Sex and the Romantic Solution (Open Forum)

[00:00:03] Welcome to Gospel in Life. What lies at the heart of our need for romantic love? We place tremendous expectations on sex and romance and often look to other people for acceptance and fulfillment. But can any human relationship really satisfy those deep needs? Today on the podcast, Tim Keller explores what our longing for romantic love reveals about us and how a gospel-centered understanding of sex and relationships helps us make sense of what we're really searching for.

[00:00:32] Now, I know you don't want me. I know that. I know that. So, I won't overstay my welcome, as meager as it really was, since you were applauding for them. But I could have said, it's really all for me, and I haven't even said anything yet.

[00:00:58] The way an open forum works, the way we've done this over the years, is we take some issue of abiding relevance, of abiding interest, and an issue that people debate about. And we use art to try to shed light on the facts on the ground about our experience. See, what the music does is it tells us something about how we actually experience sex.

[00:01:26] It tells us something, there are things that we can say are kind of self-evident if you're observing it. So, the art gives us the facts on the ground. Then we have to figure out how to explain and account for the things that we see and how to make sense of it. And you have to do that from some perspective. There is no such thing as a view from nowhere. And so, what we try to do here, when we do the open forums, is we take the art, we see the facts on the ground, and then we use Christianity as a resource.

[00:01:56] Some of you may find this helpful. Some of you may find this a little off-putting. I think everybody's going to find it interesting. That Christianity can be a resource to help you make sense of our experience of sex. Now, what do I mean by experience of sex? Well, looking at the music, and it is a little hard. You can get carried away by the music and not actually look at the words. But the words are actually pretty important, and the music and the words are of a piece.

[00:02:23] And so, here are four facts on the ground that I think we know about sex today, and that comes from the music. The first fact on the ground is, in spite of what David said, and I'll get back to this, that in some ways sexuality is something that we've experienced all of throughout human history, there has been an enormous change culturally in our attitude towards sex in the last 70 years.

[00:02:48] One of the best ways to see that is to contrast the earlier song, like, for example, I Can Cook Too from 1944, Leonard Bernstein. And now, it's all in double meanings. This is a woman. Her name is the character in the Broadway is Hildy Esterhazy. And Hildy is offering herself sexually, but it's all double meanings. It's all through the cooking and the food. For example, my ribs get applause.

[00:03:17] My lamb chops will cause you to drool. My oven's the hottest you'll find. My chicken's just ooze. My gravy will lose you your mind. And you know what? Why doesn't it work when I say it? You know, Roz was singing it, you were on your feet screaming, and I just said it. What? Something wrong with me? They're all double meanings.

[00:03:46] There's no way that would have been on Broadway. There's no way that would have been allowed on the air, you know. And now, you come 70 years later, and you've got locked out of heaven. Your sex takes me to paradise. And everybody's fine. There we are. Something's happened. Now, what's happened? Here's my point. I think there's a fact on the ground. Contemporary culture puts more emphasis on sex. It talks more about sex. It hopes more for sex.

[00:04:12] It sees sex as this transcendent thing that will, if you get it right, will make everything incredibly happy. There's never been a culture in the history of the world that puts so much emphasis and so much hopes in sex. You say, what? I thought the Greeks and the Romans, for example, were very open about sex. Now, listen, it's always a bad idea to read your own cultural moment back into the past and say, well, all enlightened people were the same. It's not fair.

[00:04:41] And if you actually go back to Greece and Rome, that is not what you see. For example, read Plato's Symposium, which is actually about sex and romance. And you'll see, yes, Plato is pretty open to all kinds. But if you read carefully, sex was just a practice. Sex was never an identity. It was not a right. It was never seen as a necessity. If you said to Plato, well, we're living together because before we get married, we have to make sure we have, you know, sexually compatible. He would have said, what?

[00:05:11] Because the Greeks believed that friendship was infinitely more, more infinitely important and good love than sexual romantic love. Why? Because they thought of the body as basically unimportant. There has never been a culture like ours. There's never been a culture that puts so much emphasis, talks so much about it and puts so much hope in sexual romantic love. Okay, that's the first fact on the ground, which you get from the music. And it's just true.

