LIMITLESS LOVE Operating in the God-kind of Love
If you are married, then we can assume, at some point when it all began, you “fell” in love— romantic love, that is. Romantic “love” is an off shoot of human love.
The thing about human love is that it only goes so far—it has limits and boundaries pre-set by emotion. Most people, their marriages included, operate in this basic human love, which is conditional and must receive love in order to give love.
Human love is selfish, asking “What can you do for me?” It’s also heartless and mechanical as it continues “…and I’ll see what I can do in return for you.”
Human love does not resemble the God-kind of agape love that Jesus walked in. Agape is a Greek word. The English language only has one word for “love.” But there are actually various words for “love” along with agape, like eros and philia.
For lack of time, let me give you a quick synapsis of what the Greek word “agape” means from the Britannica encyclopedia, below in the following paragraph:
“Agape, in the New Testament, is the fatherly love of God for humans, as well as the human reciprocal love for God. In Scripture, the transcendent agape love is the highest form of love and is contrasted with eros, or erotic love (romantic love), and philia (human love), or brotherly love. In John 3:16, a verse that is often described as a summary of the Gospel message, agape is the word used for the love that moved God to send His only Son for the world’s redemption. The term necessarily extends to the love of one’s fellow humans, as the reciprocal love between God and humans is made manifest in one’s unselfish love of others.”
The God-kind of love is limitless—it blows off all the roofs and pulls out all the stops. The Bible says countless times, “His love endures forever.” God’s love is everlasting, expanding to every corner of the earth, every corner of the heavens, every corner of the universe.
Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens… (Psalm 36:5)
Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you. (Isaiah 54:10)
The agape God-kind of love is the power you need to thrive and prosper in your marriage, no matter what comes, no matter what you feel or don’t feel, no matter what is done. The God-kind of love is a love that GIVES. The Father showed us exactly how it’s done:
For God so loved the world that He gave… (John 3:16)
This is not a romantic love, or even the kind of love you enjoy pizza with. This love we’re talking about today is the one that inspires you to be selfless. It’s a love that gives of self. It’s not just the kind of love that gives an anniversary gift. The world does that all day long. You can do a lot of things like this out of duty or responsibility, but doesn’t mean you’re flowing in the God-kind of love.
When was the last time you truly gave in this way to your spouse? How often can you say that you truly operate in this kind of love, within your marriage?
What if our human love and romantic love have dwindled? Are we without hope? After romantic love has faded and human love has quickly found its end, do our relationships end, too? Ha, no!
There’s good news for us! Since we’ve been born again, we have this greater kind of love already on the inside of us, ready to be tapped into on a daily basis.
We, too, possess agape love. The God-kind of love has been shed ABROAD in our hearts when we were born again. ABROAD—far and wide, everywhere. It’s not minimally shed, or scarcely shed, or even slightly shed. It’s been expansively and extravagantly poured out into our hearts like a river flowing abundantly. So yes, that being said, you, yes you, DO have the God-kind of love and plenty to go around.
But wait. If this is true, which it is, then why are Christian marriages drying up all around us, even maybe some of our own?
To those who are married, the Bible makes it very clear that they will have trouble in the flesh (1 Cor. 7:28). What does “trouble in the flesh” mean? It means selfishness. The very nature of the flesh is selfish and the only way to keep out of marriage troubles is to grow up in agape love, the God-kind of love, and become unselfish.
Real God love, alive and active in your life, will energize and refresh the soul of your marriage.
If your marriage isn’t flourishing like you know it could and should be, then you can probably trail the issue back to one main thing—selfishness, human love.
Selfishness will dry out your marriage and drain the life and energy right out of it. Selfishness is a marriage killer because it always produces strife. When strife is unchecked, the enemy is given place to steal, kill, and destroy.
Check out James 3:16 in a couple different versions, and we can see how selfishness and strife are interchangeable:
For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. (KJV)
Where there is jealousy and selfishness, there will be confusion and every kind of evil. (ERV)
For where jealousy and selfish-interest are, in-that-place there is disorder and every bad thing. (DLNT)
For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. (NKJV)
Selfishness, which works hand in hand with pride and conceit, is a root cause of a large percentage of marriage troubles—where one or both spouses are putting their own self above the other.
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. (Philippians 2:3-4, NIV)
This selfless God-love is one that lays down its life for another, one that gives of itself for another.
If you are too busy thinking about what your spouse isn’t doing for you, and your spouse is too busy thinking of what you aren’t doing for him, then what is bound to happen?
Giving will stop.
And what happens when no one is giving??
The marriage dries up. It’s not a mystery.
…Whoever refreshes others will himself be refreshed. (Proverbs 11:25)
You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. (Isaiah 58:11)
If you want your marriage to flourish like a well-watered garden, then there’s got to be some watering.
Ephesians 5:33 describes it very beautifully what this dual watering in a marriage looks like:
However, each man among you [without exception] is to love his wife as his very own self [with behavior worthy of respect and esteem, always seeking the best for her with an attitude of lovingkindness], and the wife [must see to it] that she respects and delights in her husband [that she notices him and prefers him and treats him with loving concern, treasuring him, honoring him, and holding him dear].
Here we see the husband’s focus is loving his wife, and the wife’s focus is respecting and delighting in her husband. To add to that, 1 Corinthians 7:34 says that a godly married woman is to “seek to please her husband.” Please herself? Even, please the Lord? No, it says “please her husband.”
