Love in Marriage

Chuckle: "The most difficult years of marriage are those following the wedding."

Good Quote: "Happiness grows at our firesides and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens."  --Douglas Jerrold

LOVE IN MARRIAGE                 

    "May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you" (I Thessalonians 3:12-13 NIV). "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her" (Ephesians 5:25 NIV). ". . . and the wife must respect (and love) her husband"  (Ephesians 5:33b NIV).

A few years ago, Tina Turner had a hit song called, "What's Love Got to do With It."  This song describes many couples today.  Marriages are coming apart at an ever increasing rate.  Not only that, but the social stigma once attached to divorce and breakdown of the family unit no longer exists.  Sadly, growing numbers of children are being abused and abandoned.  

Most problems within the family begin and end with the relationship of the husband and wife.  What is it that causes so many marriages to come apart?  Many reasons are given, but the most serious problem may be a growing lack of understanding of what it means to genuinely love someone.  At least three kinds of love should be present in marriage relationships:

    1. Romantic Love (Eros): This love describes the sensual attraction of a man and a woman to each other.  This "romantic love" is on the level of instincts.  It is the chemical reaction of a male to a female, and vice versa. This physical attraction is important but should be only the first step in a growing and much deeper kind of love.  Marriages based only on this dimension of love are doomed to disappointment and disintegration once the physical attraction becomes less intense.

    2. Respect Love (Phileo): This is brotherly or friendship love, and is based on someone's worth, faithfulness, and reliability.  It's the love between friends.  It is extremely important that a husband and wife genuinely like each other and be best friends -- that they provide each other someone to share their innermost thoughts without fear of rejection or condemnation.  

    3. Help Love (Agape): This is the highest and noblest form of love.  God showed this kind of love when He "so loved the world that He gave His only Son."  This kind of love sees something infinitely precious in the object of this love.  It is a sacrificing love without thought of self, and is not dependent upon circumstances.  It is an unconditional selfless love.  The other person's well-being becomes more important than your own.

Happy indeed is the home where the husband and wife are romantically attracted to each other.  Happier still is the home where the husband and wife also respect each other and are best friends.  But the happiest home is the one where every thought and activity is saturated with self-sacrificing "help" love.  When love has reached this level a marriage will last a lifetime.

Love, Jerry & Dotse