What does the Bible say about relationships?

There is a constraint — a compelling power — in the love of Christ. Under that constraint there is a spontaneity of progress and response. We have experienced the compassionate love of Christ. Our hearts have been touched by it and we are Christians because it has laid hold of us. If the truth of Christianity is to be practised and maintained by us we need the constraining love of Christ to motivate us.

We shall not love because we ought; we shall not serve because we should. There is no legal, servile, bondage here. We shall love, we shall serve, we shall live to Him because we cannot help it. The constraint of His love which on the one hand reduces us to the lowest level, so blesses us that we respond to Him as the flower opens to the rising sun.

The perfectness of God's love toward His saints is seen in the bringing them to be like Himself. The sovereign grace of God puts the saint into the same place as Christ, that we may have the same kind of fellowship with the Father that Christ had.

If my heart has seized the truth that God as a Father is acting in grace towards me, there is no place for fear... perfect love casteth out fear.

To be devoid of that love is to be devoid of eternal life — of life in the Son of God. "He that loves not his brother abides in death." There may be a high religious profession, and a zeal for Christianity so-called, but to be destitute of love for the brethren is to be destitute of divine life.

Love to God and to one another is inseparable. "Everyone that loves Him that has begotten loves Him also that is begotten of Him." He that loves not his brother whom he has seen cannot have love to God whom he has not seen... "And this commandment have we from Him, that he that loves God love also his brother."

It is cheering and edifying to see the way the apostles expressed their love for the brethren in their epistles. This stands out in vivid contrast to the cold statements of officials in religious documents today. The apostles showed zealous care for the flock; and they also preached the gospel with untiring earnestness; whilst, to them, all those who belonged to the assembly were brethren beloved, for whom, writes one apostle, "we ought to lay down our lives," because the Son of God laid down His life for us.

The only healthy state of any member is getting blessing from every other member... The Lord has arranged the church not after the pattern of ever so many captains over so many companies, which is the pattern of the religious world. There it is the one man surrounded by the persons who look up to him. But in the church according to God's order it is wholly and manifestly different.

Those members of the body engage us which seem to be more feeble. Suppose a person has some member that is weak, what is the effect? Why you take more care of the weak member instead of slighting its being so.

"Ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular." That is, if he looked at them as a whole, they were Christ's body; if individually, they were Christ's members.

Marriage is like a finger pointing to the union of Christ and the Church, and what a poor-hearted thing he must be who, with the arm of a wife pressing on his own, has never thought of it as pointing to the love of the Lord Jesus Christ for that Church for whom He gave Himself, and which He is to present to Himself without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing.

Christ became the shelter of the Church. That is a solemn word, when one looks around the world on all the miseries of domestic life, and sees how little the husbands know how to be the shelter of the wives; how little, as individual Christians, we know how to walk like Christ.

The wife... is never commanded to love her husband. It is taken for granted that she will do so; and, as a matter of fact, she seldom fails in this direction. Even though she may be unequally yoked — be united to one who has not the least sympathy with her holiest feelings, and receive little but unkindness, her love will survive the harshest treatment. Crushed and trodden under foot, it will spring up and greet the first display of kindness with a forgiving embrace. It is a perennial fountain. But with the husband it is often otherwise. With fewer of the tender emotions, engrossed by his daily occupations, and exposed, it may be, to severer temptations, his danger is to forget his responsibility to love — or at least to manifest his love to — his chosen wife.

Love, and love only, should be the motive of the choice; and love must cement and beautify the union when formed. The whole element of the married life should be love... His love must endure — survive all trials, unweariedly seeking to draw his wife closer and closer to himself, and ever keeping before him the object of a union which, as it has sprung from, can only be cemented by, an unchanging and indefatigable love.

Let therefore the oneness of the union — they two shall be one flesh — be apprehended, and love will follow; for the husband will then no more consider his wife as distinct from, but as a part of himself. Thus whatever touches her, will touch him; and his self-love, moving now in a wider circle, includes her, and all that affects and concerns her, within its embrace.

"Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them." (Col. 3:19.) Many a husband who truly loves his wife drops, in moments of unwatchfulness, when out of the presence of God, hasty words, which are as bitter as gall to a tender heart.

It may seem to some as if the duty of the wife, as so explained, were one of the hard sayings difficult to receive. And to nature, no doubt, it would be often impossible. But mark the provision made for this in the Word: "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord." Thus the Lord Himself is brought before the mind of the wife; and we all know that things which in themselves are irksome and indeed intolerable are rendered light and joyous when done unto the Lord.

It is "without the word" that the husband is to be won by the conversation (walk, deportment, demeanour, whole manner of life) of the wife... the calm beauty of a life reflecting in the power of the Spirit the gentleness, meekness, and humility of Christ, would constitute, in the order and blessing of God, a far mightier appeal than her words.

The force of the statement therefore cannot in any way be diminished, that the family of Noah was delivered from the judgment of the flood because of the faith of its head... Thus the whole household was brought, in the grace of God, out from under the judgment, and placed upon the new earth, because of the faith of Noah.

Where there is a real affection which acknowledges God and all the relations in which He has placed us with Himself, it is absolutely impossible that a Christian should allow himself to marry a worldly person, without violating all his obligations towards God and towards Christ. If a child of God allies himself to an unbeliever, it is evident that he leaves Christ out of the question, and that he does so voluntarily in the most important event of his life.

How can two walk together except they be agreed? If not, they must first yield to worldliness and then take pleasure in it; but this sad result is lost sight of when they first place themselves in the position which renders it inevitable.

We have to come out from that blessed place, and, according to the new man, take up on earth, in the power of the Spirit, every responsibility devolving upon us, by virtue of our natural ties and relationships. It is therefore as heavenly men that we have to fill our respective places in the family and household. Thus every relationship we sustain should be simply a sphere for the unfolding of Christ, for the display of what He is and what He was when down here upon the earth.