Μy topic is Marriage Lived for the Glory of God. And the key word, the operative, definitive word in that phrase is for — marriage lived for the glory of God — because that means that there’s a certain order of priority between marriage and the glory of God. And the order is this: God is ultimate and marriage is not. God is the most important reality and marriage is less important, far less important, infinitely less important than God.

The Reason for Marriage

Marriage exists to magnify God — the truth of God, the worth of God, the value of God, the beauty of God, and the greatness of God. God does not exist to magnify marriage. Until that order is vivid in your mind and valued in your heart, until you see it and savor it, marriage will not magnify the worth and the beauty and the truth and the greatness of God. It won’t do it.

I was assigned this topic. I didn’t come up with these words. I take my topic to be the answer to the question, why marriage? Marriage Lived for the Glory of God sounds like somebody was thinking, “Why marriage?” And so, let’s answer that with, “For the glory of God,” and then talk about it. That means that “why marriage” or the topic I have is a subset of a larger issue, namely, why anything? Why does anything exist? Why do you exist? Why does sex exist? Why do hotels exist? The answer is the same for all of those from the Bible: they all exist for the glory of God. That is, they exist to magnify the worth and the truth and the value and the beauty and the greatness of God. That’s why they all exist.

Telescopes, Not Microscopes

Now, when I say they exist to magnify, I don’t have in mind the magnifying of a microscope. I have in mind the magnifying of a telescope, because the magnifying of a microscope is to take things that look very tiny and make them look bigger than what they are. And the magnifying of a telescope is to take things that are unimaginably great and help them look like what they really are. It’s blasphemy to magnify God with a microscope, and it’s worship to magnify him with a telescope.

A microscope tries to move the size of an object away from reality, and a telescope tries to move the size of an object toward reality. So when I talk about marriage existing, and you existing, and hotels existing, and animals and plants and atoms and galaxies existing to magnify the worth and the beauty and the greatness of God, I mean helping the appearance in the mind of God to move toward reality for other people.

God is unimaginably great. God is infinitely valuable. God is unsurpassed in beauty. Psalm 145:3 says:

Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised,
     and his greatness is unsearchable.

Isaiah 43:6–7 says:

Bring my sons from afar
     and my daughters from the end of the earth,
everyone who is called by my name,
     whom I created for my glory,
     whom I formed and made.

It’s really clear.

From Him, Through Him, For Him

Romans is a great book. Paul comes to the end of his greatest of all books and he climaxes, as you know, with:

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

“For who has known the mind of the Lord,
     or who has been his counselor?”
“Or who has given a gift to him
     that he might be repaid?”

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

It’s all from him and through him and to him. So everything is from God, everything is sustained by God, and everything is designed for God. Or you can read it about Jesus in Colossians 1:16, which says:

For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things were created through him and for him.

It couldn’t be any clearer. Everything exists for Christ. And woe to you if you interpret the phrase, “For Christ” to mean “for his improvement” or “for his benefit”, like so much children’s curriculum does. The thought is, “Poor God had to create the universe because he was lonely and needed a friend.” That is, not to put it too strongly, blasphemy — without some extraordinary twisting of the ordinary meaning of language, which I hope teachers in those classes do, lest they teach heresy.

It doesn’t mean “for his improvement” or “for his benefit”. When it says, “It is for Christ,” it means for the display and the magnification and the bringing toward reality in people’s minds of how true and how great and how valuable he is. When it says, “Everything exists for Christ,” it means everything exists to magnify the glory of Christ in the lives of people so that they can see him for who he is. It’s the display of his glory.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made (John 1:1–3).

This is the starting place for understanding marriage. If we get this wrong, everything goes wrong. If we get this right, really right in our heads and in our hearts, marriage will become what it was created to be — namely, a display in the world of the truth and beauty and value and greatness of God. But if you get this wrong, if you get the order wrong, if you get the meaning of the word “for” wrong, it won’t.

The Substance of Our Preaching

Now, this leads to a very simple conclusion. I’m already at my conclusion, and it is so simple and so far-reaching that I won’t be able to stop having reached it. If we see marriage this way, if we want marriage to be what God designed it to be in the world and in the church, if we want to magnify and glorify the truth and beauty and greatness of God, then we must preach less about marriage and more about God.

Most young people who come to marriage don’t bring to their courtship a great vision of God and who he is and what he’s like and how he acts. In the world, there’s almost no vision of God. He’s not on the list to be invited to the wedding. He is simply and breathtakingly omitted, absent. It simply takes your breath away to look at our culture.

