The Elements Of Love Series

[LIVING IN LOVE SERIES] 1 CORINTHIANS 13:4-6a

THE SPECTRUM OF THE ETERNAL GIFT OF LOVE

[Galatians 5:22-23]

Perhaps you’ve seen this Peanuts cartoon: Linus announces to his cranky sister, Lucy, that he’s going to be a doctor. “You, a doctor?” She asks. “How can you be a doctor? You don’t love mankind.” Linus replies, “I do too love mankind. It’s people I can’t stand.”

Aren’t we all tempted to love that way, in the abstract. It takes much less commitment. It is much less costly.

Love though is not an abstract concept but a living reality. So after contrasting the indispensable virtue of love with words, spiritual gifts and sacrificial deeds, the Bible compresses in four very short verses an amazing descriptive analysis of what this supreme gift is. In our look at love we will find that it is made up of many elements. You may have seen a scientist take a ray of light and pass it through a crystal prism and seen it come out on the other side broken up into its component colors; orange, indigo, violet, yellow, red, blue and green –the colors of the rainbow (colors of the light spectrum).

In the same way God takes love and passes it through Paul’s inspired intellect and it comes out broken down into its elements [fourteen descriptive statements listed in pairs]. In these few words we have what one might call The Spectrum of The Eternal Gift of Love ( or the analysis of love). Will you observe what its elements are? Will you grasp their common names and practice their virtues that make up the supreme gift of love? All of love’s 15 [14] virtuous actions relate to persons and to life. They are concerned primarily with the here and now of daily life.

We hear a great deal about God’s love for man and even man’s love for God but Christ also spoke about man’s love for man. Christianity is not a separate or an added component to life, but the inspiration of every day life, the breathing of the eternal into this temporal world. Love is not simply a component of life but love is an intent, a purpose, that causes thoughts, words and acts of everyday life. This intent to love was the need of the Corinthians, and this is still our need today.

So that we are all diving for pearls at the same depth perhaps we should distinguish the term love used in our text from other terms. The word used here is agape, not eros which denotes physical love or philos which denotes friendship love, but agape, love that originates with and comes from God Himself which sanctifies all other types of love. Agape love is Christian love. So that we understand this distinction the Apostle uses the definite article with agape.

I. REAL LOVE’S BEGINNING, 13:4.

II. REAL LOVE’S CONSTRAINS, 13:4b-6a.

This hymn of love in 1 Corinthians 13 describes how love is demonstrated in specific actions. The first two pair of descriptive characteristics are positive. Next we will look at the four pairs given in the negative that follow. The first characteristic of agape love is given in verse 4.

“The Love is Patient (long-suffering ).”

The word used for patience here is makrothumeo which is made up of two words, makros-meaning “long” and thumos meaning “passion, anger, rage.” The word literally means long tempered or that the temper is a long time in rising. Thus the word denotes a long waiting time during which the waiter refuses to give into anger. It is the quality of self-restraint in the face of provocation that does not hastily retaliate or promptly punish. It’s the quality of having a long fuse.

It could be looked at as love passive. Love waiting for opportunity to begin. Love not in a hurry, calm ready to do its work when opportunity arises.

Our first color in love’s spectrum is that it agape love is slow to arouse resentment and patiently endures provocation waiting for an opening to do its good work.

[ATHEIST LECTURES] Robert Ingersoll, the well-known atheist of the last century, often would stop in the middle of his lectures against God and say, “I’ll give God five minutes to strike me dead for the things I’ve said.” He then used the fact that he was not struck dead as proof that God did not exist. Theodore Parker said of Ingersoll’s claim, “and did the gentleman think he could exhaust the patience of the Eternal God in five minutes?”

God’s children who have appropriated His love will not quickly take offense, much less seek revenge. They will bear patiently with the wrongdoer, not rendering evil for evil, but striving to overcome evil with good, not only in thought but in word and deed.