Love That Does Not Insist on Its Own Way

Love is patient and is kind; love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud, doesn’t behave itself inappropriately, doesn’t seek its own way, is not provoked, takes no account of evil; doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7, WEB)

Paul's description of love is read at so many weddings that a man can stop hearing it. Love is patient and kind, Paul writes, it does not insist on its own way, it bears all things and hopes all things and endures all things. Set that beside pornography and the contrast is hard to miss, because the two could not be pointed in more opposite directions.

Lust is impatient, it demands its own way immediately, and it endures nothing and bears no one. It is love turned inward until only the self remains, a hunger that dresses itself up as desire but cares for no one it consumes. A husband who has lived this way for years may look at Paul's words and feel he is being shown a country he has never visited, a way of loving that seems to belong to better men than himself.

The good news buried in the passage is that this love is describing God's own posture toward you, patient and kind toward a man who has insisted on his own way for a long time. Everything Paul says love does, God has been doing toward you the whole time you were failing. He has borne with you, hoped for you, endured your worst seasons, and he is not out of patience with you now. Ask him to work that same patient, self-giving love into you toward your wife, a little at a time, because it is not a thing you can talk yourself into. Ask, and keep asking, until the man she lives with begins to resemble the love Paul wrote about rather than the appetite that has ruled you. That change is slow, but it is the very change God is committed to.