[LIVING IN LOVE SERIES] 1 CORINTHIANS 13:6b-8a
THE PRODUCT OF REAL LOVE
Here we find Real Love’s Outcome. Love, says Browning, “is the energy of life.” The Bible says where God is, love is, for God is love. All of these 15 colors and hues of the spectrum of love we find in this passage are verbs in the original Greek. What this means is that love is not simply a feeling, or an abstraction or passive; love is active. Love is only love when it acts (1 John 3:18). So we should do all the good we can, to all the people we can, for as long as we can.
The act of loving is what makes a person better than he is (CIT). Love enlarges the boarders of our heart, it deepens us and overflow from us. It is by loving that we come nearer to God and knit our soul to that of Jesus. To refuse to love is to contract inward, shrivel, decay and die. To live in the Spirit is to love.
Paul has been contrasting love by teaching what it is not, he now flips the coin and returns to the positive side of love and gives the last five qualities. These qualities also reveal what love brings to those who love. For God’s love is the fountain from which goodness flows.
I. LOVE BRINGS (SUPPORTS) TRUTH, 6b.
II. LOVE BRINGS (DEVELOPS) EMPOWERING, 7.
III. LOVE BRINGS (IS) SUCCESS, 8a.
The first element is a contrast with the last negative which it follows. But rejoices with the truth.
Love rejoices with truth as opposed to rejoicing with thoughts, words, or actions that are not right or unrighteous according to God. Unrighteousness justifies sinful actions, words, and attitudes. Love is concerned about truth not about selfish opinions. It does not look for tidbits of untruth to pass on. It refuses to float along with gossip. Some Christians who refuse to participate in evil, enjoy watching it or hope others fall into it. Rejoicing in anyone’s sin is wrong. We are to rejoice only with the truth.
Do you become glad at learning of another’s calamity, failure or faults, or at the exposing of the weaknesses of others? That is not love for love covers a multitude of sin (1 Pet. 4:8). Love does not spread gossip and those that love will be offended at the sharing of gossip. Love rejoices with learning, comprehending and sharing truth.
The mind that seeks after God, the source of eternal love, rejoices with learning of and comprehending His truth. Those that love search for God’s truth and with truth comes their rejoicing. Good doctrine is right thinking about God, ourselves and others. Right thinking, in turn allows us to love one another in truth, with what is real, rather than in a setting of self-deception.
WILLIAM GLADSTONE, a prime minister of England in the nineteenth century, one night was working late on an important speech he was to give to the House of Commons the next day. At about two o’clock in the morning a woman knocked on his door, asking the servant if Mr. Gladstone would come and comfort her young crippled son who lay dying in a tenement not far away. Without hesitation the busy man set his speech aside and went. He spent the rest of the night with the boy, comforting him and leading him to accept Jesus Christ as Savior. The boy died about dawn, and Gladstone returned home. He told a friend later that morning, “I am the happiest man in the world today.”
The true greatness of Gladstone was not in his political position or attainments but in his great love, a love that would risk his political future to show the love of Christ to a young boy in great need. As it turned out, that morning he also made what some historians claim was the greatest speech of his life. He gained that victory, too, but he had been willing to lose it for the sake of a greater one. Love endeavors to see things as they are. To love a person to heaven is getting all the facts right.
On the other hand, love does not focus on the wrongs of others. It does not parade their faults for all the world to see. Love does not disregard falsehood and unrighteousness, but as much as possible it focuses on the true and the right. It looks for the good, hopes for the good, and emphasizes the good. So it rejoices in those who teach the truth and live the truth.
A SCOTTISH MINISTER was known for his love and encouragement of the people of his church and village. When he died someone commented, “there is no one left to appreciate the triumphs of ordinary folk.” Love appreciates the triumphs of ordinary folk. Our children are built up and strengthened when we encourage them in their accomplishments and in their obedience. Love does not rejoice in falsehood or wrong, but its primary business is to build up, not tear down, to strengthen, not weaken.
II. LOVE BRINGS (DEVELOPS) EMPOWERING, 7.
Verse 7 continues to develop the positive good done by love and in four master strokes the apostle completes the portrait of this gift of heaven in an indelible manner. First, Love “Covers or bears all things.”
