Most people think of love simply as a feeling you have for someone. For them, it’s a good, warm, romantic, sentimental feeling. I’m in favor of good feelings, but there is a problem: feelings are undependable and uncontrollable. You can’t decide how you’re going to feel – you just feel. Consequently, many of the people who think of love in such terms fall out of love as quickly as they fall into it. Their love is undependable. Marriage is too important to be built upon a foundation so shaky.

The Apostle Paul doesn’t think of love in such terms at all. He writes about a tough, durable kind of love, a love that keeps on loving no matter what. That understanding of love is so important to marriage, because only those able to love one another uncondi…