God instructed our husbands to love us with a love so amazing that they should be prepared to die for us. What a beautiful way to love, our Heavenly Father knew what we would need as His precious daughters.
Ephesians 5:25 NIV
[25] Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
For years I struggled to articulate how my husband could demonstrate his love for me by his actions because I thought that love had to translate into actions, so I felt he was not doing a great job of it.
He on the other hand thought love was a state of being and he felt he was loving me perfectly. This caused great strife in our marriage until we both understood love in this context.
Love is :
- a state of being;
- specific and demonstrated with actions.
Love as a state of being is perfectly and beautifully defined in the Word of God in 1 Corinthians 13:
Love means that our husbands:
- are patient with us;
- that they are kind to us in Word and deed;
- that they are not boastful in any way towards us;
- that they are not proud and that they apologize when they have wronged us;
- that they honor us;
- that they seek to please us or look out for our interests and not their own;
- that they not get angry with us easily;
- that they forgive and forget and that they do not keep score of what we have done wrong in the past;
- that they do not take pleasure in any evil but take great joy in the truth;
- that they always protect us;
- that they always trust us;
- that they always have hope that all things are possible;
- that their love for us remains steadfast despite adversity or set-backs;
- that we can depend in their love, it never fails;
- that their love for us never ends.
“Specific ” love demonstrated by actions is different for each of us as wives, for instance whether we want our husbands to spend quality time with us, buy us gifts, take us out for candlelit dinners. This each one of us must articulate to our husbands.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 13NIV
[4] Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. [5] It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. [6] Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. [7] It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. [8] Love never fails.
[13] And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.