Proverbs 31:30-31
Here are 4 things God will often show you when someone truly loves you for the right reasons.
1. When Someone Loves You for the Right Reasons, God Will Show You Their Heart for Him Before He Shows You Their Heart for You
What is the “right reason” to love someone? There are many good reasons to love, but the best reason to love someone is to bring glory to God. When God is leading someone to truly love you, their desire for you will first be founded on their desire for God. The greatest commandment, to love God, overflows into obeying the second greatest commandment, to love people (Matthew 22:36-40).
If you are constantly looking and searching and trying to find an angle to see this person’s love for God, something is off. If someone truly loves God it won’t be so hard to see this about them.
As Jesus said in Matthew 5:14, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.”
2. When Someone Loves You for the Right Reasons, They Will Not Place You at the Top of Their Triangle
It’s a common analogy but it is helpful so I’ll review it again if you are someone who has seen this before. A healthy Christian relationship is a lot like an equilateral triangle where God is at the top and the man and woman are at the bottom. The further the two get from God, the further they will be from each other. The closer they are to Christ, the closer they will also be together.
When someone does not understand this and they are trying to love you because they want you to be their god rather than love God with you, they will try to place you at the top of their triangle. Many times, especially if they are not a Christian or they are a very immature Christian, they will even see you as their mediator to God. They will feel like since you are following God that if they get close to you this means they will also get close to God.
But when someone truly loves you for the right reasons, they won’t be idolizing you. Rather, they will want you in their life so you two can be partners together as you love and serve God as a team, as God designed a husband and wife to do. While romantic love is different than true Christian love that we are too have for our brothers and sisters in Christ, when a romantic interest loves you for the right reasons, they will still have an overarching Christian affection for you that sees you not just as a romantic partner.
Like Paul said in Romans 1:11-12, “For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you—that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine.”
3. If Someone Loves You Because of Who You Are and Not Because of What You Can Do for Them, This Is a Sign They Love You for the Right Reasons
The sin nature craves the attention and approval of other humans. One way people often try to exalt themselves in the eyes of others is to be in a relationship with someone that they perceive to have a lot of social value in the world’s eyes. Money, physical appearance, class, social influence, and so on are not the qualities that can form the basis of true love.
It’s fine if someone is physically attracted to you or respects the degrees you have or can relate well to you because you are from similar backgrounds, but all of this is superficial compared to the qualities underlying true love. When someone truly loves you, they will enjoy you as a person. They will not see you as a strategic tool to be used for personal advancement. As James 2:2-4 explains:
For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, ‘You sit here in a good place,’ while you say to the poor man, ‘You stand over there,’ or, ‘Sit down at my feet,’ have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?”
Passages like this are not condemning rich people. They are not saying that rich people can never be deserving of a place of honor. It’s not saying that poorer people have more value to God. Rather, what it is saying is that being rich or poor is not the variables by which God will assess us; therefore, it should not be the variables by which we assess each other either.
So don’t hate the rich because they are rich and don’t hate the poor because they are poor. Don’t love the poor because they are poor and don’t love the rich because they are rich. True love focuses on the real person.
And when someone truly loves you for the right reasons, they will love because of who you are and not because of what you can do for them.
4. When Someone Loves You for the Right Reasons, They Will Love Your Walk with God and They Will See the Value of Partnering with You
While in point 3 we did just say that someone will not love you for what you can do for them, we must not take that principle too far and miss the truth that God does want men and women to form partnerships that create equal blessings in their lives, mainly when it comes to their spiritual well-being.
Notice what it says about a Proverbs 31 woman in verses 10-12, “An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life.”
Notice that this godly woman is precious to her husband because he can trust her and she does him good and not harm. But when you keep reading you see this is not merely a material benefit but more so a spiritual benefit of having a partner who you can serve and love God with. Proverbs 31:30-31 explains, “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates.”
Likewise, whether you are a man or a woman, when someone loves you for the right reasons, they will love your walk with God.