[00:05:39] Second fact on the ground is sex is so enormously powerful that basically it's our master, not our servant. That basically sex is so powerful that it's really in charge. We're not. Now that comes out, you know, the first song that Keith sang, the Al Green song, Love and Happiness, actually says, you know, sex is a power. And he says sex will make you, I mean, love will make you do right, then love will make you do wrong, love will make you come home, love will make you go to bed on time, have a disciplined

[00:06:08] life or stay out all night. The point is, once we're in the grip of it, we do whatever it takes. You want me to be disciplined? Okay. You want me to be totally undisciplined? Okay. And a big part of the power is that sexual romantic love tends to deify the lover. To deify. What do I mean? Well, you know, you see, for example, in Let's Stay Together, that song we sang tonight, Let's Stay Together, whatever you do is all right.

[00:06:38] It'll be all right with me. There's a tendency to either say, I'm so in love with you, you can do no wrong, or the Billie Holiday song, which we'll get back to in a second, which is the most brutal and painful of all the songs, where she basically says, you know, I'm going to let you walk all over me because I can't live without you. You know, lipstick on, a collar, don't worry about it. I'm completely yours. It doesn't matter. I know you're cheating on me. What's that? That's deifying the person.

[00:07:08] It's saying, I can't live without you. Sexual romantic love is so powerful that I hardly ever talk to anybody who's candid with me, who doesn't say that I've been in relationships I really should have been out of. They weren't good for me, but I really couldn't. I slept with people I shouldn't have slept with, but I really, really couldn't stop. I mean, in a way, I mean, I don't have anybody who hasn't at some point said that sexual romantic love was such a power in my life, it ran my life. It ruled me.

[00:07:37] So that's the second thing on the ground is sex is an enormous power and it's more of our master than a servant. Thirdly, okay, now this is the most controversial of things I'm going to say, but again, I think it comes out of the songs and it comes out of not just these songs, but all kinds of love songs. Sexual love, if it's not in an exclusive relationship, is dehumanizing. Now, the longest and saddest songs up here are all about that.

[00:08:05] You know, the long songs from the, I don't want to recount all the stories, but from the Broadway play, The Last Five Years, where the couple, Jamie and Catherine were talking there, that was the disillusion of a marriage, as you know. A man being, you know, not having an exclusive sexual relationship with his wife and it falling apart. But I mean, I Can't Make You Love Me. Remember that one? The first one that Mindy sang, I thought.

[00:08:33] But it's brutal because, and by the way, Bonnie Raitt, I think, sings that song. Even now she sings it. And she says, when I get to those lines, you know, the, I can't make you love me if you don't. You can't make your heart feel something if it won't. If I'm loving you and you are not able to exclusively love me back, but you're going elsewhere, it kills me. The Billie Holiday song, Don't Explain, was written by Billie Holiday in the 1940s, who said

[00:09:02] she wrote it after her husband, Jimmy Monroe, came home one night with lipstick traces on his collar. And basically in there, it's, she says, I'm so completely yours, yet she says, I know you cheat, but don't worry about it. Don't even think about it. What she's saying is, I'm yours, but you're not mine. And it's just brutal. I mean, the music's sometimes so lovely, you sit back and you sort of let the, you know, the music throb over you and all that. But if you actually look and see what some of those very, very sad songs are about,

[00:09:32] it gets across this idea that sexual romantic love, if it's not done in an exclusive relationship, it's devastating. Now, it's destructive, dehumanizing. You say, well, what if both people are just trying to have fun? You don't have one person giving themselves, the other person not. Both people are having fun. Well, even so, and here's something I'll say again for the next couple of minutes, is the primal.

[00:09:58] You have to, almost all the love songs talk like this. Here's from Let's Stay Together. You make me feel brand new. I want to spend my life with you. Let me say that since we've been together, loving you forever is what I need. Let me, I mean, this is almost typical. Let me be the one you come running to. I'll never be untrue. Let's stay together. Loving you. Whether times are good or bad, happy or sad.

[00:10:21] That is the primal impulse of sexual romantic love. You want to give yourself, if you can, to be sophisticated, train yourself to detach yourself so much from the feelings of romance that sex is really basically just a way of getting a thrill. Yeah, it's possible, but that is not, I don't think, primal.

[00:10:50] Now, the primal experience of sexual romantic love is, I want to be in an exclusive relationship. I want to be in a permanent relationship. That's why the word forever shows up all the time in love songs. All the time. So, the third, I think, fact on the ground is that sex outside of an exclusive relationship is dehumanizing. And I think there's lots and lots of artistic evidence for that. And there's lots of personal evidence for that.