But you know what’s mostly happening instead? The husband is thinking too much about how his wife isn’t respecting him, and the wife is thinking too much about how her husband isn’t loving her. This is backwards thinking and a main reason as to why many marriages aren’t thriving.
Too many Christian marriages are “take take take”, instead of “give give give”, and they are sucking each other dry. If both sides are giving, then it’s automatic—both sides are receiving. That’s how marriage is meant to be. Not, give and take. Only, give and give. If your marriage is functioning on the world’s “50/50 rule” for marriage, then it doesn’t take a genius to realize that’s only at 50% capacity. And most marriages aren’t even operating at that much.
If I’m giving my all, and Matt is giving his all, we aren’t operating at 50%—nope, we are operating at 100% and then some.
When I wake up in the morning, if I’m thinking about what he needs and he is thinking about what I need, then together, we are taken care of by each other. That keeps the marriage union thriving and increasing, being strengthened and flourishing.
This is a beautiful way to do marriage.
I’ve done it the other way, and it’s not fun! It’s draining and exhausting. Selfishness not only drains those around you, but you get depleted as well. If you are yielding to agape love—God’s love in your recreated inner man—then you are being constantly motivated by the very power that brings life.
I like how one minister connects this thought:
“There are two laws that govern life: the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, which is love; and the law of sin and death, which is selfishness (Romans 8:2).”
There are two big ways of functioning in marriage – by love or by selfishness. Yielding to love brings life and yielding to selfishness brings death.
We all have heard this next verse over and over again, but let’s look at it again with fresh eyes:
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13, KJV)
Although Jesus was talking about laying down His own physical life for all of us, that is not the only revelation in this verse. It’s describing a life lived FOR others instead of FOR self.
The Bible says Jesus emptied Himself (Philippians 2:7, AMP) in order to do what He did for us.
And do you know that in order for us to do what we, as spouses, are commanded to do for our husband or wife—previously mentioned earlier in Ephesians 5:33, that is, “husband’s love your wives as Christ loves the Church, and wives, submit to your husbands in all reverence [as the Church submits to Christ]”—then we also must empty ourselves?
Emptying our self? Sounds like selflessness to me. Sounds like giving.
You see, some things Jesus did for us as our substitution (i.e. dying on the cross, the whipping post, the stripes for our health, going to hell); but a lot of things He did for us, as an example of what we should do. Dying to self (selflessness) is one of those “example” instances.
Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 2:1-5, NKJV)
If each of us, husband and wife, would actually do what Jesus did, do what this verse says, and humble ourselves by laying aside “self,” by laying aside our own selfish ambition and desires, I believe we would see some major changes for the better in our marriages.
What does selfishness look like in a marriage? Let’s just bring it home “real good.”
If you are waiting for your spouse to do something about your situation, that’s selfish (waiting for him to make a change, take the first step toward reconciliation, say the first word, etc.).
If the husband brings up about how he should be respected, that’s selfish. If the wife brings up how her husband should be loving her and taking care of her, that’s selfish. These types of things will bring strife, and not life, into the marriage.
If you are bringing up to your spouse about how they don’t know you like you think they should, expecting them to “know you” by now, that’s selfish.
If you are expecting your spouse to have the same schedule as you, that’s selfish.
If you are waiting on your spouse to make the first move in the physical romance, that is selfish. Or vice versa, if you are playing dead when your spouse moves in toward physical romance, that is selfish.
If you expect your spouse to pick up after you, that’s selfish. But if you get mad at your spouse because you have to pick up after them, this is also selfish.
If you are expecting your spouse to do all the praying and have all the spiritual responsibility, expecting him/her to hear from God for the family about all the things, that’s selfish.
If you are sitting around thinking about what your spouse hasn’t been doing for you, then you are wallowing in selfishness. There is too much thinking about what he/she isn’t doing for you and too little thinking about what you should be doing for him/her.
True God-kind of love doesn’t need the other one to act first, it doesn’t need the other one to give first, respond first, touch first. True God-love GIVES. True agape love makes up his/her mind that “I am going to do what God’s Word says (i.e. respect my husband, love my wife) whether my spouse does it or not.” That is agape love. You and I are the ones who will be standing before the Lord when the time comes and will be able to say, “I obeyed You, Lord. I respected and honored my husband; I esteemed and loved my wife and took care of her, like You told me to.”
If your spouse doesn’t do the Word of God, that is between them and God, not you and them.
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. (John 15:9-12, NIV)
Let me end by giving you a prayer, a Scriptural prayer at that. You will find this prayer in Ephesians 3:14-21. You can pray this every day over you and your spouse and God will begin to work in both of you the powerful expansiveness of His great love:
Father, I pray that You, out of Your glorious riches, would strengthen me and my spouse with power through Your Spirit in our inner beings, so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith. And I pray that my spouse and I, together, would become rooted and established (grounded and firm) in the love of God, that we would be able to grasp and understand and have a living revelation of the length, width, depth, and height of Your great love. I pray that we would be filled up to the measure of all of the fullness of You and Your love on the inside of us for each other. Father, you are able to do immeasurably, exceedingly, and abundantly above, more than I could even ask, think, or imagine, according to the power that is at work within us. I thank You for doing this and I give You all the glory! In Jesus’ Name, amen.
We love you today.
Remaining in His limitless love,
Matt and Jess