The discussion highlights how this ledger serves as a false sense of control, masquerading as security while ultimately leading to isolation. By continually resurrecting past grievances, the heart becomes a prison rather than a sanctuary, distorting our perceptions of our partners. This episode draws poignant parallels to the life of King Saul and his relationship with David, illustrating how bitterness and jealousy can cloud judgment. We examine how a husband, in particular, can fall into the trap of viewing his wife through the lens of past mistakes rather than understanding her as a work in progress under God’s grace. Ultimately, we invite listeners to consider which book they carry into their relationships: the ledger of grievances or the cross of forgiveness, emphasizing that true love, as defined in Scripture, seeks restoration over retribution. We discuss how this habit, while seemingly protective, can actually lead to emotional isolation and a distorted view of one's partner. Through the lens of biblical examples, including the story of King Saul's jealousy towards David, we illustrate how easily one can slip into the mindset of suspicion and bitterness, which undermines the foundational trust needed for a thriving marriage. The conversation further highlights the necessity of recognizing one’s own imperfections and extending the same grace we desire for ourselves to our partners. By the end of the episode, we challenge our audience to reflect on the duality of holding onto past grievances versus embracing the transformative power of love and forgiveness, ultimately advocating for a shift from the ledger of wrongs to the grace of the cross. Through humor and heartfelt insights, we aim to inspire a deeper understanding of love’s true nature and its implications for everyday life.

Takeaways:

• In our exploration of First Corinthians 13, we discover that love is not about keeping a ledger of wrongs, but rather about embracing grace and forgiveness.
• The act of holding onto past grievances can distort our perception of reality, turning innocent actions into sources of suspicion and resentment.
• A husband's love should mirror Christ's love for the church, which means practicing patience and understanding rather than clinging to past mistakes.
• True healing in relationships comes from letting go of the ledger, allowing love to flourish in an environment of trust and grace.

Welcome to our study.

Thank you for joining us.

We are continuing a study on First Corinthians 13 and the reference to love, not being a one who keeps a record of wrongs, keeping a ledger, as we've called it.

And that's in within the greater context of the husband's responsibility as the head of the house, that he's to love his wife as Christ loved the church.

But we can't begin to understand what that love is without a better description.

And that leads us to a study of First Corinthians 13 and ultimately back to the example of Christ.

And this is all in a larger context even than that of the need to transform, be transformed by the renewing of our mind.

We need to think and put on the mind of the spirit rather than the carnal mind.

And that's really why we're looking at marriage in particular, to help us exercise or put into practice these things, because it's the more likely place where we'll be tried and tested and where we can examine ourselves and be the kind of men that we need to be.

So that has been our focus for several weeks now.

And we left off to talk about another reason why the carnal heart seems to cling to that ledger.

That is the not ne, not literally in ledger, though again, some people have been known to.

To do that, keep notes of the past and imperfections of their spouse.

But I'm talking about someone who remembers and keeps a running ledger in their minds about all the faults and wrongs, and they're.

They remember it with such clarity and such deep detail because they may need it later.

They may need it as evidence.

But another reason why the heart clings to this ledger is it mistakes control for security.

Old hurts often become our way of protecting ourselves from any future pain.

The heart quietly reasons, well, if I never forget what happened before, perhaps I can keep it from happening again.

So we imagine that if we can remember another person's failure, somehow that prepares us for the future.

It doesn't.

It only changes to the past.

Fear has a remarkable ability to disguise itself for wisdom.

You know, a husband can tell himself, for example, that he's simply being cautious, when in reality he's become suspicious.

He tells some, maybe a friend, or he certainly tells himself.

He assures himself that he's protecting his heart, when in reality he's just.

Actually, he just imprisoned it.

That's all he's worried about, is keeping that ledger and that that promises some security.

Security purchased at that expense of trust always becomes isolation.

That's Their end result.

And King Saul illustrates this.

It's a tragedy in his life.

And perhaps he illustrates that more than anybody else in Scripture.

Because when David first appeared in Saul's life, Saul loved him.