Does it take your breath away when you get up in the morning and open the Minneapolis Star Tribune, or whatever, and there’s this big section on sports and no section called “God”? Does that take your breath away? No, because you’re so soused with American neglect of God. We are so utterly acclimatized to godlessness on television, in the newspaper, in the advertising world. Nothing takes our breath away that ought to take our breath away.

The absence of God in the world is breathtaking because it means that the fact that we are breathing and this hotel is standing instead of being squashed flat under eternal wrath is awesome. It’s just awesome that we are alive. It’s unbelievable that we are going to wake up, probably, tomorrow morning. The Lord makes his sun rise on the just and the unjust. Stand and wonder.

In the church, the view of God for our young people is so small instead of huge, and so marginal instead of central, and so vague instead of clear, and so impotent instead of all-determining, and so uninspiring instead of ravishing, that when they marry, the thought of living this marriage to the glory of this God is a thought without content. The words can come out of the mouth because we have worship songs that say it over and over and over again, but the content is gone. It’s not there by and large.

If I say, “Tell me, young person, a little bit about the glory of God that you’re going to live for. Put some content on it for me,” the speech will not be long. It will not be long. What would the glory of God mean to young people who don’t do what CJ Mahaney read today from Sinclair Ferguson? I went to CJ’s workshop and he quoted Sinclair Ferguson. If I got it right, it went something like this: “We should expend energy admiring, exploring, expositing, and extolling Jesus Christ.”

The Particularities of God’s Glory

So if their marriages are going to be lived to the glory of God, we must say something not primarily about marriage, but about God. Our pulpits are not as filled with God and the particularities of his glory, but far too many generalities, so that the heads don’t get filled with:

• The glory of his eternality that makes the mind want to explode with the thought that he never had a beginning
• The glory of his knowledge that makes the Library of Congress look like a little matchbox and makes quantum physics seem like first-grade reader
• The glory of his wisdom that has never been nor ever can be counseled by any man or any group of men
• The glory of his authority over heaven and earth and hell without which no man and no demon moves one inch
• The glory of his providence without which not one bird falls to the ground in any forest in the world, or without which any hair on any head turns gray
• The glory of his word which upholds the universe and all the atoms and all the galaxies in it
• The glory of his power to walk on water, cleanse lepers, heal the lame, open the eyes of the blind, cause the deaf to hear, cause storms to be stilled, and cause the dead to rise
• The glory of his purity, never to sin or never to have one, two-second bad attitude or one evil thought
• The glory of his trustworthiness, never to break his word or to let one single promise fall to the ground
• The glory of his justice to render all moral accounts in the universe settled either, on the cross or in hell

There will be no outstanding injustices when all is said and done. People will either be redeemed or they will burn forever in hell, and there will be no injustice in the universe that has not been settled because of the glorious justice of God. Or consider:

• The glory of his patience to endure decade after decade after decade of John Piper’s slow sanctification
• The glory of his sovereign, slave-like obedience to embrace the most excruciating pain that has ever been designed by humankind
• The glory of his wrath, which will one day be revealed with such fierceness that men and women and children will ask stones to crush them rather than have to look on the face of the lamb
• The glory of his grace, which justifies the ungodly like me
• The glory of his love, that dies for us while we’re yet sinners

Until, brothers — and I’m talking to pastors now — we preach the particularities of his glory and put contours on our God instead of using broad, sweeping generalizations about his attributes, but make him look irresistibly magnificently more attractive than anything in the world, nobody’s marriage is going to be lived for the glory of God in our church because they won’t know him. They won’t know him. They’ll use all the language and they won’t see him. They won’t be able to talk about him to their children. They won’t be able to talk about him to their neighbors. They won’t be able to talk about him to their spouses because there’ll be no content to all those big words and we haven’t glorified him in our preaching.

A Passion for God’s Supremacy

It’s not hard to see, at least I hope it’s not hard to see, that my life mission now at 54 is simple and it’s single. I say to people, you really don’t need to buy more than one Piper book because they all say the same thing. And you don’t need to listen to more than one tape because they all say the same thing. You just need to get it.

The mission of my church is that we exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples. That’s the mission. So if I drop dead before I’m done with this talk, I will be dead while doing my mission. And if I live another 20 years, I hope I’m found in 20 years doing this mission. I exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples. That’s why I exist. I think that’s why you exist as well. You don’t have to use those words, but that is why we are on planet Earth. And until there’s a passion for the supremacy of the glory of God in the hearts of married people, the marriage will not be lived for the glory of God.

