In his book, What Did You Expect? Redeeming the Realities of Marriage (a really fine book), Paul Tripp offers the following definition for love:
Love is willing self-sacrifice for the good of another that does not require reciprocation or that the person being loved is deserving.
From that definition, he draws two dozen implications for marriage. Among them are:
- Your love for your husband or wife is a very accurate barometer of your true love for God.
- Love is actively fighting the temptation to be critical and judgmental toward your spouse, while looking for ways to encourage and praise.
- Love is a daily commitment to admit your sin, weakness, and failure and to resist the temptation to offer an excuse or shift the blame.
- Love means you never ask your spouse to do for you what only God can do. Love never demands from your spouse spiritually what God has already given you in Christ.
- Love is staying faithful to your commitment to treat your spouse with appreciation, respect, and grace, even in moments when he or she doesn’t seem to deserve it or is unwilling to reciprocate.
- Love is daily admitting to yourself, your spouse, and God that you are not able to love this way without God’s protecting, providing, forgiving, rescuing, and delivering grace.
The book is worth reading just for the complete list.
Words of Grace 