Stego is from stege, meaning roof. Love covers and protects like a roof covers a house and protects it from storms. Love throws a protective cover over its object. Instead of airing the fact of another’s sins love builds a compassionate roof over the sinner. Such love does not condone sin but it extends itself to the who sins. This reminds us of the example of Jesus. 1 Peter 4:8 says “Love covers a multitude of sins.” Love keeps out resentment as a ship keeps out the sea or a roof the rain. Love bears the storms of disappointment, the rains of failure, and the winds of time and circumstances. Love provides a covering that shields from the extremes of cold winters and hot summer sun. Love provides a place of shelter that can withstand the worst circumstances imaginable.
Do you look for people’s faults, consciously or unconsciously, and pick at them or do you look at people’s positive characteristics and concentrate on them?
Now this does not mean that love passively bears all sin in the way a doormat passively takes the feet of its users. (Some say bears, meaning love does not complain.) What it means is that love never stops caring and never stops offering forgiveness and a place of restoration. Love never gets to the place where it begins hating, despising, and condemning others. Love never protects sin but is desires to restore the sinner. Love cares enough to keep praying, to take every opportunity to patiently endure the sin of others, to confront when necessary, yet always ready to forgives and ready to reconciled when there is repentance.
The MERCY SEAT, where the blood of atonement was sprinkled (Lev. 16:14), was a covering, not only for the ark itself but for the sins of the people. The mercy seat was provided by Jesus on the cross in His great propitiatory sacrifice (Rom. 3:25-26; Heb. 2:17; 1 John 2:2). In the cross God threw the great mantle of His love, the shed blood of Jesus, over sin, forever covering it for those who trust in His Son. By nature, love is redemptive. It wants to buy back, not condemn, to save, not judge.
Love feels the pain of those it loves and helps carry the burden of the hurt. True love is even willing to take the consequences of the sin of those it loves. Isaiah wrote of Jesus Christ, “Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried;; ...He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him” (Isa. 53:4-5). As Peter knew firsthand from Jesus’ great patience and kindness, “love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Pet. 4:8).
During the puritan OLIVER CROMWELL’S (1599-1658) reign as Lord Protector of England (1653-1658) a young soldier was sentenced to die. The girl to whom he was engaged pleaded with Cromwell to spare the life of her beloved, but to no avail. The young man was to be executed when the curfew bell sounded, but when the sexton repeatedly pulled the rope the bell made no sound. The girl had climbed into the belfry and wrapped herself around the clapper so that it could not strike the bell. Her body was smashed and torn, but she did not let go until the clapper stopped swinging. She managed to climb down, bruised and bleeding, to meet those awaiting the execution. When she exclaimed what she had done, Cromwell commuted the sentence. A poet beautifully recorded the story as follows:
At his feet she told her story,
Showed her hands all bruised and torn,
and her sweet young face still haggard
With the anguish it had worn,
Touched his heart with sudden pity,
Lit his eyes with misty light.
“Go, your lover lives,” said Cromwell;
“Curfew will not ring tonight.”
Where love reigns, God reigns.
The Love also “Believes all things.”
Believe usually refers to God but here apparently it denotes confidence in man. It means one lives a life of faith. Love is ready to believe the best about another. Belief is not gullibleness but it expects people of the truth to be true, not doubting but believing them; innocent till proven guilty. Love trusts. Love is not suspicious or cynical.
Love leads one to interpret the conduct of fellow men in a good sense. This does not mean that one ignores when the opposite of what love should be is seen. But it does mean that love believes what one says in their own defense until actions prove them otherwise.
[Real love will not even pass on the facts about people if those facts will be unnecessarily harmful. Love knows that truth must be yoked with grace.]
Love is a safe harbor of trust. It is a tragedy when people in relationship with one another do not trust each other. It is better to trust and be wrong than to live in suspicion and be wrong. Suspicion eats up the inner well being of a person. It slowly eats away like a cancer and destroys.
[It was about 40 YEARS AGO that I observed a friend of mine showing great affection for someone whose integrity I doubted. I thought my friend was being taken in, and I was afraid he would be disillusioned and saddened in the end.
When I expressed my concern, he replied, "When I stand before my Lord, I hope He’ll say of me that I’ve loved and trusted too much, rather than too little." I’ve never forgotten his words.]
The Bible states that “[love] believes all things.” Love "believes" in people. It can see the potential in them. It believes that God can take the most unattractive and unworthy individual and turn that person into a masterpiece of beauty and grace. If love errs, it must err in the way of trustfulness and hopefulness.
