Today on Summit Life with J.D.
Greer. The deeper the shared interest, the greater the friendship. For a Christian, the deepest passion is seeing Jesus, growing in Jesus, being like Jesus. Christian marriage is supposed to be a comrade in your greatest passion and a companion for your greatest journey. Welcome to Summit Life with pastor, author, and teacher J.D. Greer.
I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. You know, if you were to ask most couples why they got married, they'd probably say something about being in love and making each other happy. Or if they're being really open, they might even say something about physical attraction.
And of course, there's nothing wrong with any of those things. But today on Summit Life, pastor J.D. reveals one of the most forgotten and important elements of marriage.
If you're ready to grow, you've come to the right place. If you've missed any of the messages in this teaching series so far, or if you'd like to get your copy of Devotions for the Distracted Family, please visit us at jdgreer.com or by calling 866-335-5220. But right now, let's get started. Pastor J.D. titled this message, Friendship and Communication. I sent you out last weekend with the assignment to ask every significant relationship in your life one question. Do you remember what that one question was? You should.
What was it? How can I serve you? That's right. We are on week three of our series on relationships. That series is First Love. And each week, what we've been doing is coming out of the classic biblical passage on romance and relationships, Ephesians 5, verses 21 through 32. And so I would again invite you, if you have your Bible, to turn to that passage because I'm going to show you a number of things through there that are going to develop the idea that we're going to chase after today. I'm going to start off today by telling you about one of the most important marriages in history, though it is probably one that you've never heard of. It is the marriage of Martin Luther to Catherine von Bora. Martin Luther, in case you don't know this, was famous for starting the Protestant Reformation. And the core of the Protestant Reformation was that it was the Bible, not the teachings of the church that were the authority for life. Well, one of the areas that Luther took issue with was the teaching of the church at the time that all clergy should be celibate. And he said that is nowhere in the Bible.
And he was, of course, correct, which I'm grateful for. He wrote a book called On Monastic Vows in which he proved that forced celibacy on priests was an invention of man and that it wasn't in the Bible. And he ended that book by encouraging monks and nuns everywhere to throw off their vows and get married for the glory of God. Well, there was a group of nuns that read his book in one particular convent. They found his reasoning to be compelling and so they threw off their vows. But the Roman Catholic Church of the time would not let them do that and they wouldn't let them leave the convent.
So Luther helped arrange this big heist. Twelve women were smuggled out of that convent in twelve empty fish barrels. Well, they found husbands for all twelve of these ex-nuns except for one, Catherine von Bora, who turned out to be pretty tough, it seems, to find a husband for.
Because she was, according to all accounts, she was brash, she was proud, she was loud, and she was generally unattractive, is what the literature says. Eventually she came up to Luther and she said essentially, you got me into this mess. You owe me a husband.
If you don't find me one, then you are going to have to marry me. Luther, who was forty years old at the time and still a virgin, content, by the way, in his singleness, didn't want to marry her. But she, his words, wore him down and finally they got married. By the way, this is all 100% true. When asked later why he married her, Luther responded, and I quote, to spite the devil.
To spite the devil. Which has to be the least romantic reason for a wedding ever given in the history of mankind. So the marriage did not exactly start off like a fairy tale, but they ended up having one of the most incredible marriages in history. We know most about their marriage through their letters. They are awesome.
They are truly hilarious. She was really smart and so was he. She was pretty fiery and she was quick-witted. But they were passionately in love. His favorite pet name for her was Lord Katie. Other pet names included Dear Rib, My Empress, My True Love, My Sweetheart, and The Dear Gift of God. In Luther's earlier writings on marriage, if you ever get a hold of those, you'll notice that he treated marriage as primarily something functional.
Something that God gave us for the propagation of the human race and something that we should enter into in order to stave off sexual temptation. But toward the end of his life, he would call Katie von Bora, quote, the greatest earthly gift of grace that a man could ever have. She was more than his lover. She was his confidant.
She was his truest companion and she was his best friend. Friendship is one of the most forgotten elements in marriage. Now I know that many of you probably realize that your spouse is supposed to be your friend.
And if you're single and you are looking for a mate, you probably realize that somewhere in the mix, friendship ought to be a part of the discussion. But really, if you're honest, you see attraction and passion and romance as the core of the marriage. If anything, you see marriage as, listen to this, primarily romance spiced with a little friendship. What I'm going to try to show you today is that biblically speaking, marriage is friendship spiced with a little romance. If you want a marriage to be both endearing and enduring, then friendship has to be the core basis of it. And that should affect both how you operate before the marriage as you seek a marriage partner and it has ramifications for how you operate after you are married. One respected sociologist says it this way, the determining factor in whether wives feel satisfied with the sex, romance, and passion in their marriage is by 70% the quality of the couple's friendship. For men, the determining factor in all those same things is by 70% the quality of a couple's friendship.
