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Fruit of the Spirit #3 - "The Languages of Love"

by Clancy Nixon

January 28, 2007

Church of the Holy Spirit

www.HolySpiritAnglican.org

William Shakespeare penned the memorable lines: "How do I love thee? Let me

count the ways." In that sonnet, the lover loves his beloved in so many ways that he will

can't wait to enumerate several. That is the poem of a man who has recently fallen in

love. After a few years of marriage, he might ask the same question, but with a different

meaning: "How do I love thee?" Many a confused husband is wondering how to please

his wife after the honeymoon is over, and the same goes for wives wanting to know how

to please their husbands. It's not just marriage partners, but every follower of Christ

wants to know how to fulfill Jesus' commandment in John 13:34 to love one another.

Our culture talks about love incessantly, and we talk about it in the church, too. But

where does the rubber meet the road? How do we love each other biblically?

There are few simple answers to the question of how to love each other. Since

God is love, and Jesus is God, the life of Jesus is our best example of how to love. In

John 13:34, Jesus gives this farewell command to his disciples: "As I have loved you, so

you must love one another. By this will all men know that you are my disciples, if you

love one another." Love is the mark of the church of Jesus Christ, the test of our

Christianity before an unbelieving world. This is the love with which Jesus loved his

disciples.

What does this love look like? How did Jesus love his disciples? First, Jesus loved

his disciples sacrificially. His was a limitless love. He went to the cross for you and me.

That is what Jesus means in verse 31, when he says "Now is the son of man glorified"

he was going to the cross the very next day, and he knew it. Agape love gives itself away.

Second, Jesus loved his disciples understandingly. He lived with them for three

years, and he knew them intimately. When you and I see each other occasionally on

Sundays, we see each other at our best. If you lived with me, like Ginger and Sam and

Will do, you would see my irritabilities, my foibles and my weaknesses, and I would see

yours. Jesus knew his disciples even better than your family knows you, and still he loved

them. Jesus loves us, too, just as we are.

Love begins at home. Jesus said that the world will know we are Christians by our

love for each other. The general principle is known first by its application in the specific

and more limited context. Similarly, the church will know we love one another when we

first see families love each other. Love begins at home. But it does not end there. Love

radiates from our homes to all our other relationships.

I'd like to apply these two principles of Jesus' love for us, that he loved us

sacrificially and understandingly, in a way that I have found to be very helpful, and that is

with Gary Chapman's concept of The Five Love Languages (Northfield, 1992).

Chapman's thesis is that much of our failure to love one another is not a lack of intention

to love, or even a lack of effort at loving, but rather, a lack of knowledge of how to love

particular individuals in a way that they feel loved. The problem is that we all tend to

express love in the same way that we most like to receive love. Chapman calls that way

we like to receive love our primary love language, and he believes that there are only five

basic ways that people speak and understand love on an emotional level. If your primary

love language is English, and that of your mate or family member is Chinese, then no

matter how hard you try to express love in English, they will never understand as love the

things you intend to be received as love.

A man that Chapman once met on a plane told him that he had been married and

divorced three times. In his last marriage, he fell in love and felt that his wife really loved

him. After the wedding, he says he did not change. He continued to tell her he loved her

and how beautiful she was. Soon she began to complain about things he considered petty

like not taking the garbage out or not picking up his clothes. She became very negative

about him, when before she was completely positive, and his marriage fell apart. This

man was speaking the love language of Affirming Words, but his wife was telling him

that she needed to hear the language of Acts of Service. He was speaking love to her, and

he was sincere, but she did not understand his language. It was as different as English

and Chinese.

We must be willing to learn the primary love language of our mate and children

and siblings if we are to effectively communicate love. If we don't, then the emotional

love tank of our mate, our children or our siblings is likely to run low. When a child's

love tank is low, he is likely to misbehave, in a misguided search for the love he is

missing. The same is true in marriage. Misbehavior, withdrawal, misbehavior and harsh

words often come from a mate's empty love tank. The tank is often empty because we are

filling it with the wrong fuel.

"Now the object of love is not getting something you want, but doing something

for the well-being of the one you love. It is a fact, however, that when we receive love

in a way we can understand, we are far more likely to be motivated to reciprocate."

(Chapman, p. 41)

Here are the five love languages: Words of Affirmation; Quality Time; Receiving

Gifts; Acts of Service; and Physical Touch. We would all be better off if we understood

our primary love language, and we understood the primary love language of our children

and siblings. You can take a simple test if you go to www.fivelovelanguages.com. Most

likely, whatever primary language you use to express love is the language you most like

to receive it. Let's look at each one in turn.