[00:11:17] But now, the fourth thing, real fast, because I don't want to make sense of this now, is that the songs say that sex tends to be far more than a physical experience or even a psychological experience. Because love songs are constantly, instinctively grabbing for words that are spiritual. The word forever comes up all the time. Take me to heaven. Look at all the Bruno Mars thing. It's all spiritual. Spiritual ecstasy, you know?

[00:11:45] And frankly, a lot of those are very skillful love songs. Even the stupid love songs do the same thing. You know, like, well, don't you remember the one from years back? Longer than there have been stars up in the heaven, I've been in love with you. But I say, unless you dehumanize yourself and detach sex from your heart, that's how you feel. That's how you feel.

[00:12:14] And you have to reach for something spiritual because sex actually gives you something more than just a physical charge. It can be a doorway to the transcendent. So now, take those four things. What are the four things? The culture change is far more than physical. Primal exclusivity. And it's a power that we have to figure out how to not have it ruin our lives and rule our lives. How can we make sense of these four? And I would like to give you three ideas from Christianity.

[00:12:43] Three ideas from Christianity that I think help you understand and answer some of the questions. And then we're done. We're going to have a brief time of Q&A, and I'll tell you how that works in a second. Here's the first of the three things I want to tell you. Number one, Christianity would say that people are trying to get today, in our modern culture, people are trying to get out of sex and romance what people used to look to religion and God to give them.

[00:13:09] And that's the reason why it is so emphasized today. The reason why it's talked about in such cosmic ways. The reason why Bruno Mars will say, your sex takes me to heaven. Let me say that again. Today, we're looking for sex and romance to give us what, in the past, people looked to religion and God to give them.

[00:13:31] To make my case, Ernest Becker, an atheist, by the way, just to let you know, an atheist who wrote in the 1970s, he wrote a book called Denial of Death that won the Pulitzer Prize. And the basic point of the denial of death was that now that we all know, see, here's what he was assuming. Now that we all know that there is no God, now that we modern people, this is 1970s, now all that we smart people know that there is no God, what are we going to do? How are we going to replace him?

[00:13:59] Now listen to this, quote, Ernest Becker. Modern man edged himself into an impossible situation. He still needed to feel heroic, to know that his life mattered in the grand scheme of things. He still had to merge himself with some higher self-absorbing meaning in trust and gratitude. But if he no longer had any God, how was he to do this? One of the first ways that occurred to the modern person, as Otto Rank saw, was the romantic

[00:14:27] solution, hence the title of the night. The self-glorification that he needed in his innermost being, modern man now looked for in the love partner. All spiritual and moral needs are now become focused on one individual. To be sure, all through history, there has been some competition between human objects of love and divine ones. We can think of Heloise and Abelard, of Alcibiades and Socrates.

[00:14:56] But the main difference is that in religious societies, the human partner would not absorb into himself the whole dimension of the divine longing. In modern society, he does. Now you know what he's saying? Let me say that. He is saying that religion is not basically just a way to channel repressed sexual feelings. You ever see The Crucible by Arthur Miller? Or you ever read Sigmund Freud?

[00:15:22] What they say is, yeah, yeah, yeah, religion is just repressed sexuality. Actually, what Ernest Becker is saying, no, no, no, no, sexuality is repressed religiosity. It's exactly the other way around. You're trying to get from sex what you used to go to God for. You say, what is that? Well, everybody needs a word from outside to give you vindication, validation, self-worth.

[00:15:49] You can't just look at yourself and say, I'm great, I'm great, I'm great. Oh, we try. We need a word from outside. Listen. Bridget Jones' diary. Okay. Quote. New Year's resolution. Bridget Jones. New Year's resolutions. Resolution one. Buy books by unreadable literary authors to put impressively on shelves. Resolution two.

[00:16:20] Develop inner poise and authority and sense of self as a woman complete without boyfriend. Since very way, best way to obtain boyfriend. Okay. And then, third, be assured, receptive, responsive woman of substance knowing that my sense of self comes not from other people but from myself. Wait, that can't be right. And she's right.

[00:16:46] To say, if you want to attract people, of course, you need to have this poise and a sense of self and you know who you are and you know you're okay. But if nobody outside thinks you're okay, if there's nobody telling you you're okay, you're not going to have that poise. Your sense of self can't come from self.

[00:17:01] You need, and here's the thing, a person who you don't respect saying, I think you're great, but a person you respect saying, I think you're great, and a person you adore. You adore. Adoring you. Okay. Now, I've got a sense of self. Now, here's what was in the past.

