Sometimes we wonder, faced with so many counsels that the Holy Bible has to give us: what does the Bible say about marriage and family? The answer is that the Bible speaks wonderful things about marriage and family. Through this Bible study on family, we can understand that in marriage and in the family, true love must be present.
However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. (Ephesians 5:33)
Family is something so interesting, because through it we can see the great love that God has for the family. God leaves us the model of what the family should be like and tells us of its grandeur. The Word of God teaches us what the real value of the family is, values that should never be erased or modified, because the family is perfect.
The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. Then the Lord God made a deep sleep fall upon the man, and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. (Genesis 2:18-24)
It is impossible to talk about family without talking about marriage, and it is impossible to talk about marriage without talking about family. According to the dictionary, family is defined as the group of people who have degrees of kinship or affective bonds and live in the same house, forming a home. Another thing we should highlight here is the pillar of the family, which is love. According to the dictionary, love is a feeling of affection and demonstration of fondness that develops between beings who have the capacity to show it.
The family must be founded on love, because it is the central base for the existence of the family. And the Bible teaches us how we should care for our family in every way.
Love According to 1 Corinthians 13:4-8
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)
Love is Patient
When the Bible tells us that love is patient, it does not mean that loving is suffering, but on the contrary, it means that true love endures suffering. The only perfect love is the love of God, and it is this love that we should take as an example. We well know that any marriage and any family is subject to going through difficulties, difficulties that generate pain, but the love of the family remains intact.
The representation of this “patient” love is in the marriage vows, where it is said: “I promise to be with you in joy and in sorrow, in health and in sickness, in wealth and in poverty, loving you, respecting you, and being faithful to you all the days of my life, until death do us part.”
Have you noticed that everything said above is followed by “joys” but also by “sufferings”? “Patient” love remains intact when financial life is good and intact when financial life is bad, remains intact when we are employed, going to the best restaurants, and remains intact when a simple cake has the same joy as a restaurant. Because life is like stock market graphs: today we are in the green, tomorrow in the red. In other words, “patient” love is discreet in prosperity and alive in scarcity.
Love is Kind and Does Not Envy
Those who love God desire to see the good of their spouse, desire to love their family, and only desire and do good. In this, there are no second or bad intentions behind kind love. The true love described here knows no envy.
Envy is a strong and evil feeling that a person has of wanting to possess what belongs to others. It is a selfish feeling on someone’s part. Every action that originates from love is good and true, and never has the objective of hurting another person.
Characteristics of True Love in Marriage
Love does not boast, it is not proud. Those who love are not foolish or impulsive. Those who love do not treat the other with arrogance, because love brings with it meekness, patience, and kindness.
It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking. Love is cautious and knows the limits of decency. There is no selfishness in true love; on the contrary, those who love care about the well-being and happiness of the beloved instead of their own.
It is not easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs; does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Love is calm, understanding, and never aggressive. Love is not jealous, because trust is part of its “structure.” It is always ready to listen and understand, not to fight and condemn. It is always sincere and just, and seeks sincerity and justice.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. When we talk about love in the family, we are saying that there will be pain, there will be difficulty, and there will be waiting. But there will also be strength, there will be patience, and there will be reward.
Love and Respect in Ephesians
When we return to our anchor text in Ephesians, we can extract more information about love within the family.
However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. (Ephesians 5:33)
In the verse above, we have something to highlight: love and respect. Just as our Lord Jesus Christ loved the wife (Church) in such a way that He gave His life for her, in the same way, God expects us to care for our wife in such a way that, if necessary, we give our life for her.
God places the man as the “head of the woman.” This was the responsibility that God assigned to the man, but we can describe four pillars that must be present in the family:
- Provision for the spiritual and domestic needs of the family.
- Love, protection, security, and interest in her well-being, in the same way that Christ loves the church.
- Honor, understanding, appreciation, and consideration for the wife.
- Total loyalty and fidelity in marital life.
In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church. (Ephesians 5:28-29)
Based on the verses above, we come to a question for our reflection: do you love yourself? And perhaps you are wondering: but why is knowing if I love myself so important for my marriage or my family? The answer is simple, because it is impossible for someone who does not love themselves to truly love another person. Those who do not love themselves always put their desires first.
Have you noticed that those who do not love themselves, for example, if they have a bad financial life, will not encourage their spouse to have a better financial life? Those who do not love themselves will not encourage another to move forward, because they are not capable of stimulating themselves.
For this reason, it is important that we love ourselves, so that we can love our family. The greatest model of family love is that of Jesus for the church, a love that sets aside its own interests, that deprives itself of its glory and comfort, to give its own life in favor of its wife.
Automatically, respect and love for the husband are generated in the wife, because the church recognizes the act of love that her beloved husband performed. When we, no matter how many years we have been married or how many children we have, stop and recognize where we are going wrong and start acting differently, the marriage wins, and ultimately the family wins.
Do not let the flaws erase the qualities of your spouse and family. There is an area in our brain that, when we think something negative about our spouse, tells another story: its history. Precisely what we think are the qualities. Here we ask about the flaws, three qualities, certainly you will have an answer for all. And you can test the qualities you chose are three against the flaws you chose. What we want to simplify here is that qualities are always superior to our flaws, but when we look only at the flaws, we are prevented from seeing the qualities.
Think of two flaws and three qualities of your spouse. Which is greater, the 2 or the 3? The number three will always be greater than two. In other words, sometimes we cling so much to the flaws that we are prevented from seeing the qualities.
When we talk about marriage and family, we know that not everything will be just roses, because thorns exist and will always try to prick love. As we well know, the love from fairy tales, unfortunately, does not exist. The true love that comes from the heart of God: the original, pure, and perfect in its imperfections, the real and true love that God created.
“Barbara Flores – Love is like a small boat; to sail forward, the crew needs to be rowing in the same direction and with the same intensity. It doesn’t help if only one rows, only one commands; both need to be together, in the same frequency, the same intensity, so that when a strong wave comes, they can face it without making the boat sink. And even if the boat is leaking, they need to stay together, companions, to learn that it is possible to swim together. Love endures everything, endures a wave, an obstacle, a storm, and even when it no longer seems possible, there is always a way to save it. You need to believe, exert the heart, you need to row, re-love, love.”
