John 5:19 So Jesus explained, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does ( NLT)
A MODEL OF LOVE (B)
The subject of love is inexhaustive especially If we consider it from God's perspective. Man cannot fully fathom the love of God in its entirety but we may consider how God's love manifest in various forms and pattern ours after it.
Romans 5:8 says "But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners". Hey! We use this scripture for evangelistic purposes but it has wider application. Can you see something relating to the fatherhood of God here?
God the father loved us while we were yet sinners, in our state of imperfection, in our uncomely state when we do not have any reason to be loved, yet he loved us. He demonstrated that love by sending Christ to die for us so that we can come into a mutual relationship with him. This is deep.
God the father did two things in the scripture under discourse. The first is loving when the loved does not deserve it while the second entails making sacrifices for relationship to be restored. This is what God expect from fathers and by extension, husbands.
Your wife and children may not be deserving of your love due to their imperfections yet you are expected to love them in their imperfect state. That is the way God the father love us. It is the pattern to follow.
Sometimes, when I listen to some men talk about their wives and their issues, they speak as If it is only their wives that are imperfect while other women out there are perfect. They go to the extent of comparing their wives with their mother and they say things like: "Our mothers are not like this. Women of nowadays are...". Why can't they marry their mothers?
Such men forget so soon that they made a choice to marry their wives. They focus so much on their imperfections to the point where they withdraw from loving as they should. No, it shouldn't be. If you complain every now and then about your wife, we need to question your sense of judgement about the choice of a wife you married. It was your choice.
Some men call their wives fools and all sort of derogatory names. If you call your wife a fool, then you are the bigger fool. You saw a fool who will do your life no good and still went ahead to marry her, then you are the bigger fool here. The choice of whom you marry reflect your sense of judgement.
Start learning to love the choice you made. You are to love without condition or reservation. That is how God love us. If you always focus on your wife's imperfections, you will kill your love for her in no time.
Aside lust and quest for unholy adventure, one of the reasons adultery and extra marital affairs thrives in our society is because some men are looking for what they think is missing in their spouses in other women. In the process, they get trapped and discover the something worse.
The second aspect of that God-kind of love is sacrifice leading to transformation and restoration of relationship. You are to love her into transformation.
*Love will not leave the beloved the way she is. When God saw that sin was the problem of his beloved, he swung into action to solve the sin problem.
Love her the way she is but not for her to remain the way she is. That is where sacrifice is needed on your part. You are to wash her daily with the water of the word until she's transformed( Eph 5:26).
Loving like God the father is a lifetime pursuit, it is a progressive journey not a state.
Just as we are transformed daily into the image of Christ as we fellowship with the Spirit, so it is in matters of love: "And AS WE LIVE IN GOD, OUR LOVE GROWS MORE PERFECT..." ( 1 John 4:17 NLT). A vital connection with God in continuous fellowship is the only way to grow perfect in love.
Men who are not in Christ cannot love like Christ. Men in Christ that are not in fellowship with him cannot love like him. Stay in fellowship with Christ.