David played the harp, soothed his troubled soul, and David defeated Goliath when no one else dared face him and served faithfully the kingdom.

And yet everything changed the day Saul heard the women singing.

Saul slain his thousands and David his ten thousands.

David was gaining popularity.

One statement, one comparison, one wound to Saul's pride, and he had a lot of that.

From that moment on, Saul began keeping a ledger.

Every success that David enjoyed became another reason for taking suspicion.

Every victory that that he had only deepened Saul's resentment.

And every act of faithfulness was interpreted through the lens of jealousy and bitterness.

Saul no longer saw David as he actually was.

He saw him through the eye or through a record of imagined offenses that his own heart had created.

The remarkable thing is that David conducted the opposite.

He was thinking the opposite.

David's conduct changed very little from the time he met Saul to the time he continued as King Saul's heart did.

But that observation, I think, is worth lingering over in our minds because it reveals something very important about bitterness.

The person keeping the ledger eventually stops seeing reality.

They make it up.

Every event is filtered through resentment.

Innocent actions even become suspicious.

Kindness is questioned as one begins to wonder about their motives.

I mean, this goes both ways, but motives are often doubted.

Why is he being so nice to me?

Why is she being so sweet to me?

The heart begins finding evidence to support the conclusion that it already has reached.

In other words, I mean, how many marriages have suffered under exactly that burden of suspicion and lack of trust?

And not because they've got any reason that the other person's given for that lack of trust.

But just because they're doubtful, they don't have confidence.

They're very insecure about themselves and their marriage.

They become suspicious of everything.

A husband becomes very convinced that his wife doesn't respect him.

And soon every conversation is interpreted through that assumption.

Now, this goes on both.

Both ends, no doubt.

But again, my focus is on husbands.

And even when she sincerely seeks to encourage him, he hears criticism instead of encouragement.

And when she asks an honest question, he's hearing accusation.

See, the ledger has become the lens through which he views the relationship.

Now, this is so common, I may be talking to a lot of people who going through this very exact thing.

But the tragedy is not merely that he misunderstands his wife.

The greater tragedy is that he can no longer enjoy her because the ledger has stolen his ability to rejoice in the present blessings.

Why?

Because he's continually resurrecting the past.

And that's precisely what love refuses to do.

Do you see that?

You know why?

Love doesn't keep records.

It's not merely, why shouldn't we?

Love understands something.

Pride never learns.

Because every person that God has ever placed in your life is imperfect and unfinished.

Your wife is imperfect and unfinished.

Your children are imperfect and unfinished.

You are unfinished.

God is still shaping both of you, at least if you're working in that direction.

And so love therefore judges people according to God's work in progress.

According rather than freezing them at any moment in time where they appear to be their worst.

And we really need to understand God's patience to move on to the next important thought and point.

And that to me is so essential.

I'm talking about tracing God's dealings with us.

And I think we need to spend some time thinking about that.

Thinking.

Think about Israel.

Think about how many times they failed.

Think about the golden calf they made and the murmuring and the complaining and the unbelief.

Think about the rebellion, their idolatry.

Over and over again we read, but the Lord is long suffering.

And we ask, and no doubt it's an obvious reason, we ask why, and you know why he loved them.

Now ask the husband, if God has spent 40 years patiently dealing with Israel, 30 years patiently dealing with you, then why are you unwilling to spend 30 days patiently dealing with your wife?

You see, we need to balance that.

That.

Otherwise, see, some people are going to say, so I'm supposed to ignore abuse.

I'm not saying that.

I think we need about three or.

Well, we need to understand the problem is forgiveness.

We're not trying to pretend something is that it isn't.

We're not trying to be enablers or remove consequences or abandon the need to be wise.

And we're certainly not suggesting that we need to refuse any accountability.

Okay, great Biblical example of what we're really trying to drive at here is to look at the elder brother who was the prodigal son's brother.

The elder brother.

Let's not focus on the prodigal.

I don't believe that was God's point either, or the Lord's point.

His.

His emphasis was on the elder brother because it represented the Jewish people that he was teaching.

And they, they recognized it.

The elder brother is the ledger.

