When a man and a woman get married, they promise themselves to each other. The assumption is that they are each in a position to actually give the item that they are promising.

I wonder how often that is completely true.

Traditionally, there is a point in a wedding ceremony where the minister asks if there is any other relationship that prevents either person from being legally and morally capable of marrying the other. It is mostly just a formality–though it reminds us that marriage had to be carved out of social chaos.

But while the average couple in a wedding is legally free to marry the other, do they have any real freedom to truly offer themselves to the other?

To a certain extent, of course, you can’t learn how to give yourself in marriage until you get married. You are promising to learn how you need to change to become the perfect spouse (not perfect in a generic way but perfect to the particular person you are marrying) and then to do so. That can’t be all figured out before marriage. You have to grow and adapt.

But such growth and change require freedom. And by freedom I mean slavery.

Slavery to oneself.

Slavery to oneself as an integrated decision maker rather than slavery to the bits of you, whether only immature or downright sinful, that you can’t understand.

If you can’t master yourself you have no capacity to offer yourself to another. So two people take vows who have a hundred invisible spouses already chained to their hands, feet, eyes, and mouths. They are slaves to ambitions, greeds, vices, and assorted addictions.

Marriage has to force real change on a person in order to work. The person has to realize that the vow to belong to another entails a vow to capture and dominate oneself so that one has a person to offer to another.

Related:

• Your mission field includes your mouth, hands, and feet
• Members of the body
• CVT on self-realization and the Kingdom of God
• Spurgeon on making oneself one’s best weapon
• Proverbs as Father addressing Son, God to Jesus
• Jesus learning obedience as he suffers before our eyes
• Adding a premise can change expectations
• Messed up your underwear lately?
• You can’t rent out a slave if you share him with other masters

David thought the interview had gone well so far. Huxley Industries needed a slave to answer phones, keep records, and do other office work. David needed some better income and he had a slave to rent. His slave could easily do the jobs they needed to be done.

“So can your slave be here by 7:30 am every weekday morning?”

David’s heart lurched. “You start that early?”

Well, we need him ready to go before others come to work. We found this position works better if he starts a half hour earlier.”

“Oh.”

“Is that a problem?” Sharon, the interviewer sounded completely non-judgmental about David’s slave. He was thankful for her professionalism.

“Well, I have my slave during most of the day,” said David, hating to have to admit the truth out loud. “Body is a good slave and I’m sure he could do the work here.”

“But?”

“But I’m not completely his sole owner. His other master may make that 7:30 start time difficult to meet.”

“Someone else has ownership that early in the morning?”

David shook his head. Not in the morning, but usually late at night. Wine, Women, and Song are part owners from about 9 p.m. until pretty late. Getting up that early might be a problem.”

Sharon nodded. “That was actually why this position didn’t work with the last slave we tried to rent from someone.”

“Did Wine, Women, and Song have part ownership?”

“No,” said Sharon, “I think it was Late Night Television. It kept the slave up at night and when the other owner got full control back in the morning, the slave was too groggy to work for us effectively.”

David sighed.

“I appreciate talking to you about the job,” said Sharon. “But you have to understand lots of slaves can do the tasks we need done. Our problem isn’t the tasks themselves but the simple fact that the owners are not really total owners. You can’t really rent out a slave if you already share him with other masters.”

From Proverbs 3:

Do not plan evil against your neighbor,
who dwells trustingly beside you.
Do not contend with a man for no reason,
when he has done you no harm.
Do not envy a man of violence
and do not choose any of his ways,
for the devious person is an abomination to the Lord,
but the upright are in his confidence.

The first four lines seem pretty self-evident. But I wonder if this neighbor is himself the violent man you must not emulate even in trying to “fight fire with fire” against him. The statement is that “he has done you know harm,” but I wonder if Proverbs 24 is the same situation:

Be not a witness against your neighbor without cause,
and do not deceive with your lips.
Do not say, “I will do to him as he has done to me;
I will pay the man back for what he has done.”

“For no reason,” “he has done you know harm,” “without cause,” are all assertions made against what you want to believe. You think it is payback time and Solomon is telling you otherwise.

