A study some years ago found that about nine-in-ten Americans (88 percent) cited love as the primary reason for getting married. It was more important than the idea of making a lifelong commitment, or companionship, and certainly prioritized over the monetary and tax benefits associated with marriage. When it comes to getting married, love truly is the glue that makes relationships last. But what do you do when the feelings of love go away?
In the Bible, true love is something that is fixed more than it is felt. It is stabilized by the contract, or covenant, that binds two people together. There are different kinds of covenants in the Bible, but generally speaking we might define a covenant as an arrangement between two people or parties that creates a new kind of relationship. In these covenant relationships, there are often certain obligations that each party assumes. Think for example of the promise to love for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, and so on. Marriage is meant to be rooted in a pledged covenant love.
The Bible talks about this kind of “love contract” more than you might think, and there’s even a special word for it in the Old Testament. Moses told Israel, “Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations” (Deut. 7:9). The phrase “steadfast love” translates the Hebrew verb hesed. It’s the same word used when God made a covenant with King David, promising that his hesed would never depart from David’s house (2 Sam. 7:15). It’s even used in the description of God’s marriage to Israel in Hosea 2 where God pledged, “I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy” (v. 19).
Marital love is a hesed kind of love, not to be confused with the feelings of “being in love.” C. S. Lewis helped to clarify this distinction in his book Mere Christianity,
Ceasing to be in love need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this sense, as distinct from being in love is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask and receive from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other. . . . They can retain this love even when each would easily if they allowed themselves, be “in love” with someone else. Being in love first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.
This kind of covenant relationship modeled after God’s steadfast love for his people ensures that earthly marriages can endure the ebb and flow of feelings. But more than that, it should comfort us in those moments when we question God’s love for us. God doesn’t love you today and stop loving you tomorrow. His love for his people is contractual, grounded in what’s called the new covenant (Jer. 31:31–34). This promise to love was sealed by the Bridegroom’s very blood (Heb. 9:11–28) and is as sure as the bread we hold in our hands every time we take Communion. Rather than question whether or not God truly loves us, we are called by Christ on the basis of his gospel to rest in believing that he does. May our love for one another, especially in marriage, take for its example the steadfast love of Christ.
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