The church can easily make an idol out of marriage.  As Tim Keller helpfully puts it, idolatry happens when we take a good thing is made into an ultimate thing.

Is marriage a good thing? Absolutely. I just did premarital counseling yesterday for a couple that has been engaged all of a week. I heard their story and happily agreed to perform their wedding. When we finished our time together, I prayed and thanked God for bringing the two of them together. Marriage is a good gift from God, and I am thankful he has given this gift to my friends.

But how can we make marriage an ultimate thing? Marriage becomes an ultimate thing when we equate being married (or being happily married) as the ultimate goal in life. In this worldview, life doesn’t really begin until you walk down the aisle or your marriage is deeply satisfying.

Before you’re married, you’re seen as an irresponsible child. After all, if you were responsible and mature and godly, you’d obviously be married. So, after you get married, you get promoted to the grown up table. Finally, you’ll get to eat something other than mac ‘n cheese on Thanksgiving.

There are a couple of major problems with the idolatry of marriage. The first is pastoral. If your view of life is that marriage is the highest good, how do you counsel people who are not married? Do you tell them to suck it up while they muddle through a “Plan B” life? Or worse, do you tell them something well-intentioned but heretical like, “As soon as you learn to be content, then God will bring you a spouse?”

What about people who are in bad marriages? Do you encourage them to believe that God will someday transform their spouse into the person they’ve always dreamed of? What are they supposed to do twenty years from now when their husband is even more insufferable and checked out than he is today?

The other significant problem with idolatry of marriage is that it’s not biblical. The gospel teaches clearly that there is one way to have “life”, and that way is to be a disciple of Jesus (John 20:30-31). Life is not found in “Jesus plus anything”—not even marriage.

Going a little deeper into Scripture, you will find that even the best marriages in the world have an expiration date. Jesus says that in the new heavens and new earth there will be no marriage (Luke 20). This can be a baffling text to people that are happily married. But the reality is this: the best marriages are only signposts pointing beyond themselves. The self-giving and mutual enjoyment that marks good marriages are pointers to the relationship between Christ and his people. This is where true and full life is to be found.