Loving the Stranger: A Reflection on The Meaning of Marriage

In Tim Keller’s well-known book, The Meaning of Marriage, Keller has much wisdom to offer on marriage. In this article, I am focusing on the one chapter I make sure my marriage clients read if they read nothing else: Chapter 5 – “Loving the Stranger.”

In this chapter, Keller says marriage changes us by bringing out negative traits within us that were there all along but were hidden. Most relationships begin with a “love phase” or “romance phase” which means that there is an illusion of perfection in play, usually for both partners and some form or degree.

Marriage as a means of sanctification.

Everyone tends to be on their “best behavior” at the beginning of a relationship, says Keller. Eventually, though, the in-love experience gives way to greater and greater disappointment, as the flaws of the other person become more known. And they will, given enough time living under the same roof.

Along these lines, Keller asks “But what if marriage is actually spiritual friendship for a journey to the new creation? What if our marriage is actually meant to change and grow us, and we wouldn’t change in the same way or to the same degree in any other venue?”

Marriage as covenant faithfulness.

Keller says that along with this often comes the shock of the realization that marriage will actually take a lot of work just to keep it functioning. The merged life of marriage brings each other into the closest, most inescapable contact possible. In other words, marriage does not just bring you into confrontation with your spouse: it confronts you with yourself.

This is why covenantal faithfulness is important. Keller stresses that when we see problems in each other, it is important to ask: “do I just feel like you want to run away, or do I have a desire to work on those problems together with my spouse?”

The self-image with which we enter marriage is meant to change. God will use the tension between two souls in marriage to shape both. Marriage will test and transform each spouse’s self-image if they let it.

Keller also says in this chapter that because marriage brings two lives into the closest possible contact, the assessment of our spouse has ultimate credibility. We cannot just brush off what the other person has to say, the way we can ignore a rude driver at an intersection. That driver will usually just drive off, never to be seen again. But our spouse knows us more than anyone else on the planet. Their opinion, for better or for worse, matters tremendously.

Speaking your spouse’s love language.

Keller moves from this point into the importance of learning how to speak each other’s “love language” in marriage. Giving love in 1) the way the other person needs it and 2) is actually costly to them, is usually how the other person experiences love, regardless of the “love language” being spoken.

Jesus is an example of this. We are told in the Old Testament that no one can see God and live. Yet in the New Testament, we are told that Jesus is the image of God. This means that God loves us by relating to us in a form that we can relate to and understand. And we ought to each do the same with our spouse.

How do we do that? Here are some ways:

First, we need to realize that we almost always have a “filter” when it comes to hearing and seeing our spouses. Keller says it would be helpful to learn how to translate a conclusion about our spouse such as “he is so selfish” to “he is feeling so unloved.”

I remember working in family therapy a few years back where my worldview changed with regard to the behaviors I was seeing exhibited and high trauma high crisis high conflict homes. after describing a really troubled environment in a particular home that was on one of our therapist caseloads, the supervisor sat quietly and then responded in a way that I will always remember: “wow. It is really sad when someone feels like they need to get their needs met in that way.”

Notice the difference. This person is getting their needs met. They are not “a hoarder,” or even “a verbal abuser.” They are getting their needs met. At least, they are trying to. Let me be clear. This does not make the behavior OK. But it does help us to understand better.

A note about marriage counseling.

An important note: In employing these methods in marriage counseling, it is assumed by most competent therapists that there are certain basic conditions in place in order to be able to effectively (or even ethically) conduct therapy. Usually, it is a requirement that there is no abuse, that there is no adultery, and that there is no active addiction present.

The reason why is that if these are active, we can’t expect to make much headway in the deeper more nuanced, and subtle matters of emotional connection and expression. The environment is just not stable enough for that kind of delicate work.

It would be like trying to operate on someone while riding in the back of a pickup truck going along a dirt road. It doesn’t matter how hard you try or how careful you are. The environment just is not stable enough to be successful. Eventually, a bump will kill your patient.

Marriage as an x-ray machine.

But back to the point. It can be very valuable to realize that the most annoying behaviors of our spouse or not attempt to drive us crazy, but might actually be an attempt to get needs met out of a place of pain and perceived lack of feeling loved and connected.

This is why Keller says it is important to recognize that we tend to hear the other person’s love language or attempt at love through our own love language filters. Another way of putting it is what Tim Keller says in this chapter: we tend to give love in the language that we like to receive it.

Second, Keller stresses how important it is to never abuse the primary love language, to never withhold it to hurt the other. This is not always easy. Marriage is a journey of transitioning from being in love to experiencing true, active love.

At first, love sweeps us up in voluntarily, but then love is a deliberate choice. Efforts to change the way we love one another will seem mechanical at first. but if both spouses do it together, eventually the entire field of the relationship will change from cold to warm, and less to more loving.

In The Meaning of Marriage, Keller says the willingness to change can be one of the most powerful forms of love in a marriage. There must be an ability to take correction and to be accountable for real changes. And there is no better way to serve one another than to help each other grow spiritually.

As stated above, Keller states that the reason why marriage has the power to show us what is wrong with us so effectively is that my spouse is able to see me, pretty much all the way to the bottom, in a way that even often I can’t even see myself.

My spouse knows my sins in a way that no one else can. Keller points out that this is not objective knowledge, but personal knowledge. In other words, we are not talking about knowledge from a book, here. We are talking about personal experience. This is knowledge about me that comes straight out of my relationship with me. Such knowledge is deep, personal, and hard for me to deny, even though I may try!

However, only when I know that my spouse regularly tells me the truth will her loving affirmations significantly change me. Keller draws on Ephesians 4:15 for the last portion of this essay, which states “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.” (NIV)

Truth and love.

Truth and love need to be kept together. But this is very hard. Truth without love ruins the oneness. And love without truth gives the illusion of unity but actually stops the journey and the growth. The solution, Keller says, is grace. The experience of Jesus’s grace actually allows us to practice the two most important skills in marriage: forgiveness and repentance.

Only if we are very good at forgiving and very good at repenting and truth and love be kept together. But without the power of grace, truth and love cannot be combined. When truth and love are kept together in the power of Jesus’s grace, communication is utterly transformed in marriage.

Keller says “One of the basic skills of marriage is to tell the straight unvarnished truth about what your spouse has done, and then, at the same time, to completely unselfrighteously and joyfully and express forgiveness.”

Humility is essential. How do you get the power of Grace? Keller says we cannot reflect it to others unless we ourselves have first received it. This is why the vertical relationship (human-God) must precede the horizontal relationship (human-human). We must draw upon God’s grace for us in Christ in order to be able to offer it to our spouses, especially when wounded.

Jesus, looking into our hearts, saw the worst, and loved us anyway. He set the example for what we are to do in marriage with our spouses. But we cannot do it without him.

And that, to me, as what Christian marriage counseling is all about. I highly recommend this Chapter, Loving the Stranger in Tim Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage, to all who strive to have their marriages reflect the love of God in a broken and suffering world.