So men and women come from the same planet after all. Proverbs 2 17 calls your spouse your aloof, aloof, which is a very unique Hebrew word which lexicons translate as special confidant or best friend. And in the great biblical book of romance, Song of Solomon, the bride says of her groom, you are my lover and you are my aloof, my best friend. That is at the core of what Paul says in Ephesians 5, the middle part, verses 25 through 28.
I'm going to show you this. You're not going to see the word friendship in there, but I'm going to explain to you that's the concept that's at work in these verses. And when you get this principle, it has implications for you after you get married, when you're seeking to get married, or even if you're somebody who's going to be single for most of your life or all of your life, it has ramifications for how you think about your singleness. Ephesians 5 verse 25, listen, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her that he might sanctify her having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word so that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his wife loves himself. Now, again, he doesn't use the word friendship in there. And maybe you read that and you're like, well, I didn't hear friendship anywhere in there. But when you think about it, there are a couple of things in that passage that teach you that marriage is essentially friendship.
Let me unpack that for you. First of all, he uses the analogy of the body. That's what pervades this whole passage.
That is a fascinating analogy. In one sense, we can think of our body as separate from us. I can think of my body as separate from me if my body's lying there and I'm dead. You can think of me as separate from it. But in another sense, you don't think of me as separate from my body.
I'm one with my body. My wife is in one sense separate from me, yet she is also, in a very profound sense, one with me. We have fused our entire lives together, our homes, our futures.
Most of life, especially the things that we care most about, we are going to experience together. We are two separate beings that have united into one body. Throughout this passage, Paul is going to refer back to the Genesis account of man and woman's creation. Then in your Bible, you look down in verse 31, you'll see he explains in marriage, a man is going to leave his father or mother and cleave to or literally become one with his wife.
That's the essence of marriage, becoming one. In fact, when Adam saw Eve in the garden, he said, this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. Scholars say that the nuance there is what he's saying is, this is a piece of my soul that has been missing. This is like a part of my bones and part of my flesh that I'm seeing there in front of me.
He didn't see the woman for the first time and say, whoa, what a hot babe. Can't wait to get my hands on that. What he said is, that's actually a part of me. That's a part of my soul.
It's a part of my body. I feel like I'm seeing something that I've been missing. That's what a friend is.
A friend is someone who feels and shares your deepest interest and passions so that you feel like you've been cut from the same cloth. Which leads me to the second thing. You see in this passage a progression toward a common cause.
That's what friendship is. It's progression toward a common cause. In this case, the common cause is Christ's likeness. 1 John 3, 2. Dear friends, we know that when Christ appears, we will be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
All who have this hope in him purify themselves just as he is pure. This is our greatest passion. My wife and I's greatest passion is to know Jesus, to grow in Jesus, to love Jesus, to see Jesus one day and to prepare ourselves for that day. And she and I are assigned to one another to help one another along this greatest of all passions and journeys.
What makes a friendship great is a sense of unity around the common cause. I mean think of how many epic movies that we love have that as like kind of the core basis of it. Lord of the Rings.
There's not even a group of people. It's elves and dwarves and things that have nothing in common. But they're brought together in unity around the pursuit of a common cause. Band of Brothers, Ocean's Eleven. They all have the same theme. A group of people are brought together around a common cause.
C.S. Lewis says there's one kind of love. Greek word eros, where we get the word erotic. He said this comes from two people who are absorbed in each other, face to face with each other. He said there's another kind of love in Greek that is storhe or phileo, which is where two people are not face to face but side by side, absorbed by some common interest. That, he says, is friendship.
Two people that are side by side but they're friends because they're focused on one thing that they both love. Now friendship or common cause can be found around a lot of things. If somebody else and I share a common love for a sports team, we feel a kind of friendship about that.
It always amazes me when you go into Cameron Indoor Stadium or you go into the Dean Smith Center. What you're going to find is you're going to find a group of people that are together. They may hate each other outside of that context, but in that moment they're united in this profound sense of unity by a common cause. If you and I share a love for a hobby, we're like that. If we share a love for the same band or the same author, we find friendship around our love of that thing.
But the deeper the shared interest, the greater the friendship. For a Christian, the deepest passion is seeing Jesus, growing in Jesus, being like Jesus. Christian marriage is supposed to be a comrade in your greatest passion and a companion for your greatest journey. Tim Keller says in Christianity to fall in love is to look at another person and get a glimpse of the person that God is creating. And to say I see who God is making you and it excites me.
