Overview
Dr. Jackie Patterson examines “Living Love in Our Christian Marriage” through 1 Corinthians 13, Hebrews 10, showing how love, marriage, spouse shape a believer’s relationship with God, daily choices, and service to others.
Transcript
Understanding Living Love in Our Christian Marriage
We are in a three-part series on the Christian marriage, and if you heard either of the first two teachings, you know that I have been reflecting on my marriage to Jason and some of the intentional habits that we’ve built along the way to give us a great marriage. The three that we’re covering in three separate teachings are God First, One Flesh, and Living Love. We put God first by seeking God, not the world together, by setting our expectations in God, not our spouse, and by seeing our spouse the way God sees them, not based on their actions.
We build a one flesh relationship by prioritizing time together, making big decisions as one, and refusing to live offended. Today, we’re going to consider how to live love in our marriages, and in my practice of this, I return to 1 Corinthians 13 again and again as practical instruction direct from the Father for how to live love. Let’s read 1 Corinthians chapter 13 verses 4 through 8, and I’m going to read from the English Standard Version.
In verse 4, it says that love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. My grandmother was from Malaysia, and she had an arranged marriage.
When she was 20 years old, her parents arranged for her to marry a man that was 40 years old, and she had only a few days to get to know her fiancé before they were wed, and the two of them had a lovely, wonderful, prosperous marriage, and her advice to me as I was growing up was that you don’t marry the one you love. You love the one you marry. That certainly was true for her in her marriage to my grandfather, that they chose to love one another because they were married, and that gave them a prosperous and intimate relationship.
That decision in our culture, that’s not really the way we approach marriage. Most of us find somebody that we love first and then choose to marry them, but the second part of her advice is really poignant that you love the one you marry. Love is not a feeling.
It’s an action. It’s a decision to emulate our Heavenly Father with the wonderful qualities that are spelled out here in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. I want you to just sit and contemplate the love of God as I read the same verses from 1 Corinthians chapter 13 from the Amplified Version.
It says that love endures long and is patient and kind. Love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy, is not boastful or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily. It is not conceited, arrogant and inflated with pride.
It is not rude, unmannerly, and does not act unbecomingly. Love, God’s love in us, does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking. It is not touchy or fretful or resentful.
The Biblical Foundation
It takes no account of the evil done to it. It pays no attention to a suffered wrong. It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail.
Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person. Its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything without weakening. Love never fails, never fades out or becomes obsolete or comes to an end.
What a beautiful passage of scripture to give us clear instruction from the Father about how to live love. And we can live this love of God in all of our relationships with friends, with co-workers, with family, but in particular in our marriages. We’ve covered a couple of these concepts in prior teachings.
When we talked about the one flesh relationship and refusing to be offended, we read first Corinthians 13, that the love of God is not touchy or fretful or resentful, and it takes no account of the evil done to it. It pays no attention to a suffered wrong. And when we talked about God first in the Christian marriage, we talked about seeing our spouse, the way God sees them, not based on their actions from first Corinthians chapter 13, verse seven, that the love of God is ever ready to believe the best of every person.
Jason and I have a great marriage because of living love in our marriage. And we do that with three principles. In particular, we show unconditional kindness.
We change ourselves rather than our spouse, and we bear burdens with love. Let’s start with showing unconditional kindness. This comes naturally in the dating phase, where in our culture, we win over our date’s heart with extraordinary acts of kindness, things like flowers, unique adventures, thoughtful gifts.
And these extraordinary acts of kindness are a memorable way to continue showing kindness to your spouse once you’re married. There are two illustrations that come to mind when I think of extraordinary acts of kindness. When I gave birth to our second child, Callie, Jason gave me a set of jewelry in appreciation for and in recognition of my role as mother to our two girls.
At another point in our marriage, Jason had been looking for a new job, and his search had taken several years to find a job back in his field. And when he landed a job in architecture again, I took him out to the best restaurant in the triangle for steak, and we enjoyed a fancy steak dinner together to celebrate. But these extraordinary acts are not a substitute for ordinary acts of kindness.
When I was a pediatric resident and had to be at the hospital at five or six in the morning, Jason used to get up early with me, and in the winter months, he would go outside and scrape my car because we didn’t have a garage so that I could head out and be on my way without needing to stand out in the cold. Ordinary acts of kindness that I’ve done for him when he was spending his time studying in graduate school or for licensing exams, I used to bring him a cup of tea or a snack to help fuel his brain. These ordinary acts of kindness make up the character of your daily relationship.
