What Is Marital Love in Light of the Gospel?

This was way too good to improve on, so I just had to share!

22 Descriptions of Marital Love
By Paul Tripp

1. Love is being willing to have your life complicated by the needs and struggles of your husband or wife without impatience or anger.

2. Love is actively fighting the temptation to be critical and judgmental toward your spouse, while looking for ways to encourage and praise.

3. Love is the daily commitment to resist the needless moments of conflict that come from pointing out and responding to minor offenses.

4. Love is being honest and approachable in times of misunderstanding, and being more committed to unity than you are to winning, accusing, or being right.

5. Love is a daily commitment to admit your sin, weakness, and failure and to resist the temptation to offer an excuse or shift the blame.

6. Love means being willing, when confronted by your spouse, to examine your heart rather than rising to your defense or shifting the focus.

7. Love is a daily commitment to grow in love so that the love you offer to your husband or wife is increasingly selfless, mature, and patient.

8. Love is being unwilling to do what is wrong when you have been wronged but to look for concrete and specific ways to overcome evil with good.

9. Love is being a good student of your spouse, looking for his physical, emotional, and spiritual needs so that in some way you can remove the burden, support him as he carries it, or encourage him along the way.

10. Love means being willing to invest the time necessary to discuss, examine, and understand the problems that you face as a couple, staying on task until the problem is removed or you have agreed upon a strategy of response.

11. Love is always being willing to ask for forgiveness and being committed to grant forgiveness when it is requested.

12. Love is recognizing the high value of trust in a marriage and being faithful to your promises and true to your word.

13. Love is speaking kindly and gently, even in moments of disagreement, refusing to attack your spouse's character or assault his or her intelligence.

14. Love is being unwilling to flatter, lie, manipulate, or deceive in any way in order to co-opt your spouse into giving you what you want or doing something your way.

15. Love is being unwilling to ask your spouse to be the source of your identity, meaning and purpose, or inner sense of well-being, while refusing to be the source of his or hers.

16. Love is the willingness to have less free time, less sleep, and a busier schedule in order to be faithful to what God has called you to be and to do as a husband or wife.

17. Love is a commitment to say no to selfish instincts and to do everything that is within your ability to promote real unity, functional understanding, and active love in your marriage.

18. Love is staying faithful to your commitment to treat your spouse with appreciation, respect, and grace, even in moments when he or she doesn't seem to deserve it or is unwilling to reciprocate.

19. Love is the willingness to make regular and costly sacrifices for the sake of your marriage without asking anything in return or using your sacrifices to place your spouse in your debt.

20. Love is being unwilling to make any personal decision or choice that would harm your marriage, hurt your husband or wife, or weaken the bond of trust between you.

21. Love is refusing to be self-focused or demanding but instead looking for specific ways to serve, support, and encourage, even when you are busy or tired.

22. Love is daily admitting to yourself, your spouse, and God that you are not able to love this way without God's protecting, providing, forgiving, rescuing, and delivering grace.

What is the Gospel?

The Gospel (Jesus, and the amazing work that He, the God-Man did through His life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and second coming) is not a "get out of hell free" card. It is not a "get into heaven free" card. It is not a "get away from the devil and sin free" card. It is most definitely not a "get prosperous in this life free" card.

The Gospel is the truth that shows us our sinful state (both volitionally and non-volitionally) before a holy God.
The Gospel is the truth that shows us we are in need of a perfect substitute who lived the perfect life that we, as both naturally and willfully sinful creatures, are not able to live.
The Gospel is the truth that shows us that we need a perfect substitute who is able to take the wrath of God for us, which we incurred by our willful disobedience to His holy standard, if we are to survive.
The Gospel is the truth that shows us Who that perfect substitute, set up by almighty God, is.
The Gospel is the truth that reveals that by taking our sins on Himself, that perfect substitute innocently bore our sins and was punished for the crimes we perpetrated against our holy Creator.
The Gospel is the truth that shows us that when our perfect substitute died and was buried, He took all of our sins to the grave with Him, forever burying them.
The Gospel is the truth that shows us that by raising Himself from the dead, our perfect substitute enabled us to be free from the bonds of sin, death, and hell.
The Gospel is the truth that shows us that our perfect substitute ascended to the Father to sit at His right hand, while at the same time leaving us a Comforter, who guides us into all truth.
The Gospel is the truth that shows us that our perfect substitute (Jesus Christ) is coming back to this earth someday to rapture His saints, and ultimately set up His kingdom, where His saints will be finally free from every aspect of the curse of sin.

Our reaction to the Gospel must not be one of indifference. It must not be one of light-heartedness. It must not be one of disbelief. It must not be one of a disregarding spirit. 
Our reaction must not be to pray a simple prayer. It must not be to superstitiously "ask Jesus into our hearts." It must not be to desire heaven or any other benefits of the Gospel.

Our reaction to the Gospel must be one of trembling, realizing that we are under the condemnation of a holy God because we have violated His nature.
Our reaction to the Gospel must be one of repentance, changing how we see our sins and selfishness as we understand the severity of our depravity.
Our reaction to the Gospel must be one of crying out to God, fully relying and throwing ourselves on the mercy of God because of the work our substitute (Jesus) did on our behalf.
Our reaction to the Gospel must be one of trust, resting in the knowledge that the work Jesus did for us is sufficient to pacify the wrath of God, make us accepted into God's family, translate us from the kingdom of darkness in to the kingdom of light, and ultimately free us from the bonds of sin and death forever.
Our reaction to the Gospel must be one of humility, realizing that the holy, righteous God of the universe took on Himself the form of a servant and humbled Himself even unto death for sinful man.
Our reaction to the Gospel must be one of remembrance, always calling to our minds the fact that we are sinful creatures who have been shown mercy when we did not deserve it.
Our reaction to the Gospel must be one of cultivation, cultivating in us the mind of Christ, Who had the right to revile when He was reviled, Who had the right to reject when He was rejected, yet chose to give Himself a ransom for His rebellious creation.
Our reaction to the Gospel must be one of mercy, showing mercy to others when they wrong us, when they hurt us, when they revile and reject us, because we ourselves have been shown mercy by the Father.
Our reaction to the Gospel must be one of action, not only in telling others of the suffering substitutionary Saviour, but also in daily walking in remembrance and in light what was done for us.

Why Me? Why Now?

The Lord God Almighty, Creator of the universe, Saviour of mankind, Judge of the nations, Lion of Judah, Lamb of glory, reigning King, and righteous Servant saw fit twenty and some odd years ago to place a me into a loving, Christian home. I was born in the 80's, had my childhood in the 90's, was gloriously translated into the kingdom of righteousness in 1998, grew up in the first decade of the 2000's, and have come to a much fuller understanding of our Lord and His grace since the turn of the last decade.

I surrendered my life to Him when I was eleven years old. Since then, life has taken me through many, many, many ups and downs. In fact, there have been dozens of times in which I have wished I could just get off the roller coaster all together! But through it all, God has been faithful to me! He has never left me, nor forsaken me, and I daresay that I have learned the most from Him through the bad times rather than the good.


So why me? God has given me a desire to write. I enjoy it! I think more Christians need to be writing the biblical truth! And besides...I need to study more!!
Why now? God has shown me the imperative state in which we find American Christianity. Our nation is full of false teachers, watered-down theology, and we are plagued by post-modernism.

I am not sure that I can make a difference in this world...in fact, I know that I cannot. But I do know my God. And HE can do anything. Having a better understanding of Him, His nature, and how to live in the Gospel will only further equip me to glorify Him through my life. And that is really all I want!