Love

The most famous literary description of love is surely 1 Corinthians 13. It has been read aloud at countless weddings, and yet, it was not written for a wedding. It was written for a church. Actually, it was written for a struggling and divided church in Corinth. This was a church that was splintered by factions, by immature Christians flaunting their supposed superiority, and by a whole host of interpersonal tensions and issues. This was the church into which Paul unleashed “the love chapter!”

The chapter sits at the heart of a section addressing the right use of spiritual gifts in the church. It begins by underlining the necessity of love (v 1-3) and ends with the never-ending reality of love (v 8-13). And at the heart of the chapter, in verses 4-7, we find a familiar and poetic depiction of the nature of love. In just four verses, Paul offers fifteen descriptions of love.

Their world, like ours, was a confusing melee of ideas when it came to love. There was romance, passion (appropriately marital and many harmful alternatives), family, and friendship. I don’t know whether they used “love” to speak of food and sport, quite like we do in English, but let’s not imagine their culture was any less confused than ours. In the face of that confusion, Paul offered a confrontation with God’s kind of love.

What do we do with a list like this? Our tendency is to see it as a behavioural checklist and to consider it as a suggestion for greater effort on our part. The problem is, not only do we all fall short of God’s perfect love, but we are unable to self-generate genuine godly love. We can only love, John tells us, because God first loved us (1 John 4:19). So, while it may look like a list of descriptions, actually, Paul wrote it as a list of verbs. This is love dressed up and going to work!

So, as we consider this love in action, we should let it confront our own areas of lack, but also point us to the only one who perfectly lived out God’s love in this world. Let this list point you to Jesus, and then let his love flow more freely in your local church setting. As we look to Christ’s love, it will stir Christlike love in us. And when the body of Christ starts to look like Christ, we can pray for the church to have an impact like Christ!

1. Paul begins with a basic foundation: Love gives. He begins his list with two positive statements: love is patient and love is kind (v 4a). Patience here speaks of having a long-fuse with other people, giving them space and time, instead of flaring up at the first opportunity. Patience is partnered with kindness, which gives of our own usefulness for the higher good of the other. A loving church is a place where grace infiltrates every relationship. Grace for the weaknesses of others, and grace that gives of ourselves to build them up. Love gives.

2. Paul zeroes in on the Corinthian core issue: Love is not selfish. His list shifts into a sequence of nine points, most of which are negative. The central thought in this list of nine points is like a summary of the whole section: love is not self-seeking (v 5b). Ever since the Garden of Eden, we humans have been largely unaware of how self-oriented our hearts now are, by nature. Our selfishness is built-in from birth, but it is only because our nature is fallen. It seems so normal to seek our own good, but God’s design is love that is not self-seeking. (Look at the Trinity for the greatest example of this: how consistently does the Father lovingly honour the Son, and vice versa? Our God is a God who lovingly and selflessly lifts up the other, and the good news is that can even include us!)

Before and after that central thought, Paul offers two sets of four descriptions of love. When there are differences between us, love does not self-elevate (v 4b-5a). It does not envy what others have, longing for self to be satisfied by that salary, that house, that spouse, etc. Neither does love boast, trying to make the other person long for my ability, possessions, or strengths. Love is not arrogant, puffing up self to push others down. And love does not disregard accepted standards of behaviour to elevate self and so disregard and dishonour others. Some versions have “love is not rude” at this point. That might bring to mind inappropriate vocabulary or noises at the dining table. But Paul’s word goes beyond the odd little social faux pas. It is the same word used for unnatural sexual relations in Romans 1. It is that casting off of restraint and acceptable norms, because, well, because I want to . . . so I should. Actually, love wouldn’t.

And when there are problems between us, love does not self-protect (v 5c-6). Love is not easily angered, that is, it is not irritable and touchy. If we take any of Paul’s negatives and pursue the opposite, we will discover a painful loneliness. Now, there is a place in the Bible for legitimate provocation. Jesus was provoked by death at Lazarus’ tomb, and Paul was provoked in spirit by the idols of Athens. Luther was provoked by a false view of God and so launched the Reformation, and Wilberforce was so provoked he sought to end the slave trade. Maybe today many of us have grown too nice before the provocations of society, but perhaps still too easily angered at little personal slights in church life. Love is not easily angered in church fellowship. When people say and do wrong things, love lets the grievances go instead of inscribing them in our internal memory ledger of grudges against others. And when those people that grate on us turn out to be sinners in some way or other, love does not rejoice in their sin. Rather, it rejoices in what is true – God’s love for them, their position in God’s family, their gifting, and their key role in our lives.