And in many ways, these are the acts that carry you through the valleys that you weather as a couple. Look at Ephesians chapter four, and in verse 32, it says, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. I love that God put this command to be kind in the same verse as to forgive.
Examples and Spiritual Lessons
Our kindness towards one another is unconditional. It’s not dependent on how your spouse treats you. If you’re in a state where you’re struggling to be kind, and you might laugh, but my advice to you is to refuse to be unkind, bite your tongue, literally take a break from the situation, do what you need to do to change your state.
Maybe you need to eat something. Maybe you need to rest. And yes, it is easier to be kind to someone who is being kind to you.
So if your spouse is being unkind, that makes your job harder. But as the old saying goes, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. In Hebrews chapter 10, and in verse 24, it says, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.
When your spouse is being unkind, instead of retaliating with the same, put your energy into helping them change their state. That’s my takeaway from this verse. We’re to consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, figure out how we can help our fellow believer do the good works and manifest the love of God that God wants them to manifest.
So instead of getting frustrated and being unkind, take that frustration and put that energy into helping the other person into stirring them up to love and good works. Encourage them to eat, to rest, to take a break from the situation. Jason does this for me when I get frustrated.
Sometimes he takes the kids and sends me out on a run around the neighborhood because he knows that when I go for a run, that’s my thought time to work out my frustration while I talk with my God and I return in a much better state, not only able to refuse to be unkind towards him, but to actually manifest that unconditional kindness. I know for Jason, if he’s frustrated that taking a few minutes to stand and rub his neck can disarm him and calm him down and help change his state so that he can also show kindness towards me. As far as it depends upon you be unconditionally kind to your spouse.
You’re likely to find that your unconditional kindness will be increasingly returned with kindness from your spouse. The second principle on living love in our marriage is the principle of changing yourself. First Corinthians 13 said that love does not insist on its own rights or its own way for it is not self-seeking.
And yet many of us enter marriage thinking that we are going to be able to change various things about our spouse. When we first got married, I had some things that I wanted to be done my way. And I had some early successes in convincing Jason to comply with some of these things.
For example, he loads the dishwasher exactly the way I like it to be loaded. And thankfully his mom and his sister had already trained him to put the toilet seat down. So I didn’t have to work on that one, but there are other things that were more of a work in progress, such as architecture models.
Let me explain when Jason and I were engaged, I had noted that he had an architecture model sitting on the floor of the master bedroom of his apartment. And this model was a year end project that he had worked on as an undergraduate prior to getting his degree, something that he had put blood, sweat, and tears into. And that five years later, he was not quite ready to part with.
Faith in Action
And so we got married and I moved into that master bedroom. And just to give you some context, this was a small master bedroom that was part of a 700 square foot apartment. And so that model taking up space on the floor was actually an obstacle to get around the bed.
And I dealt with the obstacle lovingly for a few months and then just couldn’t take it anymore. And I remember saying to him one evening, either you hang up the model on the wall or it’s going in the trash. And so he complied and turned the model into artwork and hung it on the wall.
So why did I call this a work in progress? Well, you see several years later, Jason decided to go back to school to get his master’s degree. And as it turns out, building models is a regular part of the work of a master’s degree for architecture. And after a three-year degree, God blessed me with 10 plus additional models that would grace my home for many years to come.
Some of which are quite large. There is one that is literally the size of a door. And if you come to our house, you will find that these models from graduate school are predominantly sitting in our basement, taking up space on the floor.
So there’s an example of a work in progress of me trying to change something about my spouse, but then there have also been some epic failures. I spent the first decade of our marriage trying to get my husband to close cabinet doors. And I went through a lot of strategies to attempt to change this annoying habit of his, of leaving cabinet doors open.
Early on in our marriage, I would grumble and lightly slam them shut, but I started to notice that he wasn’t really paying attention when I did that. So I thought, okay, I need to change my tactic. And when I would find a cabinet door open, I would look at him and say, are you done with this? To which he would look back at me and respond, no, and then walk out of the room.
So that strategy didn’t work. And then I moved on at one point and thought, what if I just leave them open for a while and see how long it takes him to close them? Well, let me tell you, cabinet doors being open, they don’t bother him. He would them open for days until he would decide to close them.
