The Invading Conscience
Our longing for someone to know and understand us draws us into marriage. But when we marry, we immediately feel like we have been invaded and intruded upon. We want to be known but becoming intimate is disturbing. There is no privacy in marriage. She is everywhere I am. She is in my bedroom. He is in my bathroom. She is in my living room. He is in my car. She identifies, classifies, and tags my self-conscious and unselfconscious habits and puts them on display before me like unearthed artifacts in a museum. I was quite comfortable with that habit, I never even knew I had that attitude, and now, there I am, exposed under the light of not one, but two consciences! My private habits and moods are now scrutinized and morally assessed in the public presence of this “invader” who compels me to take responsibility for things I had tucked neatly beneath my fig leaf. This is what is so unsettling about intimacy: it is the constant presence of another conscience. It is the constant presence of another judge who insists on evaluating the minutiae of my life.
Judgment: that is the problem with intimacy. Intimacy often feels like judgment and judgment is precisely what I, in my sin, would flee. Sinners spontaneously run from the prospect of being judged. God comes in the cool of the day: the divine conscience arrives and I swiftly depart! I go behind a tree and start pointing and blaming someone else, trying to divert God’s gaze away from my privacy. Marriage can feel like judgment. Here comes another conscience and there goes my privacy. She invades my otherwise detached privacy and shines the light of her conscience beneath my social superficiality and it feels like judgment. I am tempted to hide from her. What she learns about me makes me uncomfortable. She invades me. But I want her to know me, to love me, to accept me. I want intimacy, but it is expensive.
The cost of intimacy is the willingness to be judged. That is what it costs to be intimate. If we would experience intimacy, we must pay the price of having our privacy exposed and judged. Intimacy challenges us and asks, “Is your love deeper than that ingrained sin? Is your love stronger than that unbreakable habit? Can your love spur you on to overcome that character flaw that you would otherwise carry to your grave?” This is expensive. This is dangerous. Will I choose my cherished indulgences, my cultivated flaws, and my sin instead of my wife, instead of my husband? These are anguishing choices. Have I not repeatedly chosen my sin? Have I not proven that I am able to destroy friendships, offend intimates, and separate from others and isolate myself? But I know that it is not good for me to be alone. I want intimacy. I am made for intimacy. I need intimacy. Yet when I reach out to be intimate, my sin erupts and threatens to kill intimacy.
THE LOVE THAT OVERCOMES SIN
Here is the real issue in all this privacy stuff: we do not want our spouse to expose our sin. That is the trouble with being intimate. It brings us a fresh discovery of our sin. We find ourselves as the disciples when they said to Jesus in Matthew 19.10, If the relationship of a man and his wife is like this, it is better not to marry. What compels us to seek intimacy when so much within us opposes intimacy? Why choose intimacy when it costs us our privacy, when it exposes our cherished self-indulgences and renders us constantly liable to being judged? Why be intimate only to see your deep-rooted heart sins continually being dredged up into the light of mutual scrutiny? Why be intimate only to be repeatedly painfully reminded of things you wish could stay hidden? Why pay this price? And yet how can you be human, much less married, and not want intimacy?
What does Christ give us to enable us to overcome our sinful reluctance to be intimate while satisfying our inherent hunger to be intimate? Love. Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sin (1 Peter 4.8). Love. Only love can overcome the sin that threatens to kill intimacy.
No doubt most, if not all, married couples would say that they married because they “fell in love.” Love is the explanation we give for marriage. Remember all the objections that our friends hurled against us when we announced our wedding plans? They barraged us with objections, and demanded an answer to the question “Why?” Why did we decide to marry? Well, because we were confident that we were in love. What about those of us who are in our middle years, watching the odometer pass through cycles of decades? What motivates us to overcome the challenges to intimacy? What will keep us on the course mapped out by the four guiding stars?
What will enable us to withstand the threatened mutinies, the careless dereliction of duty? What will keep the rudder firm against the waves, the crosscurrents, and the gale force winds of certain crisis? What will keep us going amid the foggy, motionless stillness of lulls in our love? What will keep us on course is what I am calling “gospel love.”
Excerpt from Gospel Intimacy in a Godly Marriage, used with permission.
Gospel Intimacy in a Godly Marriage is available at Trinity Book Service.
Table of Contents
Preface ………………………………………………………………………….11
PART ONE:
NAVIGATING THE JOURNEY INTO MARITAL INTIMACY
Introduction ……………………………………………………………… 15
1. The Doctrine Of God Directs Our Journey
Into Marital Intimacy……………………………………………….17
Being intimate and the being of God
We are “the image of God”
Unified plurality
The picture of perfection
Jesus’ language of “oneness”
2. The Doctrine Of Creation Directs Our Journey
Into Marital Intimacy……………………………………………… 28
The needs inherent in creation
The earth needs man’s labor
The man needs the woman
The man named the woman
What God has joined together
3. The Doctrine Of The Fall Directs Our Journey
Into Marital Intimacy……………………………………………….36
The essence of death is separation
Fig leaf rebellion
Divine justice
Divine Grace
A propensity to perversion
4. The Doctrine Of Redemption Directs Our Journey
Into Marital Intimacy……………………………………………….49
A showcase for the gospel
A signpost to glory
PART TWO:
MARITAL INTIMACY AND THE GRACE OF GOSPEL LOVE
Introduction ……………………………………………………………….57
5. The Challenges To Gospel Love ……………………………..58
The intimacy we need: “Love me.”
The privacy we want: “Leave me alone.”
The invading conscience
The love that overcomes sin
6. The Enemy Of Gospel Love …………………………………….68
Not any old love will do
Gospel realism: “Yes, that is sin!”
7. Be A Gospel Lover ……………………………………………….. 77
The loved lover
Love with love
A disposition of forgiveness
A disposition of forbearance
8. The Transaction Of Gospel Love …………………………… 84
An exchange of gospel commodities
Confession offered
Repentance expressed
Forgiveness bestowed
No vengeance
I promise
PART THREE:
OVERCOMING CHALLENGES TO MARITAL INTIMACY
Introduction ……………………………………………………………..107
9. The Challenge Of Headship And Submission ………..109
Leadership: not “source”
Submission: not egalitarianism
Christ – the model of headship and submission
10. The Challenge Of Selfishness………………………………130
The attitude of Christ
Discipleship and self-sacrifice
Wisdom from above
11.The Challenge Of Unbiblical Communication
Patterns ……………………………………………………………….141
Meaningful words
Cleansing words
Affectionate words
Sexual communication
12. The Challenge Of Unavoidable Death …………………..153
Married to my wife
Married to my sister
Discipleship – “Until death do us part”
A society of love
Even so, come Lord Jesus
Notes ……………………………………………………………………….167