Saturday, January 28, 2012

How to love your wife

The Bible instructs husbands to love their wife like Christ loves the church. That's a wonderful verse for wedding speeches and other such occasions where love is dealt with on a merely abstract level, but there comes a day for every husband when the cake is all gone and he finds himself in the middle of real life, assigned with the seemingly impossible task of unconditionally loving a woman that he's frankly upset with at the moment. Does "love your wife as Christ loved the church" have any practical value in those situations?

I'm about to insist that it does. Here's how it works; every time you find yourself feeling mistreated by your wife, ask yourself how Christ loves you when you do the same thing to him. Then love your wife like that.

Maybe some examples will help:
  • How does Christ love you when you don't trust him, but doubt his ability or faithfulness to do what he's said he will do?
  • How does Christ love you when you don't submit to his better judgment, but keep tugging in the opposite direction of where he's leading you?
  • How does Christ love you when you're to tired, to busy, or not in the mood to sneak away and enjoy sweet intimate fellowship with him?
  • How does Christ love you when he's assigned you tasks in his kingdom, but your laziness keeps you from making more than a minimal effort?
  • How does Christ love you when you make poor stewardship decisions with the resources he has put at your disposal?
These are the types of questions I ask myself whenever I get upset with my wife. I find that it does three things:
  • It makes me focus on my own sin in stead of my wife's.
  • It humbles me. Do I esteem myself higher than Christ, since I hold her sin toward me against her, while Christ so willingly forgives me?
  • It gives me an example to imitate, of to how to love her in a way that brings about reconciliation.
On that last point, husbands, let me point out one aspect of Christ's love for his church: He doesn't love us because we first loved him. We love him because he first loved us. That is what makes his love so irresistible. Gentlemen, I am not interested in hearing a word about how impossible your wife is. You have the power to make her love you, by loving her first as Christ has loved you.

Here is our model. Here's how Christ has loved us. 
  • By doing good to us when we deserved punishment. 
  • By gently calling us back to him when we were pulling in the opposite direction.
  • By persistently wooing us when our first love had grown cold, and other things started catching our interest.
  • By proving his faithfulness again and again in response to our mistrust.
  • By continuing to provide for all of our needs even when we don't deserve it and don't bother thanking him.
I dare you to find a woman who will respond unfavorably to a man who consistently, over time, loves her like this. 

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Sunday, January 15, 2012

The gays didn't do it

Weddings always afford me some opportunity to reflect on the demise of the institution of marriage in our culture.

In my humble opinion, marriage ranks among the finest of God's creation. And let me emphasize again that it is God's creation, not man's. However, man has taken upon himself to improve upon God's original design.

The last few years there's been a lot of controversy about legislation to change the definition of marriage to accommodate for marriages between two people of the same sex. Many Christians have, in response, rightly pointed out that marriage isn't ours to define; that if we're going to pretend that it is something else than God says it is, we'll do serious damage to the credibility and validity of the institution.

However, looking at divorce rates of more than 50 %, cohabitation rates in the same range, and the attitudes about marriage that are propagated through music, movies, TV-shows, jokes etc., do we really have any credibility in pointing our fingers at the pro-homosexual movement for changing marriage? Do we not already have laws on the books that change marriage from a life long covenant into a temporary contract that can be ended at our convenience? What's one more little change going to do?

So let's stop pretending like the homosexuals are to blame for the demise of marriage. It's been sliding downhill for a long time before they ever got their perfectly manicured hands on it. It was heading down long before divorce was legalized as well.

If we trace the slippery slope all the way to the top, I'm convinced we'll find that the first change made to marriage, triggering the drove of successive redefinitions, was when we decided that the husband and wife were the main characters in the institution. This is no small error. It is monumental, because once committed it will inevitably change every aspect of the relationship.

God created marriage as a picture of Christ and the church. Then secondarily, flowing from that picture, it is about the joy of the husband in his union with Christ as he shares in the experience of selflessly and sacrificially pouring out his love on his wife, and the joy of the wife in receiving this love and returning it by fearlessly and joyfully submitting to his caring leadership.

It is a great perversion when the primary focus of the marriage shifts to the husband and wife, and their needs, desires, and preferences. It inevitably puts the husband and wife at war with each other, over whose preferences get priority. It defaces the picture of Christ and his church and replaces it with one of a ruthless dictator fighting against his rebellious subjects.

And that is the cause of the demise of marriage. Everything else is just a symptom.

Yesterday I was blessed to attend the kind of wedding that make me hopeful for the future. The joining of a young man and a young woman who have consistently honored God in the way they have pursued and prepared for his gift of marriage, and whom I trust will honor God in how they steward this gift as well.

Congratulations, Stine and Jarmo. May your marriage always point to Christ.
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