[00:17:28] Literally, the person you adored, God, the majestic one you literally worshipped. If you could come into a relationship where you know you had God's favor, God's love, and you were going to live with God forever, that's absolutely transforming. And then, sex and romance and love is great, but you're not trying to satisfy that foundation. But now we are. Now we are.

[00:17:52] We're looking to sex and romance to give us what in the past only God was looked to. And Becker's quote ends like this, and he's absolutely right. He says, but no human relationship can possibly bear the burden of Godhood. But after all, what is it that we want when we elevate the love partner to this position? We want to be rid of our faults, of our feeling of nothingness. We want to be justified and know our existence has not been in vain.

[00:18:21] We want redemption, nothing less. Needless to say, the love partner cannot give this. If you put more value on the love of a human being, if you look to your spouse or to your love partner to give you that sense of validation, you will crush your love partner with expectations of that.

[00:18:51] Your expectations, they will be crushed under the weight of your expectations. Why? First of all, the person's imperfect. They're not always going to be adorable. And if you lose respect for them, then you feel your own self-regard crumbling. Also, because you can't live without them, that is, by the way, that's a recipe for abuse. See, if you get so detached, I'm not going to just adore anybody, then you're going to be lonely.

[00:19:17] On the other hand, if you adore anybody more than you adore God, that person becomes your master. Even if he or she isn't trying to. You're too angry, you're too upset with their anger so you can't tell them the truth. You're so needy. Or if you're not married, you know, you're looking for a partner. You're just looking for a partner? You're going to need the partner so much, you're going to put all the freights of your spiritual longings in it, and you're going to be too desperately searching?

[00:19:46] Or are you going to be so scared? So scared of disappointment. So scared of the deep need that you're just going to stay away and try to do without. So the point is, the first point is simply this. Our modern culture puts too much emphasis on sex and romance because God's not in our lives. And if you actually look to sex and romance to give you what God in the past gave people, you will be devastated.

[00:20:16] Your own sexual and romantic life will be distorted, to say the least. Point one. Point two. Doesn't that make sense of some things? I think it does. Makes sense of what we see on the ground? Secondly, here's the second thing. The Bible and Christianity says that sex is not merely biological. We experience something much more than that because it was made by God to be something more than that. What? Two things. I'm going to tell you these two things, and then we'll be done.

[00:20:45] First of all, the Bible says Christians understand sex as God's ordained way to say to another person, I belong permanently and exclusively to you. Holy. Christianity thinks that God invented sex. To say to someone else, I belong permanently and exclusively to you. Holy. And you mustn't use sex to say anything else.

[00:21:16] Because sex is a commitment apparatus. Now, let me explain that. When you have sex, you become naked and vulnerable, and you give your body. Christianity teaches that that should be a symbol and a sign. The physical giving of the body, the physical nakedness and vulnerable of the body, should be a sign that you've become totally vulnerable, totally open, and you've given your whole self.

[00:21:44] We would say you give the body as a sign that you've given your whole self. And how do you give your whole self? It means with all that you are economically, all that you have. In other words, you marry. See, somebody who says, I want to have sex, but I don't want to get married, what you're saying is, I want to give you my body, but I don't want to give you my life. I want to hold on to my independence. I don't want to give you myself.

[00:22:11] And Christianity understands that God created sex to be something that's done inside marriage, because any other place it would be a lie, to say I belong completely and exclusively to you. And what it does then is it's this incredible unifying, nurturing discipline inside marriage that keeps the marriage strong, keeps it fresh, and just deepens it and deepens it and deepens it. If you use sex not to say I belong to you. In other words, if you say I'm going to make myself physically vulnerable to you.

[00:22:40] I'm going to be stripped. I'm going to be naked. I'm going to be vulnerable. But I'm not going to make myself personally involved in vulnerable. I'm vulnerable. I'm going to hold it back. Then you're actually not using sex to give yourself. You're using sex to get something, but not to give. And you're misusing it. And you might be ruining it as a commitment apparatus. Now, does that explain the primal exclusivity we've been talking about? I think it does. It explains those incredible feelings, those profound feelings.

[00:23:10] I think it does. A lot of people think they know the Christmas story. Cultural references to the birth of Jesus are unavoidable this time of year. But how closely have you examined what really happened that first Christmas night? In his book, Hidden Christmas, Tim Keller takes you on an illuminating journey into the surprising background of the nativity story to help you better understand the redeeming power of God's grace.

