As I read this passage in 1 Corinthians 13, I am struck by how much Jesus is all these things. Jesus is patient and kind. Jesus did not insist on His own way but submitted even to death on the cross. Jesus is the Truth Who died for our wrongdoings. Jesus endured all things for our sakes so that we could know love without end.
If we were to read all of 1 Corinthians 13, we would see the futility of doing good things apart from love, and this is what God is telling us in Colossians 3 as well. Apart from love, we cannot live with compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forbearance, and forgiveness. Without love, all our efforts to help our spouse will be a waste of time, energy, and effort.
Biblical love is costly. It involves dying. It is others-focused. It is patient, kind, generous, enduring, full of hope, and never-ending. It is Jesus. It is impossible to have biblical love apart from Christ.
A wife once told me, “I would love him if I could, but I just can’t. He has hurt me too much. I’ve tried all that stuff the Bible says, and it didn’t work. I’m tired. I’ve endured enough. I’m going to tell my husband that when he changes, I’ll try to make an effort again.”
We can sympathize with this wife’s struggle. Sin is fatiguing to our hearts and minds, which is why we must fortify our hearts and minds in the gospel of Jesus. We cannot love others biblically if we are not first receiving true love from Jesus as displayed through His death on His cross.
If you want to love biblically, you must believe in and receive Jesus’ cross love for you and learn from Him how to lay down your life and love others.
This wife did not understand biblical love. She did not understand God’s love for her. God didn’t wait for her to get her act together before sending His Son to die in her place. Jesus didn’t say, “Father, forgive them when they know and understand how terrible they are.” This poor lady allowed her feelings of weariness and pain to control her mind instead of having the mind of Christ. It was no wonder she felt helpless to show love to her husband since she was not experiencing it from Christ. If biblical love binds everything together, then a lack of it drives people away from one another.
Worldly love pushes the sinner away until they change, but God’s love (gospel love) draws the sinner near and binds hearts together.
Gospel love empathizes with the struggle and believes that change is possible. Indeed, gospel love uses every means of grace available to encourage the sinning one toward repentance and restoration including applying all the biblical principles of Matthew 18 and even calling the local authorities if necessary. Gospel love is generous, but it is not foolish.
Question 6. How can you show biblical love to your spouse today?
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Some ways I learned to show love to my husband are: listening to him, speaking words of encouragement and hope to him, focusing on his positive traits and commending him for them, speaking kindly about him to others, helping him with his work, going on hikes with him, following his lead, supporting his ideas, and showing physical affection to him—hugging, kissing, physical intimacy.
1 John 4:10-12, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”
Question 7. How are things going in your marriage? Please share.
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Friend, biblical love is the “most excellent way” of life (1 Corinthians 12:31); it fulfills the whole law of God (Romans 13:10). I pray that you will look to Jesus to know true love and that God will make love abound more and more (Philippians 1:9) in your heart and marriage.