Love One Another Just Like Jesus Did

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” – John 13:34-35

Someone made a comment to me the other day complimenting me on how I show my love to my wife. My response was “I am supposed to love my wife in an understanding way.  The Word says I am to study my wife.” (1 Peter 3:7) I said that because I wanted to redirect the credit to the Lord. I thought about that conversation later. Loving others, in particular our spouses, is a spiritual mandate.  Loving them like Jesus loved requires that we be submitted to the will of God.  It is God’s design that men and women form an intimate relationship.  That relationship is supposed to reflect our relationship with God. Dedicated to one. Sacrificial – placing ourselves second – the other first. Founded on faith and our relationship with the Father through the Son.  Not unevenly yoked.  I have seen so many people of faith choose an unbelieving partner because they desperately wanted a relationship and were not willing to wait on God to lead them to it. There is a dynamic between a man and a woman that cannot be experienced  apart from a proper relationship with God.  Submitted to the Father and submitted to one another.

The idea of mutual submission stretches beyond the marriage relationship to all relationships with other Believers, but it should start with your marriage. 

“Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” – Ephesians 5:25

“No greater love has one man than this, but to lay down his life for his friends.” – John 15:13

“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.” – Ephesians 5:22

There is something called the Dupuy fighting position. These were modified foxholes with overhead cover and a berm in front permitting weapon's fire from the sides. The fighting positions were configured in what was called a "lazy W" where each hole support the ones on each side to cover the blind spot in the front. The idea was that the two people in each foxhole would protect the people in the foxhole next to them.  It works so long as each one is faithful to their responsibility and don’t panic in the heat of battle and choose to look to their own safety and survival.  In a similar way, we are to look out for each other.  I look to your needs and you look to mine. Mutual submission in the context of spiritual submission to the Lord. It works so long as each one is faithful to their responsibility and don’t panic in the heat of battle and choose to look to their own safety and survival.

I wrote about Spiritual paradoxes yesterday. Living the life that God calls us to and having relationships that reflect God’s intent and design requires faith and trust and obedience to the Father. Simply getting married in a church is not what makes a marriage.  The point is not to legitimize living together.  The point is to reflect our relationship with the Father and point people to Jesus by the way we love one another.

“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”