To this day, if you come to our house, you will know if Jason has been in the kitchen of late because the doors will be open. And then in the past couple of years, while working from home, we developed a new problem, socks. And I thought that I had wisely learned from my past failure with this problem.
So what’s the problem you say? My husband likes to have a pair of socks at the ready in case his feet get cold. We don’t wear shoes in our house. And I started to find pairs of socks scattered around my house, not just at his desk, but on the stairs or in other places.
And it was typically unclear whether the socks were partially used or fresh for the taking. And so thinking that I had wisely learned from my past epic failure of closing cabinet doors, I decided that I would use humor to try to change my spouse. And so if I found a pair of socks, not in a drawer where they belonged or in a laundry hamper, I would take them and put them in an unexpected place where he might find them like in his desk drawer, or I would stick his computer mouse inside a sock.
Walking in Love and Confidence
I even put a pair of socks in his pillowcase and our girls got involved in the fun. But despite my humorous attempt at changing my spouse, this has also been a failure. Look at Philippians chapter two, verse three.
I’m sure that Jason has lots of other examples he could give about my idiosyncrasies and attempting to change me. We all have these in our marriages. Philippians chapter two, verse three, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. In a marriage relationship in humility, we need to count our spouse more significant than ourselves and be willing to yield on unimportant things. I was enjoying some fellowship time with some close friends who are also married.
And a bunch of us women were sitting around chatting about our past year. And one of these Christian women asked for some advice about her marriage and a bad habit that our spouse had developed that was really tearing apart their marriage. And so we listened with attentive ears and thought together about how she might approach this challenge.
And at one point, I think the punchline of the conversation came from a wise wife who said to my friend, it sounds like you are the one with the problem, not him. And she was absolutely right. Now, let me tell you, I’m not going to get into the details of this bad habit, but if you had been there as a fly on the wall, hearing the conversation, you would have agreed with my friend’s perspective that this habit was a bad habit and it had to go.
But this wise wife’s advice was really poignant that my friend was the one with the problem, not her spouse. And that was so true. His bad habit was not bothering him.
It was only bothering her. And just that shift in perspective was helpful in starting to think about how to handle the situation and how to find solutions. Some of you may have heard the serenity prayer, which is God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
I love this pithy saying, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, insert your spouse, the courage to change the things I can insert yourself and wisdom to know the difference. After 13 years of marriage, I now reframe these kinds of problems as mine rather than his. And my solutions are much more successful.
I change myself by either changing my expectations or minimizing my exposure to the problem. Let me explain. What do I mean by changing my expectations? Well, here’s another funny issue that we deal with in my house.
We live in a multi-story home that’s split level. And so going up and downstairs is a regular part of our routine. And I decided early on when we moved into this house, that I was not going to go up and downstairs just to put things away.
Applying the Teaching in Daily Life
And so I will often leave a pile of things at the bottom of the stairs or the top of the stairs and take them to the next level when I happen to be going in that direction. And I was sort of expecting when we moved into this house, that Jason would participate in that task, that he would pick things up that were sitting on the stairs when he was already going up and take them to their location where they belonged. But I have found after many months of, of approaching this problem that my spouse does not even see the things that I put on the stairs.
I mean, he bypasses these piles as if they don’t exist. I tried putting them in the center of the stair where he would practically have to step on it to get by and still he wouldn’t pick it up. And I learned based on my maturity after 13 years of marriage, that the best way to fix this problem was to change myself.
And so I changed my expectation and I don’t expect for anyone in the house to pick up piles on the stairs other than me. Funny enough, a few weeks ago, after I had done the first teaching on God first in our marriages, I saw Jason pick up a pile of items from the stairs and take them up to our bedroom as he was going up. And I jokingly said to him, what’s the occasion? You just picked something up off the stairs to put it away.
And he laughed and tongue in cheek said to me, yeah, sometimes I like to exceed your expectations. Well, what about minimizing my exposure to the problem? That’s my other strategy for changing myself. And my example is suitcases and travel.
When Jason and I were newly wed and going on a variety of trips together, we used to share a suitcase if it was a shorter trip. And I would get really frustrated sharing a suitcase with him because when I travel, I like for my clothes to stay folded in the suitcase so that they’re not wrinkled and I can readily pick out what I want to wear. And Jason, on the other hand, finds that maintaining a neat and orderly suitcase is not worth the effort.
