The Church - Love
November 8, 2015
1 Corinthians 13:4-13:8
There was a Peanuts cartoon in which - - - Linus tells his kind and loving sister, Lucy, he’s going to be a doctor. She responds - - - “You, a doctor? 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.”
Many of us are tempted to love that way. To love in the abstract, because it’s much less costly to love that way.
The problem is that love is not an abstract concept but a living reality. So, what is love? Paul gives us an amazing description in 1 Corinthians 13. We’ve looked at the first 3 verses, now we are moving into the nuts and bolts of love. In 4 very short verses, Paul gives us an amazing look at love. In these 4 verses Paul lists 15 virtues of love — describing what love is and what love is not. He tells us ~
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant
5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Today . . . we are only going to look at verses 4 and 5. Next week we will finish looking at this section, on the 22nd we will have our guest speaker, then believe it or not, we jump into Advent and prepare for the coming of the Christ child.
Love is Patient. The word used for patience is made up of two Greek words meaning “long” and “passion, anger, rage.” When combined, it literally means long tempered or that the temper is a long time in rising. The word means waiting a long time before the you give in to anger. It’s the quality of self-restraint in the face of being provoked, so that we do not act before we think. It’s the quality of having a long fuse.
As we all know, this is not always easy to do. We can jump to conclusions, we can be offended and make rash decisions, we can become angry and slam something which breaks or even causes us some physical pain.
It’s not easy to be patient when we are being hurt. It’s one of the acts of love I am still learning, and I believe will be learning all of my life. I grew up in a home where anger was quick and explosive. It’s not easy to get that image out of your heart and head. We often live with this all of our lives and fight a daily battle with what we don’t like within ourselves.
So, Paul calls us to be long-tempered - long-sufferers . . . . to have a long fuse.
Paul continues be telling us not only is love patient, but love is also kind.
Love sees people’s imperfections and still cares. Love is not unkindly sever in its criticisms or disagreeable in its actions. As I was preparing for today, I was convicted again and again of my shortcomings. Am I always patient? Am I always kind? Maybe I should stop now.
We’ve heard these verses many times before, but when we slow down to consider their meaning in our lives, they are not easy!
The word kind means “useful, gracious, kind.” It comes from the word “to use.” This is meant to be an active form of love. It is a call for you and I to make ourselves useful. In a sense it is a victory over idle selfishness and comfortable self pleasure.
Have you ever noticed how much of Christ’s life was spent doing kindness? He spent so much time and energy simply helping people. That’s a great demonstration of love - - - which we can also do for our heavenly Father - - - be kind to His children. Everyone needs kindness, you do, and I do.
This verb is a call to serve others. Paul starts with passive love in being patient, which is slow to act and moves to active love — doing good for others.
One of the things I’ve learned about life in the past few weeks is that when we love . . . we must love our grandmother, our cranky neighbor, an insensitive boss, an off-key choir member, a troublesome daughter, or someone who is mean spirited. If we keep love in the abstract we will insulate ourselves from its sacrifices and actions. How about you? Is your love abstract or concrete?
At the same time love must have boundaries so that we don’t get hurt and we must be able to protect ourselves. Because people will act like wolves in sheeps clothing. At times it is easy to be deceived, but we must stay true to God and seek to follow God’s call.
Paul follows up patience and kindness with 8 negatives. He tells us what love is not. These stifle and hold love back. In a sense, these are the enemies of love. The first four deal with the abuse of the gift of love.
Love is not envious. The word to envy literally means “to bubble over because you’re so hot; to be boiling; to set one's heart on something, to be completely intent.”
The word is used to express any wrong feeling when viewing the good of others. Envy or jealousy is a feeling of ill will or begrudging because of the supposed advantages of others. Envy goes further than jealousy. Because when we envy, we begin to plot and plant a way to get what the other person has.
Love is not in competition with others. When you attempt a good work there will be others doing it better. Do not be envious of others but be grateful for them.
Beware of envy. Cain’s envy of Abel’s acceptable worship hatched the murder of his brother. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery because of envy. Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den because of the envy of his fellow officials in Babylon. Real love does not resent the blessings, successes, or well-being of another.
Paul goes on to tell us that love does not boast. Boasting is defined as bragging. To brag means you are seeking “vain glory, you’re a show off who needs too much attention.”
In Greek literature it was used for someone who was a talkative, self asserting or self exaggerating person who put on a show to get attention. It’s a person who lets everyone know what they’ve accomplished. It’s the parent who can’t stop talking about their kids accomplishments. It’s great to praise your kids, but people don’t have to hear it in every conversation.
Boasting usually pulls people away from you. They may tolerate you, but more than anything, they don’t want to be with you because the side hazard of being a boaster is that you are only interested in yourself and not interested in the other person. It’s when you tell them you took an amazing vacation, but they have to tell you about their better vacation. You tell them about your upcoming surgery and they have to one up you by telling you about their bigger and better surgery.