3. Paul points them beyond any notion of personal ability because true love relies on God (v 7). Undoubtedly, Paul is offering a literary flourish to complete the list. The last four descriptions add the word “always” or “all things.” It feels good to the ear, but if you consider it carefully, it feels impossible to the heart. How can I always protect? The idea is to cover, like the seal on a ship that keeps all water out. One commentator describes the idea of “throwing a blanket of silence over the failings of others.” Obviously, there are legal and moral exceptions to this. But as a general rule, when I am annoyed, provoked, antagonized, and bothered, love will keep that sin hidden from others who do not need to know about it. Paul points upwards to God – love always trusts and always hopes. That is not easy. And back to the struggles here below again, it always perseveres. That kind of persistent endurance of inter-church tensions can easily take us beyond ourselves.

Paul’s great list is a bit like the Law of Sinai. A wonderful revelation of what is right and good, but beyond our ability to keep. And so, let 1 Corinthians 13 not only confront your struggle to love like Jesus. Let it also point you to Jesus. We can only love at all because God has first loved us. May our hearts be so captivated by his love that our churches increasingly look like the body of Christ! We can only live this life in the flesh by faith in the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us.

⁴Love is patient, love is kind.

It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It does not dishonor others,

it is not self-seeking,

it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

1 Corinthians 13:4–7 (NIV)

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I am hearing a lot about how we Christians should love our neighbour as people discuss the cultural issues of our time. We are told to love our neighbours with respect to tolerance, affirmation of declared identity, or various aspects of pandemic response. If our society declares that it is loving to praise any angry youth for venting their angst, should we automatically join in? If our society determined that good people always wear a glove on the left hand, would that make it so? Now, I believe we absolutely should be loving our neighbour, but it is important to think through what that really means.

The default view of many, it seems, is that loving your neighbour means expressing kindness in the way our culture and the media has defined kindness for us. The basic idea is that Christians should be leading the way in expressing kindness as it has been defined. But how is the world’s track record at defining what is right or wrong? We know the world doesn’t do well with defining wrong, so why should it be any better at defining right? What if loving our neighbour is more complicated than we are told?

This matters and if we don’t think carefully, we can easily let faulty logic slip into our preaching. This only reinforces the error.

Let’s take a historic example. Imagine that we are living during the so-called sexual revolution. “Love” was a big theme for many at that time. What if Christians were to “love their neighbour” according to the cultural expectations of the day?

We always have the option of loving our neighbours and participating fully in their world as they have defined it. That was true during the sexual revolution, just as it has been true in the more recent variations of sexual identity and tolerance, or today, in our era of disease prevention. So, during the sexual revolution, perhaps some Christians participated in the “loving” according to the expectations of the day – or if not full participation, at least by affirmation. I hope you can see how that would not actually be loving!

The counterpoint always seems to be a pendulum swing in the opposite direction. If Christians are not going to love as they are told to love, then they must be anti-love and pro-antagonism. So, the logic goes, the only alternative to loving your neighbour is to criticise your neighbour, to be all about truth, to be relationally clumsy, difficult, awkward and unkind. (Some Christians certainly have taken this approach, sadly.)

Surely there is an alternative? We must let God’s values shape our view of right and wrong. We don’t have to look just like the world, but neither do we have to look like the world’s caricature of Christians. We can seek to live out that Christ-like combination of true love. We can love our neighbours, understand them, be kind to them, care for them, show sensitivity to them, etc. And we can do so while still valuing truth, and reality, sharing the true hope that is found not in their pursuit of love, or safety, or whatever else, but the true hope of love and life and happiness found only in Jesus. It is not loving to perpetuate a lie to those around us. In those revolutionary years, the lie of “free love” hurt many people. The lies of our culture always do.

In a similar way, as a parent, I want to show love to my children. Do I always give them love on their terms? If not, is my only alternative a harsh unloving approach? Not at all. I want to love my children and it often requires prayerful consideration to know what that should look like in a way that will actually help them.

Today we are living in a confused world. Is the answer to be all in with the world’s plan for showing virtue? Just love your neighbour and be essentially indistinguishable? Or should we awkwardly proclaim the truth without love? Or is there a better way? There is. It is a way that is sensitive to their fears and concerns, a way that goes out of our way to demonstrate love, but at the same time lovingly speaks the truth and points to real hope.

Let’s be sure to love our neighbours, and let’s pray for wisdom to know how to do it.

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