We’re called to honor our father and mother, to lay down our life for our wife, and to love without fail the children God has blessed us to raise. And yet none of these loves should take the priority over our devotion to Christ himself. In fact, there might be times in which we must accept the costly obedience of loving Jesus more than these.
For instance, Jesus declared that his mother and brothers are those who do the will of his Father in heaven – making a sharp distinction and giving priority to those who follow God over the customary and expected claims of blood relatives. Likewise, he was very clear that if we love our father and mother, or son or daughter more than him, we’re not worthy of being his.
These are often hard teachings in our generation, as they serve as another example of living in the tension. On the one hand, it’s clear we have a duty to love our neighbor and care for those in our household. And we can’t claim that we love God while failing in our duty to love others.
All the same, this duty to others must flow from who God has called us to be, and not the other way around. We risk turning our relationships into an idol when we seek to appease others more than God.
For instance, in marriage we love our wife because we seek to imitate Christ’s love for his church. And our desire to be like Christ supersedes any romantic expectations otherwise placed on us. Of course, we remain responsive to the needs and desires of our wife. But this is still motivated primarily by our desire to please God, as we’re to love and obey him even more than her.
In the end, keep your loves in their proper priority. And our love of God must take supreme priority even over the love of those otherwise closest to us.
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