Biblical Love

By Jim Wilson

God tells husbands to love their wives. How are we to do that, and what does that love look like?

Love Her as Your Neighbor

“Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself”’ (Matt. 22:37-39).

“Yourself” is someone you already greatly love, and therefore is a good standard for how to love someone else. For a start, calculate how much time you spend thinking about yourself on an average day. Second, list all the things you do for yourself, including bathing, eating, sleeping, and studying. Third, admit that these things are expressions of love for yourself. Fourth, admit that you do not love your neighbor (even your best friend) this much. Fifth, admit that that is a violation of God’s command and needs His forgiveness. Turn to Him for forgiveness. This will not make you loving, but it will make you clean. From that position, you can choose to love your neighbor.

Now, decide to love your neighbor. The choice is yours. The power to carry it out is God’s. The love will not be an emotional feeling, at least not at first. Yet when you choose to obey God in this way, He provides the emotion and the means of expressing it so that it will not be phony.

Love One Another

“Serve one another humbly in love” (Gal. 5:13). Loving one another means loving both ways. I serve you in love, and you serve me in love. It is a two-way give, not a one-way take.

Paul talks about another kind of two-way practice in the same chapter: “If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other” (Gal. 5:15). Have you ever seen two people bite and devour each other? It happens often, especially in marriage. The result is mutual destruction.

Later in the passage there is another two-way teaching: “Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other” (Gal. 5:26). And in chapter 6, a strong command: “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2).

Here, then, are the choices:

You bite and devour me, and I bite and devour you. You provoke and envy me, and I provoke and envy you.
I serve you in love, and you serve me in love. I carry your burdens, and you carry mine.

“We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:19-20).

Love Deeply

“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Pet. 4:8).

Love does not overlook sin. Love sees sin, then covers it—in this case, covers lots of it. We know that God’s love is like this, but is ours? The command is directed towards us.

“You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19). Deep love provides deep cover. Deep love keeps no record of wrongs (1 Cor. 13:5). It forgives others, regardless of the magnitude or quantity of sins. It banishes sins for good. It does not remember them so that it can bring them up later.

However, we are not to cover our own sins: “He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy” (Prov. 28:13).

Discerning Love

“We know that ‘We all possess knowledge.’ But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. But whoever loves God is known by God” (1 Cor. 8:1-3).

Knowledge and love do not necessarily go together. You can easily have one without the other.

“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ” (Phil. 1:9-10). Paul assumes that love is natural for believers. He prays that the love the Philippians have would abound and that it would be accompanied by knowledge and depth of insight. The New King James Version translates this “knowledge and all discernment.”

There are two reasons for having discerning love:

That we may approve what is excellent. If we have love without discernment, we will end up loving (and thus approving of) things we should not.
That we may be pure and blameless.

These reasons are closely tied, for if we approve what we should not approve, we will not be blameless.

It is easy to have love without discernment if you do not have a biblical definition of love. Discerning love does not approve of sin. It recognizes things which are neither pleasant nor good. Many people mistakenly think that love does not allow for disapproval. They turn it into something gooey and sweet and, consequently, sticky and messy.

How do we obtain discerning love? We get it by desiring it and by asking God for it. Many Christians do not desire it because having discerning love puts them in awkward situations. Others desire discernment only so that they can be critical.

Christlike Love

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them” (Luke 6:32). Many Christians love those who love them and think that they are showing the love of Christ by doing that. However, that kind of love is part of human nature; it is common to everyone.

There is a love that only Christians have. It comes from the Lord. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). Jesus’ love for us had nothing to do with our love or our loveliness. It had to do with His loving nature and our need. When we share this kind of love with others, it cannot be based on their love or loveliness.

Love is Patient

“Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:1-2).

To live a life of love, you must know what love is and how Jesus expressed it. Paul describes love wonderfully in 1 Corinthians 13. I would like to highlight two very important aspects.

