FIRST CORINTHIANS 13
1 Corinthians 13:4-8
Love is patient, love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. (NASB)
I Corinthians 13:4-8
Love endures long and is patient and kind; love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy, is not boastful or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily. It is not conceited, arrogant and inflated with pride; it is not rude, unmannerly, and does not act unbecomingly. Love, God’s love in us, does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it, it pays no attention to a suffered wrong. It does not rejoice at injustice and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything without weakening. (THE AMPLIFIED BIBLE)
Love is the first quality listed in Galatians chapter 5. The best place to start our study on love is to go to 1 Corinthians 13.
We will start off with some insights from others and then I will have some comments at the end.
Paul begins with two positive aspects of love, love is patient, love is kind. The first is passive, not retaliating. The second is active, bestowing benefits.
This twofold opening statement stands as a daily challenge to every Christian! But the “descriptive definition” does not stop here but is followed with a series of primarily negative aspects of love; love never brags, is never arrogant and so on.
This description of “agape” should drive every believer to the foot of the Cross and to a complete surrender to our lord Jesus Christ, Who is the perfect fulfillment of “agape” and Who alone by His Spirit’s filling and control can enable us to work out this aspect of our salvation in fear and trembling to the glory of the Father.
Remember the context of the preceding three verses of this “crown jewel of Holy Scripture for there we learn that love is indispensable and is more important than eloquent communication, spiritual gifts, or personal sacrifice. We may have all the trappings of true religion but if we don’t have love, we don’t have anything at all.
The Corinthians were impatient with each other, suing each other, tolerating sin in the church, and creating problems because they did not have love. Paul emphasizes that whatever gifts and or qualities a believer may possess, they are nothing without love.
A. T. Robertson says that 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 pictures the character or conduct of love in a marvelous rhapsody.
Chrysostom adds that here Paul makes an outline of love’s matchless beauty, adorning its image with all aspects of virtue, as if with many colors brought together with precision.
C. F. Pfeiffer has an interesting comment writing that one might almost say that love is personified here, since the description is practically a description of the life and character of Jesus Christ. However, the picture is directly related to the Corinthians. The observance of the truths of this chapter would have solved their problems.
C. Hodge introduces this famous passage noting that almost all the instructions of the New Testament are suggested by some occasion and are adapted to it. This chapter is not a methodical dissertation on Christian love, but shows that grace is contrasted with the extraordinary gifts that the Corinthians valued inordinately. Therefore, the traits of love that are mentioned are those that contrasted with the Corinthians use of their gifts. They were impatient, discontented; envious, puffed up, selfish, indecorous, unmindful of the feelings and interests of others, suspicious, resentful, censorious. The apostle personifies love and places her before them and lists her graces not in logical order but as they occurred to him in contrast to the deformities of character that the Corinthians displayed.
John MacArthur explains that “agape love” is the greatest virtue of the Christian life. Yet that type of love was rare in pagan Greek literature. That’s because the traits of “agape” love portrays, unselfishness, self-giving, willful devotion, concern for the welfare of others, were mostly disdained in ancient Greek culture as signs of weakness. However, the New Testament declares “agape” to be the character trait around which all others revolve. The apostle John writes, “God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. (1 John 4:16)
LOVE IS PATIENT
The word “patient” used here is the Greek word “makrothumeo.”
“Makrothumeo” describes manifesting a state of emotional calm or quietness in the face of provocation, misfortune or unfavorable circumstances. Love never says, “I’ve had enough.” It suffers indefinitely. It is longsuffering and continues in spite of conduct likely to quench it. This continuance often, but not always, shows itself in restraining anger.
“Makrothumeo” describes especially patience towards people who act unjustly toward us. Another verb meaning to be patient is “hupomeno” which describes patience under circumstances, although there can be some overlap for circumstances often involve people. In other words the emphasis of “makrothumeo” is not so much a call to patience with circumstances as to patience with people. The action indicated by both verbs is essential to development of our Christian character, for patience with people is just as important as patience with circumstances. Patience is the righteous standard God expects all believers to conform to no matter what person he places, or allows, into your life or whatever trying circumstance you might face.
W. E. Vine has this note on “makrothumeo” writing that longsuffering is that quality of self-restraint in the face of provocation which does not hastily retaliate nor promptly punish; it is the opposite of anger and is associated with mercy.
