In all my years on this planet, I am yet to know a word more abused than “love”. You see a dashing young man (as a woman) or a clean beauty (as a man) that catches your fancy and you think, wow! I love him/her. Somebody does you a favor and you are, wow! I love him/her. Love has been defined severally even to the point of confusion. Why is this? People link love to a feeling. Love is more than a feeling. Paul wrote an entire chapter on love and its attributes, as may be found in I Corinthians 13. A man who loves his wife would have these attributes. We will come back to them later.
When no definition would suffice for love, the bible said, God is love! Love is the fulfillment of all laws. Wherever there is love, there is harmony, progress, peace and everything good and godly. The need for couples to love and be in love cannot be over emphasized. However, the specific command in terms of roles in the home was for the man to love his wife. Is there any way of measuring that love? Yes…like Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. What is that saying? A man should love his wife to the point that if he has to, he would die for her.
I Peter 5:
25: Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
26: That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,
27: That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.
28: So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
29: For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:
30: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
31: For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
32: This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
33: Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.
I try to imagine it. If you could die for a person, that is giving your life for the person, is there anything you cannot give that person? Your life is you. It is all you have. If you lose it, there is nothing left. Have you ever seen a dead man coming to argue with the living on how his property was being used? It does not happen. The love requirement is so strong that if we truly understand it, most issues at home would be considered trivial. For instance, who does the dishes at home? You may not believe it, but that is enough to create permanent chaos in some families. I am not here to say the man or the woman should do dishes. What works with people differ. I have met women who chase their husbands out of the kitchen. It is not a man’s place, they say. That is what they want. For some others, the woman would not mind doing the cooking while he does the dishes afterwards. There are families where this is their arrangement. They are happy with it and it works for them. One thing I can say is, wherever you find couples arguing about things like this, love is not firmly grounded there. Love takes care of a lot of things. Traditionally, a woman is the Director-General in the ministry of Foods and House Keeping, but I tell you that if she is in the kitchen doing her stuff, the loving husband is not far away. Sometimes, having someone to talk to while you do some chores can take away all the work in those chores. In the last analysis, a loving husband thinks of what gets done at home; not who does it.
I talked to a number of married men and asked them if they helped out with house chores. Some of them started by drawing my attention to the word “help”; which pre-supposes that it is primarily the woman’s job. They are only trying to help, but according to them, if you do a thing for a woman once, twice, next time she claims it is your job to do. That is why they don’t even want to start it. Ordinarily, they don’t mind doing things at home, but they fear a permanent role reversal. Food for thought? Even then, I look at it and wonder, is that how Jesus would treat His church? Would Jesus take away His grace from us because of our failings? Paul said, where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. (Rom.5:20) From Christ’s perspective, if you fall in the days of adversity, then your strength must be small. That is why to those who have no strength, He increaseth might. That is love. Of everything God made, we humans are the most terrible. We are the only ones who challenge God. Some of us even doubt His basic existence, but what does He do? Patiently and in love, He stands at the door and keeps knocking hoping that one day, the door would be opened. He never forces Himself on people. You cannot understand this God. His ways are mysterious, but then I guess that is part of what makes Him God. I often wonder what I would do if I were God. I would start with all those who say I don’t exist, by teaching them a few lessons on the reality of my existence. A friend said he would grab all of them by the throat and choke them to death, and then they would believe. I wonder how many of us would be here if He did that. Amazing.
Continued in Part Five
