Love
from a husband does not always need to end up in sex. If a wife is not up to it
at a particular time, she may get suspicious any time her husband becomes
affectionate. She may even become cynical about expressions of love. A wise
husband needs to learn many ways to express love to his wife besides sex.

Learn
all kinds of giving ways to show love that go beyond saying, “I love
you,” and giving her flowers and hugs and kisses (although those are very good
ways to start, and you should certainly be doing all these things). Think of
things you don’t do that you should start doing. I have learned over fifty
years of marriage to pick up stuff that I didn’t pick up for years. My socks!
Could be that. There were things around the house that I knew would get put
away or taken care of by my wife, and I could ignore them and go on my merry way.
She was healthy and had nothing else to do at home. She could do it! I don’t
know why I ever even thought this way. Do you want to show love to your
wife? Pick up your socks. Take out the trash. Put the toilet seat down. Wipe
the bathroom counter after you shave. Fix that broken thing you’ve been
ignoring. If you put your mind to it, you can probably think of many practical
ways to show love to your wife.

Look
around. Stop and assess: what are some things you could do at home that would
bless your wife? Bessie had trouble with her back off and on for years. One
time, we went to a doctor in Spokane, and he asked, “What size bed do you
have?”

“Queen
size,” she told him.

“Do
you make the bed?”

“Yes.”

“That’s
your problem. Reaching over the queen-size bed as you’re making it is hurting
your back.”

“Ok,
that’s solved,” I said. “I’ll make the bed.” I have been making the bed every
morning for many years now. Making beds is not high on my own priority list,
but “whatever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord, knowing that of the Lord
you shall receive the reward of your inheritance” (Col 3:23-24). It is an act
of love to Bessie.

There are
many little things like this that you can do for your wife. Give to her for her
sake. Do things out of consideration and thoughtfulness for her that do not
have an immediate payback to you.

Likewise, ye husbands,
dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto
the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your
prayers be not hindered. (1 Pet. 3:7 KJV)

Husbands, in the same way
be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs
with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.
(1 Pet. 3:7 NIV)

The
word that the King James Version renders as “honor” is translated “respect” in
the NIV. The key to the definition is in the context. “Husbands, in the same way…” What way? 1 Peter 3:1
reads, “Wives, in the same way…” What
way?

Look
back at 1 Peter 2: “Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect,
not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are
harsh. For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust
suffering because he is conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you
receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing
good and you endure it, this is commendable before God” (1 Pet. 2:18-20).

“The
same way” refers to this command to Christian slaves. It also refers to verse
21: “To this you were called, because
Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps” (1
Pet. 2:21).

What
was that example?

“’He committed no sin, and
no deceit was found in his mouth.’ When they hurled their insults at him, he
did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted
himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the
tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds
you have been healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have
returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls” (1 Pet. 2:22-25).

The
title of the book In His Steps was
taken from verse 21. When the heroes and heroines in the book had to make a
decision, they asked themselves what Jesus would do if He were in their
position. Then they would guess the answer and act on their guess. The same
question sparked the WWJD fad among Christian youth several decades ago. The
problem with the book and the fad is that people try to guess what to do in
situations where Jesus’ example already gives the answer. He did not retaliate.

“The
same way” for wives is the same “same way” for husbands: follow Christ’s
example. Notice the words for wives: submissive, without words, purity,
reverence, and gentle and quiet spirit. Notice the words for husbands:
considerate and respect. The husband
does the respecting here. This is following Jesus’ example.

These
are heart words, not mouth words. A wife can keep her mouth shut and be
screaming inside. A husband can be “considerate” and have it be just an act. If
you have the heart, the fruit of the Spirit will show as you do things “in the
same way.”

When
I got married, it never occurred to me that I didn’t love my wife as Christ
loved the church. At the time, I was a naval officer, and I was in the Korean
War. My first ship struck an underwater mine, and my second ship was hit by
gunfire. I was willing to die for my country, or I wouldn’t have been there. I
was also willing to die for my wife—and I assumed that meant I was obeying the
command to love her as Christ loved the church.