Everything about him is bookkeeping.

Listen to him.

These many years he's been keeping a record he knows.

He has the feelings.

He's got the facts.

He's counting it.

You see, Lo, these many years, I've never transgressed your law.

See, he's counting.

But your son.

Not my brother.

But your son.

He can't even say my brother.

You see, the ledger has rewritten the relationship.

And then notice this son, your son who devoured your living.

He's still counting.

And then I never.

Oh, you never.

You never gave me up fatted calf to marry with my friends.

See, he's counting again.

The entire speech is accounting language.

It's one of the greatest portraits of resentment in all the scriptures.

And I want you to see that.

That's.

That's what happens when we start writing the ledger, whether it's in our head or literally.

And so I don't want to end with, just go forgive your wife.

That's too small.

I'd rather end something.

Like what?

Every husband carries one of two books, either a ledger or the cross.

And I think we need to think about it that way.

The ledger records all the debts.

The cross cancels them.

The ledger is always asking, what does she owe me?

See?

Or that something's not fair.

It's all about me and mine and what I deserve and what is true or what is right for me to get.

But the cross asks, what has Christ already paid for me?

The ledger's looking backward.

The cross is looking forward.

Remember Paul?

Forgetting the things that are behind, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

He's looking forward.

He's pressing onward.

The ledger preserves the guilt, but the cross, it proclaims victory and grace.

And every morning, a husband quietly chooses which book he's going to carry into his marriage.

If he carries the ledger, then he's going to eventually win many arguments.

He will, but he'll lose something more valuable than that.

He'll lose the heart of the woman that God entrusted to him.

But if he carries the cross, he's going to lose arguments.

But he'll gain something far, far greater.

He'll build the kind of marriage where confession becomes safe and easy and repentance becomes possible, forgiveness is even believable.

And love begins to look remarkably like the love that Christ had for us.

Oh, this is great.

The reason love keeps no record of wrongs is not merely because record keeping damages the one being accused.

It damages the one keeping the record.

A ledger may appear to be a tool of protection, but over time it's not.

It just hurts.

And this is one of the reasons Paul places this statement inside this description of love.

He's not merely giving a rule for conflict resolution, is he?

He's revealing the kind of heart that love produces.

Love is able to release the ledger because love is not concerned with defending themselves.

Pride keeps records because pride has to constantly protect its own case.

But fear keeps records because fear wants advanced warning before the pain comes back.

And self righteousness keeps records because it needs evidence to preserve its superiority.

But love has no reason to keep a record.

It goes in a different direction.

Love is not blind to sin.

It's willing to admit it.

It's not governed by accusation.

It's not careless with truth either.

But it does not turn truth into a weapon.

It looks at another person not merely through the memory of what they have done, but through the hope of what grace may yet make them.

That distinction is very critical, and it's essential in marriage, because every husband and every wife is still imperfect and unfinished.

No one marries a complete person.

Every believer is in the process of being formed and conformed and corrected and humbled and strengthened and renewed.

Now, that doesn't excuse sin.

Don't misunderstand me.

It simply places sin within the larger story of sanctification.

And so a husband who keeps a ledger, he tends to freeze his wife at her worst moments.

He remembers what she said in anger, and that allows that sentence to define her.

He remembers a season of weakness and quietly interprets her through that failure.

In other words, any future failure is interpreted by the past failures.

He remembers a disappointment, and he permits that disappointment to become the name by which he inwardly knows her.

And by doing that, he refuses to view her as a person still under the patient workmanship of a loving God.

Now that's how the Lord has dealt with his people.

And this scripture repeatedly shows us a God who knows the sins of his people with absolute clarity and yet still continues to work patiently toward their restoration.

Israel's history is full of this.

It's not a story of faithful nation earning divine favor.

It's the story of a long suffering God remaining faithful to to an unfaithful people.

Again and again Israel murmured, doubted and complained.

At Sinai, while Moses receiving the law, the people were fashioning a golden calf in the wilderness.

After seeing the Red Sea open up and the armies of Egypt destroyed, they still questioned whether God had brought them out to die.

