Love Thinks No Evil

Alba 12-21-2025

LOVE THINKS NO EVIL

I Corinthians 13:5

Glynda Lomax said she once knew a woman whose heart had been broken by disappointing relationships. She became very sarcastic towards the opposite sex and could often be overheard making disparaging remarks about them. It always surprised Glynda that, although the other woman never had a nice word to say about men, she seemed always to be searching for one.

Each time she began a new relationship it seemed to be all candy and flowers. Before long, however, the spiteful remarks would start and the next thing Glynda would hear, the current beau could do nothing to please the worman. She seemed to always be angry at them for some imagined wrong no one else could see, and for which she would find various ways to punish them. She seemed to feel strong when she was angry, as though her anger somehow made her powerful.

The men at first seemed hurt and baffled, and finally so frustrated they just gave up trying to please her. At this point the arguments would escalate until finally a breakup would occur and she was alone again, back to the venomous remarks, with new fuel for the fire of her anger. After a number of relationships over a span of years, the woman became very bitter. Today she is alone. She would have done well to learn what I Corinthians 13:5 says, “love thinks no evil”. Or as other translations have it, “love keeps no record of wrongs.”

If a person stores up every slight and every hurt that has happened to them, it only results in more misery. It solves nothing. If daily the mind is thinking of the evil that the person believes has happened to them, keeping a record of every wrong, it leaves no room for love.

Our life is full of records, we have a record when we were born, we have a record of when we got our shots, our visits to the doctor, when we go to school they keep records, the police even have a record of you if you’ve ever been into trouble, if you have ever been in the military they have a record of it.

We found out the truth of that by something that happened recently. Alison was out in the back yard and stepped on a rusty nail. It did not puncture deeply, but it left a wound. Thinking that a tetanus shot would be wise, we went to get her one at the Joplin Health Department. In the paper work they gave after giving the shot was a list of every vaccination and shot she ever had. What amazed me is that those shots covered time that we had lived in Nebraska, in Kansas and in Missouri. Yet it was all there. The record was complete.

And there are people who also keep a complete record in their minds of everything that is negative that other people have done to them. And often out of spite or inward hurt, they lash out at others who may or may not be guilty of any of it. Its a feeling that ends up as the old saying goes, “Get mad and the dog and kick the cat.”

In the Christmas story, there is the biblical account of someone who seems to fit this attitude. Think about someone who becomes angry when feeling deceived by others, lashes out hurting others, and has a mean streak. Can you think of a person that fits that category? No, it is not the Grinch. He is not in the biblical account. Although the person I am thinking about was definitely “grinchy”. It is King Herod, the Great.

He wasn't called “Great” because of being such a good guy. Because he wasn't. The greatness came from all the building he did including rebuilding of the Temple. He initiated a massive expansion of the Temple Complex in Jerusalem, eventually doubling it in size until it took up around 450 acres. His palace at Caesarea Maritima was built with impressive technology for the time, including the use of hydraulic cement and even underwater construction. Herod also built several impressive fortresses, including Masada, Herodium, Alexandrium, Hyrcania, and Machaerus.

While these were monumental sites, some of which, like Masada, can still be seen today, he actually built them mostly for himself and his family in case of mass insurrection against him. He even built an entire city, Sebaste, designed specifically to appeal to the Greek-speaking pagans of Judea.

But beyond that, Herod was cruel and merciless. He was incredibly jealous, suspicious, and afraid for his position and power. The people understood what a evil man Herod was. They knew that any threat to his power meant bloodshed. By bitter experience they knew he would release his carnage against innocent people. Their fears for their own safety were well grounded. Fearing a potential threat, Herod had the high priest Aristobulus, who was his wife’s brother, drowned. After which he provided a magnificent funeral where he pretended to weep. He then had his wife killed, and then her mother and two of his own sons. That barbaric act was exceeded in cruelty only by his slaughter of “all the male children who were in Bethlehem, from two years old and under” (Matthew 2:16). He did that in hopes of killing any threat to his throne from the One the magi said had been born King of the Jews.