I
figured Bessie had the harder job; she had to submit. It was easy for me to
love Bessie, but hard for her to submit to me: she had been a Christian for
sixteen years, I had been a Christian for only three; she was a Bible school
graduate, I was a Naval Academy graduate; when we met, she was the principal of
a Bible school in Yokohama, and I was a naval officer; and she was eight and a
half years older than I was.

After
we were married, we came to the States for a while, and then I was sent to sea
again. Our first two children were born in California while I was in the
western Pacific. Then Bessie came over to Japan with the boys. We were together
at first, since I had shore duty. Then I got six months’ temporary duty aboard
an aircraft carrier out at sea. I called home from the first port we came into
in the Inland Sea, and Bessie said, “I think I’m pregnant.”

All
this time, I thought that I had been loving Bessie as Christ loved the church. One
night, when Bessie was expecting our third child, and I was in the East China
Sea, I had a dream. Most dreams you forget. I remember this dream. I dreamed
that I lost Bessie. I remember weeping in the dream. Two things shook me up
when I woke up. One was that I had lost Bessie, and the other was that I had
cried. I hadn’t cried since the 8^th grade when I was called into the
principal’s office for beating up the principal’s son! I was shocked that I
wept in this dream.

I
thought, “Man! Suppose this really happened? Do I love Bessie like Christ loved
the church?” I opened up my Bible to Ephesians 5 and read it. “Yeah, that’s
simple. I do.” I remember closing the Bible and saying, “That’s easy.”

Then
I thought, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute! Was it easy for Christ to love
the church? Maybe I don’t understand how much He loved the church.”

I
began to study Christ’s love for the church. In this study, I came across two
physical descriptions of Jesus. The first was in Matthew 17: “After
six days Jesus took with Him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and
led them up a high mountain by themselves. There He was
transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes
became as white as the light. Just then
there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus” (vv. 1-3).
Remember the angel who sat on the stone that he rolled away from the door of
Jesus’ tomb? The Bible says his countenance was like lightning and his raiment
white as snow (Matt. 28:3). The angel had a countenance like lightning, and
Jesus has a face like the sun. That is wonderful—real glory.

Then I came across another description of
Jesus in Isaiah 52 and 53. “Behold, My Servant shall deal prudently; He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high. Just as many were astonished at you, so His
visage was marred more than any man, and His form more
than the sons of men” (Isa. 52:13-14 NKJV). Have you ever seen anyone whose
face has been scarred by fire or badly mutilated in some way? Do you want to
look at him? No. You turn your face away. On the cross, Jesus was marred beyond
human likeness, His form beyond that of the sons of men. Paintings of the
crucifixion make Him out to look like a normal man up on that cross. He did not
look like that. His form was marred beyond recognition.

“Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been
revealed? For He shall grow up before Him as a tender
plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; and when we
see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him”
(Isa. 53:1-2 NKJV). Have you ever pulled a root out of dry ground? What did it
look like? Withered. Jesus on the cross had no beauty, nothing to make Him
pleasant to look at.

“He is despised and rejected by men,
a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He
was despised, and we did not esteem Him” (v. 3). How awful did He look? As one
from whom men hide their faces. On the cross, the One whose face had shone like
the sun became an appalling sight.

We learn the reason for this in verses
4-5: “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our
sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was
wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our
iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon
Him, and by His stripes we are healed.” He became a sight
that no one could bear to look at because all our sins were placed on Him. Billions
of rapes, murders, and atrocities of all kinds turned the beauty of Matthew 17
into the horror of Isaiah 52 as He was wounded for our transgressions. Every
evil deed in the history of the world was nailed to the cross in the person of
Jesus Christ.

