“Give, and it will be given to you”

“Give, and it will be given to you” is a teaching from Jesus’ sermon that Gary D. Chapman applies to marriage as an ethic of generous love, not a technique for controlling another person. Its importance lies in the qualification Chapman attaches to its promise: loving behavior may invite reciprocity, but the other person remains free to refuse it.

The Teaching and Its Context

Chapman presents the saying alongside the instruction to love enemies, do good to those who hate, bless those who curse, and pray for those who mistreat. The passage challenges the assumption that love is owed only to someone who first behaves lovingly. Chapman connects its expansive image of a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, with the possibility that giving kindness can be met with kindness in return.

The saying becomes especially consequential in the account of Ann, whose husband Glenn had criticized and condemned her for years. Ann had asked him to seek counseling or engage with material about marriage, but he refused, insisting that he had no problems and that she was the one with them. After ten years, her emotional energy was depleted and her self-esteem nearly destroyed. Chapman wondered whether the teaching could offer direction for loving a spouse who had come to feel like an enemy.

Application to Ann and Glenn

Chapman turns the saying into the ethical and practical frame for a proposed six-month experiment. The hypothesis is that if Ann consistently speaks Glenn’s primary love language, his emotional need for love may begin to be met and he may eventually reciprocate. In this model, the act of giving is directed toward a concrete relational need rather than left as an abstraction.

The plan places the initiative with Ann because Glenn is not trying to work on the marriage. Chapman presents the teaching as a principle rather than a means of manipulation: people are independent agents who can reject love or walk away from it. He therefore does not promise that Glenn will change; he describes reciprocity only as a possibility. The distinction keeps the saying from becoming a guarantee or an instruction that Ann can make another person loving by being loving herself.

Chapman also identifies Ann’s likely primary love language as quality time. She recalls that, early in the marriage, she felt loved when she and Glenn spent long hours talking and doing things together. His present lack of time for conversation or shared activities makes her feel that business and other pursuits matter more than their relationship. That contrast gives the experiment a specific direction: the proposed giving is to take the form of attentive shared time, not merely a general resolve to be kind.

Ethical Meaning and Limits

The saying appears within a broader account of service as a practical expression of love. Chapman describes acts of service through ordinary household tasks and invokes Jesus Christ washing his disciples’ feet as an example of love enacted through humble service. In that framework, giving is not just a sentiment or a verbal declaration; it takes form in actions intended to meet another person’s needs.

Chapman’s explanation preserves a boundary between spiritual teaching and behavioral prediction. Kindness may tend to elicit kindness, but it cannot compel it. The experiment asks whether a change in Ann’s loving conduct might alter the relationship’s emotional climate; it does not establish that every spouse will respond in the same way. This caution is central to the teaching’s use in the book: generosity can guide an action without guaranteeing its outcome.

Faith, Reciprocity, and Love

Chapman returns to the passage when considering the difficulty of loving an unloving spouse. He presents Jesus’ words as a demanding ethical direction and links them to a faith that can sustain action even without immediate return. The scriptural appeal therefore supports both a relational experiment and a form of love that cannot depend entirely on the other person’s response.

In his account of his own faith, Chapman says that examining the historical accounts of Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection led him to regard Christ’s death as an expression of love and the resurrection as evidence of power. He describes committing his life to Christ and finding spiritual energy to love even when love is not reciprocated. The saying’s promise of return remains part of the argument, but its deeper force is that giving love can be chosen even where reciprocity is uncertain.