There is a difference between the love of the world and the love of God. We learn about God’s unchanging, unconditional love in His Word. This is what we call agape love. Though hurt, angered, saddened, disappointed, God’s love for us is permanent.
Jeremiah 31:3 says, “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting (never-ending) love.”
So He teaches us in marriage. You choose this person whether they are godly or a heathen and no matter where they are, where they go, what they do, you love them anyway. That’s why love is not a feeling or passion. True love is a choice. A sacrificial choice, daily, for someone else. Their wrong actions or treatment towards you deems them undeserving, but true love does not always give because of what’s deserved.
Christ Jesus shed grace, mercy and forgiveness in place of hate, anger, bitterness and condemnation.
Marriage between a man and a woman is the physical representation of the spiritual love that God has for us, despite our wrongs and failures. Oh, how we put God to shame because we say we love Him and then our actions show different. Yet He says “I love you anyway.” Yet He sheds His grace and mercy. Yet He forgives. Yet He spares and is ready to receive us back at any given moment. Even with all the nasty filth we obtained while away from Him.
“And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.” Luke 15:20
Marriage is no joke because it is God’s masterpiece. Nothing that He makes isn’t good, but everything He makes is good and, even when we mess it up, He can still come back and use those messed up things to make it good. As husbands and wives, we must have God’s view.
Most of the time we go through tough things, I believe, to learn and understand the depths of His love. When we suffer in our marriage, it is as the sufferings of Jesus. We take up our cross and walk. Yet it is a choice. A daily choice.
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit. 1 Peter 3:18
Most of us at some point have gone through something that gives us the right to put our cross down. Jesus had the right to drop His cross, yet He kept going. He saw God’s vision. He saw that the suffering was but for a moment and He saw victory at the end. Every hard thing that came, He took one step forward over and over again. Each day in our suffering we get up every day knowing the sufferings that we are facing are difficult but, for the victory, we take each step. The walk is a walk of victory because everything we encounter on that journey Jesus has already overcome. So we must keep walking until the physical manifestation of that victory is made plain.
Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:2
We gain so much at the end of this trial. This is how we know God’s love is real because we’ve experienced it ourselves. Because He is Spirit, He had to make Himself known physically. There are many ways that He teaches us His love but marriage is so beautiful because it is one special way. God takes two people and makes them one and it is permanent and never ending.
“So then they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.” Matthew 19:6
We get to learn and experience so much in our lifetime. Of course God isn’t for divorce because He is a permanent God, but even in divorce there is a promise for reconciliation.
Now to the married I command, yet not I but the Lord: A wife is not to depart from her husband. But even if she does depart, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband. And a husband is not to divorce his wife. 1 Corinthians 7:10-11
It’s as easy to put your spouse off as it would be easy for God to have put us off, but it is love that keeps us even when we turn our backs. Love says, “Whenever you are ready, I’m right here waiting for you.”
Let the wicked forsake his way, And the unrighteousness man his thoughts; Let him return to the LORD, And He will have mercy on him; And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon. Isaiah 55:7
Happy Marriage Anniversary my dear. The LOVE is really there.
