| Love does…

I, Jamie, take you Daniel to be my husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part.

Implicit in our wedding vows to our spouses is the idea that we will serve one another from the day of our marriages until God parts us at death. How we will decide to serve one another is not mentioned, so one marriage may have all the traditional elements of woman’s and man’s roles, and another may not. One of the beauties of marriage is that each one is as unique as we are as individuals – specially designed by God just as we are to portray the body of Christ.

I’ll have to admit, I hardly think that on most days my marriage portrays anything that looks like Christ, cause I’m a sinner and he’s a sinner. In fact, one of the days I worked on this post, I shed a few tears, and we each had our turn yelling at one another, but those days are usually rare. But they are real.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it is that I don’t know a much of anything, but I know a God who knows everything. Service to your spouse must be rooted in His love. It is vital for us to understand LOVE in order to serve.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13 (ESV)

In this passage, love is defined by several verbs. (Yes, I’m reminded of the DC Talk song, “Love is a Verb.”)

According to this passage there are seven things love does and seven things love does not do.

The 7 things LOVE does not:

Envy:

We do not have to envy, because God will supply every need according to his riches in glory in Christ (Phil 4:19). In marriage, what is mine is his, and what is his is mine. If there is something he has that I feel I do not have, and I start to envy it, I begin to pervert our marriage. For instance, because we are equals, it need not bother me if Lisabeth prefers him over me. Spouses do not compete with one another.

Boast:

We no longer boast in ourselves, because we can do nothing apart from God (John 15:5). All things must be done for the Glory of God (1 Co 10:31). This means that whatever I do and whatever Daniel does, we must do it for God’s glory, not our own. This one was hard for me to put within a marriage context, but spouses do not boast in what they feel they’ve accomplished in their marriage, but in what God’s done within the marriage.

Act arrogantly:

Because of Christ, we know that life is not about us. All must be done for the praise of His glory. When you step more and more into the spotlight of God’s grace, you become more and more aware of the fact that you are so undeserving of the gift of grace. Maybe for a moment, we think we’ve gotten grace because we earned it, but as we learn what love has done for us, we can no longer act in accordance with that. We’ve not earned grace at all. We’ve done nothing. In marriage, we must approach one another humbly, recognizing one another as Christ.

Insist on its own way:

Nothing reveals our self-centered heart quite like marriage, when you find out that your way is not always the best way or when you have to submit to your spouse’s way instead of your own. In marriage, we seek the good our not only of our own self, but the good of our husband or wife as well. We act in unity with one another to hopefully serve others.

Get angered easily:

Is your anger holy? My anger is rarely holy, because it is almost always rooted in my self and my selfish desires. You too? I hope I’m not alone! We need to check our hearts before we approach our spouse in anger. Chances are even we think we are rooted in righteous and holy anger, we really are not. Sure, we think we are right to feel like we do, but are we really? Now, anger is not wrong, but we must be slow to get angry. In marriage, we need to pray when we are angry. Often the Spirit will reveal to us that it is not just our spouse’s wrong but ours as well.

Act resentfully:

Do you keep a list of all your spouse has done or is doing wrong? That’s not a loving trait! You are setting a trap for him – to catch him in the act of failure! Yikes – I am very aware of all my failures; I certainly do not want my spouse making another list for me. That’s the opposite of the grace of God. Grace accepts us in spite of our faults and failures and helps us through them. In marriage, we learn to communicate our hurts, forgive our spouse, and let hurts go. We don’t remind our spouse of what he or she has done wrong over and over again.

Rejoice in wrongdoing:

Ever been secretly happy that someone (a friend or a spouse, etc) made a mistake or got caught in their wrongdoing? You’ve just judged yourself as better than or more than and made yourself a little god. But we do this more often than we care to acknowledge. In marriage, we do not rejoice when we or our husband is caught doing wrong. Because we are united in marriage, it should feel like someone cut off an arm or a leg. It should hurt us for our spouse to be exposed as if we have been hurt. In marriage, we hurt when our spouse hurts. If our spouse is in sin, we are participants in the sins of our spouse (think Daniel or Nehemiah), and we acknowledge our need for a Savior, together.

The 7 things that LOVE does:

1. Acts patiently.

I looked up this word “patient” in the Greek to see what verb it was, since I knew it probably conveyed long-suffering. It turns out that is it is makros meaning, “long, referring to length and amount of time, and thumos. The definition of thumos is very hard to pin down. The noun means “passion, fierceness, indignation, wrath,” having to do with the mind, will, desire, emotion. It tends to refer to an inward feeling, not an outward expression. While the verb form means, “to rush” as in by breathing, blowing, smoking, “to sacrifice, to kill, or to slay.” It seems to convey a sense of intense inward passion that is your life force, wherein our own self may be sacrificed. Now, I’m no Bible scholar; I just used a bible dictionary to come up with this on my own, but that is definitely not what I think of when I think of patient. You?

2. Acts kindly.

3. Rejoices in truth

This means love is glad / congratulates truth.

4. Bears all things.

Love “covers with silence” all things. (woah, right?) We should cover our spouses in silence. This is a beautiful example of how He covers us. Love covers over a multitude of sins. 1 Peter 4:8

5. Believes all things

Love “has faith in, gives credit to, entrusts.” We’ve entrusted our spouses with our very hearts, bodies, and minds. We’ve partnered with them. We must allow God to work out our unbelief in anything we do not believe God cannot change about ourselves or our spouse, because all things are possible with God.

6. Hopes all things

Love expects, confides (have confidence in), trusts; has a confident expectation of good.

7. Endures all things

Love “remains” (it doesn’t easily leave); love “stays under” (ladies, we stay under the authorities of our husbands and our marriages); love bears/has fortitude/perseveres. It endures, waits, and suffers.

Love is not easy, is it? After this list, I’m very aware of how I do not serve my spouse in love. Fortunately, we can ask God to help us know and understand love, which in turn helps us serve one another, so I pray this prayer for all of you reading today:

“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:14-19 (NIV84)

Visit these lovely ladies for other posts in this series: Kayse, Monica, Kelly, and Emily

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