And he’s content if his clothes are just in or near the suitcase when we travel. And so this was driving me crazy. And I quickly learned with maturity that trying to get him to change was not going to be a viable solution.
And so instead to change myself, I have learned to minimize my exposure to the problem. We don’t share suitcases anymore. Even if we’re going out of town for one night, he packs his bag and I pack mine.
I maintain mine the way I like it and he maintains his the way he likes it. And there is no problem. Love is not self-seeking.
Constantly insisting on your way and attempting to change your spouse can cause a lot of irritation and strife and chip away at your intimacy. Reframe these problems as yours rather than your spouse’s and change yourself. And the third principle in living love in our marriage is bearing burdens with love.
First Corinthians 13 says that love bears up under anything and everything that comes. And to bear up means to bear up by covering, to keep off something that threatens. Jason and I have shared this principle of bearing burdens with love during much of our marriage when we, one of us, one or the other of us was studying for graduate school or licensing exams of various sorts.
A Life Shaped by God’s Word
And we would take on the burdens of managing the household to keep off the things that threatened the other one’s study time. And so when it was my turn to study for an exam, Jason would cook and clean and pay the bills. And then we would reverse roles when it was his turn to study and therefore protect one another’s time.
Sometimes the burdens that we bear are emergent and short-lived and require bearing up with love. I think of the birth of our first child, Izzy. And after 24 hours of a daunting labor and her status being concerning, the OB recommended an emergency section and whisked me off to the operating room to protect my life and our baby’s life.
And at that point, Jason’s believing was what carried us through that situation. He bore the burden of that emergent and short-lived but life-threatening situation with love. And he prayed and fueled my peace so that we could surmount that health challenge together.
In Ecclesiastes chapter four, verses nine and 10, it says that two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow, but woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. This is a lovely benefit of a Christian marriage and also Christian relationships in general, that two are better than one because if one of us falls, the other can lift up his fellow.
That’s what we do in our marriages. We bear burdens with love. Sometimes the challenges that we face, the burdens that we face are more constant and routine.
And the one that I think of in our house is the time that I spend taking care of patients in the intensive care unit. When it is my time to go on service for several weeks in a row, it is a burdensome time for my family. And Jason and I are committed to me living the word and loving people through this relationship that I have with patients.
And so we have found a way to manage the burden, but it is a burden. And we’ve had to believe God for solutions to bear the challenge. We found when I’m on service that it’s best if we minimize our evening commitments.
Sometimes we purchase prepared meals to eliminate that variable from the week. We get help with the children from family and friends that are close by when needed, and we get help cleaning the house. And in particular, on my day off each week, we are very intentional about getting refreshed and spending time together as a family and as a couple.
This is a burden that my family bears with love and that Jason bears the brunt of with love on a constant and routine basis. And these strategies have helped us be able to routinely go through that challenge and for him to bear that burden routinely with love. When I’m challenged to live love in my marriage, I return again and again to 1 Corinthians 13 for precious wisdom from God about how to live love in my marriage.
I’m inspired to grow in living love in my marriage through the living epistles of Christian marriages that I encounter. In our marriage, we strive to show unconditional kindness, to change ourselves rather than our spouse, and to bear burdens with love. How do you live love in your marriage and how could you grow in living love? We can both be inspired and inspire others by the living epistle of our Christian marriages.
Key Takeaways
- In our marriage, we strive to show unconditional kindness, to change ourselves rather than our spouse, and to bear burdens with love.
- Jason and I have a great marriage because of living love in our marriage.
- We change ourselves rather than our spouse, and we bear burdens with love.
- And yet many of us enter marriage thinking that we are going to be able to change various things about our spouse.
- In a marriage relationship in humility, we need to count our spouse more significant than ourselves and be willing to yield on unimportant things.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the main message of “Living Love in Our Christian Marriage”?
Dr. Jackie Patterson examines “Living Love in Our Christian Marriage” through 1 Corinthians 13, Hebrews 10, showing how love, marriage, spouse shape a believer’s relationship with God, daily choices, and service to others.
Which scriptures are central to this teaching?
The teaching draws especially from 1 Corinthians 13, Hebrews 10.
How can believers apply this teaching?
In a marriage relationship in humility, we need to count our spouse more significant than ourselves and be willing to yield on unimportant things.
Scripture References
1 Corinthians 13; Hebrews 10
This text was prepared from the teaching audio or source document. Please verify scripture references against your own Bible.