Have you ever met a person who has lived
in sin all his life? You can see it in his face. There are certainly some
Dorian Grays walking around, but with most people what is on the inside shows
on the outside. Have you ever seen a photo of Corrie ten Boom? She looked like
she never had a problem in her life. The joy and peace she had on the inside
showed in her face.

All the sins of the world were placed in Christ’s
body. He took them, and the punishment for them, in six hours on the cross. He
was so beautiful we couldn’t look at Him, and then so ugly we couldn’t look at
Him.

Many years ago, a conference speaker told
of a woman who wanted to know how to become a Christian, but he did not have
time to lead her to the Lord. The speaker told her, “Look up Isaiah 53:6. Go in
at the first all, and come out at the last all.”

“All we like sheep have gone astray; we
have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the
iniquity of us all” (v. 6). All our sins, laid on Him. All our iniquity, gone.
She was converted.

He
was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not
His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. He was taken from
prison and from judgment, and who will declare His
generation? For He was cut off from the land of the
living; for the transgressions of My people He was
stricken. And they made His grave with the wicked—but with the rich at His death, because He
had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth.
(vv. 7-9)

Zero
sin became maximum sin.

Yet
it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief.
When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall
prosper in His hand. He shall see the labor of His
soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous
Servant shall justify many, for He shall bear their
iniquities. Therefore I will divide Him a portion with
the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the
strong, because He poured out His soul unto death,
and He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made
intercession for the transgressors. (vv. 10-12)

In third grade, I was sent to sit in the
corner for something I hadn’t done. I wanted to claim my innocence. (If I had
been put in the corner for all the things I had done, I could have been
there for quite some time!) But Isaiah says Christ opened not His mouth. He did
not defend Himself against the false accusations; He just took them.

Having read all this and more in my study
on Christ and the Church, I read 2 Corinthians 5:21: “God made him who had no
sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Jesus didn’t just carry sins; He became sin. Why? That we might be made
the righteousness of God in Him. Again, the trade—but He not only took our
sins; He took our sin nature: He became sin.

Having made this study, I asked myself,
“Do I love my wife like Christ loved us?” I was willing to die and go to heaven.
“Am I willing to take the punishment for all of Bessie’s sins?” Well, that’s a
dumb question; I can’t anyhow—it’s already been done. That is not the question,
though. We are to love our wives in the same way as Christ loved the
Church.

“Am I willing to lose my salvation for
Bessie?” Whoever was willing to do that? Moses was. He told God, “Please
forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written”
(Ex. 32:32). The Apostle Paul was also willing. “For I could wish that I myself
were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the
flesh” (Rom. 9:3 NKJV). Paul and Moses both said, “I am willing to lose my
salvation for their salvation.” Am I willing to lose my salvation for Bessie’s?
The answer was no. I realized I did not love my wife as Christ
loved the Church.

I
wrote Bessie a letter and told her she was going to be loved like she had never
been loved before. I am still not loving her as Christ loved the Church. The
difference is, before I was counting on how submissive she was to make our
marriage good instead of on my own responsibility to love.

Loving
the Unlovely

“If you love those who love you, what reward
will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only
your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?”
(Matt. 5:43-47).

There
is nothing particularly Christian about loving lovely people. To explain this,
Jesus chose a class of people despised by the Jews¾tax collectors¾and
said, “Even they love like that.” God created everyone, including the worst
criminals, with this kind of friendship love.

Only
Christians can love the unlovely. This is how you show your Christianity. If
you have only loved lovely people, you are being disobedient. Although this
kind of love is central to Christian behavior, it only comes through obedience.
Scriptural love is always volitional. You have to choose to do it. Do not wait to fall in love with your enemy. It
will never happen.

I
became a Christian during my second year at the Naval Academy.
Suddenly, I loved my roommate, and he was not lovely. After three weeks, he
asked, “OK, Wilson, what happened? The last three weeks you have been
unbearably pleasant.”

I
saw my love expand to more and more people. Jesus Christ filled me with His
love, and now I could pour it out. It had nothing to do with what the people
were like.