They tasted the manna from heaven and complained about the menu of mercy.

Their history is full of failure.

And yet the Lord did not abandon his purposes and his covenant.

That long suffering that Long patience of God should humble every husband.

If the Lord dealt with us according to our rate of progress, who among us would stand if he marked every act of inconsistency, every moment of unbelief and failure, of gratitude, every repetition of sins that we continue to commit that we ought to have long since outgrown, then none of us would have hope.

But the Scripture continually returns to the same confession.

The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness.

The slowness of God's anger is not weakness.

It's love governed by patience.

God is not indifferent to sin.

He is patient with sinners.

And that's a big difference.

And that difference must shape the atmosphere of a home where God is the center.

And so, husbands, remember, judge your, set your goals and your standard of love to God and how he treated Israel over and over again, and how he's treated you over and over again.

A husband that has that kind of patience, the patience that God has, he's got to learn to extend patience within that marriage.

It doesn't mean that he ignores the wrong.

Again, we're not saying that.

It means he refuses to treat his wife as though her failures are the final word about her.

I mean, it's going to happen.

Nobody's perfect.

He may need to address sin honestly, but he does so as a man who knows that God has addressed him honestly and still shown mercy.

He may need to speak truth, but he speaks it as one that is in need of truth himself.

He may be wounded by her weaknesses, but he remembers that his own weaknesses have wounded others as well.

And so the patience of God doesn't make a man passive.

It just makes him humble.

And when humility begins governing the heart, the ledger begins to lose its power.

Proud man needs the ledger.

Why?

Because it helps him remain above the one who's hurting.

He's got to have that ledger.

But a humble man, he finds the ledger unbearable because he knows too much about his own need for grace.

He can't stand over his wife as though he were merely the offended party and never the offender.

See, he can't rehearse her failures without eventually remembering his own.

And he can't continually ask, how could she do this?

Without asking, how many times has the Lord been patient with me?

That question weakens the hand that clings to the record.

And that's why biblical love is what it is.

It's not a sentimental feeling about how one feels about another.

It's.

It's not this shallow optimism that pretends everything is Fine, it's.

And we need to be morally serious because God is morally serious about sin.

But love is redemptive.

God is redemptive.

It seeks more than just the exposure of sin.

It seeks the restoration.

You see that it wants the restoration of the sinner, and therefore it's patient.

And for us, that's not difficult.

Because, you see, we need patience.

We need.

In other words, we need God's patience on us.

See, the ledger can expose, but it cannot heal.

It's intended by its nature to help one accuse another, but it doesn't by its nature restore another.

It can prove things, it can give evidence, it can prove a pattern, but it cannot produce repentance.

But grace joined with truth.

Oh, that's powerful.

The husband must therefore ask what he truly wants when he, his wife fails.

Does he want restoration or does he want vindication?

Does he want to prove that he was right or does he want the relationship healed?

Those aren't the same desires, I think.

It's possible to win an argument and weaken a marriage.

It's possible to prove a point, but damage trust.

Do you see that in it?

It's possible that you can be absolutely right with all your facts, but spiritually wrong because your heart is governed by accusation rather than love.

Scripture never calls a husband merely to be accurate.

It calls him to be Christlike.

And that brings us back to that elder brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son.

Few passages reveal the ledger of the heart more clearly.

The young brother, because he had sinned grievously, he had dishonored his father, demanded the inheritance and left home, wasted it all, brought shame upon himself.

No one in the story denies the guilt.

Even he didn't.

The father doesn't pretend the son's rebellion was harmless.

There's nothing like that.

It's not like we're just ignoring the sin.

But the younger son himself confesses when he comes to his father, father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight.

His sin was real, and his return required that.

It required an acknowledgment of that.

And that in turn required humility.

But when his father sees him coming from a great way off, he doesn't meet him with a list.

He doesn't stand at the road rehearsing the wasted inheritance, the public shame and the sleepless nights the son had caused.

He runs to him and embraces him and kisses him.

He closes him, puts a ring on his finger and says, kill the fatted calf.

This son of mine that was lost is found.

