. ... in a
wedding you stand up before God, your family, and
all the main institutions of society, and you promise
to be loving, faithful, and true to the other person in
the future, regardless of undulating internal feelings
or external circumstances.” (Tim Keller)

11. Covenantal Love
❖ (Eph 5:25, 28a, NIV) Husbands, love your wives, just
as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for
her ... In this same way, husbands ought to love their
wives ...
❖ Paul urged husbands to love their wives in v. 25,
but in v. 28, he repeats it with a verb that stresses
obligation. He commands them (“ought”) to love.
❖ Emotions can’t be commanded, only actions. So
Paul is commanding actions of love.

12. Covenantal Love
❖ (Q) Some say, “I’m sorry, I can’t give love if I don’t
feel it! I can’t fake it!” Do you struggle with this?
How would you respond to this statement?
❖ (Rom 5:8) But God shows his love for us in that
while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

13. Actions Of Love Lead To Feelings Of Love
❖ “Our culture says that feelings of love are the basis
for actions of love. And of course that can be true.
But it is truer to say that actions of love can lead
consistently to feelings of love.” (Tim Keller)
❖ Our outward actions can shape our inner feelings.
❖ “Do not waste time bothering whether you “love”
your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do
this we find one of the great secrets. When you are
behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently
come to love him.” (C. S. Lewis)

14. How To Love With Action
❖ (1 John 3:18) Little children, let us not love in word
or talk but in deed and in truth.
❖ How to love with action?
1. Not living for yourself
2. Using correct “love currency”

15. Not Living For Yourself
❖ “Whether we are husband or wife, we are not to live
for ourselves but for the other. And that is the
hardest yet single most important function of being
a husband or a wife in marriage.” (Tim Keller)
❖ “You only discover your own happiness after each of
you has put the happiness of your spouse ahead of
your own, in a sustained way, in response to what
Jesus has done for you.” (Tim Keller)

16. Not Living For Yourself
❖ (2 Cor 5:15) And he died for all, that those who live
might no longer live for themselves but for him who
for their sake died and was raised.
❖ (1 John 3:16) By this we know love, that he laid down
his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for
the brothers.

17. Not Living For Yourself
❖ Jesus loved us even when we deny him, betray him.
He said, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what
they’re doing.”
❖ Spirit-generated selflessness =
❖ Thinking yourself less
❖ Realizing that, in Christ, all your needs are met

18. Love Currency
❖ Wife: “I don’t feel that you love me!”
Husband: “But I do love you!”
❖ They’re using the wrong love currency
❖ “It is not enough to simply say, “I love you.” Nor is it
enough to give love to your spouse in the way to
which you feel most accustomed. ... learn to give
your spouse love in the way he or she finds most
emotionally valuable and powerful.” (Tim Keller)
❖ In other words, learn your spouse’s primary love
language and send love over those channels.

19. Love Currency
❖ Affection
❖ Physical affection (eye contact, caresses, being
together, holding hands)
❖ Verbal affection (honest praise, thankfulness,
appreciation, affirmation)
❖ Friendship
❖ Do common tasks together (recreation, gardening
chores)
❖ Share your life together (spend quality time
together, show interest and pride in his/her work
world), be supportive and loyal to each other

20. Love Currency
❖ Service
❖ Menial tasks (childcare, housekeeping)
❖ Emotional support (show respect, give confidence
to what he/she is doing, stand up for him/her)
❖ Spiritual service (pray daily for each other)
❖ Examples of other love languages
❖ Commitment to change and growth (willing to
take correction, accountability to make changes)
❖ Give space (allow spouse to have privacy time)

21. Final Exhortations
❖ (1 Pet 4:8a) Above all, keep loving one another
earnestly ...
❖ The greek word translated “earnestly” here
literally means “stretched out.”
❖ “Love comes from you, but marriage from above,
from God. As high as God is above man, so high are
the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of love. It is
not your love that sustains the marriage, but from
now on, the marriage that sustains your
love.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

22. Suggested Exercise
❖ Discuss with your husband/wife what his/her
primary love language is. Examine how you have
communicated love in the past, and how you should
change and improve in the future in this area. Make
commitments to each other to love with action.

23. Summary of Study #2
❖ You never marry the right person. Even if you do,
they’ll change into a different person in the future.
❖ Marriage is not a consumer relationship. It is a
covenant relationship.
❖ Covenantal love is more action than emotion. It
values the relationship over fluctuating feelings.
❖ Actions of love can lead to feelings of love.
❖ Married people must learn to live for others and not
for yourself, by following Christ’s example.
❖ Learn your spouses’ primary love currency and love
them in the way they find most emotionally valuable.