Certainly, we must be aware of danger when we see it coming, and become "as wise as serpents" (Mt. 10:16). Tough love may be the best response to irresponsible and foolish people, but we can be too guarded, too wary and distrustful.
It doesn’t do us any real harm to be hoodwinked and defrauded (Mt. 5:38-48). It’s better to believe in someone and have your heart broken than to have no heart at all. British poet Alfred Tennyson wrote, "T’is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." Do you agree? [Lord, help us to believe in people and all that You can do in them. May we make sure we’ve loved too many, rather than too few. Let our love looks beyond what people are, to what they can become.]
The love “Hopes all things.”
Love does not despair but sees the bright side of things. No matter the circumstances, love continues to hope for the best. It is positive, not negative. Even when evil seems to be winning, love hopes for truth to prevail. Love hopes for the best in regard to all people and situations. This hope is based in the fact that God will accomplishes His benevolent purpose in people and situations brought to Him (Rom 8:28).
Love is confident of the future and full of good will. Our faith in God’s grace means we can believe that human failures aren’t final. Real love can hope because of what God can do in a person’s life. Only those who trust in the God of The Bible have a sound basis to be loving and hopeful in this present world.
This is the power of love. It is not fueled and sustained by an ever-changing emotional or physical state, but by deep beliefs and hopes that are given by God to those who trust Him. Real love has the capacity to view life and live it with an optimism that is refreshing because of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27). You know there is hope for you which enables you to have hope for others.
So when you meet someone who needs encouragement, give it to them! Why? Because more people die of broken hearts than swelled heads. And that’s true whether they live in a mansion or a mud hut. The story is told of a LITTLE BOY who wanted to play darts with his father. The boy said, “Come on Dad, let’s play darts. I’ll throw, and you shout ‘wonderful!” You may smile, but we tend to become what the most important people in our lives think of us. So think the best, believe the best, and express the best toward them-for your words are helping to shape their destiny.
I heard the story of a dog who stayed at the airport of a large city for over five years waiting for his master to return. Employees and others fed the dog and took care of him, but he would not leave the spot where he last saw his master. He would not give up hope that someday they would be reunited. If a dog’s love for his master can produce that kind of hope, how much longer should our love make hope last?
Our next color of the spectrum of eternal love is: Love “Endures all things.”
The eternal circle of love is now complete. It began with patience toward persons (or judgments) and ends with patience toward things or circumstances. Hupomene is made up of hupo meaning “under” and meno meaning “to remain or abide,” thus the word literally means to remain under, to endure or sustain a load of miseries, adversities, persecutions or provocations in faith and patience. It was a military term used of an army holding a vital position at all costs. Every attack and hardship was to be endured in order to hold fast.
Did you watch the 1984 OLYMPIC GAMES? In the women’s 26 mile marathon a Swiss runner came staggering into Los Angeles stadium. All the other runners had already finished. She was staggering nearly falling, far beyond the point of exhaustion. The crowd stood and cheered her as she made the final stadium lap. Her coach walked beside her encouraging her on. When she crossed the finish line, she collapsed into his arms near unconsciousness. What a picture of endurance! Love really endures. It does not give up in the face of pain, but endures to the finish knowing the goal is worth it.
Love cares and like a stout-hearted soldier holds its ground. Love perseveres, perseveres to the end. It has a stick-to-it-iveness about it. It hangs on. Real love is a survivor. Because it finds its source and life in God, real love can endure anything, then counterattacks to bring about loves victory.
Love bears what otherwise is unbearable; it believes what otherwise is unbelievable; it hopes in what otherwise is hopeless; and it endures when anything less than love would give up. After love bears it believes. After it believes it hopes. After it hopes it endures. There is no “after” for endurance, for endurance is the unending climax of love.
III. LOVE BRINGS (IS) SUCCESS, 8a.
Which brings us to the culminating of the colors that make up love in the first part of verse 8. “Love never fails.”
Ekpipel means failing in the sense of cessation. Here we have the perpetuity of permanence of love. Love doesn’t quit. It doesn’t give up.
The best proof of the absolute value of love is its eternal permanence in contrast to everything else, even the other excellent eternal qualities, of hope and faith. The subjective persistence of love in the believer on earth becomes objective permanence in heaven. Love endures forever!
