International Bible Society

The International Bible Society is identified in the book’s publication notice as the copyright holder of the New International Version text from which its Scripture quotations are taken. Its role is both bibliographic and consequential to the book’s argument: biblical passages, presented with permission, inform Chapman’s accounts of service, marital love, and the possibility of responding lovingly when affection is not returned.

Publication and Permission

The copyright notice specifies that Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, come from the Holy Bible: New International Version, copyrighted in 1973, 1978, and 1984 by the International Bible Society, and used by permission of the Zondervan Publishing House. The notice also clarifies that the book’s use of selected references from various Bible versions does not imply that the publisher endorses those versions in their entirety. The Society’s credit therefore identifies the source and authorization for the principal biblical text without claiming exclusive use of that translation throughout the book.

Scripture Applied to Service

Chapman connects the book’s practical account of acts of service with the Gospel image of Jesus Christ washing his disciples’ feet. In the setting described, household servants customarily washed the feet of guests arriving from dusty roads; Jesus instead performs the service himself and urges his disciples to follow the example. The passage gives the chapter’s domestic examples—such as cooking, cleaning, and caring for a child—a biblical frame: service becomes an intentional expression of love rather than merely an assigned household duty.

The same discussion presents service as a reversal of conventional status. Chapman contrasts societies in which the powerful rule over the less powerful with Jesus’ teaching that greatness is expressed through serving others. He also invokes Paul’s summary, “Serve one another in love.” These references establish a religious rationale for Chapman’s practical emphasis, in which the meaning of an act depends not only on the task but on whether it is freely and positively offered.

Scripture in the Marriage Experiment

The most sustained application of Scripture appears in Chapman’s account of Ann’s marriage. After years of criticism and her husband’s refusal to pursue counseling or other efforts to improve the relationship, Ann’s emotional resources and self-esteem were badly depleted. Chapman turns to Luke’s account of Jesus’ teaching and identifies the instruction to love enemies, do good to those who hate, and treat others as one wishes to be treated as a possible direction for her situation.

Chapman then uses the promise of giving and receiving to shape a six-month counseling experiment: Ann would consistently speak her husband Glenn’s primary love language, with the hope that meeting his emotional need for love might eventually lead him to reciprocate. The proposal places the initiative with Ann, since Glenn is not undertaking work on the marriage. But Chapman draws a firm distinction between a religious principle and a means of control: kindness may make a loving response more likely, he argues, yet it cannot compel another person to change. Glenn remains free to reject the love offered, so the experiment carries no guaranteed outcome.

Wider Meaning in the Book

The Society’s credited translation supplies language for a recurring movement in Chapman’s argument: Scripture is carried from religious teaching into concrete relationship practices, but its ethical demand is not presented as a promise that those practices will produce a predictable result. The instruction to serve supports acts of service as an expression of love; the challenge to love an enemy informs counseling guidance for a marriage marked by contempt and withdrawal. Chapman presents the latter not as a technique for manipulating a spouse, but as a difficult choice whose source may lie in spiritual commitment.

In his closing reflections, Chapman describes his own turn toward Christian faith during marital struggles. After investigating accounts of Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection, he came to understand Christ’s death as an expression of love and the resurrection as evidence of power; he says this faith gave him inner spiritual energy to love without reciprocation. He invokes Jesus’ prayer for those who killed him as love’s ultimate expression. In this framework, the Bible quotations credited to the International Bible Society do more than furnish references: they anchor the book’s movement from marital need and practical action toward a religious account of love that may persist even when it is not returned.