Welcome to Gospel in Life. When it comes to marriage, we often use words like soulmate

or the one. These words can reveal an underlying belief that, to have a good marriage, you just

have to find the perfect person. But the biblical vision for marriage is starkly different.

It's a way for two imperfect people to help each other become who God intended them

to be. Listen as Tim Keller explores the meaning of marriage.

This is the sixth week. I understand that everybody wants to buy the series of tapes on marriage.

And Jim Irwin tells me that if it's long enough, and if the series is long enough, the sales

will be such that we'll be able to buy our own building. And so I'm thinking of, you

know, this is the sixth in a series of 652 talks on marriage. Now this is our sixth talk

on this passage, the classic text in the scripture on Christian marriage, Ephesians 5. And I

would just like to read it to you and then continue our exposition of it. This is the sixth

week they've been on it. Ephesians 5, and sorry about my sound and sorry about the occasional

memory lapses that I'm bound to have tonight. But let's see, we can muddle through best

we can. It's Ephesians 5, and we'll go verses 21 to 33. It's a great passage to know

by heart. Here it goes. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives submit to

your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head

of the church, his body of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ,

so wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands love your wives just

as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, to make her holy, cleansing her

by the washing with water through the Word, and to present her to himself as a radiant

church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In the

same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife

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