How Is Your Love Life? Part Two
I Corinthians 13: 4 – 8
The kind of love the Father wants to harvest in your life has several facets. Observe: “Love suffers long,” that is, it is patient. This word was always used to speak of patience with people, not circumstances. We are to be patient with circumstances also, but this word relates to personal relationships. It is the ability to be wronged and wronged again and having the power to retaliate ,but never even thinking about doing it. That is love.
II Peter 3:9 says of God “He is longsuffering — not willing that any should perish.”
“Love …is kind.” This is the flip side of patience. Patience endures the injustices of others while kindness pays them back with good deeds. Inherent in the Greek word for kindness is the meaning of being “useful.”
Jesus didn’t say, “Love your enemies…feel good about them.” He said, “do good to them,” that is, be useful to them.
“Love does not envy.” Another word for envy is “jealousy.” Shakespeare called it “the green sickness,” Solomon spoke of it as “rottenness of the bones.” A Latin proverb called it “the enemy of honor.” It is “the sorrow of fools.”
One form of envy is to want what you have. Another is to wish they didn’t have it. The root word for envy means to “boil.”
“Love does not parade itself, is not puffed up.” To be puffed up means to have an attitude of false pride while the idea of parading oneself means to verbalize pride. Our word “windbag” comes from the root word “vaunteth.” This is the flip side of envy. Envy is wanting what others have. To be a boastful windbag is to try to make others want what you have.
“Love does not behave rudely.”
“Love does not seek its own.” It isn’t selfish.
“Love is not provoked.” The root is the word from which we get our word “paroxysm” which means a sudden outburst. Thus, love is never ready to fight.
“Love thinks no evil.” The word “thinks” translates logizomai which was an accounting term meaning “to keep a mathematical account.” Love doesn’t keep score. It is the same word used to speak of God’s pardoning act toward us.
“Love does not rejoice over iniquity.” Love doesn’t brag over sin.
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote: “Everybody soon or later sits down to a banquet of consequences.”
“Love rejoices in the truth.” Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life is the personification of “the truth.”
Do you rejoice in Him so fully that you are willing to give yourself self-sacrificingly to Him in your daily life publicly?