Transcript
Ben Fallon: For the next 10 weeks on Ask Paul Tripp, we’re going to be diving deep into archives and compiling some older answers from Paul. These answers were relatively brief, so we’ll put together two or three of them together to create an episode with a common thread running through it. For today, that thread is marriage. The first question comes from someone asking Paul to practically explain Genesis 2:24 - “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” So here’s Paul answering the question, “What Does It Mean to Be One Flesh?”
Paul Tripp: When the Bible talks about “one flesh”, it really means one flesh. It’s that in the intimacy of the marriage relationship, there is meant to be the most miraculous, tender intimacy that you could ever experience in human life; that it’s this moment where all protections are gone. “I am now literally naked, exposed in the arms of another human being and our bodies literally become as one.”
Now, it’s not enough to say that that’s what it’s about because that depth of intimacy, with all of its tenderness and with all of its needed protection and all of its mutual serving love, is only possible because there is a deep abiding relational unity that that couple has. You see, here’s how it works in marriage. You always drag the character and quality of your marriage relationship into the marriage bed.
“If you have been harsh and judgmental with me, if you have been selfish and demanding with me, why would I not expect that you would be that same person in the intimacy of our sexuality? Why would I relax? Why would I rest?” The wholeness of marital sexuality is only possible because of the wholeness of the spiritual relational intimacy of those couples.
I want to speak for a minute to men. I think it’s possible to treat your wife as an object for your own sexual satisfaction without little concern about how you tenderly love and serve her in the intimacy of marital sexuality. You get satisfied and you walk away. It’s almost like you’re treating your wife as a tool of your own masturbation. It’s horrific. It’s wrong. It violates “one flesh” because the love that I’m called to where I would love my wife like Christ loved the church, I would give my life up for her, I would serve her, that love is to make that sexual relationship, that “one flesh” in intimacy safe and tender and loving and serving and mutually satisfying.
You see, “one flesh” doesn’t begin with your body. “One flesh” begins with your heart. I am convinced that most sexual dysfunction isn’t in marriage. It’s not about biology. It’s about the heart. It’s selfishness and demandingness and entitlement and anger and un-forgiveness and bitterness that is wreaking havoc on your ability to enjoy the deepest, most beautiful intimacy that human beings can know.
I need to say something else – that in our culture, we have made a separation that was never supposed to be made. We separate sex from relationship, and sex just becomes “an act for my pleasure with whoever will give me pleasure whenever, however, wherever”. And it walks away from that the context of this by God’s design was this beautiful “one flesh” thing, where the souls that have been connected now become bodies that are connected in the deepest, most beautiful of human unity.
You want to fix your sex life? Fix your marriage relationship. Be committed to self-sacrificing love, so that person, when they are unprotected next you, knows that there, they will be loved.
BF: This next question on marriage is, “How can I encourage my spouse when they are struggling with sin?”
PT: You know, one of the things that you have to understand and submit to is that in marriage, you have no capacity whatsoever to change the other person. If a human being could change another human being, Jesus would not have had to come. The whole message of scripture is that change is a result of the exercise of the power of divine grace.
Now, what that then means is I should not think that by the force of my personality, by constant argument, by the tightness of my logic, that I can change the content of another person’s heart. That’s trying to be the savior. What I need to understand is I am called to be a tool in His redemptive hands. I’m never anything more than His instrument. And so, here’s the question that I think every married man, every married woman should be asking. “What is God seeking to do in the heart and life of my husband or wife, and how can I be part of it?” You should ask that question every day.
Now, here’s how marriage works, why so few wishes your husband was a better spiritual leader or husbands, if you wish your wife were more joyful and content. Here’s how marriage works. If your eyes ever see or your ears ever hear the sin, weakness and failure of your spouse, it’s never an accident. It’s never an interruption. It’s never a hassle. It’s always grace. God loves that husband or wife and He’s put them in a marriage of faith; and He will reveal their need to you, so you can be a tool of His rescue and transformation. It’s always grace.
If you are now experiencing the sin, weakness and failure of your husband or wife, that exposure is exactly what God means to do in marriage because the ultimate plan for marriage – sorry, this is true – is not my temporary happiness. The ultimate purpose of marriage is to further God’s work of rescue and transformation because in marriage, the real Paul gets exposed. The real Luella gets exposed and that exposure is meant, not to defeat us, not to discourage us, but to encourage us with the presence of a God who still is at work in us.
And so, I ask the question. “How can I be a tool of that grace? How can I help the other person see things that they don’t see? How can I help them desire things that they don’t desire for?” Listen. We’re tools of restoration, not condemnation. Let me give you an illustration. If a house is falling down, you know whether it’s going to be restored by the size of the equipment that’s out front. Wrecking ball responses to the sin and weakness of another person are seldom restorative to the response of condemnation. I want to use the smaller tools of insight and encouragement, so that I can be part of what God wants to do in the life of the other person.
Don’t be a wrecking ball. Be a tool in the hands of God as He seeks to do good things in the heart of the person whose sin, weakness or failure has now been revealed to you in your marriage.
BF: Paul Tripp Ministries has a variety of resources available on marriage. Paul wrote a book titled Marriage: 6 Gospel Commitments Every Couple Needs To Make, which you might know by its original title, What Did You Expect?: Redeeming the Realities of Marriage. The updated book, Marriage: 6 Gospel Commitments, is the same exact material - just a new cover, a new title, and a bonus chapter. That book is available at PaulTripp.com/Marriage. You can also find several of our video resources on marriage at PaulTripp.com/Store.
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