Love in Marriage

Love in Marriage

My last post on marriage was on Managing Marital Conflicts and I noticed a rather quiet response which I feel it's due to the perfectionist feel it has...or to the demand it places on the flesh.

The truth is that we have no way to push the fact that conflicts come through self seeking and fleshly lusts. We can't deny also that offences will always come, we offend each other either knowingly or unknowingly and the answer to offences will be something within the range of forgiveness, bearing with each other, forbearance and long-suffering. We can't also deny the fact that the source of that is unconditional, non selfish, sacrificial love for each other. That love is found in Christ. The kind of love that turns the other cheek, that wouldn't mind suffering being defrauded, that loves enemies, that seeks not her own... The Matthew chapter 5 and 1 Corinthians 13 kind of love...

But this kind of love is a things of the spiritually matured. It is in 1 Corinthians 13 that Apostle Paul connected maturity to the God kind of love, the Agape. This is the kind of love God commanded in marriage in Ephesians 5 where He said, Husbands love your wives.

What of people who are still struggling with their spiritual maturity. In whom the flesh is still strong and self is still dominating on their way to total freedom?

Such would need to work towards promoting Agape and deal with the flesh. Marriage in its true sense can't survive outside Agape and that should remain the destination of the journey.

Such marriages that survive outside unconditional love are those where one person suffers, is being used,  being abused, being dominated, oppressed or treated as just another property without a voice or an option to exit, probably as the societal, cultural or religious norm accepted by both or only by the one benefiting.

Love in marriage must ensure mutual freedom and commitment. It's not the kind of love like we would have for our cars or our Porsche houses or properties. It's the kind of love that gives opportunity for full expression of the other person in seeking the best for each other. It's not the kind of love like that we have for our livestock that eventually leads them into our cooking pots.

Love works no ill to its neighbours...love protects the freedom of the other person. Love gives all, love submits and serves without a feeling of pride or shame. Love is trustworthy and it also trusts.

Love breaks down societal, cultural or religious moulds. Love works outside any mould of rights and responsibilities. Love covers multitudes of sins. Love is just ready to do the best possible, forgive the worst, suffer the most just to make the other person the best. Love is never stubborn though can insist on what's good.

Love ordinarily makes you look like a fool and sometimes present as making one vulnerable. And that's the fear we have in going in that direction. The question is 'Who protects me?' 'What if he/she takes advantage of my love?'

Ordinarily, love protects and avenges wrong done against the lover. That's why when you love those that hate you and do good to those who do evil to you, coals of fire heaps on such a people and God delivers the righteous.

But we suggest that both parties in marriage ought to work on this together. It's good to deal with issues that threaten that kind of love starting from being able to believe in this kind of love. Many, unfortunately don't believe in such a miracle...

Each couple must take out time to talk about it openly with each other, what those cultural, societal and religious norms are that must be dealt with to protect such love towards each other.

They must talk about the practicality of Agape in their peculiar situation. They must work together to actualize the principles and concepts of unconditional love in their daily lives. They must do daily what benefits the other person and trusting that the other person will do same without compromise or failure. And when that seems not to be done, one can ask without malice or animosity expecting issues to be dealt with rationally in love.

Agape must define and instruct on how parties see each other. That shouldn't be done by the mould the culture, tradition, society or religion presents. Love would want us to see the other person better than us. Any principle that makes us see ourselves better than others will also make us enslave and rule over them instead of loving them in the unconditional way. The same is true in marriage. God didn't say Adam would rule over Eve until after the fall...that's not part of the original plan for marriage.

[My Offline Bible] Genesis 3
16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

It wasn't so in the beginning and not the intended model, definitely not the one Christ proposed. Matthew 19 showed Christ commanding the model that was before the fall.

Today, with the believer partaking of God's nature we have the ability deposited in us to love just as God does even in marriage.

We shouldn't see agape love as too high to express, and our marriages deserves nothing less...

Let's go for it!

Good morning!