Then
a few years later, I ran into a type of person I could not love. In June 1950,
I graduated from the Naval Academy and shipped out to the Korean War. Our ship
stopped at Sasebo, Japan, for refueling. There were
about three thousand prostitutes in the first three blocks. You could not walk
down the street without being grabbed. It was the same when we docked in
Yokosuka. I was witnessing on the ship and leading men to Christ; then those
same men would go ashore and come back with gonorrhea. I hated these women for
years, and I knew it.

One
day, I was on an aircraft carrier in Hong Kong. I had invited a missionary
couple to dinner on the ship, and I told them about this lack of love. The wife
said, “You have it all wrong. You are commanded
to love those people. It is not something that happens naturally. It is
something you choose to do in obedience to God.”

I
knew she was right. I went to my room that night in a turmoil of rebellion. How
do I do it? Do I crank up the love by sheer willpower? Do I go out and say,
“OK, I choose to obey. I will love them if it kills me!” I knew that was not
right, because the Scripture requires genuine
love. No one would be fooled by me faking it. I wanted to say, “Lord, if You
want them loved, You will have to love them through someone else. I don’t have
it.”

But
as I prayed, I realized several things. If loving is a command, then not loving
is disobedience. If it is disobedience, then it is sin. If it is sin, then it
is forgivable.

The
Bible says that the man who says he loves God and does not love his brother is
a liar (1 John 4:20). I had never considered that this business of not loving
my enemies was in the same category as lying. When I do not love others, I do
not love God. If the greatest commandment is to love God, and I am disobeying
it, how great a sin is that? It is huge. If loving my neighbor is the second
commandment, and I am not doing it, I am guilty of another great sin. Does that
mean I have to live in guilt? No—it means I need forgiveness. But I have to
recognize my sin first.

“Love
your enemies” is a hard command. If we love God, we must not cut the command
down to our size. How can we obey it as He wants us to?

Start
with this proposition: “I do not love my enemies.” Since that statement is
contrary to God’s command, what I am saying is that I am in sin. Am I saying that as an acceptable
fact, or in repentance? If I am just saying that as a fact, I will not be able
to go beyond it. If I try, the love will not be real, and everyone will know
it. So, not willing to be hypocritical, I say, “At least I am honest. I do not
love my enemies.” However, that still does not change the situation. Honesty
about sin is not the same as confession of sin.

So
what do I do? I can say the same thing to
God in confession and be
forgiven for it. Then I can choose to
love my enemies, and it will not be on top of anything but cleanness. When I
make the choice, God provides the love. There will be no hypocrisy.

That
night, I confessed all my unlove, and God forgave me. Wonderful! That did not
make me loving, but it did make me clean. It brought me to a position from
which I could choose to love. If I had decided to love those prostitutes in the
presence of my sin, I could not have done it. But I was forgiven. From a clean
position, I chose to love them. I said, “God, You had better meet me before I
meet them, or it is going to come out phony.”

When
I confessed my sin and chose to obey the commandment, God gave me a great love
for these people¾His
love. God’s love does not condone sin, so I did not condone their sin. But now
I could see them as those for whom Christ died.

How
does this apply to loving your wife? Let’s start with this question: When does
a woman need loving the most—when she’s lovely, or when she’s unlovely? When
she’s unlovely. When is she likely to get love the most? When she’s lovely.
Women know that. That’s why they deck themselves out to be attractive,
especially if they can’t get beauty on the inside. Peter told women not to do
it that way. “Your beauty should not come from outward
adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine
clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self,
the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in
God’s sight” (1 Peter 3:3-4). The hidden beauty of the heart shows on
the outside.

A
wife wants to be beautiful for her husband, but the husband should recognize
that loving her will make her beautiful. The more she is loved, the
lovelier she becomes. The less she is loved, the less lovely she becomes. Men
marry a woman because of how lovely she is. “Wonderful! Look what I’m getting!”
They tell her how beautiful she is, how lovely. A few years later, they wake up
in the morning and look at her, and she doesn’t look lovely, act lovely, or
talk lovely. If you only loved her because she was lovely, and now she is not
lovely, you might be tempted to say, “I don’t love her anymore, so we’ll have
to break up.”

