Week 1 of 4
The ledger you rehearse is not discernment. It is the opposite of love.
Love doesn’t keep a record of wrongs.
1 Corinthians 13:5
Paul says love does not take account of evil. The word is a ledger: love does not keep charging the same offenses to her account so that you can feel like the righteous one. Psalm 130 asks the terrible question. If the Lord kept a record of sins, who could stand? Micah says God does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love, and he treads iniquities underfoot. A husband who keeps the record God has put down is living a different gospel at the table than he confesses in church.
Formal study reading, written for this series
Formal study reading, written for this series
Love is patient and kind. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
The missing line in a husband’s definition of love is the ledger.
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.
If God kept your record, you would not be standing either.
Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. He will tread our iniquities underfoot.
He does not hold the anger, and he puts the iniquity under his feet.
NASB, the Amplified, and the ESV open on Bible Hub. The Legacy Standard Bible opens on its own reader. Close, Expanded, and Easy on this page are original study readings. WEB is the World English Bible, public domain.
Logizomai is an accounting word. Paul uses it for God reckoning righteousness to the ungodly. Love’s refusal to logizetai the evil is not amnesia. It is a refusal to keep her in court so that you remain the judge. You may need memory for wisdom — a real pattern, a real danger, a counsel you should seek. That is not the same as a speech you polish in the car so you can feel right again.
Psalm 130 and Micah will not let the husband stand above the text. If God marked you, you could not stand. The fear of the Lord grows from forgiveness, not from getting better than your wife at documentation. The man who delights in the record delights in something God does not delight in.
Find the ledger. It may be a note in your head, a story you tell the same way every time, a sigh that means “there it is again.” Write the charges down once, then write under them what God has done with yours. You are not erasing wisdom. You are firing yourself as prosecutor.
If the offense is ongoing and harmful, love still does not mean you manage it alone with a file of her faults. Get a pastor or a wise couple. Do not build a case instead of getting help.
Stays on this device. No account.
Lord, if you kept a record, I could not stand. You have forgiveness, and I have been keeping books on the wife you gave me. Close the ledger. Teach me the difference between wisdom and prosecution. I want to love her without taking account of evil, because that is how you have loved me. Amen.
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