Affirming words build people up. Mark Twain once said, "I can live for two

months on a good compliment." Women, your husbands will probably need more than

that! Solomon wrote in Proverbs, "The tongue has the power of life and death." He also

wrote, "An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up."

(Proverbs 18:21, 12:25) Simple statements, such as "You look great in that suit" or

"You are the best cook in the world" are sometimes all a person needs to hear to feel

loved. The word encourage means to inspire courage. We all have areas where we feel

insecure. That lack of courage hinders us from accomplishing the things we would like to

do. The latent potential in your mate or child or sibling may await your encouraging

words. Words of criticism deplete a person's love tank, but encouraging words fill it.

Most people need to receive five words of praise for every one word of criticism. My

wife Ginger is simply the best at speaking words of encouragement she learned it from

her mother. That's great for me because it is my secondary love language. I feel loved

when Ginger encourages me.

Quality Time is giving someone your undivided attention. It's not about watching

TV together; it's talking together, or walking together, or just the two of you going to a

restaurant and looking at each other. Early in our marriage, this was Ginger's primary

love language. She feels loved when I listen to her, so I work hard on what I call the

ministry of listening. She does not want me to offer advice or solve her problems; she

wants me to give her my time and a sympathetic ear. She also loves it when we do things

that she likes to do. She lives in house full of males who like football and sports. She is

okay with that, but every once in a while she wants to see the ballet or the opera or the

symphony. Ginger was absolutely delighted when I took her to see the musical The Light

in the Piazza at the Kennedy Center last month. With the CD replaying the music in her

car, she continues to feel loved. I also think that parents should take their children out

regularly, one on one, and focus just on them. That can be at a restaurant, or a walk in the

park.

Receiving Gifts is the third love language is. Some people respond best to visual

symbols of love. Symbols have emotional value think wedding ring. If you are not a

gift giver, but that is your family member's primary love language, then you need to learn

a second language. Gifts communicate love. They don't need to be expensive. You can

cut out a heart on a piece of paper, and write on it, "I love you," and sign your name.

That is a powerful symbol. If you are a saver, and not a spender, it may be difficult for

you to buy gifts. It's important to realize that gift giving is a way to meet the emotional

needs of someone else. One husband who courted his wife with gifts but after he was

married figured he could not afford gifts. He did not give one gift to his wife in five

years! After realizing that this wife's primary love language was receiving gifts, he

saved his marriage by giving his wife a small gift every day.

Acts of Service can be simple chores done around the house. Jesus demonstrated

his love for his disciples in John 13 by washing their feet. This has become Ginger's

primary love language it's what she needs most these days. It is important to

understand what acts of service your mate most appreciates. For example, a wife may

spend her day washing the cars and walking to dog, but if her husband feels that laundry

and dishes are a superior necessity, he may feel unloved, despite the fact that his wife did

many other chores throughout the day. The husband can be a great handyman and

gardener, but if he does not pay the bills on time, when that is what she really needs him

to do for her to feel secure, that is what he should do.

Physical Touch is the fifth love language. Remember that people brought

children to Jesus so that he might touch them. (Mark 10:13) His disciples thought that

Jesus was too busy for that, but Jesus rebuked them, saying, let the children come to me.

And Jesus took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them. Wise

parents touch their children often. I'm so glad to hear that baby Benjamin has been

sleeping in his parents' bed. When I saw him in hospital with all those wires coming from

him I knew that he needed more touch that his parents could not give him there.

One researcher said that most adults need ten hugs a day in order to thrive. I don't

know if that is true for everyone, but it is true for me, because touch is my primary love

language. Researchers have noted the cultural phenomenon that the farther north you go

in Europe, the less people touch one another. At dinner in a restaurant, an English couple

typically will touch not at all, while an Italian couple will touch each other over one

hundred times! Appropriate touch is regulated by culture as well as faith. Some of us

need touch more than others, and touch can be easily misinterpreted. The important thing

is to learn how your family and friends like to be touched, and to meet that need within

appropriate boundaries.

Christ's command to love one another is much talked about, but little obeyed. The

fruit of true loving will be sacrificial, and it will be understanding. It takes understanding

to discover someone's love language. It takes sacrifice to meet another's needs in the

way that they feel loved rather than in the way we'd like to express it.

We love because God first loved us. When we have received Christ as our Savior

and Lord, as the parents of those how are being baptized today have, then that love

naturally spills out onto our children. We long to bring our children into the promises of

the New Covenant, even as the Jews did with circumcision under the Old Covenant. One

day, these children will need to own for themselves these promises said for them today.

Let us pray that we all come to the place that we look to God to meet our deepest needs

for love, and that we are found in him.