Love
your wife because she is your wife. Loving her will make her lovely. It
is your responsibility to love her into increasing loveliness. You are
responsible for how lovely your wife is; and that loveliness is, in part, a
function of your love for her. If you say, “No, she is not lovely anymore, so I
love her less than I did when she was lovely,” that will make her less
lovely. Now she’s less lovely, so you love her even less, which will make her
even less lovely… That is how people get divorced.

Respect
works the same way. When you don’t respect your husband, he becomes less
respectable. So, you respect him even less, which makes him even less
respectable… Respect your husband, not because he is respectable, but because
he is your husband. The respect is owed to him because of his office as
husband. A husband does not have to be respectable to be respected. In fact, a
wife’s respect will make him more respectable. It is amazing how a man can
measure up when his wife starts pouring on the respect; it is food to him.

Love
has to do with the lover, not the person to be loved. Respect has to do with
the respecter, not with the person to be respected. We have it turned around.
We say, “You’re not lovely; I don’t love you. You’re not respectable; I don’t
respect you.”

Our
love comes from the love of God. He provides an unlimited supply that we can
plug into. As we receive and give by grace, by choosing to obey God, God gives
us the love and respect we need to give our spouse. This great love of God
through us for our wives makes our wives lovely. When a wife respects her
husband, he becomes more respectable. When a husband loves his wife, she
becomes lovelier.

God
made us to be loved, and He made us to be respected. Women want to respect
their husbands, men want to love their wives, but if you say they have to earn
it first, that’s works righteousness. This should all be grace. You are
representing the Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, no woman wants to have a guy
say, “I love you for ‘real’ reasons. You are the ugliest, homeliest, mouthiest
woman I know, and I love you!” She’d tell him to get lost (and rightly so).
Nevertheless, that is the kind of love you are going to want when you are
homely and mouthy. You don’t want to hear that in the courtship (you don’t want
to ever hear it), but you do want your husband to love you that way. You want
him to love you to make you lovely. Jesus Christ loved the Church to cleanse
her with the washing of water by the Word so He could present her to Himself as
a spotless bride. When you love your wife as Christ loved the Church, she
becomes lovelier, and you get to present her to yourself.

God
made a great, big emptiness in man that needs to be filled with respect, and a
great, big emptiness in woman that needs to be filled with love. The husband
might begin to think the hole in this woman is a bottomless pit. How do you
ever get it filled? It’s like pouring water down a rat hole—you run out of
water before you run out of rat hole! Men will run out of love before they get
it adequately provided. What do you do when you run out? Get more love
from your unlimited source of love—God. You are not giving this love from a
fixed quantity.

Christlike
Love

 “If
you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ love
those who love them” (Luke 6:32). Many Christians love those who love them and think that they
are showing the love of Christ by doing that. However, that kind of love is
part of human nature; it is common to everyone.

There is a love that
only Christians have. It comes from the Lord. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still
sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). Jesus’ love for us had nothing
to do with our love or our loveliness. It had to do with His loving nature and
our need. When we share this kind of love with others, it cannot be based on
their love or loveliness.

Love
is Patient

“Be imitators of
God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as
Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice
to God” (Eph. 5:1-2).

To live a life
of love, you must know what love is and how Jesus expressed it. Paul describes
love wonderfully in 1 Corinthians 13. I would like to highlight two very
important aspects.

“Love is
patient…” (1 Cor. 13:4). Jesus was an example of patience: “But for that very
reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus
might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe
on him and receive eternal life” (1 Tim. 1:16).

“Love is kind…”
(1 Cor. 13:4). God is also an example of kindness: “But when the kindness and
love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things
we had done, but because of his mercy” (Titus 3:4).

