1 John 2: 5
But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him.
Love can be perfected, which means love grows, and it has to grow to the point that it reaches perfection or full maturity.
When I fell in love with my then beloved and now wife, I was so in love with her that I always wanted to be with her, I was always thinking about her, especially when I was away from her. If she had travelled or perhaps I could not visit, we would speak on the phone for at least three hours, daily!
When we began marriage school, just a few months before we got married, one of the pastors taught on what is known as the honeymoon stage and that it would fade away over time. “What!” this, of course, made no sense to me, they went on to explain that the feelings I had for my then beloved would gradually fade away, “but your love for her will grow,” they said, the more they tried to explained the more I couldn’t understand.
You see, I was enjoying being in love and all the feelings associated with it, I did not want them to fade away, I wanted them to continue forever.
The Apostle John explains to us that love has stages of development, it must mature, we can not live in the stage of infatuation love, this stage is good in the beginning, but if we remained in this level, we would be useless in life.
Song of Solomon 8:6
… for love is strong as death…
There are a lot of people in this world who are “infatuation love” junkies, they are the type that does not commit to one woman, to build a life with her and even if they marry, there are always people on the side.
2 Samuel 13:1-2
And it came to pass after this, that Absalom the son of David had a fair sister, whose name was Tamar; and Amnon the son of David loved her. And Amnon was so vexed, that he fell sick for his sister Tamar; for she was a virgin; and Amnon thought it hard for him to do any thing to her.
2 Samuel 13:11-15
And when she had brought them unto him to eat, he took hold of her, and said unto her, Come lie with me, my sister… Howbeit he would not hearken unto her voice: but, being stronger than she, forced her, and lay with her. Then Amnon hated her exceedingly; so that the hatred wherewith he hated her was greater than the love wherewith he had loved her. And Amnon said unto her, Arise, be gone.
This is sometimes the behaviour of people who are not willing to experience the adventure of growing ones love with their spouse and as you can see from the story of Amnon, this can be extremely dangerous.