Saturday, May 8, 2010

Love is a Verb: Love and Marriage

Society often tells us that in order to “feel” love toward our spouses, we need to love ourselves more. In contrast, the Bible never tells us to love ourselves. It tells us to love God first, then our neighbors (Matthew 22:37-9). According to the Bible, we are to shift our focus from ourselves and onto acting in love toward God and other people.

Putting others before ourselves is difficult, but we have to remember that, according to the Bible, love is a purposeful commitment to sacrificial action for another. God provides the ultimate example of loving, faithful commitment; John 3:16 tells us that God loved us so much that He sent His only Son to die for us. If we are to follow God’s example of love, we must love our spouses even when they act unbecomingly. Loving our spouses even when we do not “feel” like loving them is not hypocritical; rather, it is a demonstration of our commitment to our spouses and of our love for God.

In contrast, faithlessness, which is often the result of a self-focus, causes a multitude of problems. A self-focus tells us to find someone more compatible. It seeks reasons to leave a marriage, and it often allows feelings to dictate actions. Jesus speaks of this self-focus when the Pharisees, a religious sect, asked Him why Moses allowed the Israelites to divorce their wives. Jesus’ reply is revealing. He says, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives” (Matthew 19:8). A self-focus is a malignancy in a marriage; if not dealt with quickly and radically, it will kill the relationship.

To learn how to love correctly, we need only look to Jesus’ example. Love is not about being served or “getting.” It is about giving. Jesus tells us in John 15:12-3: “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus exemplified this kind of love by “becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). Jesus did not come to earth to be served but to serve others and “to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

How do we demonstrate this type of love? An evidence of it is our faithfulness. The Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 13 that love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” While strong emotions may accompany love, faithfulness is what keeps love steadfast and unchanging. It is what gives us the ability to stay in a relationship even when it seems as though we have reached the proverbial, final straw.

1 Corinthians 13 gives us a detailed picture of how love, as expressed through faithfulness, acts. Again, the focus is on acting in love rather than “feeling” in love. First, love bears all things. Love endures even when our spouses are difficult to understand or when we find it hard to respond kindly. Love that bears all things remembers that God uses difficult circumstances to develop us into mature people. Second, love believes all things. Love accepts what the other person says and does not judge motives. Even when we learn that a person is untrustworthy, love that believes all things seeks to restore that person to trustworthiness. Third, love hopes all things. Love anticipates the best for the other person. Love that hopes confidently expects that God will fulfill his perfect will in our loved ones’ lives. Fourth, love endures all things. Love remains steadfast in spite of how we feel. This kind of love helps us to persevere even when we think that we cannot endure the people or circumstances in our lives. Finally, love never fails. Love does not dissipate under pressure or difficulties. Rather, this kind of love remains selflessly faithful to the point of death.

Genuine love is more than an emotion. It is a purposeful commitment we make every day. When we wake in the morning, we must decide if we are going to love God and our spouses despite how we feel. We have to choose if we will be controlled by our emotions or if we will live in obedience to God and what He says about love. If we choose God’s path of faithful love, we may begin to find that acting in love more often than not leads to feeling love.

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