Infinite
patience and kindness together result in mercy. “Do you show contempt for the
riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s
kindness leads you toward repentance?” (Rom. 2:4). If we are impatient with our
wives, husbands, children, parents, coworkers, or the unconverted, we are not
living a life of love.

Love
Deeply

“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over
a multitude of sins” (1 Pet. 4:8).  

 Love does not
overlook sin. Love sees sin, then covers it—in this case, covers lots of it. We
know that God’s love is like this, but is ours? The command is directed towards
us.  

“You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our
sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea” (Micah
7:19). Deep love provides deep cover. Deep love keeps no record of wrongs (1
Cor. 13:5). It forgives others, regardless of the magnitude or quantity of
sins. It banishes sins for good. It does not remember them so that it can bring
them up later.

However,
we are not to cover our own sins: “He
who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces
them finds mercy” (Prov. 28:13).

Discerning
Love

“We know that ‘We all possess knowledge.’
But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think they know
something do not yet know as they ought to know. But whoever loves God is known
by God” (1 Cor. 8:1-3).

Knowledge and love do not
necessarily go together. You can easily have one without the other.

“And
this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and
depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be
pure and blameless until the day of Christ” (Phil. 1:9-10). Paul assumes
that love is natural for believers. He prays that the love the Philippians have
would abound and that it would be accompanied by knowledge and depth of
insight. The New King James Version translates this “knowledge and all discernment.”

There
are two reasons for having discerning love:

·      
That we may approve what is excellent. If we
have love without discernment, we will end up loving (and thus approving of)
things we should not.

·      
That we may be pure and blameless.

These
reasons are closely tied, for if we approve what we should not approve, we will
not be blameless.

It
is easy to have love without discernment if you do not have a biblical
definition of love. Discerning love does not approve of sin. It recognizes
things which are neither pleasant nor good. Many people mistakenly think that
love does not allow for disapproval. They turn it into something gooey and
sweet and, consequently, sticky and messy.

How
do we obtain discerning love? We get it by desiring it and by asking God for
it. Many Christians do not desire it because having discerning love puts them
in awkward situations. Others desire discernment only so that they can be
critical.

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).

One
of the good things I learned as an officer in the U.S. Navy was that authority
and responsibility must go together in equal proportions. A person with
authority but no responsibility will exercise that authority arbitrarily. He
will order people around with no objective other than establishing his own power.
Conversely, a person with responsibility for a task but no authority to help
him accomplish it will only be frustrated.

Before
I apply this concept to Christian husbands, I want to discuss and hopefully
dissolve a common misconception. Because the Scripture tells wives, children,
and servants to obey, some Christians have inferred that it is the job of
husbands, fathers, and masters to command. This is an inference only and
is, therefore, invalid. The Bible contains no
direct teaching nor implication that husbands, fathers, and masters are to
be commanders. The Bible does not teach a chain of command. It teaches a chain
of obedience and submission. The
Bible teaches that servants are to be submissive to their masters, wives are to
be submissive to their husbands, and children are to submit to their parents.

The
difficulty is that we have mistakenly assumed that if these people are to be
submissive, then the husband, the father, the master, or the government is to
be the boss. Not so! When God speaks to the people on the top, He never
tells them to be the boss.

A dispute also arose among them as to which of them was considered to
be greatest. Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them;
and those who exercise authority over them call themselves benefactors. But you
are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the
youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. For who is greater,
the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at
the table? But I am among you as one who serves.” (Luke 22:24-27)

Now
look at the commands specifically addressed to husbands:

Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. (Col. 3:19)

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the
church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the
word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or
wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. (Eph. 5:25-27)

Husbands, in the same way be
considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you
of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers. (1 Pet.
3:7).

