The Artisan Post

Christmas and Marriage meet

“In order to keep our expectations of love for each other realistic, we must look deeper and wider than our love for one another.  We must look to the source of LOVE. Even when we love each other well… learning and growing in love in creative new ways… we cannot fill the full and complete ‘need for love’ in some one else, nor in turn, can we expect it from them.  The fulfillment of our need to be loved is greater than what’s possible from a merely human capacity.”

Mark Wanders

There is amazing growth and a deepening of emotional oneness and satisfaction in marriage when you begin to express to one another how you best feel loved and then live into it by loving one another in those ways.

Loving one another in ways that meets our need can feel like oxygen to us.  As oxygen brings life to the body, so love that feels like oxygen brings life and flourishing to marriage. And a flourishing marriage is helpful for when we hit the rough patches.

Keeping Expectations Realistic

LOVE is key in all of this.  That’s been the core consideration in this three-part series as we’ve explored the question, ‘Can you LOVE me like this?’

And we’ve seen how loving one another in particular ways in meeting the specific identifiable, spoken needs of our spouse, deepens our marital oneness.

But in order to keep our expectations of love for each other realistic, we must look deeper and wider than our love for one another.  We must look to the source of LOVE.

Because even when we are working at loving each other well, we cannot fill the full and complete need for love in our spouse, nor in turn, can we expect it from them.  The fulfillment of our need to be loved is greater than what’s possible from a merely human capacity.

That means we would need to look outside of ourselves.  Beyond ourselves.  Perhaps beyond this world.

We cannot even love others well, unless we understand we’ve been loved first.

Looking to the Source

Have you ever considered that there is a source of love outside of ourselves? Please hear me out. It’s powerful and takes a lot of stress out of loving one another in any relationship, most particularly in marriage where you live in very close proximity to one another.

There is a simple statement in the Bible that says, more than once, ‘God is Love’.  What a profound acknowledgement.  God not only acts in love, or demonstrates love, but He is the essence of love.  His very being is love.  He is the source of love. Let that sink in.

The Bible further informs us that we can ‘love one another because love is from God… and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.’  All love then, whether it is recognized to be from God or not, originates from God.  But to love one another in the deepest way possible is to love in a way made available to us through knowing and experiencing God.

And what kind of love do we know of from God?  How did He demonstrate love?  What do we experience?

Originally God made the world and everything in it very good.  Lovingly He created all things including the first man and woman in the first marriage we know of.  They were given authority over all things, to enjoy this created world together.  But eventually, in rebellion to the very God who made them, wanting to be like God themselves, they disobeyed Him and ushered the whole world into a state of misery and brokenness. Sin and its curse entered in and our relational capacity to love well, died.

But God, in His love and grace, did not leave things in this hopelessness. For God so loved the world that, as promised, in history and time, He sent a Saviour to redeem this world lost in sin and misery. In love He redeemed love and made it possible for us to love again. Operating out of His very essence, God demonstrated His love in that ‘He sent His only Son (Jesus) into the world, so that we might live through Him.’

The whole story of Christmas is remembering how God loved us so much that He did not want to leave us in a state of brokenness and hopelessness. Instead, He sent His only Son, Jesus, to be born in the likeness of a man, to live and experience this suffering world, and to die on a cross to take away the sins of all who would believe in Him. Restoration initiated. And He arose again by Holy Spirit power and gives us freely of that same Spirit so that we can once again move towards loving one another well in a deeper and more meaningful way. This is what it means to be born of God. We experience His working in us new life and love here and now… thus imitating God’s love as He so graciously demonstrated to us.

Husbands, there comes a tall order for us in the Bible to love our wives in the same way ‘as Jesus loved His bride (metaphorical language referring to His people) …giving Himself up for her’.  Sacrificial love on display!

‘If God so loved us, we ought to love one another.  We love, because He loved us first.’

God is the secure and stable source of our love because God is Love and acted on our behalf in love.  From this place, we have a renewed capacity to give and receive love, and to understand its true filling in our lives comes from God alone.

