Loving one’s partner unconditionally is the most unreasonable gift one can give. It is foolishness in human terms and doesn’t work in the natural order of reciprocity. It opens us up to being taken advantage of. God still did it for you and me…
1 Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Ephesians 5:1-2, 21 NIV
Our community group just started a series on marriage. The leader asked me to read Ephesians 5:1-2 out loud for the group the other night. Then he asked what we thought of the idea that in marriage we should give everything with no expectation of receiving anything back. I replied that it is completely unreasonable and violates the principle of reciprocity.
My inner voice was asking, ‘Who can live in a relationship in which one person gives and the other takes? Well, the person who takes can. Forever. Especially if they lack a conscience and real love for their partner. The giver is profiled for dark movies about how glass can be ground into dust and added to stews and sauces to slowly chew up the innards of their mate,’ (which doesn’t fact check as a reliable method, by the way).
The leaders eyes got bigger. Someone else went on to give their opinion, saving all of us from my human perspective. But the human perspective is that this is hogwash. This doesn’t pass the smell test. Give without getting? That’s not a relationship.
Go back to verse 1-2. When we act in this proposed one-sided giving model, we are imitating God. Follow God’s example. God was dealing with a people he created in his image to have relationship with them. They became cold to him as they went their own ways. They knew better.
So God sent his only son to earth to live and then die to accept the penalty for our sins. He did so while we were in an estranged state, acting as his enemies. In fact, he continues to love each of us constantly, without ceasing or wavering, even though most of us don’t love him back.
God is the example of the one who does the unreasonable thing, in human terms, for the sake of entering and restoring a love relationship with his bride (as the church is called in scripture). The fact that God does this doesn’t make it any easier for humans to do it, but the fact that God will empower us through the Holy Spirit to be like him makes the impossible possible.
Amen.
Marc Kinna
marckinna 