Can you imagine how a man can continue to truly love a woman who is mean to him?

Can you imagine how a man can continue to truly love a woman who is mean to him? Such a love may be rare, but it is the kind of a love that “suffers long,” that “bears all things, ... endures all things,” a love that “never fails” (1 Cor. 13:4-8). Don’t be surprised. That word translated as “love” is agape, which is not only the spiritual love of Christ for us--it is also conjugal love, the love of a man for a woman (see Eph. 5:25 where we read the same word in “husbands, love your wives”). That is a love beyond the “chemistry” that is mere sexual passion in a brief infatuation. It’s the kind of love similar to that of Abraham Lincoln when he gave Mary Todd a ring inscribed, “Love is eternal.”

Can you imagine the conjugal love that Jesus has for a church that He says is His “wife”? It’s a love that is more than mere pity or compassion or forgiveness; the love of a husband for a “wife” who has mistreated him when he still loves her is the kind of love that “controls” him--and that’s the love Christ has for His Bride-to-be, His church (Eph. 5:25; Rev. 19:7, 8). He does not stand toward her as a Judge, but as a Lover. True, His church is feeble, defective, and unfaithful; but He still cannot turn from her to another “woman,” mysterious as that love may be for us to understand. He simply loves “one.”

The love that is agape does not depend on the goodness or value of its object, but it creates value in its object. A heart response to that love will motivate His church to “make herself ready” for “the marriage of the Lamb.”