Holy Love

Driving home on the highway the other day, I suddenly found myself thinking about my wife...specifically about how I've been loving her lately. I started replaying recent scenarios in my head where she asked me to do something, and I did it, but if I'm honest, I had a pretty sorry attitude about it! If she could've heard the unspoken phrases inside my head, it woulda been on like Donkey Kong!!

Anyhow, for some reason that passage from Ephesians came trickling into my cranial cavity: "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her." (Eph 5:25) I started thinking about what that meant--to love my wife "just as Christ also loved the church."

Christ loved the church SO much that He gave His life for it; He died for all people, in the hope that they would put their faith in Him as Lord and Savior. BUT here's the kicker: He did it without any promise or guarantee that ANYONE would ever put their faith in Him. He went to the cross willingly out of love for us knowing inside of Himself that it might not be accepted by any. That is a love that I do not possess or understand, but I want to.

The word "holy" has come to mean something more to me in the last few months. I used to think that it meant "exceptionally good, better than the rest," and that somehow I could achieve more holiness in my life by living well (following the rules, doing what I know I should, etc.). But I think there's a lot more to holiness than that. When we say God is holy, I think it means that He is altogether otherly; everything about Him is on a different plane, a higher dimension, a level of purity and goodness that we can never fully comprehend in this life.

So as I drove that day, I started to ask God to help me love with the holy love that He has already shown us. The kind of love that doesn't act out of any kind of selfish ambition, but simply seeks to love because I want to...because I love my wife, and I want her to know it everyday. And when I reach the end of my life and stand before God, if I can be proud of nothing else, I want to stand there in humble and reverent pride knowing that I loved my wife "just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her."

Have you taken a love inventory lately?