Thus reads Proverbs 22.29-23.9:

Do you see a man skillful in his work?
He will stand before kings;
he will not stand before obscure men.
When you sit down to eat with a ruler,
observe carefully what is before you,
and put a knife to your throat
if you are given to appetite.
Do not desire his delicacies,
for they are deceptive food.
Do not toil to acquire wealth;
be discerning enough to desist.
When your eyes light on it, it is gone,
for suddenly it sprouts wings,
flying like an eagle toward heaven.
Do not eat the bread of a man who is stingy;
do not desire his delicacies,
for he is like one who is inwardly calculating.
“Eat and drink!” he says to you,
but his heart is not with you.
You will vomit up the morsels that you have eaten,
and waste your pleasant words.
Do not speak in the hearing of a fool,
for he will despise the good sense of your words.

This looks to me like an identifiable “unit”–a series of Proverbs on a single theme or topic.

29.29 begins with a promise that sounds like a blessing. It is indeed a blessing but one with temptations and challenges. 23.1-8 in my view is a simple chiasm that shows the danger of depending on kings as a path to riches:

When you sit down to eat with a ruler,
observe carefully what is before you,
and put a knife to your throat
if you are given to appetite.
Do not desire his delicacies,
for they are deceptive food.

Do not toil to acquire wealth;
be discerning enough to desist.
When your eyes light on it, it is gone,
for suddenly it sprouts wings,
flying like an eagle toward heaven.

Do not eat the bread of a man who is stingy;
do not desire his delicacies,
for he is like one who is inwardly calculating.
“Eat and drink!” he says to you,
but his heart is not with you.
You will vomit up the morsels that you have eaten,
and waste your pleasant words.

The ruler and the stingy man are the same person. And the middle portion shows the hopes and ambitions of the one sitting at his table. Hoping to get rich by getting rich friends is a vain hope. While it may happen to some people, it is not a reliable strategy for making one’s fortune. So be careful. Don’t expect to much.

The chiasm ends with a warning that flattery will not gain favor. The next verse (23.9) ends this section with a warning that your wisdom will not be appreciated either.

Jesus reproduced this wisdom in another situation:

He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” (from Luke 14)

OK, you know how everyone is claiming that real character comes from “the inside” and must be truly “from inside you” and “listen to your heart” and “be true to yourself” and all that?

Once that was messy diapers but now you would find it difficult to go in your pants even if someone offered you two hundred dollars to do so.

It was the most natural thing in the world to every single human being now reading this blog post to, at one time, let “poop happen.” No control. No concern. This was spontaneous human behavior unconstrained by outward, external imposition.

And now it is inside you, in your heart and in your mind. You have not only the ability to control your bowels, you have such a powerful impulse to do so that the idea of overriding that impulse seems almost beyond your reach.

You get trained and you change…. from the outside in and then from the inside out.

And this applies to much else.

A baby will play with his hands and feet and put them in his mouth because he perceives them as externalities. He doesn’t know how to control them at first. He’s not sure they are part of him.

By the time he is two, that stage is over. He has “brought” his limbs “into” his consciousness. Or he has “extended” his self into his hands and feet. They are part of him now. They are tools. He has dominion and from there he can do new things.

Or consider teaching a teenager to drive. Once you know how to drive you no longer think, “I need to slow down so I had better push the pedal on the left.” If you are thinking that way, then you don’t know how to drive yet. But when you do learn, the car is part of your body. You never need to think about the controls.

It is true of language. You can no more think of the individual letters in order and the sounds they make as you read this post, than you can drive by first thinking about what the controls for the car do. Language, both written and spoken, is experienced without noticing the different parts that, when you were young, you had to figure out.

This is called wisdom. The same principle applies to learning to listen before you speak or learning to restrain anger.

When a teen first gets in a car, the car’s power scares him. It bucks and jerks. Why is the engine so rough?

But it is not rough. You just don’t have control. The car couldn’t function without an engine and brakes. You need those things. But you need to know how to use them right. The same with your emotions. You have to learn to drive them or else they will drive you off the road.

Whoever restrains his words has knowledge,
and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding (Proverbs 17.27).

Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding,
but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly (Proverbs 14.29).

Good sense makes one slow to anger,
and it is his glory to overlook an offense (Proverbs 19.11).

The vexation of a fool is known at once,
but the prudent ignores an insult (Proverbs 12.16).

A fool gives full vent to his spirit,
but a wise man quietly holds it back (Proverbs 29.11).

These are habits of behavior. They are how you drive yourself in a way that glorifies God and keeps you out of unnecessary traffic jams. They are the habits that give you the time you need to reflect when reflection is called for.

It is all about how you train your body.

The first time wisdom is mentioned in the Bible, it is used to describe what tempted Eve about the tree–that it was desirable to make her wise.

This seems to be the equivalent of gaining the knowledge of good and evil, having one’s eyes opened… and being like God.

At the end of Genesis 3 God seems to agree with these equivalences:

Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil…”

Adam and Eve are naked in the beginning of Genesis. Genesis ends with a man who, after repeatedly losing his robe of authority through injustice, gains authority over the whole world… precisely because he is wise.

This proposal pleased Pharaoh and all his servants. And Pharaoh said to his servants, “Can we find a man like this, in whom is the Spirit of God?” Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has shown you all this, there is none so discerning and wise as you are. You shall be over my house, and all my people shall order themselves as you command. Only as regards the throne will I be greater than you.” And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “See, I have set you over all the land of Egypt.” Then Pharaoh took his signet ring from his hand and put it on Joseph’s hand, and clothed him in garments of fine linen and put a gold chain about his neck.

Every workman knows the necessity of keeping his tools in a good state of repair, for “if the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength.” If the workman lose the edge from his adze, he knows that there will be a greater draught upon his energies, or his work will be badly done. Michael Angelo, the elect of the fine arts, understood so well the importance of his tools, that he always made his own brushes with his own hands, and in this he gives us an illustration of the God of grace, who with special care fashions for himself all true ministers. It is true that the Lord, like Quintin Matsys in the story of the Antwerp well-cover, can work with the faultiest kind of instrumentality, as he does when he occasionally makes very foolish preaching to be useful in conversion; and he can even work without agents, as he does when he saves men without a preacher at all, applying the word directly by his Holy Spirit; but we cannot regard God’s absolutely sovereign acts as a rule for our action. He may, in his own absoluteness, do as pleases him best, but we must act as his plainer dispensations instruct us; and one of the facts which is clear enough is this, that the Lord usually adapts means to ends, from which the plain lesson is, that we shall be likely to accomplish most when we are in the best spiritual condition; or in other words, we shall usually do our Lord’s work best when our gifts and graces are in good order, and we shall do worst when they are most out of trim. This is a practical truth for our guidance, when the Lord makes exceptions, they do but prove the rule.

We are, in a certain sense, our own tools, and therefore must keep ourselves in order. If I want to preach the gospel, I can only use my own voice; therefore I must train my vocal powers. I can only think with my own brains, and feel with my own heart, and therefore I must educate my intellectual and emotional faculties. I can only weep and agonise for souls in my own renewed nature, therefore must I watchfully maintain the tenderness which was in Christ Jesus. It will be in vain for me to stock my library, or organise societies, or project schemes, if I neglect the culture of myself; for books, and agencies, and systems, are only remotely the instruments of my holy calling; my own spirit, soul, and body, are my nearest machinery for sacred service; my spiritual faculties, and my inner life, are my battle axe and weapons of war. M’Cheyne, writing to a ministerial friend, who was travelling with a view to perfecting himself in the German tongue, used language identical with our own:—” I know you will apply hard to German, but do not forget the culture of the inner man—I mean of the heart. How diligently the cavalry officer keeps his sabre clean and sharp; every stain he rubs off with the greatest care. Remember you are God’s sword, his instrument—I trust, a chosen vessel unto him to bear his name. In great measure, according to the purity and perfection of the instrument, will be the success. It is not great talents God blesses so much as likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.”

–From his Lectures to my Students

See also my recent quotation from Cornelius Van Til.

And also my post on the Great Commission to one’s mouth, hands and feet.