L. O. Richards adds that the word group “makrothumeo” and “makrothumia” focuses our attention on restraint: that capacity of self-control despite circumstances that might arouse the passions or cause agitation. In personal relationships, patience is forbearance. This is not so much a trait as a way of life. We keep on loving or forgiving despite provocation, as illustrated in Jesus’ pointed stories in Matthew 18.
P. W. Barnett notes that “makrothumeo” is a metaphorical word, literally “long burning,” as of a decent log burning for many hours in an open fire, as contrasted with light pine kindling that fizzes and sputters, sending showers of sparks in all directions.
Chrysotom, and early church father, said that “makrothumeo” is a word which is used of the man who is wronged and who has it easily in his power to avenge himself but will never do it.
J. Vernon McGee writes that the idea is “long-burning,” it burns a long time. We should not have a short fuse with our friends and Christian brothers. We should not make snap judgments.
Illustration of love is patient:
Paul Tan illustrates this trait writing that during the late 1500’s, Dr. Thomas Cooper edited a dictionary with the addition of 33.000 words and many other improvements. He had already been collecting materials for eight years when his wife, a rather difficult woman, went into his study one day while he was gone and burned all of his notes under the pretense of fearing that he would kill himself with study. Eight years of work, a pile of ashes! Dr. Cooper came home, saw the destruction, and asked who had done it. His wife told him boldly that she had done it. The patient man heaved a deep sigh and said, “Oh Dinah, Dinah, thou hast given a world of trouble!” Then he quietly sat down to another eight years of hard labor, to replace the notes which she had destroyed. Next time you thing you’ve arrived at being patient, Dr. Cooper’s example will give you something to imitate!
LOVE IS KIND
The idea is that the kind person is disposed to be useful or helpful, even seeking out the needs of the other person to selflessly meet those needs without expectation of being repaid in kind! This quality of love inclines one to be of good service to others.
The Greek word for “kind” used here is “chresteuomai,” which basically means to provide something beneficial for someone as an act of kindness. It is an attitude of being willing to help or assist rendering gracious, well-disposed service to others. It is active goodwill. It not only feels generous, but is generous. It also describes one’s “gentle in behavior.”
“Chresteuomai” is not merely passive but it is actively engaged in doing good to others. It’s the picture of a person who spontaneously seeks the good for others and shows it with friendly acts. It is considerate and helpful to others, is gently and mild and always ready to show compassion.
Matthew Henry describes this kindness as benign, bountiful; it is courteous and obliging. The law of kindness is in her lips; her heart is large, and her hand open. She is ready to show favors and to do good. She seeks to be useful; not only seizes on opportunities of doing good, but searched for them. This is her general character. She is patient under injuries, and apt and inclined to do all the good offices in her power. And under these two generals all the particulars of the character may be reduced.
Ray Pritchard has the following thoughts on a selfless love that is always kind writing that “chresteuomai” means something like “sweet usefulness.” Love is quick to help others and eager to reach out to those in need. Perhaps you have seen this famous quote:
“I shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing, therefore, that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it, or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”
Mark Twain called kindness “a language that the deaf ear can hear and the blind can read.”
In one of his news reports, Paul Harvey told about a man named Carl Coleman who was driving to work when a woman motorist, passing too close, snagged his fender and hers. Both cars stopped. The young woman surveying the damage was in tears. It was her fault, she admitted. But it was a new car, less than two days from the showroom. How was she ever going to face her husband? Mr. Coleman was sympathetic but explained they must not each other’s license number and automobile registration. The woman reached into the glove compartment of her to retrieve the documents in an envelope. And on the first paper to tumble out, in a heavy masculine scrawl, were these words: “In case of accident, remember, Honey, it’s you I love, not the car.”
John MacArthur notes that the first test of Christian kindness, and the test of every aspect of love, is the home. The Christian husband who acts like a Christian is kind to his wife and children. Christian brothers and sisters are kind to each other and to their parents. They have more than a kind feeling toward each other; they do kind, helpful things for each other, to the point of loving self-sacrifice, when necessary. For the Corinthians, kindness meant giving up their selfish jealous, spiteful, and proud attitudes and adopting the spirit of loving-kindness.