Connected to the Source Fills Us

Understanding that we are loved by God, who is the source of love, we rest secure in His complete love.

God’s love is what satisfies our deepest need to be loved.  He is our filling, and the source of our being able to love — like an overflowing. He also is our source of grace in being able to deal with each other when we don’t love so well.

But seeing and experiencing how God demonstrated His love for us, we are moved to love one another.  We cannot remain unloving.

‘If we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us.’

In marriage, we live in a representation of the first relationship ever created.  And we live in representation of the relationship of Jesus and His church, which we be the last marriage.  We live in the closest, most intimate relationship that we will experience on earth.  It would be foolish, almost arrogant, to think that we can live in love in the bond of marriage, entirely on our own, without connection to the original Source, this God who is Love.  When we live in love through Jesus Christ as central and foundational to our marriage, remembering all God has done for us, we flourish and represent Him well to each other and to those around us. Life, love and hope shine in this broken world.

And then learning to love one another in the best way possible asking, ‘Can you love me like this?’ takes on a whole new depth and understanding in our marriage.

Understanding and Loving

As we approach our spouse, ‘Can you love me like this?’, the answer will come. Yes…  And no. 

Yes… I can.  And I want to… I will. 

But no… I can’t do this perfectly.  Will you accept the love that I can give as a fellow human being?  Will you accept my love in the broken and beautiful way in which I can do this through the restoring, renewing power of Jesus in me?

Henri Nouwen wrote, “If we do not know we are beloved sons and daughters of God, we are going to expect someone else to make us feel that we are.  We will expect someone else to give us that perfect, unconditional love.  They cannot.”

Receiving Love

When we anchor our receiving of love in God who is Love, and remember His demonstration of unconditional love towards us, allowing that to fill us, then dependability on love from another person becomes loosed. We can then receive love from one another in the knowledge and satisfaction of being fully loved by God first, and then graciously accept the love (or even lack thereof) shown to us in relationships here and now that are in a restorative, sanctifying process.

Showing Love

And when we show love to one another as beloved sons and daughters of God through Christ, the best way to love each other is through Him.  Husband-Jesus-Wife.  Wife-Jesus-Husband.  Me-Jesus-Others.  Others-Jesus-Me.  It’s loving one another with copious amounts of grace, knowing much grace has been given us.  As we have been forgiven much, so we exercise forgiveness.

This becomes the grounding security from which we can live a life of love.

Stress Reduced

In marriage, stress is reduced in knowing we can’t love one another to the absolute fullest.  We were never designed to be able to do so.  But marriage was given by design, from the God who is Love, to experience love in the fullest capacity here on earth, all the while being dependent on God’s love.  To love well and deeply inside of that bond needs the foundational centrality of God in it. 

He is the One who made love possible by demonstrating the greatest sacrificial love gift ever given… Himself… in the person of Jesus Christ, for us, His bride.  This stands at the pinnacle of the question ‘Can you love me like this?’  He has pre-empted the question with the greatest marital sacrifice ever, that God did come, Immanuel, ‘God with us’, with the express intent to die for His bride in order live with Her eternally. 

Christmas and Marriage meet.

God has spoken.  God has acted.  He loves us like this.

We love because He loved us first.  In our brokenness we love in a restorative capacity through Jesus Christ now already, but it is not yet fully complete.  So we need much grace and patience as God molds us into the people He wants us to be.

Marriage is a gift. It’s a place to practice loving and being loved, grace and being gracious, giving and receiving, forgiving and being forgiven, as God so loves and leads us.  From the place of living and learning, giving and growing, knowing and loving, we flourish and go forth sharing with the broken world around us a taste of God’s design for marriage and relationships. Amazingly, God who is Love, uses you and me to help point the way toward to a time when full restoration will be complete and ALL things will be fully restored and made new. 

Word has it, that at that time there will be the greatest marriage banquet ever… between Jesus and His Bride.  I want to be there.  How about you?

‘Can you LOVE me like this?’

No, but yes.  Through Him, we can ‘love one another because love is from God…’