Our Secret Paradise: Redemptive Love

A good marriage needs love, but a great marriage needs redemptive love. That’s the kind of love that reflects Jesus by doing the right thing even in response to the wrong thing.

Occasionally a husband or wife will respond to a problem the right way: by talking it over. Maybe you approach your spouse and say “What you did really bothered me and I would like to talk about it because it really hurts me.”

But what if they don’t respond to your honesty and transparency?

That is when you have a choice. Will you choose redemptive love? Or will you try to punish your spouse for the slight? I’ll make you pay the price until you do it my way…until you acknowledge what I just said. I’ll withdraw from you sexually. I’ll wound you with sarcasm and bitterness.

That’s not the redemptive approach that Jesus modeled. 1 Peter 2:23 says of Jesus, “When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.”

Like Jesus, you trust God for the results. You put your faith in Him.

In the following passage, 1 Peter 3 talks about the “unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit” in women. This kind of spirit—whether in men or women—doesn’t mean becoming a mousy doormat, but it does mean taking an approach that is not aggressive and loud.

People who are aggressive and loud act that way because they believe that they are responsible for the results. A gentle and quiet spirit has faith in God to achieve the results He desires.

I believe God can heal marriages. He can change you. He can change your husband or your wife. God is able. Jesus kept entrusting himself to God, and husbands and wives need to entrust each other to God, too.

You have the right to say anything you need to say in your marriage—whether problems or complaints—as long as you say it in a loving way. The important thing isn’t what is said, but how it is enforced. Who is the enforcer?

Is it you? If you take the role of enforcer, then you are going to ruin the marriage. You will end up belittling, badgering, or verbally abusing your spouse until he or she finally acknowledges that you are right and they are wrong. But it never works.

The only way it works is if God is the enforcer. Redemptive love says I will reflect Christ and God’s love in your life. I am his partner, but it is not up to me to change you. That’s His job.

Intimidation, manipulation, domination…these are what we resort to when we are angry. They never work. They just make relationships worse and worse.

Redemptive love, however, does work. It says I am going to tell you the truth and I’m going to do it in love. I will be honest with you—it is my right—but I’ll let God be the enforcer. My job is to be honest, to love you, and to pray for you.

And what we’ll find, often, as we are praying for our spouse, is that it’s not always him or her that’s the problem. Sometimes I’m the problem. And admitting when you are the problem is at the height of redemptive love.