Wouldn’t it be great if God could download that kind of love into all our hearts? Then Paul adds that love "endures all things." Endure is a military term. It means driving a stake into the ground - isn’t that great? It’s like, "I’ll stand my ground in loving you."
Remember, change happens by inches, not miles! You didn’t get there overnight and they won’t either. Even when change seems simple, it’s rarely ever easy. The only way we can break old habits is to form new ones - and that takes time and practice - lots of it! You can’t tell people something just once and expect them to get it. No, they need to hear it over and over before they can make the adjustment. And how you tell them, the look in your eyes and the tone of your voice, can determine whether they freeze in fear or soar above the obstacles. It can also determine the coping skills they hand off to their children. So this is no small matter.
Be persistent! Never give up trying to help them improve. Express gratitude for every step of progress they make. Flying off the handle doesn’t help them - or you. The way to get lasting results is through patience and love. Remember;""Love.. . always hopes, always perseveres. . never fails."
In his book Love, Acceptance & Forgiveness, Jerry Cook describes a church in Washington state that grew in 14 years to more than 4,000 people. The book includes a commitment the people at that church made to each other. It says: "You’ll never knowingly suffer at my hands. I’ll never knowingly say or do anything to hurt you. I’ll always, in every circumstance, seek to help and support you. If you’re down and I can lift you, I’ll do that. If you need something and I have it, I’ll share it with you. If I need to, I’ll give it to you. No matter what I find out about you, no matter what happens in the future - either good or bad - my commitment to you will never change. And there’s nothing you can do about it!" May the Lord help me to love like that.
[First Corinthians 13 is often read at weddings. Yet even optimistic newlyweds will eventually fail to love. The only individual who perfectly fulfills this "love chapter" is Jesus Christ.
Pastor F. R Meyer (1847-1929) wrote, "Jesus sits for His portrait in these glowing sentences, and every clause is true of Him. Substitute His name for ’love’ throughout the chapter, and see whether it is not an exact likeness."
Let’s try that. "[Jesus] suffers long and is kind; [Jesus] does not envy; [Jesus] . . . does not behave rudely, does not seek [His] own, . . . does not rejoice in ’iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. [Jesus] never fails" (1 Corinthians 13:4-8).
Yes, Jesus is the perfect example of love. Yet Paul wrote to describe how we are meant to love others. He knew, though, that we need more than to read about Christ’s example of love; we need to experience His love by receiving Him into our lives as Lord and Savior. If we have done that, Paul declared, "the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit" (Romans 5:5). Only then will we be able to love others as Jesus does, by allowing Him to love them through us.
More like the Master I would live and grow, More of His love To others I would show. -Gabriel]
IN CONCLUSION
Now the business of godly living is to have these virtues fitted into our daily living. Life is packed full of opportunities to learn loving. The world is not a playground but a school room. Life is not a holiday but an education. God would have us apprentice under Him to learn how we can love better.
How can we love better? By practice: that is what makes the good athlete, the good artist, the good sculptor, the good musician–practice. That’s what makes the good linguist, the good nurse, and the good stenographer–practice. What makes the good person, practice. Love is not the expression of enthusiastic emotion. Love is the expression of a character that has practiced, exercised these virtues.
If the question of you heart is, “where can I find this real love?” Let me share with you some good news. You already are loved. In the most familiar verse in the Bible we are told, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (Jn. 3:16).
Have you taken the first step of finding love in the Person and actions of Christ? Have you entrusted yourself to Him? Have you believed the Bible when it says Christ loved you and died for your sins?
This is the starting point. Acknowledge your sin and your need of Christ, who came “to seek and to save that which was lost” (Lk. 19:10). It is in Christ that we find the love of God, and it is in Him that we see what it means to live in the kind of love Paul described. He is the one who calls us not merely to a higher standard but to let Him live His life of love through us.
Do you need motivation or do you need encouragement to love?
1 John 4:19 says “We love because He first loved us.” Contemplate Christ and learn how He loves you and you will love. You cannot force it up, but you can look to Christ and the love of God will grow, for love begets love. God’s love for you can overpower you, melt you and begin creating a new heart within.
We can love others, we can love anybody, even our enemies “because He first loved us.” Whom will you love today in Jesus’ name?
To know love, open your heart to Jesus. To show love, open your heart to others. Do you need to know more love today?...or do you need to show more love today?
