Biblical Love (Part 1)

God
tells husbands to love their wives. How are we to do that, and what does that
love look like?

Love
Her as Your Neighbor

“Jesus replied: ‘“Love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest
commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself”’”
(Matt. 22:37-39).

“Yourself” is
someone you already greatly love, and therefore is a good standard for how to
love someone else. For a start, calculate how much time you spend thinking
about yourself on an average day. Second, list all the things you do for
yourself, including bathing, eating, sleeping, and studying. Third, admit that
these things are expressions of love for yourself. Fourth, admit that you do
not love your neighbor (even your best friend) this much. Fifth, admit that
that is a violation of God’s command and needs His forgiveness. Turn to Him for
forgiveness. This will not make you loving, but it will make you clean.
From that position, you can choose to love your neighbor.

Now,
decide to love your neighbor. The
choice is yours. The power to carry it out is God’s. The love will not be an
emotional feeling, at least not at first. Yet when you choose to obey God in
this way, He provides the emotion and the means of expressing it so that it
will not be phony.

Love One Another

“Serve
one another humbly in love” (Gal. 5:13). Loving one another means loving
both ways. I serve you in love, and you serve me in love. It is a two-way give, not a one-way take.

Paul
talks about another kind of two-way practice in the same chapter: “If you keep on biting and devouring each
other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other” (Gal. 5:15).
Have you ever seen two people bite and devour each other? It happens often,
especially in marriage. The result is mutual destruction.

Later
in the passage there is another two-way teaching: “Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other” (Gal.
5:26). And in chapter 6, a strong command: “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law
of Christ” (Gal. 6:2).

Here,
then, are the choices:

·      
You bite and devour me, and I bite and devour
you. You provoke and envy me, and I provoke and envy you.

·      
I serve you in love, and you serve me in love. I
carry your burdens, and you carry mine.

“We
love because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his
brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has
seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:19-20).