Chapter 9: Love the Wife's Choice

Chapter 9 of The Excellent Wife is, in my opinion, the key chapter of the book. I expected to write volumes. Instead I find myself starting over again and again...what is it I really want to say? I feel completely and utterly inadequate to the task. I am sure this is a good thing. So instead of going through the chapter and perhaps selecting key points to highlight I will do something a bit different. I will exhort you to make the choice to purpose in your heart to practice love in your house.

The following verse in Romans has been my key verse or dare I say mantra for the last 8 years or so.

8 Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not bear false witness,”“You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

This verse and others like it have changed my relationship with those dear to me. Love is the debt that is always owed. Without love I am truly a sounding brass or a clanging symbol in my house that all shudder to have around. When I make love a practice, I realize that love really is the bond of perfection. It is the one thing we can do to fulfill the law completely. Also, the more I attempt to make a practice of love, the more I realize how very very much my love falls short of the love that God wants us to have for each other. I feel overwhelmed and condemned like Paul in Romans 7 and rejoice that there is no condemnation in Christ.

I don't know about you but recalling all the things the Bible tells me I should and shouldn't do sometimes gets laborious. It is comforting that the only thing I really have to remember is love.

I have also memorized 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8. In putting on love toward others I have never had to recite further than love suffers long and is kind to be convicted. I say it silently to myself many times a day to renew my mind and get my thought processes traveling in the right direction again. There are many many other verses that can do this ....Get out your concordance or your Thomas Chain reference and write them all down...carry them with you...read them when your will falters.

It would be great if love were our natural response toward others. Unfortunately, it is not. In fact, we don't even often have loving feelings toward those around us. Most of the time our thoughts are on how they can love us. Since there thoughts are probably on themselves also, we are at an impasse. Biblical love, however, is a command. Our response therefore, is a matter of obedience.

You can read chapter 9, read my entry and choose not to purpose in your heart to practice love at your house. Choosing that road will keep your pride intact but will draw you further away from God's ideal or best for your marriage. It will also not bring you nigh unto the Lord. It is a choice that will be filled with your own way and getting what you want, but its end will not be what God wanted and as such will not be God glorifying.

As Paul says the way of love is the excellent way. Making the choice to love will bring humility which will not only draw you close to your Lord but also to your husband. It will be a choice that will have an eternal effect on all you meet. A choice that will make you shine as a light in this dark world. A choice that will always put you in God's perfect will. Choose today to be that wife that speaks gently to those around her with the law of kindness on her tongue. Who even when sorely tried, makes that second mile investment...not so much for the person who she does the act for but for herself...to break the hold that selfishness, pride and bitterness has on her. Make no mistake...a second mile investment is a step of faith. Most of the time they will go totally against what the world might tell you to do and your feelings. Do it anyway and be a blessing and be blessed!

If you are anything like me, you make excuses as to why you couldn't respond to someone in love..but remember the Bible says that God's grace is sufficient for you ...you are without excuse. Bitterness, selfishness and pride are sin, as is making excuses for them. So here is a previous entry to help you with this:

Through offenses I have learned more about God’s love.The answer to them: Here it is in a nutshell: LOVE. The bible says that love is the greatest commandment, it is the debt that is always owed (Romans 13), that it suffers long and is kind....that it never fails.(Cor 13) I interpret the never fails part like this. Responding in love always has an effect. It always bears fruit. You CANNOT go wrong by responding in love. Another verse that helps keep me from getting offended is in Philippians. In 4:5 it says to let your gentleness be made known to all men. That word gentleness is filled with meaning in the Greek. I got this list from John Macarthur and it helped me through many an offense...

Gentleness: This means learning to accept less than you might think you are due...this is a tough one for me...Let your gentleness ....we can replace this word with the following: Get ready for a long list... I needed one so that there were no loopholes. Let your contentment, forbearing spirit, sweet reasonableness, bigheartedness, good will...bending beyond what is expected to grant them good, magnanimity, charity toward the faults of others, mercy toward failures of others, not being personally offended by the faults of others..be known to all men. It is the kind of gentleness that can submit to injustice, disgrace, mistreatment, without hatred, without malice, without retaliation, without vengeance.

The best way to look at it...it is the graciousness of humility which basically says you may have mistreated me, you may have misjudged me, you may have misrepresented me, you may have not given me what I deserve or given me what I don’t deserve, you may have ruined my reputation with some, acted in hostility towards me, I may be the recipient of your inequity, injustice, and mistreatment but I humbly, graciously accept it...Christ still reaches out in love...

Wow...we really are without excuse. But the blessings and joy you receive by responding biblically to offenses in your life will be far reaching. Specifics will follow in later chapters, but responding to others in love is the foundation...remembers love is the debt that we always owe and that it fulfills the law.


In closing, 1st Peter 1:22 says this: "Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart." John MacArthur tells us that this is the love of choice, the kind of love that can respond to a command. The word fervently means to be stretched to the breaking point...like a rubber band. I don't know about you but I know I always fall short of that one. Our souls have been purified. We do have the capacity to love like this. Let's exhibit it by meeting others at the point of their need.

Praying that we would have fervent love for one another...