“Love is patient…” (1 Cor. 13:4). Jesus was an example of patience: “But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life” (1 Tim. 1:16).

“Love is kind…” (1 Cor. 13:4). God is also an example of kindness: “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy” (Titus 3:4).

Infinite patience and kindness together result in mercy. “Do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?” (Rom. 2:4). If we are impatient with our wives, husbands, children, parents, coworkers, or the unconverted, we are not living a life of love.

Loving the Unlovely

“If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?” (Matt. 5:43-47).

There is nothing particularly Christian about loving lovely people. To explain this, Jesus chose a class of people despised by the Jews⎯tax collectors⎯and said, “Even they love like that.” God created everyone, including the worst criminals, with this kind of friendship-love.

Only Christians can love the unlovely. This is how you show your Christianity. If you have only loved lovely people, you are being disobedient. Although this kind of love is central to Christian behavior, it only comes through obedience. Scriptural love is always volitional. You have to choose to do it. Do not wait to fall in love with your enemy. It will never happen.

I became a Christian during my second year at the Naval Academy. Suddenly, I loved my roommate, and he was not lovely. After three weeks, he asked, “OK, Wilson, what happened? The last three weeks, you have been unbearably pleasant.”

I saw my love expand to more and more people. Jesus Christ filled me with His love, and now I could pour it out. It had nothing to do with what the people were like.

Then a few years later, I ran into a type of person I could not love. In June 1950, I graduated from the Naval Academy and shipped out to the Korean War. Our ship stopped at Sasebo, Japan, for refueling. There were about three thousand prostitutes in the first three blocks. You could not walk down the street without being grabbed. It was the same when we docked in Yokosuka. I was witnessing on the ship and leading men to Christ; then those same men would go ashore and come back with gonorrhea. I hated these women for years, and I knew it.

One day, I was on an aircraft carrier in Hong Kong. I had invited a missionary couple to dinner on the ship, and I told them about this lack of love. The wife said, “You have it all wrong. You are commanded to love those people. It is not something that happens naturally. It is something you choose to do in obedience to God.”

I knew she was right. I went to my room that night in a turmoil of rebellion. How do I do it? Do I crank up the love by sheer willpower? Do I go out and say, “OK, I choose to obey. I will love them if it kills me!” I knew that was not right, because the Scripture requires genuine love. No one would be fooled by me faking it. I wanted to say, “Lord, if You want them loved, You will have to love them through someone else. I don’t have it.”

But as I prayed, I realized several things. If loving is a command, then not loving is disobedience. If it is disobedience, then it is sin. If it is sin, then it is forgivable.

The Bible says that the man who says he loves God and does not love his brother is a liar (1 John 4:20). I had never considered that this business of not loving my enemies was in the same category as lying. When I do not love others, I do not love God. If the greatest commandment is to love God, and I am disobeying it, how great a sin is that? It is huge. If loving my neighbor is the second commandment, and I am not doing it, I am guilty of another great sin. Does that mean I have to live in guilt? No—it means I need forgiveness. But I have to recognize my sin first.

“Love your enemies” is a hard command. If we love God, we must not cut the command down to our size. How can we obey it as He wants us to?

Start with this proposition: “I do not love my enemies.” Since that statement is contrary to God’s command, what I am saying is that I am in sin. Am I saying that as an acceptable fact, or in repentance? If I am just saying that as a fact, I will not be able to go beyond it. If I try, the love will not be real, and everyone will know it. So, not willing to be hypocritical, I say, “At least I am honest. I do not love my enemies.” However, that still does not change the situation. Honesty about sin is not the same as confession of sin.

So what do I do? I can say the same thing to God in confession and be forgiven for it. Then I can choose to love my enemies, and it will not be on top of anything but cleanness. When I make the choice, God provides the love. There will be no hypocrisy.