And love isn’t arrogant. The word arrogant comes from the word which means “puffed up, swelled up, like an egotistical person spewing out puffed-up thoughts.
It means you are full of yourself. Boasting represented an outward display, arrogant is an inward character or attitude. It speaks of conceit and self-satisfaction.
The arrogant person boasts or toots their own horn and sees others as inferior. To contrast that, another person is modest and humble. In a sense, they are modest because they are humble. They are the people who don’t mind being last in line, who don’t need to puff themselves up, because they know God loves them. They are secure in themselves.
Puffed-up people have an exaggerated opinion of their own importance. They often assume their happiness, well-being, opinions, and feelings are the only things that really count. Puffed-up people find it easy to dismiss the needs and feelings of others.
The first place we might look to see if we have a puffed-up sense of our own importance is in our prayers. Do we pray only for ourselves and our own interests, or do we also pray for others. In our everyday lives, do we consider others as more important than ourselves, or are our interests always first?
If we are wrong we need to admit it. It’s true in all of our relationships.
We’re finally moving to verse 5. Where Paul tells us love is not rude. On the surface the definition is not about rudeness. The Greek definition is someone who “acts improperly, they act unseemly, behave unbecomingly (or even dishonorably); indecent.
It means someone’s behavior is “unabidable.” They don’t have the conduct which creates the desire for others to remain.
We can easily be rude to one another. We’ve all been there, we’ve all done it, we’ve all experienced it. Sometimes it’s really difficult to know the boundaries or what’s rude and what’s not rude. I don’t know one pastor who has not been on the receiving end of “righteous anger” masked as rudeness and arrogance. It’s part of the landscape of ministry. It’s really a look at how we treat one another. Are our actions unbecoming and indecent?
Honestly . . . sometimes it’s hard to know. Sometimes when we are feeling attacked we respond. We may think we’ve acted reasonably, but reasonably is very subjective. How one person views our actions is different from another person’s.
The bottom line is to have a goal to treat others with those first two words Paul used . . . Patience and Kindness. Of course, this doesn’t mean you need to be in a relationship with someone if they are hurtful to you. We need to set up healthy boundaries so that we don’t get hurt. We need to move away from those who hurt us, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
Love controlled behavior does nothing which brings shame on you.
Paul then tells us “Love does not insist on its own way.”
There is a tombstone in the courtyard at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London which reads, “Sacred is the memory of General Charles George Gordon, who at all times and everywhere gave his strength to the weak, his substance to the poor, his sympathy to the suffering, his heart to God.”
I don’t think he insisted on having things his own way. Paul is talking about someone who wants to further their advantage over you. They insist on having their way. Not because it is best for everyone, but because it is best for them. When this is done it is manipulative. So the person can have what they want. It’s the person who seems nice to you until you don’t give them what you want, and you realize the friendship was not real.
The love is not selfish. The love is not manipulative, it is not used to get ones own way. In agape love there is no “I’ll love you if...”
Paul then tells us love is not irritable or provoked. This means love is not “exasperated, irritated, aroused to resentment; to incite someone and stimulate their emotions; to rouse someone to anger and provoke feelings.”
How often do we irritate others; often times we do it intentionally. I’ve done it, you’ve done it. We don’t like to admit it, because it’s another chink in our armor. But we’ve been there. Can we put on love in such a way that we are not the ones who are provoking others. We call it getting a rise out of others. It may be funny at times, but is it really love?
Sometimes the greatest decision we make each day is what our attitude will be. Will we put on love and kindness; or will be do the opposite?
And finally, the last point we will look at today is the phrase of being resentful or keeping a record of wrongs.
It’s a bookkeeping term which means “to count up, to take account of,” as in a ledger. The thought is keeping score or the desire to settle the account.
How many times have we kept a record of what people have done wrong? Sometimes we seem to harbor bitterness towards others as we add up on a ledger page all that they have done wrong. Yes, we need to hold others accountable for their actions; and again . . . there is a fine line between holding others accountable and finding things we can use against someone.
There are those very difficult balancing acts we need to work through. When is too much, too much? It varies for everyone. It doesn’t mean you aren’t being kind and patient. Sometimes the greatest gift we can offer someone is tough love, love which seeks to help the other person grow and become more of the person Christ calls them to be.
It doesn’t mean we throw out patience, kindness, gentleness and grace. We try to demonstrate these virtues while loving the other person. Love is not always easy.
God’s call in our lives is to love one another. Paul has given us some ideas on how to love, next week we will finish looking at this section.
Ultimately the call is for unity. It’s not always easy. We’ve learned that. Sometimes maintaining unity involves a fight. It’s not fun. Mistakes are made, people are hurt, yet the call of Christ is larger than any one person. Christ call us to maintain the unity, yet to love one another. That will always be the challenge . . . within the church and in the world. May we always seek to love one another . . . even in the storms.
