D A Carson

John Piper, Tim Keller on Sustaining Marital Love

Combining 116 years of marital wisdom and insight, John Piper, D.A. Carson, and Tim Keller recently appeared on The Gospel Coalition blog and discussed the ground of covenant in which the flower of love grows.

Piper, who has been married the longest of the three, began the discussion by recalling what the famed German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer told a young couple about to enter into holy matrimony: “It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.”

The covenant, from this day forth, sustains the love, not the love the covenant, emphasized the author of Desiring God .

“I, at 42 years of marriage, feel very strongly that [Bonhoeffer] is emphasizing that romance and falling in love is a beautiful thing, and re-falling in love, again and again, is important... [But] re-falling in love after seasons of pain can be sustained only if you elevate covenant above those affections and romance,” Piper stated.

Piper’s main message to those looking to marry or who were already married was that affections should never be the foundation of marriage because while affections were here one day and gone the next, it was the covenant – the vow made to each other – that withstood the test of time and patience.

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“You have covenanted, and God has thus united – that covenant exists. Your affections, they exist, and then they don’t exist. You get angry, and then you don’t get angry. You feel so mad and you wonder where did all that affection go? And that can be reborn because there’s this massive platform.”

Rephrasing Piper’s statement in more popular terms, Carson quoted what one man who had been married for over 60 years said during an interview on British television .

“The interviewer [asked the man], ‘During all the time, haven’t you ever considered divorce?’ And he said, ‘Divorce, divorce, never. Murder, often. Divorce never.’”

“Obviously,” the Canadian-born professor expressed, “you can make that sound ridiculous. But he’s got a point.”

Keller, who agreed with the man on the television, reinforced the point made by the other two theologians by referencing an article by Lewis Smedes on the Christianity Today website entitled, “The Power of Promising.