[00:23:37] Hidden Christmas is our thanks this month for your gift to help Gospel and Life share the good news of Jesus with more people. Request your copy of Hidden Christmas today when you give at gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelandlife.com slash give. Now, here's Tim Keller with the rest of today's teaching. But, lastly, the other thing that the Bible says, the Christians say about sexuality, and this is the real nosebleed. Ready?

[00:24:08] If you go to places like Ephesians 5, it's in the New Testament where Paul says that the love between a husband and wife points to the love between Jesus Christ and his people. And what this traditionally has been understood to mean by Christian theologians, especially, for example, Thomas Aquinas, the great medieval theologian, is that even the most rapturous,

[00:24:32] wonderful, romantic sex is only a dim hint of what it's going to be like to someday see God face to face and to have him. And here's, you know, it's, we want someone to adore who we adore, adore us. That's what we're looking for. When we actually see the majestic, infinitely beautiful Lord of the universe who looks at you

[00:24:59] and says, this is my beloved in whom I'm well pleased. That will inflict a joy and a closure and a sense of love and union that even the greatest sex on earth is just, it's like a dew drop compared to an ocean. And even the foretaste of that that can happen to people who unite with God in prayer, you can have some of that now.

[00:25:27] Even the foretaste of that divine love is better than the aftertaste of any other kind of love. And therefore, what does that mean? Well, John chapter four, there's a place where Jesus is talking to a woman at the well, a very famous place. And the woman is drawing water and he's there and he says, I have a water. If you drink my water, you'll never thirst again.

[00:25:56] I have the water of eternal life. Eternal life. And the Samaritan woman says, really? Let me have that water. And he says, okay, go call your husband. She says, I don't have a husband. He says, I know you don't have a husband. You've had five husbands and the man you're living with right now is not your husband. Interesting question. Why, when he's talking about eternal life and she's asking for eternal life, does he bring up her sex life?

[00:26:22] And what he's trying to say is, you've been looking in men for what I have for you. And unless I'm the true love of your life, your relationships to men, your relationships to, you know, sex and romance, it will drive you. You'll be under, under its thumb. It'll be your master, not your servant. It'll be distorted. I'm the spouse you need. And then you'll be safe for a spouse. I'm the lover you need. And then you'll be able to handle a lover because you won't either be too afraid of that lover or too idolatrous of that lover.

[00:26:52] You won't deify the lover. So how do you get that? How do you get this incredible relationship with Christ? Simple. The Bible says on the cross, he died for our sins. And you know what that means? He made himself vulnerable. He was stripped. He made himself vulnerable, completely vulnerable. He looked deep into us and did that anyway. You know, he was God. He looked into you. See, to be loved but not known isn't very transforming.

[00:27:22] You love me, but you don't know me. To be known but not loved, to have somebody look right into me and then reject me, is my greatest nightmare. But to be utterly known and then completely loved, to have Jesus die for me and then for me to know that, that's the love that you're really looking for without which your sexual romantic life will be distorted, I think.

[00:27:48] And by the way, what it means is sex actually in the end, if you use it, I think according to the way that Christianity thinks about it, can actually be fun. There's one Christian writer who puts it like this. Oh, it can finally be fun. It's not like, oh my gosh, I've got to have the right person. I've got to have Mr. Right, Ms. Right. Well, yeah, it'd be nice if you could do that. It's not the end of the world if you don't. You know, you're back to the way the ancients used to be. Sex is a great idea, but it shouldn't be the whole thing. There's one Christian writer who put it like this, and I think it's kind of fun, actually.

[00:28:18] He says, we must not, by the way, this is a little bit weird because I'm talking about opera here, but anyway. We must not attempt to find a divine absolute in sex. We should not sing all our love duets in the throbbing world without end, heartbreaking manner of Tristan and Isolda. The gospel frees us to often sing about our love like Papageno and Papagena instead. Okay. I know. We didn't do opera tonight. We did this.

[00:28:45] And this is a very anticlimactic way to end the lecture, but you know, next time I'll do better. All right. I just couldn't think of a good ending, you know? I couldn't think. You know, an ending where everybody's going, well, it's a lecture. You know, what do you want? All right. Let us... For me... Okay.

[00:29:14] So, it was longer for them. Now, we've got a couple of mics. And here's the only thing we can do. It's a lot of people. And I've done this for quite a number of years, and here's what I'd like you to do. If you have a question about the subject, come to the mic, ask the question, make sure I understand it. Have a seat, and I'll answer it. If you don't have a seat, because we're only going to take about 15 minutes for this, if you don't have a seat, then what happens is you usually give a follow-up question, and we get back and forth, and then there's only two people I talk to, and that's not fair to everybody.

