Motivation Of Loving Like Christ

Let’s talk about the motive. What should motivate us to love like this? Verse 32. This mystery is great, but I’m speaking with reference to Christ and the Church. Why should I love this woman like this? Why should I love her sacrificially? Why should I love her to the degree that I lead her to holiness? That I care for her? Why should I commit myself to an unbreakable love which means I relentlessly forgive her and never become embittered? Motive? Because of the sacredness of marriage. That’s the issue. Because of the sacredness of marriage.

Marriage isn’t just marriage. Marriage is a mystery. A marriage among Christians is a picture of Christ and his Church. This mystery is great, and you need to treat marriage with reverence and awe, because marriage is a sacred symbol of Christ’s relationship to his Church. And then one final word. Verse 33 just reviews everything. Nevertheless, let each individual among you also love his own wife even as himself, and let the wife see to it that she respects her husband. It isn’t that tough to understand this, but you can’t fulfil it apart from being spirit-filled.

You have to go all the way back, don’t you? Back all the way in this text to verse 18. Filled with the spirit, a heart filled with song and joy, thankful for everything, an attitude of submission. You see, where the Spirit of God is in control, this can come to pass. The commitment of two people to be controlled by the Holy Spirit, filled with worship and thanks, devoted to submitting to each other in humble love. I’ll tell you, that’ll bring romance. That’ll put springtime in a marriage, and it’ll keep it there.

A lot of marriages break up after the kids go. Have you noticed? A lot of them. And I suppose I used to wonder what marriage would be like when you weren’t chasing them all around, when your whole life wasn’t seemingly focused on them. You know, in those early years, control is the issue. Just get those kids in control. Obedience. Line them up. Help them to learn how to think and how to act and how to react and how to submit and how to obey. And you work hard on that. Then they go off to school.

And then it’s homework for years and years. And you’re focused on the homework. Every night. Papers, papers. And Daddy, could you please explain this to me? Could you help me draw this? I don’t understand this. Or Daddy, I got a bad grade on this. Could you talk to the teacher? I don’t understand. And your life is just focused all over the place. And then it’s little league. And then it’s soccer games or whatever. And then it’s football games and baseball games and I tell you. And piano lessons. And then you have to go to some place to buy clothes for all of these kids.

And that goes on and on. You know, your whole life is focused on that. And then they get to the age where they have friends. And they all come over to your house. And now you’ve got to sort all those friends out and say, you know, I don’t think this person is a really good influence. The energy expended in just coordinating this, to say nothing of the taxi service that goes with it, your whole life is just focused on all these kids. And you then they get to the age where they start to think about serious relationships.

And then it really gets serious. I’ll tell you. Now, I pretty well had my boys wired by the time they got to the place where they were going to choose. And you know how they knew what to choose? Well, they loved their mother and she was kind of the standard. But the girls, I was protective. I confess. You know, I mean, it’s a, you spend your whole life protecting your daughter, right? Just protect her, protect her, and then one day she’s gonna marry some guy and you just say here. And not only did I have to say that, I had to pronounce them man and wife.

I mean, that’s a pretty traumatic moment. And then your life is just focused on this. And you want to get them to the right place and get them to the right partner. And you want to help them as they go through that process of sorting all of that out and lead them into the right study and get them through school and you’re, and then all of a sudden they’re gone. And I’ve seen some pretty apparently noble servants of the Lord, even in ministry, have their whole life collapse in front of them at that point.

When the truth of the matter is, you should be on your second honeymoon when they’re gone. You should look at each other and say, boy, we’ve waited a long time for this. I have to tell you, you know, it’s the best of times at our house. You know what? We, it was okay when they went, but you know what’s happened? They’re back. Only they’re back with little tiny kids. And we’re saying in the famous words of Yogi Berra, this is deja vu all over again. You know, you spend a tremendous amount of time and energy and in our complex world, it’s so diverse that there’s a certain disconnection in all these activities of our kids.

We take them here, we take them there, we take them here, we take them there. It’s not all happening in the cohesion of that family, is it? Father’s over here, one kid’s over here, another one’s over here, another one’s over here and it’s all scattered. Do we have breakfast together? Maybe. Do we have dinner together? Hardly. Splattered all over every place. All that tremendous, diverse energy. And when that all is gone, a husband and a wife have to face each other and see if there’s anything there. And it can be the best of times.

That’s the way God designed it. If you haven’t kept the list of the offenses, if there is no such list, if you are as good at forgetting sins and failures as God is at forgetting yours, if you have cultivated a sacrificial love to that wife, a purifying love, a caring love and an unbreakable love, you will be rewarded. She will be rewarded. It can be and should be the best of times. It’s sad when it kind of declines, isn’t it? I read a Saturday Evening Post old article called The Seven Stages of the Married Cold.

Stage one, first year of marriage. Sugar, I’m so worried about you. You’ve got a sniffle and there’s no telling about such things. I’m going to put you in the hospital today for a general checkup and some rest. I know the food’s lousy at the hospital, so I’ll have your meals catered, and I’ve already arranged it with the floor superintendent. Second year, listen, darling, I just don’t like the sound of that cough and I’ve called Doc Miller to rush over here. Now you go to bed like a good girl, please. Third year, maybe you better lie down, honey.

Nothing like a little rest when you don’t feel well. Have you got any soup? Fourth year, look dear, be sensible. After you feed the kids and get the dishes washed, you better lay down. Fifth year, why don’t you get yourself a couple of aspirin? Sixth year, for Pete’s sake, stop sneezing. You’re gonna give me pneumonia. Seventh year, you know, if you just gargle, you wouldn’t be sitting around barking like a seal. Well, does it have to be that way? Not in God’s plan. Billie Sunday said, gentlemen, try praising your wife, even if it frightens her.

Worthiness is not the issue. It’s not the issue with Christ. He’s tender, sensitive, forgiving toward us. We’re speaking about a divine ideal and it’s not too late for us, no matter what may be the condition of our marriages. And gentlemen, it’s gonna start with you when you love your wife as Christ loved his church and loves his church. That’s where to rebuild the whole thing and that’s going to happen when you begin to come back to where you need to be in your own spiritual life. Get the garbage out of your life, get back into the Word of God, get back into living an obedient life, get your focus where it belongs, on Christ, and then on that little family that God has given you as a piece of his kingdom to disciple and put your whole heart there and watch how God rewards that.

Thank you for joining us in this exploration of the motivation of loving like Christ. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].