Karen Vincent

Redemptive love, in the context of marriage, means reflecting Jesus by doing the right thing--even in response to the wrong thing.

Ninety-five percent of the marriage counseling I've done for the last twenty-five years has involved listening to husbands and wives trying to justify the things they've done wrong. In their minds, whatever they've done is OK, because it's a response to something their spouse has done.

But if we are to reflect Jesus Christ in our marriage, we have to follow His example. 1 Peter 2:22 says "He committed no sin." In marriage, you cannot sin, even if you have been sinned against.

I know of a couple who had been married for 25 years. On the outside, they appeared to be a good Christian couple. They weren't on the verge of divorce, but they did have a lot of anger bottled up between them. This came out when a crisis finally compelled them to resolve their issues.

The problem was that each of them had been sinning in response to the other. The husband felt dishonored and disrespected, so he decided to invest all his emotions in his work. The wife felt as if she were not special or important--it was cleared that the husband loved his work more than his family--so she decided to get her emotional needs met by raising her kids.

Both the husband and wife remained faithful to each other, physically, but they purposefully withheld their emotions from each other. The result was a marriage with no intimacy or passion. Neither was willing to admit their sin. They did the wrong thing to each other, on purpose, and justified it because of what the other person had done.

But redemptive love does the right thing in response to the wrong thing. Do not sin in response to sin. Relationships need a Redeemer.

A second aspect of redemptive love means refusing to use your mouth to seek revenge. 1 Peter 2:22-23 says of Jesus, "...there was no deceit found in His mouth and while being verbally abused He did not verbally abuse in return."

You cannot seek revenge with your speech. A vast majority of marital problems occur because of what we say in response to something that has hurt us. Redemptive love has to shut down that instinct to fight back with our response.

Early in our marriage I was very dominating over Karen. When she made me mad, I would know exactly what to say to hurt her back. It would devastate her. It never fixed anything.

My verbal abuse made our problems worse and worse. Not only did Karen not trust me, but she reached the point where she didn't like me.

Proverbs 18:21 says, "The tongue has the power of life and death." I can use my mouth to destroy someone, or I can use it in a more life-giving way.

This doesn't mean refusing to discuss a serious problem. Sometimes redemption means bringing things out in the open. But what if you do the right thing and share how you feel and your spouse doesn't respond?

That's when you have a choice. The wrong choice is making the decision to inflict punishment: Do it my way or you'll pay the price. That is not redemptive love.

Redemptive love responds with a gentle, Christ-like spirit. It does the right thing in response to the wrong thing, and it trusts God for the results.

Blessings!