ourselves as being infinitely precious to God and
ourselves, and indispensable because we have responded to a means of
salvation for one another.

VI

LOVE IN ACTION

"By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us:
and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."--_1 John 3:16_

We come now to the climax of our study. Love must lay down its life;
that is, it must give itself. The question then is: What is the mode and
place of its self-giving? Under this heading I want to consider the
nature of communication, evaluate the church as an agent of
communication, and dwell on the implications of our study for church
unity.

_The Importance of Communication_

Communication is essential to the expression of love and indeed to life
itself. Where there is love, there must be communication, because love
can never be passive and inactive. Love inevitably expresses itself and
moves out toward others. When communication breaks down, love is blocked
and its energy will turn to resentment and hostility. One of the
greatest of tragedies occurs when the partners of a relationship break
off their communication with each other. Without communication, the
possibilities for a relationship become hopeless, the resources of the
partners for the relationship are no longer available, the means for
healing the hurts that previous communication may have caused are no
longer present; and each, when he recovers from his need to justify
himself and hurt the other, will find himself in a bottomless pit of
loneliness from which he cannot be pulled except by the ropes of
communication, which may or may not be capable of pulling him out again
because of their weakened condition. Many of us know what it means to be
in a foreign country where we cannot speak the language, but the
loneliness of that condition is as nothing compared to the loneliness
that is the product of an alienation that has been produced by either
irresponsible use of the means of communication or a willful refusal to
employ them.

If there is any one indispensable insight with which a young married
couple should begin their life together, it is that they should try to
keep open, at all cost, the lines of communication between them.
Everyone needs and should have premarital counseling, if only to help
them to this all important insight. Here is a place where the church's
ministry needs to be strengthened, since so many people turn to the
chur