[00:29:44] So, come to the mic, ask the question. Once I figure it out, sit down, and I'll try to be short enough in my answers that we get several people up to the mic. Okay. Who wants to agree first? Over here. Oh, sorry. Wait a minute. Sorry. I've got the lights in my eyes. Hi. Go ahead. Hello. I'm thinking about the scripture that says that when they ask Jesus whose, disciples ask Jesus whose wife will, or was it a teacher? I don't know. I forget who it is.

[00:30:14] A woman whose husband and marries a brother, and the brother dies, and the other brother, and whose wife will she be at the resurrection? And he says that in heaven they will neither, or in the resurrection. They will not be marrying or given in marriage. Or given in marriage. Right. I guess in light of that, why? Why? Or, and then what role does that marriage play in this fallen plane as opposed to, what does it say about marriage and romantic relationships? Okay.

[00:30:42] Because there are people who are called to singleness, and that can be great too. That's right. Okay. Thanks. Thanks. My wife and I actually, believe it or not, my wife and I married almost 40 years. I've talked about that text a lot. And, you know, I think there's, I think when it comes to, when it comes to thinking about either heaven or hell, we just get little snatches. I think it's a little beyond our ability to really imagine. But, I think, this is my best guess, and it's a guess. Okay. Okay.

[00:31:11] The guess is that on earth we get one person, you know, and if we, if you both live long enough, you really only get one person. Unfortunately, some of us get more than one person. But, when you get married, you've got this one person to really practice self-giving, to do all the things the Bible says you can do, to really take down all your barriers, you know, absolutely trust, serve, and really, really become one.

[00:31:41] I actually think that that's as many people as we can do it with. That's the reason why, you know, marriage is between one, you know, but just with two people. I don't, I'm not, I don't believe in polygamy. And, I actually think in heaven, frankly, we will have that oneness with everybody. That it would be impossible to have one relationship which would trump the others. Because the love will be absolute. There's a man named Jonathan Edwards who wrote a sermon some years ago, which you can get online.

[00:32:11] It's not easy. He's 18th century, you know, the language isn't accessible. But, the name of the sermon is Heaven, a World of Love. And, it's, it's a little hard to get into, but if you read through and think about it, it's pretty remarkable. He basically says that we're going to experience the love with all other people in heaven that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have together. And so, it just means, and even though Kathy and I think about this, I say, you know, the

[00:32:39] fact of the matter is, certainly we have memories. You know, when Jesus was raised from the dead, he still had his nail prints. So, he's not, he's not totally detached from what happened here. And yet, so certainly you're not going to forget your spouse. On the other hand, you're going to have a perfect relationship with everybody. So, there won't be gradations of it. That's my best guess. And it's speculative. That's a really sweet question, too. Because it's a great thing to think about. Somebody else. Good evening, Dr. Keller. Hello.

[00:33:09] We know each other from a long time, by the way. A long time. And, by the way, I have a good one for you, Tim. These, this guy was dating these two women. One was named Kate and the other one's name is Edith. And they both found out about each other and they confronted the man and said, you know, you can't have your Kate and Edith, too.

[00:33:41] Now, you see why the rule of sitting down after the question. But, get to your question. Okay. The big problem with romantic love, it's an addiction. It just doesn't last. People keep trying, going from relationships to relationships and destroying marriages and all. Because of that addiction, they can't get over.

[00:34:07] But, you know, one of the most perceptive statements outside the Bible that's been ever made was about Pascal's statement. That there's a God-shaped vacuum in this that only he can fill. And I like to paraphrase that by saying there's a longing in the human heart that only God's love can fill. So, that's it. Okay. And I agree with you.

[00:34:35] And I think another, Augustine's right, and the other thing would be, there's a chapter in C.S. Lewis' book, American Christianity, called Hope. And in Hope, he says that when you find that you're not completely satisfied in a marriage or in your job, the fool's response is to say, I need a better spouse and I need a better job, and then I'll be completely fulfilled.

[00:35:01] The right thing to do is to say, if nothing in this world is actually fulfilling me, that maybe I was built for another world as well, and I need to be looking beyond this world to get fulfillment instead of getting upset because my wife isn't completely satisfying me, or my husband. So, I think it's the same thing that Lynn was just saying, and I think that's a very important point I would hope you'd take home tonight. Somebody else? Yeah, there you are. Very convenient. Go ahead. Yeah, I snuck over here.