I want to be a part of that. I want to partner with you and God in the journey that you're taking to his throne. And when we get there, I'm going to look at your magnificence and I'm going to say I always knew, I always knew that you could be like this.
I got glimpses of it on earth. But now, now look at you. Your hope is that one day you and your spouse are going to stand before the throne of God and you're going to hear, well done, good and faithful servants. Over the years you lifted each other up. You sacrificed for each other. You washed one another's feet. You confronted each other and prayed for each other. You loved each other and hugged each other and you continually pushed each other toward me. And now look at you.
Look at you. You're radiant. It is your commitment to your spouse's holiness that keeps the marriage going because it is friendship on the deepest level around the deepest passion and the greatest of all journeys. So even when you get tired of your spouse or irritated and you want a new one, you realize the new spouse that I really want is them in their glorified state. This is Summit Life with Pastor J.D.
Greer. We'll return for the conclusion of today's teaching in just a moment, but I wanted to remind you about our featured resource this month. It's a brand new 15-day devotional for all of us who live distracted lives and it covers the topics of relationships, faith, rest, and even parenting.
Daily devotions offer a chance to dig deeper into scripture and can help you get in the habit of regular Bible reading. It also comes with conversation cards that are perfect for any group setting, breaking down barriers, and building intimacy along the way. We'd like to encourage you to reserve your copy right now by calling 866-335-5220.
That's 866-335-5220 or visit us online at jdgreer.com. Thanks for being with us today. Now let's finish up today's teaching. Here's Pastor J.D.
So let's just stop here and for a minute let's just ask this question. If marriage is friendship, what makes for friendship? I'm gonna give you four dimensions of friendship that come out of the analogy of the body.
You ought to jot these down. A, B, C, and D. A, common cause. If you don't share common cause around the deepest things, the friendship will never really last because you'll get bored with each other. Being into each other can only last for so long and only take you so far. Here's letter B, constancy. Constancy. A friend is somebody you know will never leave because they're as committed to you as they are to themselves because it's like you've become a part of their body. In Proverbs 17, 17, a friend loves at all times and a brother is made for adversity.
A friend, I've heard it said, is someone who walks in when everybody else walks out. The person who should most trust your constancy is your spouse. They should know that while you get upset at them and while there is conflict, you're not going anywhere because you're the one who believes the best about them. You're the one who gives them the benefit of the doubt and you're never going to walk away. Because here's the thing, somebody is never going to let you in until they know that you're not going to reject them, to walk away from them, humiliate them, or expose their weaknesses. Which is why it tears me up when I hear other spouses tearing their spouse down, whether their spouse is present or not. Because I know that their spouse that they're tearing down is never going to open up to them. I mean, how could they?
They wouldn't feel safe. My body, generally speaking, knows that it's safe with me, right? I might be unhappy with some part of my body, but my body knows we can trust JD. I mean, think about trimming your fingernails, right? That's something I don't want anybody else doing.
I mean, maybe you pay a professional every once in a while, I don't, but maybe some of you do, but I don't want you doing it. I don't want you with a knife around that part of my body, right? Because, I mean, that's a very sensitive part, but my body lets JD do it because my body knows that if it feels pain, JD is going to feel pain. And JD is not going to let that happen. Now, even if JD does cause pain to the body, it's for the body's good.
Because the body knows that JD's presence with it is constant. And that's what you've got in a friendship, is you've got a constancy where you feel like you're one flesh, and so when you hurt, I hurt, and so I'm not going anywhere because I have united myself to you and we have become one. Here's letter C, transparency.
Transparency. In order to have a friendship, you've got to open yourself up. You've got to share what's going on emotionally. A companion who is like your own body has to see what's really going on.
Some of you men are a closed book to your spouse, and that's why she's not your friend, because there's nothing to be friends with, because you're a closed book to her. And for some of you men, I've got one simple activity. You know, I gave you last week one simple question.
I told you to apply it. I've got one activity for you this week that I'm telling you it's very simple. It's so simple, but it could really transform your marriage. Come home every day this week, here it is, and tell your spouse one thing, men, tell your wife one thing that happened to you that day, and here's the key part, how you felt about it.
That's the key part. Don't just tell her what happened, this is what happened, and this is how I felt about it. All right, this made me happy, this made me sad, this made me mad. All right, don't talk about her in these things. This is what you did, it made me happy, mad, sad, but just something that happened.
It may be a baby step, but I'm telling you, it would be a huge one that would go a long way in uniting you to your wife and friendship. Now, more on that in a minute. One word here by C.S.
