Jesus gave us the golden rule: do to others as you would have them do to you. In love, that sounds like, “Love others the way you want to be loved.” Good rule. I think we sometimes misread it, though. We hear “the way I want to be loved” and turn it into “however makes sense to me,” when the aim runs the other way, toward their good and not our own taste. Say you have a sweet tooth, so you bring someone pastries to show you care. Turns out they’re more of a savory person. When the gift falls flat, it’s easy to feel like you, not the gift, got rejected. Right heart, just the wrong gift for that specific person.

So we learn to pay attention to the person in front of us. But underneath what we give sits a quieter question most of us miss: in what order. Some people need to hear love before they can see it. Others need to see it before they can hear it. You can express your “I love you” in flawless acts of service and still watch it bounce clean off a friend, a kid, a spouse, and lie awake wondering what you did wrong. You can pour out a love poem from the deepest place in your heart and get back a stiff, uncomfortable “thank you,” not the overcome rejoicing you pictured, the kind you would have given for a poem like that. In those moments, I don’t think the problem is that we did something wrong. I think we loved in the wrong order.

Two Kinds of Beloved: Doers & Hearers

Everybody you will ever love is, way down at the bottom, asking one question before any of the others: “Is this someone I can trust?” Close relationships happen when both people can answer, “Yes.” People seem to come to that conclusion from two very different directions. Some need to first hear words that clearly say, “I love, respect, and value you” and then look for actions to prove it. Others look for actions that say, “I love, respect, and value you” and then have ears to hear and appreciate the words that confirm it. The first are drawn to trust by words confirmed by action. The second by actions confirmed by words. All people want to be loved in words and action, but receive them in different orders.

A familiar passage may help us to name these different folks. James 1:22 says, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” Here, James is speaking about the nature of true faith: it eagerly listens to God’s Word so it may act on it. All believers value both hearing and doing. You cannot have one without the other. In the same way, all people want to be loved in both word and action, but not all people’ receive love in the same order. Some people hear first and others see doing first. Hearers take words as the gift and actions as the wrapping. Doers take action as the gift and words as the wrapping. Both love to be loved, they just see it more clearly when offered when offered in their order. Same ingredients, opposite order.

Here is how these play out. If you give a doer a love letter before you’ve built any track record, it doesn’t feel like love, it feels either empty or like a debt they’ll have to pay off. Give a hearer a nice meal or a thoughtful act of service with no words attached and they’ll wonder, “Yeah, but do you love me?” Right love given in the wrong order won’t land. This is why many people feel they’re pouring themselves out and getting nothing back. It isn’t that they’re loving too little, but that they’re loving in the wrong sequence.

The Gift, Then the Wrapping

Practically, here’s the ticket: learn what your beloved receives as love and then confirm it. For a doer, get things handled for them before you say anything and then wrap it with short and honest words: “I took care of the laundry this morning, I know it was hanging over you.” No sermon or lavish love song needed. A doer doesn’t want to be spotlit. Putting it on them with your lavish, loving words can easily make them queasy. They want to be seen and loved first in deed and then given space to believe it. A hearer is the reverse. Lead with the sweet word or the gentle touch that communicates, “I see and value you,” then let your cleaning, meals, and logistical help prove you meant it. Once your words or touch have opened the door of a hearer’s heart, they can receive your actions and gifts as the love you hope they’ll see. I am sure you love your person, but the order you express that love will go a long way in them hearing it.

This shows up everywhere and in every relationship. There are friends who need to hear your love and friends who see it when you show up. The teenager who shrugs off “I love you” but notices when you arranged a night with them to watch their favorite sports team play. The coworker, the parent, the human across the table from you. Since love is loudest in marriage, that’s the relationship where a lot of people finally notice the dynamic and usually the hard way, but the pattern runs through all relationships.

God Loves First, So Should We

Having seen this, there is a tension worth noting: loving others is a selfless endeavor that requires us to seek their good in ways they’ll understand. This means loving them in ways they see it, not in the ways we do. We are called to love others in the way God loves us, not for the sake of getting something back for ourselves, but giving ourselves away for the good of another. God did not wait for us to get our act together, scratch His back first, love Him in His preferred ways, or prove ourselves worthy before He loved us. No, “we love because He first loved us.” God “showed His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” The love of God is not reactive, but proactive. God did not love the lovely, but loved the unlovely that they may become radiant. So our love should not be given only in response to the love or lack thereof of others, but according to the model God has given us.

This matters most when a relationship goes sideways. Trust that took years to build can wear thin, eroded by a hurt inside the relationship or a pressure from outside it, until the closeness you once enjoyed has drifted. When we feel that drift, one of two things usually happens. We revert to loving in our own order, the way that comes most naturally, because it is what we would want. Or we do know our spouse’s order, and we love them in it, but grow frustrated when they are slow to respond the way we hoped. Either way, what keeps us on course is remembering how God loves: we love not for what we get, but for what we can give, not for our immediate comfort, but for their long-term good.

God Expresses His Love in Both Ways

But though He loves in action and word, God does not reveal His love in only one order. He expresses it in Scripture in both orders because He made both kinds of people. For the doer, the one who leans back and watches, He provides a compendium of His loving actions in creating, sustaining, and saving, and then gives the words that confirm and explain the love within them. For the hearer, the one who leans in and needs to hear the heart of another first, He lavishes them with covenant words of love and goodwill toward sinners and then proves those words true by His faithful action. Some of us see His love first by what He has done in creation, providence, and salvation and then are enabled to relish the words that confirm it’s all love. Others are overcome first by His tender words, promises, and expressions of everlasting love in Christ and then freed to rejoice over the actions that prove them.

I think this may be why some believers gravitate first to the action-heavy books like the historical narratives or the Gospels, and others to the wordy books like the Psalms or epistles. Indeed, God expresses His love in Scripture by word and deed, but each book expresses it with unique emphasis. In great love, God gives us both, actions and words, so that every kind of sinner, whichever way we lean, can see and hear that He is good, that He loves us, and that He is trustworthy through and through.

Be Loved and Then Love

To find the strength to love others, we must first receive the love God offers us. See His love written in both words and actions and be filled. You are loved. Then, from the fountain of His love, see the people He’s entrusted to you and love them with word and action, but pay attention to the order they’ll receive it.