Perspective: Sacrificial Love

I share these thoughts, hoping they are of help to someone else.

Sacrificial Love

Scripture:

So the LORD God put the human into a deep and heavy sleep, and took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh over it. With the rib taken from the human, the LORD God fashioned a woman and brought her to the human being. The human said,

"This one finally is bone from my bones
and flesh from my flesh.
She will be called a woman
because from a man she was taken."

This is the reason that a man leaves his father and mother and embraces his wife, and they become one flesh.

Genesis 2:21-24 (CEB)

To lead them with strong hands
To stand up when they can't
Don't want to leave them hungry for love
Chasing things that I could give up

I'll show them I'm willing to fight
And give them the best of my life
So we can call this our home
Lead me 'cause I can't do this alone

From "Lead Me" by Sanctus Real

Not too long ago, a very popular person in the media, after a heavily publicized wedding, decided to file for divorce from her husband after less than three months of marriage. The reason she gave was "irreconcilable differences." I don't like judgmental people, and I try not to be judgmental myself, but, given the brevity of the marriage, I cannot help but think that she did not try very hard to reconcile her differences with her husband.

According to data from the Center for Disease Control, each year from 2007 to 2009, given the number of people in the United States who got married, almost half as many people got divorced.¹ I wonder if people, by and large, have lost sight of what marriage is all about. Monkish as I am, I must acknowledge that I am by no means qualified to write about marriage. Still, I feel as though I have some insights to share.

St. Paul, in the fifth chapter in the letter to the Ephesians, writes that "wives should submit to their husbands as if to the Lord."² To husbands, he says, "Love your wives just like Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her."³ Many times, this particular passage of Scripture is used by church leaders - usually male ones - to subjugate women by basically giving husbands lordship over their wives. I don't believe that this is at all what Paul intended. If you read earlier in the passage you will see that Paul is using the marital relationship as an example of how followers of Christ are called to "submit to each other out of respect for Christ."⁴

I am sure that women have heard enough about how wives are supposed to submit to their husbands, so I want to focus more so on what it means for husbands to love their wives "just like Christ loved the church." How exactly did Christ love the church? What does this kind of love look like?

Christ said that He "didn’t come to be served but rather to serve."⁵

Christ knelt down and washed His disciples' feet.⁶

Christ, as He awaited the time of His own execution, sweat blood while He prayed that He would not have to face the cross. At the same time He prayed to God, "Not My will but Your will must be done."⁷

Christ was arrested, mocked, beaten, stripped naked, and nailed on a cross to die.⁸

Jesus Christ was the Son of God, so glory, honor, and power were rightfully His. Instead He put all of that aside and Humbled himself, becoming a servant.⁹ He did things that were not becoming to a deity, such as washing dirty feet and touching diseased lepers. Christ did not want to face the cross, but was willing to go through a living hell for the sake of a fallen humanity. This is how Christ loved the church!

It is truly ironic that people try to use Paul's words to subjugate women, when Paul is actually calling husbands to a level of submissiveness greater than that to which he calls their wives. A wife is called to submit to her husband as the church submits to Christ, but, if the husband is really called to love his wife as Christ loves the church, he is called to submit to her to the extent of dying on a cross for her! The submission that Paul calls for in a marriage is mutual. Paul is calling for husbands and wives to surrender their wills to each other; he is not calling for husbands to impose their wills on their wives.¹⁰

Before I go further, I want to state that submission within marriage has nothing to do with becoming a doormat or allowing oneself to be abused in any way. Abuse of any kind is harmful not only to the abused but to the abuser as well.

In recent years, popular culture has stressed the importance of compromise in a marriage. In the sitcom Home Improvement, for example, when the lead characters Tim and Jill have a clash of wills, they end up giving up part of what they want in order to reach an agreement with each other. Compromise is a good thing, but I don't think it necessarily goes far enough. Compromise is still concerned with one getting what one wants, if not completely, then partially. What if a compromise is simply not possible? I think that what is key in a marriage is not compromise, but sacrifice.

O. Henry illustrates sacrificial love within marriage beautifully in his Christmas story "The Gift of the Magi." In this story, Della has very little money with which to buy her husband Jim a Christmas present, so she decides to sell her long, beautiful hair to a wig maker. She then goes on to buy him a platinum chain for his prized gold watch. Little does she know that Jim has sold his watch, a family heirloom, to buy her adornments for her long hair.

Both Della and Jim give up things that were important to them so that they can give Christmas gifts to each other, and, because of their sacrifices, neither of them can use the gifts they receive. At the end of the story, O. Henry notes, "Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest." The true gift they give that Christmas is in the selfless, sacrificial love that they show for each other.

I feel as though the spirit of self-sacrifice as shown in "The Gift of the Magi" has become rare in our individualistic society. Life is not always about getting we want or what we think we deserve, and I think that this is especially true in regards to marriage. Sometimes it is necessary, for love's sake, to put aside what one wants in order to do what is right for one's beloved. Both husbands and wives must put aside their own desires for the sake of the family as a whole. This is what it means for husbands and wives to submit to each other as followers of Jesus Christ.

I think that the lack of sacrificial love in our society stems partially from the fact that people often think of love as a "warm, fuzzy feeling." I believe that, though love can be felt, love is not itself a feeling. C.S. Lewis notes that a married couple is "one flesh" regardless of whether or not they are happily married.¹¹ Feelings come and go, but true love never dies. Furthermore, if you are basing a marriage or any relationship on how you feel, then the relationship is, by nature, selfish. The relationship is not about giving of yourself to the other person but about giving yourself an emotional high. True love is selfless: it is less concerned with receiving and more concerned with giving. Love is not a "warm, fuzzy feeling." In fact, true self-sacrificial love can even be painful at times.

Christ did not want to face the cross, but He loved His bride, the church, so much that he was willing to go through heartache, humiliation, pain, and even death for her. If we are to truly follow in Christ's footsteps then we must realize that life is not about getting what we want, and we must realize that love is sacrificial. In the words of St. Paul:
Love is patient, love is kind, it isn’t jealous, it doesn’t brag, it isn’t arrogant, it isn’t rude, it doesn’t seek its own advantage, it isn’t irritable, it doesn’t keep a record of complaints, it isn’t happy with injustice, but it is happy with the truth. Love puts up with all things, trusts in all things, hopes for all things, endures all things.¹²


Notes:
1 - http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr58/nvsr58_25.pdf
2 - Ephesians 5:22 (CEB)
3 - Ephesians 5:25 (CEB)
4 - Ephesians 5:21 (CEB)
5 - Matthew 20:28 (CEB)
6 - John 13:3-4
7 - Luke 22:39-44 (CEB quoted)
8 - Matthew 26:47-27:56, Mark 14:43-15:41, Luke 22:47-23:49, John 18:1-19:30
9 - Philippians 2:6-8
10 - Rob Bell. Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections between Sexuality and Spirituality. 2007, Zondervan. Chapter 6: "Worth Dying For."
11 - C.S. Lewis. The Screwtape Letters. Letter 18, paragraph 6.
12 - 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (CEB)


If you have any feedback, thoughts, stories, or even arguments to contribute, please leave comments.