Brotherly love (kindness) and our spouse. Now there’s a topic for you. If we are to add brotherly kindness to our lives, it must fit in somehow with our interaction with those around us and that certainly would include our wife. Brotherly love in the Greek is philadelphia. The kind of love involved here is different from agape love in that it is more like tender affection. It is even used of the love the Father has for the Son in John 3:35. The interesting thing is that this word is never used in a command for us to love God in this way. Brotherly love conveys the thought of cherishing the object of love above everything else and is characterized by constancy. (Thoughts taken from Vines Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words.)
So in thinking this through it seems to me that we should exhibit this kind of love toward our wife. We promised to love and cherish her above all others when we said our vows on our wedding day, but how easy it is to get into a selfish mode of living. Other passages we have looked at speak of kindness and giving preference toward one another. Have you ever thought how much easier it is to give preference to co-workers and to be polite and considerate of them more so than it is to have these same characteristics toward our own wife? If you think about it, shouldn’t it actually be the other way around.
May God help us as we diligently add brotherly kindness to our lives, especially toward our wife.
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