There
is no commanding here—only sacrifice. Husbands are responsible to love
their wives in the same way that Christ loved the church, and for the same
reason—to make her beautiful. We are to love our wives in order to make them lovely, not because they are lovely. A woman needs love the most
when she is unlovely. It is the husband’s responsibility to give that love. The Bible teaches fathers and
masters to follow the same pattern of respect, consideration, and sacrifice.

The husband is the
head of the wife. That does not mean he is boss or dictator. It means he is the
example, the provider, the lover, the
means of security, and the source of wise, responsible decision-making. If this
does not describe you as a husband, find a husband who fits this description
and ask him for help.

Husbands
are responsible to protect and care for their wives, and, although the Bible’s
emphasis is on responsibility rather than authority, God has given husbands the
authority to carry out the responsibilities He has assigned to them. For
example, in Numbers 13, God gave them the authority to confirm or nullify vows
or rash promises made by their wives, even if the vows were made before
marriage. The chapter ends with these words: “These are the regulations the LORD gave Moses concerning relationships
between a man and his wife, and between a father and his young daughter still
living in his house” (Num. 30:16).

However, what tends
to happen is that the husband demands authority and, a lot of times, refuses
the responsibility that comes with it. The wife ends up with the responsibility
and no authority. This puts her in a hard position and may tempt her to reject
teaching that indicates that a wife needs to be submissive. Husbands must
fulfill the God-given responsibilities that come with their authority, or they
are setting their wives up for a hard time.

God made men incomplete, so He made women
to be their helpers. This incompleteness is apparent in men’s need for respect.
Every man needs respect, from the time he was born and for his entire life.
That is why God requires women to respect their husbands. Men want to have
authority and respect. This is not wrong. But responsibility comes with
authority, and many men have abdicated this responsibility. Authority without
responsibility makes men tyrants. If they pass the responsibility to their
wives but do not delegate the corresponding authority to them, those wives cannot carry out the responsibility that
their husbands will not.

“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last
days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive,
disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love,
unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good,
treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure
rather than lovers of God— having a form of
godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people” (2
Timothy 3:1-5).

A young woman told me once that she loved herself and that
was a good thing. She did not like it for the Bible to have it listed as a bad
thing.

How can we tell it is a bad thing? The other words in the
list from 2 Timothy are characteristics of loving yourself. They are subsets
of loving yourself. Let’s look at them.

• Lovers of money – loving
  yourself
• Boastful – loving yourself
• Proud – loving yourself
• Abusive – certainly not
  loving your neighbor as yourself
• Disobedient to parents –
  loving yourself
• Unholy – loving yourself
• Without love (to others) –
  loving yourself
• Unforgiving – loving
  yourself
• Slanderous – not loving
  others as you love yourself
• Without self-control –
  loving yourself
• Brutal – not loving others
  as you love yourself
• Not lovers of the good –
  loving yourself
• Treacherous – not loving
  others as you love yourself
• Rash – loving yourself
• Conceited – loving
  yourself
• Lovers of pleasure –
  loving yourself

In addition to this list, there are a few other words in the
Bible that describe loving yourself.

·      
Anger: almost all anger is based on loving
yourself too much.

·      
Bitterness is based on loving yourself too much.

This post coordinates with today’s reading in the To
the Word! Bible Reading Challenge. If you are not in a daily reading plan,
please join us at TotheWord.com. We would love to have you reading with us.

In his first letter to Timothy, Paul tells him to flee
and pursue. In his second letter, he says the same: flee and pursue.
Let’s take a look at these letters:

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some
people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves
with many griefs. But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue
righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness” (1 Tim.
6:10-11).

“Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness,
faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure
heart” (2 Tim. 2:22).

It is very simple: we are to run away from love of
and eagerness for money and the evil desires of youth. We are to run after
righteousness, godliness, faith, endurance, love, gentleness, and peace. In
both cases, fleeing and pursuing, we are running in the same
direction.

This post coordinates with today’s reading in the To
the Word! Bible Reading Challenge. If you are not in a daily reading plan,
please join us at TotheWord.com. We would love to have you reading with us.