[00:35:31] This whole talk was making me think about Song of Solomon, and something I've kind of wondered, just scripturally interpreting, is how do we view, I know there's a lot of, like, I've read John Owen, Communion with God, and he's talked about how, a lot about all these specific verses, how it's pointing to Christ and the church, and to me it seems a little weird. I just wondered what your view is on it, how far we should take that as Christians interpreting. Okay. Now, the first thing is that anybody who's actually read John Owen on Communion with God

[00:35:59] should never be allowed to ask a question at the mic again. My brother is saying that there's a book of the Bible in the wisdom literature called Song of Solomon, or the Song of Songs, and it is very clearly love poetry. It's actually not that easy, you know, I don't know if you know how, ancient Hebrew not only didn't have, they didn't have chapters and verses,

[00:36:28] but they actually didn't even, you know, they didn't actually separate the words from each other, and they also didn't have any vowels, they only used consonants. It's not easy to judge where the lover is speaking, where the beloved is speaking, who's speaking. However, it's clearly a love poem, and it's actually a very sensual love poem. And it's a little bit like I Can Cook Two, frankly, because it does talk about, you know, with his right hand he's embracing me,

[00:36:56] but it means he's caressing me, and it's very, so, traditionally, I think in more prudish times, people have said that we should read this as the love of God for his people, or Christ for the church, and we shouldn't read it at the level of love poetry. But I think most people today would say that the author obviously wanted it to be read as love poetry. It's really not that different than other kind of love poems.

[00:37:23] It talks about, if you read it, it does talk about exclusive faithful love. It does talk about sex being part of an exclusive faithful marriage. It's there. But it's very, very, it celebrates sexual love, and it's, I think, a very important part of the Bible. I mean, there's places in the book of Proverbs that says, a man should always be ravished with his wife's breasts. It's in the Bible. It says so. Command. All right?

[00:37:53] And there's just too much in the Bible that shows that sex is good. It's not supposed to be the cosmic thing that we make it, but it's also not supposed to be something that we repress or are very prudish about, and Song of Solomon is one of those. There's nothing wrong with reading everything in the Bible about marital love as pointing to the relationship with God and, you know, our relationship with God and with Christ. That's fine, because I think the Bible is very clear about that. But that is actually celebrating the goodness of sexuality, and it's a part of the Bible that we should embrace.

[00:38:23] Somebody else? Hi. Go ahead. That's fine. Hello. So mine is more like a practical self-help question. I'm sure I'm not the only Christian in this situation, but both my partner and I lost our virginities already to other people, and now that we're a couple and we're getting closer to each other and getting closer to Christ,

[00:38:49] we keep having this nagging feeling that premarital sex is wrong, even though we've already done it. And you feel... But you can't... Like, you can't go back, but how do you go forward? Okay. Actually, it's... Give me a shot. Give me a shot at this. No, listen. Well, first of all, by the way, I appreciate you... Being candid, but it's an extremely good question. You're right.

[00:39:18] I'm sure there's plenty of people in the same situation. The Bible... If you only had the Old Testament, there's all this stuff about... You know, if you have mildew, you touch a dead body, you're not allowed into the presence of God. The Levitical rules were all about ceremonial cleanness, that you've got to do this and this and this, or you're not fit for the presence of God. You get into the New Testament, and suddenly Jesus is talking about the fact, he says, I'm your cleanliness.

[00:39:49] Honestly, let's just say, for the record, and I think this is true, but for argument's sake, let's say the Bible forbids premarital sex. Then what you've done is wrong. But it's certainly not the only thing you've ever done wrong. And you can't have gradations of sin. Are you greedy? Are you... Have you told lies? Have you... I mean, there's tons of things that would be on the same level. And all of those things would make you unacceptable to God, except if you're a Christian, then he's your cleanliness. There's a...

[00:40:19] I know this is a little bit archaic, but one account, Nicholas von Zinzendorf wrote a great hymn in the 18th century called Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness. And it's... The tune goes like this. Jesus, thy blood and righteousness. My beauty are my glorious dress. In flaming worlds... Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed, with joy shall I lift up my head. And what that means is, if you're a Christian, nobody wears a scarlet letter. It's just not there.

