Christian Marriage: Learning To Love

This is the second in a series of articles on Christian Marriage. In the last issue we looked at the fact that God intended marriage to display the love, peace and reconciliation of the Gospel. The purpose of Christian marriage is more to make you holy, than to make you happy. In this issue, we address the choice to love your spouse.

Jesus said the second greatest of all the commandments is to love thy neighbor. He taught that we are to love even our enemies. Divine love, or charity, is greater than both hope and faith – Paul so taught. We can sometimes love our enemies better than we love our own spouse. Those whom ought to be the closest to us, those who promised and swore before God to love and cherish us, are sometimes the ones we love the least. Little children, such things ought not to be.

Hate springs quickly from the human heart. It doesn’t have to be taught. Whenever we are provoked, hatred rises up. But love isn’t that way. Love never springs up instantly. Nobody “falls” in love. Infatuation and lust are quick to appear, but not true love. Love is not an unbidden natural response. It is something that must be acquired. It must be pursued, sought for, and attained.

It is really sad when a wife says, “I don’t love you,” to her husband. It is just as sad when a husband tells his wife that he never did love her. Sometimes one will say that they made a mistake, and married the wrong person. Those statements are supposed to be offensive – inflicting hurt on the other party. But in truth, they are an admission of failure.

The person who says that is really admitting that he or she didn’t learn to love their spouse. The Christian thing to do is to learn to love people – even your enemies. If you haven’t acquired love for your spouse, then you haven’t acted as a Christian. Please let me state this without you being insulted: If you don’t love your spouse, you are admitting you have failed to live as a Christian.

There is a common misconception in society. It is not only common, but dangerous. Society thinks love is an emotion. It is not. It certainly has emotional contexts and connotations, but love is not an emotion. It is a decision. You decide to love someone. If you say to your wife, “I don’t love you;” you are saying you have decided not to love her. How does that statement compare with the truth of Scripture?

I John 4:20 asks, how can you love God, and not love your brother or sister? Can you love God and not love your spouse? Let’s look closer at some of the verses alluded to earlier. This is God’s Word, and it is for us to implement in our lives. We are to keep His Commandments.

In Matthew 22:34-40, Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment. It was an interesting question. We already know the answer, so the question doesn’t stump us today. But it was a hot issue in Jesus’ time. Some said circumcision was the greatest commandment, because it set God’s people apart from the world. Others said the Sabbath, as no other people had a day of rest. Still others said the sacrifices and ceremonies of the law were the greatest, for they covered the sins of the people. The Jews were divided into camps, each declaring they knew what was the greatest commandment. They tempted Jesus to take sides in this debate.

Jesus said love was the greatest commandment. If Jesus had said one of the other commandments, He would have been rejected by those who held that their particular opinion was the right one. But He rose above the debate to give the true answer – one all sides had overlooked. My topic is marriage here. In the midst of debates and arguments in the home, somebody has to rise up above the din and implement the greatest commandment. Your spouse is your neighbor. Love your neighbor.

Jesus said to love God, and your neighbor. It is easy to love God. He is good all the time. He doesn’t get on our nerves. He doesn’t yell at us. He is always loveable. Loving your marriage partner, well that isn’t always easy. But he or she is your neighbor.

Think about it. How can we love God? He is so different from us. He is a Spirit; we are flesh. He is sinless; we are thoroughly infused with sin. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, as far as the heaven is above the earth. He is eternal; and we are temporal. He is unlimited; we are beset with limitations. We are not much like God. How can we love Him? Yet we do.

If we can love God when we are so different from God, how much easier should it be to love another human being, the one you married? We have many more similarities with our spouse than we do with our God. We are both flesh and blood; we live side-by-side with them. They are much more like us than our God is. Can we decide to love them?

Matthew 5:43-44 is where Jesus told His followers that they cannot just love neighbors; He said to love your enemies. This again proves that love is not an emotion. Nobody naturally “feels” like loving an enemy. You have to decide to love them – despite what they have done or are doing to you. It is the Christian thing to do. If a child of God can decide to love their enemy, why can’t they decide to love their spouse? Is their spouse their enemy? It doesn’t matter whether they are or are not. Our only response to them is to love them. What if they don’t love me back? It doesn’t matter. Your enemies probably won’t love you back either, but you are still to love them. Remember, love is a decision.

Too many people are confused. They have been told that love is a many-splendored thing. They think they fall in love. They think love is over when the “spark” is gone. They feel love is some giddy, emotional attachment. They are wrong. Love can have wonderful emotions connected with it. But the decision to love is not an emotional decision. It is a choice. If you base your choice of who to love on emotions, you are going to have a lot of trouble in life. Base your decisions on higher things than emotions – duty, commitment, responsibility, service, and such noble criteria.

God’s Word commands in Colossians 3:19: husbands, love your wives. It teaches in Titus 2:4 that wives are to love their husbands. These are not biblical suggestions. This isn’t optional. This is the Word of God for your life. If you are married, decide to love your spouse. Decide right now. Whether you feel like it or not, choose to love the person you swore before God that you would cherish and honor in sickness and in health, till death.

There are many things I intend to cover in subsequent articles about Christian marriage. I remind you that the purpose behind it is to demonstrate the love of God for His people. Marriage is designed to make you holy; even more than it is designed to make you happy. I have biblical guidelines to present later in this series that will improve your marriage. But the number one step in this is to choose to love your spouse. That choice means it doesn’t matter what he or she does. It doesn’t matter whether they are nice to you. It doesn’t matter whether physical relations are good or absent. Love is constant and abiding. Love is deliberate. You are supposed to love your wife. You are supposed to love your husband.

Deuteronomy 24:5 is a very interesting scripture. A newlywed husband was to spend the first year of marriage working to cheer his wife. During that time, he could not even go to war. This command was given when the children of Israel were a warrior nation. They were about to conquer Canaan. For most of the Old Testament era, Israel needed soldiers to fight in real battles. But here was a commandment forbidding young soldiers from fighting for a year after getting married. Why? God was telling newlyweds to work on making each other happy. The marriage relationship needed to be started on a good foundation. Separation necessary for warfare was not good for building a life together. So no war for one year.

Since this is a commandment of God, it is reasonable to assume that making your marital partner happy pleases God. Our Lord cares whether you have a good marriage or not. He made provision in His law when able-bodied men were needed on the front lines of the battles. He is concerned that we have the opportunity to be happily married.

We don’t fight those kinds of physical wars in the body of Christ today. But the principle might still have validity. We are still to work at making our spouse happy. We may not have done it as well as we should have in the first year of marriage, but it isn’t too late. We can still dedicate time and effort, not to please ourselves, but to make our wife or husband happy. This requires daily sacrifice. To really live you must die. To receive, you must give. To be loved, you must love. It isn’t easy. We are mistaken if we think it should be easy. It is sometimes hard to love someone. But it is your Christian duty, and the commitment you have made. It pleases God when you love one of His children.

There are many more scriptures about love and loving others. The Bible is a book about love. We don’t have the time or space to cover them all. But let’s look again at one more. I John 4:20-21 says: “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.” So as a Christian you must love your brother – even if he is your husband. Again, this is not a suggestion; it is a biblical command.

Remember, marriage shows us that we are called to yield at times to another, to find joy, happiness and fulfillment in giving love to another person. The true beauty in Christianity is in learning how to love. Very few situations test our Christian faith as much as marriage. If we can decide to love in that circumstance, we are demonstrating true love. Loving your spouse is a highly-spiritual act.