The father's response was not denial, friends.

It was restoration.

The son's confession was real.

But the father's mercy is greater than the son's disgrace.

The father doesn't allow the son's worst season to become his permanent identity.

He doesn't identify him to his friends and his neighbors.

This was my rebellious son.

Or this was my.

Whatever the other label you want to put on it, it's his son.

And he says this.

Now.

The brother was different.

Brother was altogether different.

Look at what he see.

The father said this.

My son was dead and is alive again.

He was lost and is found.

But outside.

His brother was out sulking like a child.

And he had that ledger in his mind.

He was angry, wouldn't go in.

And when his father comes out to entreat him, his language reveals the state of his heart.

Lo, these many years I've served you.

See, he's counting.

The ledger's been opened.

Neither transgressed I your law at any time.

See, he's still counting.

Got the ledger open yet?

You never gave me a kid that I might make merry with my friends.

Still counting.

See, he believes he's owed something.

Then, speaking of the returned son, he says this your son refusing to even call him a brother.

The ledger had not merely recorded his offenses, but now it's rewritten the relationship.

That is what record keeping does.

It changes the way we name one another.

The older brother no longer sees a brother to be restored.

He sees a guilty man receiving mercy and doesn't deserve it.

He can't enter the joy of that brother being restored because he's too busy consulting the record.

His facts are entirely correct.

I mean, they're dead on.

But his heart was far from the father.

A man may have the facts but lack the love.

He may remember accurately and judge wrongly.

He may point to real failures while missing the real purpose of grace.

And so in a marriage, if we're to love and love is described in such way of description as taking no account of wrong, then the same danger appears.

Whenever a husband becomes more loyal to the record than he does to restoration, he should be concerned about her well being spiritually as well as physically.

He may say true things about what happened.

He may recall a painful conversation.

He may even identify some repeated weaknesses.

But if the purpose of that knowledge is to stand outside the celebration of grace like that brother did, who wouldn't come in and celebrate?

Then he's become more like that elder brother than the father.

He may be near the house.

He may be near the covenant.

He may be near the language of righteousness.

But be far from the heart of loving God.

Love doesn't keep a record of wrongs.

Love wants restoration more than revenge, and that's why it doesn't keep a record.

It wants healing more than leverage.

Love doesn't deny that the younger son went into the fold far country and wasted his inheritance.

It simply refuses to make the far country his permanent address.

Love doesn't deny the failures.

It just refuses to make that failure the final name of the one who has returned.

And that's why this teaching is so essential.

And for us husbands, you need to.

We need to be paying attention to it.

A man can claim to lead his home, but if he leads with a ledger in his hand, he's not leading like Christ, and he's not loving like Christ.

Oh, he may establish order, he may secure compliance, but he'll lose trust and peace.

The husband who loves as Christ loves must learn the discipline of closing that book.

Get rid of the book.

Not because sin doesn't matter, but because grace matters more.

Not because wounds were imaginary, but because wounds are not meant to become monuments that we keep bringing up.

See, rebuilding cannot begin while the old charges are continually read aloud.

And at some point, if repentance has occurred and true forgiveness has been granted, then love's got to refuse to keep prosecuting the case.

It's done.

It's over.

I know that's not easy.

In fact, it's impossible.

Apart from the grace of God, the natural man, he doesn't release debts gladly.

He clings to them because they make him feel powerful and protected and right.

But when the gospel is understood, it teaches a man to open his hand.

Only the cross shows him what it means for a debt to be fully known and fully dealt with.

And Christ can teach a husband how to remember mercy more deeply than injury.

And so what we've established in our thoughts today is not to cling to the ledger.

The ledger.

And we see what the ledger does in a marriage, we need to be asking questions.

How does God deal with the record of our wrongs?

How does Christ deal with that?

Until that question is answered, the husband will have no power to release the record that he holds against his wife.

But the only man who can truly bury the ledger is the man who has first stood before God and watched his own ledger be nailed to the cross.

And that's exactly what God intends for you to do for your wife.

I thank you for listening.

I trust you have a pleasant day today and a good week ahead.