[00:40:50] Jesus, thy blood and righteousness, my beauty are my glorious dress. You know, you're clothed in white. I'm clothed in white. You know, we're all brides, by the way. That was a little bit gender-bending. He's the husband, we're the wife. That's what it says. And so we're all clothed in white, and we're clothed in white regardless of our past. And premarital sex is only one of the things you've done in the past. So, you know, for all I know, what if you get married

[00:41:18] and find that you've learned some bad habits through other sexual escapades? You can unlearn them. You can change. Your real problem is that you're both selfish. I mean, that's the real problem when you get into marriage. Not your sexual past. Your real problem is that every single human being feels like the center of the universe and wants everything to revolve around you, and that's what hurts the marriage. And so that's not your main problem, and it's been covered in Jesus, and you should not be... You should... Don't look back too much.

[00:41:46] And even the place where Jesus in John 8, you know, the woman caught in adultery, he didn't do that. And he makes... He always... Remember the place where he says, let he who is without sin cast the first stone? That's got to mean is, here's a woman. She committed adultery. She was, you know, married and committed adultery. And yet he looks out at the Pharisees and said, your sins are no different. So you are in no position of superiority. That's amazing.

[00:42:16] Likely, they never did any sexually... anything sexually wrong. They're Pharisees, you know. But the point is, their pride, their greed, their prejudice, all those other things, he saw that every bit as bad. He says, you do not have any... There's no gradations of sin. So just remember, in Jesus, you're clothed in white. You're not... There's no scarlet letter on you. Me too. Okay? Okay, another... I think I got time. Just one more. Great. Yes. Hi.

[00:42:47] I guess, in a practical way, how would you give some advice to newlyweds not to put the spouse before God? You know, especially since your spouse is... Especially in the first couple of years, they're there, you can humanly touch them and they're there. And God is... As you're building your relationship with God is very... So how can we

[00:43:16] not put each other first? Totally right. Okay, that was... The... That's a great question. Of course. And I must say that... This is... Think of it this way. Marriage is a complete lose-lose situation. Because... Because you get married and things are bad. That's bad, right?

[00:43:46] That's called lose, right? Get married, things go bad. Call that lose. Get married, things go great. Then you have this problem, which is a big problem. And that is that God is invisible. God is a spirit. And your spouse has got a body, therefore considerably more accessible. And actually, completely seriously, my wife and I have said, because, you know,

[00:44:15] we know our marriage has turned out pretty good through no fault of our own. We really aren't... I mean, God has kept us away from a lot of stupid things or he's got us through some real conundrums. So we get to the place where we realize that we have a really good marriage and now we have remarkable problems with that. Because the problem is that we are too tied to what... I mean, in other words, if she criticizes me or she's unhappy with me, I'm unhappy with her, we are too upset.

[00:44:45] And then we freak out for like a day or two. And we just... We go back and forth and we know... And we go back and say, you know, I always say, I'm preaching against this and I'm doing it. I'm preaching against it. I preach against it all the time. I counsel against it. I'm doing it. It is very, very difficult not to put your spouse first. So the answer is certainly do not turn down your experience of love with your spouse. That would be a real mistake. You have to...

[00:45:14] You've got to turn up your actual existential experience of love with God. You can't just believe in love. There's worship. There's prayer. You've got to experience it. It's available. It's not easy to learn a good prayer life. But it can't be just a kind of abstraction. You've got to get a prayer life. Honestly. And it takes years to get to the place where regularly you're experiencing the presence of God in prayer. It takes a long time. There's no shortcut to it. There's also no

[00:45:43] six easy steps or something like that. So you can't ratchet down a good relationship with your wife. You've just got to ratchet up your prayer life. And now that's it. So, sorry. As a matter of fact, I promised to go 15 minutes and I think I've done 20. So... What I want you to know is we're very glad you're here. Very glad you came. Please, if you've got any other kind of questions, David at Bisgrove and I will be sort of standing around here down here somewhere. And don't forget, by the way,

[00:46:13] if you love the music, most of those musicians play here. You might want to come back on a Sunday evening service. So thanks very much for coming. Bye. Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you are encouraged by it and that it helps you apply the gospel to your life and share it with others. For more helpful resources from Tim Keller, visit gospelandlife.com. There, you can subscribe

[00:46:42] to the Life in the Gospel quarterly journal. When you do, you will also receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other great gospel-centered resources. Again, it's all at gospelandlife.com. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X. Today's talk was recorded in 2014. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor

[00:47:11] at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.