That night, I confessed all my unlove, and God forgave me. Wonderful! That did not make me loving, but it did make me clean. It brought me to a position from which I could choose to love. If I had decided to love those prostitutes in the presence of my sin, I could not have done it. But I was forgiven. From a clean position, I chose to love them. I said, “God, You had better meet me before I meet them, or it is going to come out phony.”

When I confessed my sin and chose to obey the commandment, God gave me a great love for these people⎯His love. God’s love does not condone sin, so I did not condone their sin. But now I could see them as those for whom Christ died.

How does this apply to loving your wife? Let’s start with this question: When does a woman need loving the most—when she’s lovely, or when she’s unlovely? When she’s unlovely. When is she likely to get love the most? When she’s lovely. Women know that. That’s why they deck themselves out to be attractive, especially if they can’t get beauty on the inside. Peter told women not to do it that way. “Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight” (1 Peter 3:3-4). The hidden beauty of the heart shows on the outside.

A wife wants to be beautiful for her husband, but the husband should recognize that loving her will make her beautiful. The more she is loved, the lovelier she becomes. The less she is loved, the less lovely she becomes. Men marry a woman because of how lovely she is. “Wonderful! Look what I’m getting!” They tell her how beautiful she is, how lovely. A few years later, they wake up in the morning and look at her, and she doesn’t look lovely, act lovely, or talk lovely. If you only loved her because she was lovely, and now she is not lovely, you might be tempted to say, “I don’t love her anymore, so we’ll have to break up.”

Love your wife because she is your wife. Loving her will make her lovely. It is your responsibility to love her into increasing loveliness. You are responsible for how lovely your wife is; and that loveliness is, in part, a function of your love for her. If you say, “No, she is not lovely anymore, so I love her less than I did when she was lovely,” that will make her less lovely. Now she’s less lovely, so you love her even less, which will make her even less lovely… That is how people get divorced.

Respect works the same way. When you don’t respect your husband, he becomes less respectable. So, you respect him even less, which makes him even less respectable… Respect your husband, not because he is respectable, but because he is your husband. The respect is owed to him because of his office as husband. A husband does not have to be respectable to be respected. In fact, a wife’s respect will make him more respectable. It is amazing how a man can measure up when his wife starts pouring on the respect; it is food to him.

Love has to do with the lover, not the person to be loved. Respect has to do with the respecter, not with the person to be respected. We have it turned around. We say, “You’re not lovely; I don’t love you. You’re not respectable; I don’t respect you.”

Our love comes from the love of God. He provides an unlimited supply that we can plug into. As we receive and give by grace, by choosing to obey God, God gives us the love and respect we need to give our spouse. This great love of God through us for our wives makes our wives lovely. When a wife respects her husband, he becomes more respectable. When a husband loves his wife, she becomes lovelier.

God made us to be loved, and He made us to be respected. Women want to respect their husbands, men want to love their wives, but if you say they have to earn it first, that’s works of righteousness, but this should all be grace. You are representing the Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, no woman wants to have a guy say, “I love you for ‘real’ reasons. You are the ugliest, homeliest, mouthiest woman I know, and I love you!” She’d tell him to get lost (and rightly so). Nevertheless, that is the kind of love you are going to want when you are homely and mouthy. You don’t want to hear that in the courtship (you don’t want to ever hear it), but you do want your husband to love you that way. You want him to love you to make you lovely. Jesus Christ loved the Church to cleanse her with the washing of water by the Word so He could present her to Himself as a spotless bride. When you love your wife as Christ loved the Church, she becomes lovelier, and you get to present her to yourself.

God made a great, big emptiness in man that needs to be filled with respect, and a great, big emptiness in woman that needs to be filled with love. The husband might begin to think the hole in this woman is a bottomless pit. How do you ever get it filled? It’s like pouring water down a rat hole—you run out of water before you run out of rat hole! Men will run out of love before they get it adequately provided. What do you do when you run out? Get more love from your unlimited source of love—God. Then you are not giving this love from a fixed quantity.