There’s not going to be any passion for the supremacy of God until people know the supremacy of God, until they see it and know it, and they won’t know it until pastors speak tirelessly, constantly, deeply, biblically, faithfully, distinctly, thoroughly, and passionately about it. Marriage lived for the glory of God will be the fruit of churches permeated with the manifold and distinct glories of God. So I say again, if we want marriage to glorify the truth and the greatness and the value and the beauty of God, we must teach and preach less about marriage and more about God. This is not to be misunderstood. We probably don’t preach too much about marriage, we just preach too little about God. God is not magnificently central in the lives of our people. He’s not the sun.

The Blazing Center

I wrote a letter to my oldest son one time. He was at Boston College at the time. I don’t think he’d mind me telling you this story. I was concerned because of what I was starting to see in his letters. I wasn’t quite sure where God was in the whole graduate studies pursuit that he had and the young wife that he had. So I wrote him a long letter, a risk-taking, pastor-like letter to a son, and I used an image. I said, “Karsten, I want to know that the glory of God is the sun in the solar system of your life, so that all the planets are held in orbit by the glory of God and no planet is starting to move into the center. And I unpacked that a little bit, sent it off, praying, “Oh God, help him not to say, ‘I’ve heard you preach that for 22 years. I don’t need it anymore. Thank you.’ Don’t let that happen.”

He called me four days later and, trembling, I took the phone from my wife and he said, “I got your letter and Shelly and I read it. Thank you. We needed it.” And things have been so good since then, so much more open and above board, so clear, so helpful. And so I’m thankful. So I’m saying to you now, the marriages in your church have to have a sun that holds things in orbit and they can’t let anything take the place of God. But for most of our people, I fear God is marginal. A hundred good things usurp his place. Marriages aren’t going to be lived for the glory of God if that’s the case, if he’s peripheral.

So knowing God and cherishing God and valuing the glory of God above all things, including our spouse, is the key to a marriage lived for the glory of God. I like to say God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. I think that’s a key that unlocks a thousand doors in life. It says in Psalm 63:3, “The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life.” Better than life. So we should be satisfied with the steadfast love of the Lord above life, which means death is no threat to our joy, and above our spouse, if above life. Life is what brings everything good into our experience. And if the steadfast love of the Lord is better than life, then it’s better than everything in life except God and his love.

The Source of Our Long-Suffering

Now, I think being satisfied with all that God is for us in his glory and all that he is for us in Jesus is the key, or the source, of the long-suffering without which husbands cannot love like Christ and wives cannot follow that love like the bride of Christ, the church.

Ephesians 5:22–25 makes plain that husbands take their cues from Christ in their leadership and love and wives take their cues from the bride of Christ in submission and love. And both of those are so costly, so costly, that they will not be sustained without a superior satisfaction in God when things in the marriage are costly, really costly. So the key to glorifying God in marriage by maintaining this proper role order that we’ve been talking about and I won’t belabor, is a superior satisfaction in God, so that when the roles aren’t working, you’re still able to have the resources to live and love like Christ loves or like the church loves. That’s the source of it.

Let me say it this way. There are two levels at which we glorify God in our marriage. One you would call the structural level and another you might call the motivational level. And the motivational level is the deeper level. The structural level is that we get the roles right, that husbands take their cues from Christ and lead and love and sacrifice like Christ did, and that wives take their cues from the bride of Christ, the church, and support that leadership and honor that leadership and follow that leadership the way the church did.

Those are costly, costly ways of loving for a wife and a husband. And the only way to pay that price from a heart that is a desire factory is for those desires to be satisfied with the superior satisfaction in God, which is why his glory must be known by us and why he’s so glorified when we’re satisfied in him.

Now, those roles will not be sustained if the second level of glorifying God isn’t happening — namely, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. If you try to do the roles for a motive other than satisfaction in God, if you are not being sustained by a superior satisfaction in God above satisfaction in sex, above satisfaction in spouse, above satisfaction in children, you might make it happen and it won’t be to God’s glory; it will be to your moral prowess’s glory. But if you lean on God, if you get your strength from his beauty, his value, his greatness, it will be manifest that he’s the one that you’re satisfied in and where the strength is coming from to love like Jesus and love like the bride.

What that means is that we need to take our cue from Paul in Philippians 3:8, which says:

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish . . .

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

In other words, “I count marriage to be refuse, I count children to be refuse, I count my wife to be refuse, I count my husband to be refuse, and I count sex be refuse because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” From that standpoint of a superior satisfaction in Jesus, you will have the wherewithal to return to the daily, weekly, monthly dying required by Christ-like and church-like love.