Lewis. Listen, Eros will have naked bodies. Friendship, store, hey, will have naked personalities. Transparency, you've got to allow them to call out your sin. Believe me, they already see it, right? I've made the mistake a few times in my marriage, being like, hey Veronica, tell me all the sins that I struggle with.
Three and a half hours later, I've still got a notebook and a pen and I'm writing stuff down. They already see it, but you've got to give them permission to speak into your life because that's what they're there for. They're there to help point out the inconsistency in your life. And let me tell you, my natural tendency when anybody criticizes me is not to listen, right? You come down here after the service and you meet me right down front and you start giving me criticism, I can tell you what I'll be doing. I'll be like, oh yeah?
And I'll start pointing out like five or six things that are wrong with you. There's a few verses I've had to memorize because this is so unnatural for me to hear criticism that God intends for me to hear. Proverbs 9-8 is one of my verses. Reprove a wise man and he will love you for it. But fools despise wisdom and correction. Here's a question for you married people.
When it comes to how you receive correction from your spouse, which category do you go in? Fools. Isn't that right? You a fool. That's just what you are naturally. Me too. That means if I'm going to hear criticism in the way God wants me to hear, it's going to be because I make an intentional decision to be a wise man.
And I'm going to say, yeah, that's painful. But I know that God puts you here because he wants me to hear that and I want to be wise. I want to be wise. Here's letter D. Trust of good intention.
Trust of good intention. Let me go back to the analogy of the body for a minute. Cleaning the body is an intimate thing and you wouldn't want somebody else doing it besides you. I wouldn't let somebody brush my teeth. I'd be scared dead to be poking the back of my throat. I don't want you doing that. I don't want you shaving me. In order for your spouse to let you clean their spiritual body, they have to know that you have good intentions and that you're not going to go in there all poking and slashing.
Right? That's why some of you have lost all ability to be a friend of your spouse because the only way you speak to them is harshly and cruelly. I mean, think about it. I'm not going to let you clean me physically. I'm going to let you shave me. If you come at me with a knife like this, I'm like, whoa, you can back up.
I don't want you to know my face swinging like that. If you're going to shave me, not that you want to, but if you're going to shave my face, I got to know that you're going to be as gentle and careful as I would be. If my spouse is going to clean me spiritually, which is what you saw Ephesians 5, she's called to do, and I'm called to do with her. I got to know that she's going to be as gentle and has all the good intentions for me that I would have for myself.
I got a very simple thing here that can help you along this process with this principle. For every one negative comment you make to your spouse, you should make probably about five positive ones because that lets them know the intentions that you have for them. This is a big mistake, listen, that fathers make with children, bosses make with employees, teachers make with students, wives with husbands, and the whole bit, is we tend to only notice and point out the weaknesses. But see, when somebody feels like that you're down on them, they won't really listen to you. But when they know that you are their biggest fan, they will often take your criticisms more to heart because they know that it comes from somebody who cares. You've proven that by the way that you've spoken blessing and belief and vision over their life. In all relationships, especially marriage, we tend to assume the positives and notice the weaknesses. What we should do is assume the weaknesses and notice the positives. You married a sinner. You did.
That should not be a big surprise. So instead of berating them constantly over their sinfulness, assume that and speak blessing and empowerment over their lives. This is not some kind of power positive thinking junk either. This is what Jesus does. What Jesus did is he painted a picture of what you could be, what he had started in you, and he held that vision up in front of you and then said all the discipline I'm giving you now is because I'm removing from you the things that aren't that. But he's constantly speaking a word of faith, a word of blessing over your life so that you hear, you take the rebuke, you take the pruning because you see that he has died to get you to where you know that you could be. That's the same way that we grow one another up.
So I'm telling you for every one negative thing you say, you should say about five positive things. So the core of marriage is friendship. While you're there, you can also browse through previous studies or visit Pastor JD's blog for the latest relevant articles. We love making these resources available free of charge so that everyone can dive deeper into the gospel at their own pace. But this mission is only possible because of friends like you who give generously to support this ministry. And as our way of saying thanks for your gift today, we'll send you an exclusive new set of Summit Life resources. In many ways, our relationships with others are windows into our relationship with God.
And we can only love others well by saturating ourselves in the Word of God. We'd love to get you a copy of our new resource today titled Devotions for the Distracted Family, along with a matching set of 20 conversation cards. Ask for both when you donate at the suggested level of $35 or more by calling 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220. Or give and request your set online at JDGrier.com. While you're on the website, you can also sign up for our email list to get ministry updates, information about new resources, and Pastor JD's latest blog post delivered straight to your inbox.
Sign up when you go to JDGrier.com. I'm Molly Vitovich. I'm so glad that you joined us today. And be sure to tune in next week as we continue to dig deeper into our relationships here on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.
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