Love Her More, Love Her Less

I want to close with a poem that I wrote for my son. You heard that I have five children. Noël and I have been married for 31 years. My children are Karsten (27), Benjamin (24), Abraham (20), Barnabas (16), and Talitha (4). And I write poems for all of them on their birthdays. I have for 27 years. I write poems for my wife on her birthday and on our anniversary, and I write poems on Valentine’s Day and any other time that I’m feeling especially brimming. And sometimes when I have nothing at all I write them anyway.

There was a three-year season when we were in Christian counseling for 33 months trying to figure out how to love each other because we just couldn’t figure it out. It was from 1989 to 1991, and we thought, “Why do we hurt each other so much? Why does the way you talk land on me so wrong and the way I talk land on you so wrong?”

There were times when we’d come out of that office and didn’t talk for three days because 55-minute counseling appointments are not a good idea. You only get the pain stirred up and then you walk out and you have to deal with this crap, and you’re not in any spiritual condition to deal with it. And you have to preach in two days as well, and your children have to be disciplined and loved. And then there are Valentine’s Days and birthdays. I remember one poem in particular. I wrote a poem shaped like a tear. The words on a page were shaped like a tear, and it didn’t have any rhyme scheme, but it had my heart in it. And all it could say was, “I still love you and we’re going to make it.”

There have been a lot of poems like that. Other times I’m brimming, other times I’m empty, but I write them anyway. So my son, knowing this at age 22, said, “Would you write a poem for me and Shelly and read it at our wedding?” And I said, “Are you sure you want me to do that?” So I’m going to read you that poem and this is the last thing I have. I’m done after I read this and I’ll close in prayer. I chose to read it not because I want to show off my poem, but because this is a summary of what I’ve been trying to say. It’s called Love Her More and Love Her Less for Karsten Luke at his wedding to Rochelle Ann Orvis, May 29th, 1995.

The God whom we have loved, and in Whom we have lived, and who has been Our Rock these twenty-two good years With you, now bids us, with sweet tears, To let you go: “A man shall leave His father and his mother, cleave Henceforth unto his wife, and be One unashamed flesh and free.” This is the word of God today, And we are happy to obey. For God has given you a bride Who answers every prayer we’ve cried For over twenty years, our claim For you, before we knew her name.

And now you ask that I should write A poem - a risky thing, in light Of what you know: that I am more The preacher than the poet or The artist. I am honored by Your bravery, and I comply. I do not grudge these sweet confines Of rhyming pairs and metered lines. They are old friends. They like it when I bid them help me once again To gather feelings into form And keep them durable and warm.

And so we met in recent days, And made the flood of love and praise And counsel from a father’s heart To flow within the banks of art. Here is a portion of the stream, My son: a sermon poem. Its theme: A double rule of love that shocks; A doctrine in a paradox:

If you now aim your wife to bless, Then love her more and love her less.

If in the coming years, by some Strange providence of God, you come To have the riches of this age, And, painless, stride across the stage Beside your wife, be sure in health To love her, love her more than wealth.

And if your life is woven in A hundred friendships, and you spin A festal fabric out of all Your sweet affections, great and small, Be sure, no matter how it rends, To love her, love her more than friends.

And if there comes a point when you Are tired, and pity whispers, “Do Yourself a favor. Come, be free; Embrace the comforts here with me.” Know this! Your wife surpasses these: So love her, love her, more than ease.

And when your marriage bed is pure, And there is not the slightest lure Of lust for any but your wife, And all is ecstasy in life, A secret all of this protects: Go love her, love her, more than sex.

And if your taste becomes refined, And you are moved by what the mind Of man can make, and dazzled by His craft, remember that the “why” Of all this work is in the heart; So love her, love her more than art.

And if your own should someday be The craft that critics all agree Is worthy of a great esteem, And sales exceed your wildest dream, Beware the dangers of a name. And love her, love her more than fame.

And if, to your surprise, not mine, God calls you by some strange design To risk your life for some great cause, Let neither fear nor love give pause, And when you face the gate of death, Then love her, love her more than breath.

Yes, love her, love her, more than life; O, love the woman called your wife. Go love her as your earthly best.

Beyond this venture not. But, lest Your love become a fool’s facade, Be sure to love her less than God.

It is not wise or kind to call An idol by sweet names, and fall, As in humility, before A likeness of your God. Adore Above your best beloved on earth The God alone who gives her worth. And she will know in second place That your great love is also grace, And that your high affections now Are flowing freely from a vow Beneath these promises, first made To you by God. Nor will they fade For being rooted by the stream Of Heaven’s Joy, which you esteem And cherish more than breath and life, That you may give it to your wife.

The greatest gift you give your wife Is loving God above her life. And thus I bid you now to bless: Go love her more and love her less.