Now Paul begins a series of 8 negative definitions that do not spring from love, for love and jealousy, etc, are mutually exclusive. Where one is, the other cannot be.
LOVE IS NOT JEALOUS
The Greek word used for “jealous” is “zeloo” which means to be fervent, to “boil” with envy, to be jealous. It can used commendably to refer to a striving for something or showing zeal.
Whether “zeloo” is constructive zeal or destructive envy depends on the context. In 1 Corinthians 13:4 “zeloo” clearly is used in a bad sense of a hostile emotion based on resentment which is “heated or boiling” with envy, hatred or anger.
“Zeloo” in the bad sense can be manifest in two forms, one is which the person sets their heart on something that belongs to someone else or a second form in which one has intense feelings over another’s achievements or success.
A. C. Thiselton adds that “zeloo” applies the notion of burning or boiling metaphorically to burning or boiling emotions, stance, or will for earnest striving, for passionate zeal, or for burning envy. Whether it is constructive zeal or destructive envy depends on the context. The envy which is carried over from a status seeking, non-Christian Corinthian culture into the Christian church is not of the Holy Spirit, and is deemed to be incompatible with love, which does not begrudge the status and honor of another, but delights in it for the sake of the other.
Augustine wrote that the reason why love does not envy is because it is not puffed up. For where puffing up precedes, envy follows, because pride is the mother of envy.
John MacArthur writes that the second sort of jealousy is more than selfish; it is desiring evil for someone else. It is jealousy on the deepest, most corrupt, and destructive level. That is the jealousy Solomon uncovered in the woman who pretended to be a child’s mother. When her own infant son died, she secretly exchanged him for the baby of a friend who was staying with her. The true mother discovered what had happened and, when their dispute was taken before the king, he ordered the baby to be cut in half, a half to be given to each woman. The true mother pleaded for the baby to be spared, even if it meant losing possession of him. The false mother, however, would rather have had the baby killed than for the true mother to have him. (1 Kings 3:16-27)
William Barclay phrases it this way writing that there are two kinds of envy. The one covets the possessions of other people; and such envy is very difficult to avoid because it is a very human thing. The other is worse, it grudges the very fact that others should have what it has not; it does not so much want things for itself as wish that others had not got them. Meanness of soul can sink no further than that.
How significant is the sin of jealousy? Proverbs explains that “Wrath is fierce and anger is a flood, but who can stand before jealousy? (Proverbs 27:4)
It is therefore not surprising to observe that the Bible is filled with illustrations that portray the disastrous effect of jealousy on personal relationships, beginning with Cain’s envy of Abel resulting in his murder of his own brother! (Genesis 4:3-8)
Moses records the jealousy of Joseph’s brothers writing:
And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind”
“Now then, come and let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; and we will say, A wild beast devoured him. Then let us see what will become of his dreams.”
“Come, and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; for he is our brother, our own. And his brothers listened to him. (Genesis 37:11, 20. 27)
In the New Testament Luke records other jealousy motivated acts (in Acts) writing that:
“The high priest rose up, along with all his associates (that is the sect of the Sadducees), and they were filled with jealousy and they laid hands on the apostles, and put them in a public jail. (Acts 5:17-18)
“But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy, and began contradicting the things spoken by Paul, and were blaspheming.” (Acts 13:45)
What you are filled with clearly will control you.
When one is filled with jealousy, their actions are controlled by that green monster. Not surprisingly we see that the divine antidote for one fill with jealousy is to continually be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Spirit borne Christian love does not manifest this attitude and this trait is never to be a part of the Christian’s “wardrobe.” Loves does not desire for itself the possessions of or control over people. A loving person is never jealous but is glad for the success of others, even if their success works against his own.
Ray Pritchard writes that jealousy is the sin of those who think others have too much and they have too little. By contrast, love is generous. It does not begrudge others their gifts. How do you respond to the good fortune of others? If they do better than you, if they prosper when you don’t, if their family seems happy while yours is torn apart, how will you react? If they achieve what you cannot, if they gain what you lack, if they win where you lose, then the truth will come out. Can you lose gracefully? Can you walk away from the contest without bitterness?
If you live long enough, you will probably find someone who does what you do better than you can do it. You will meet people with your talents and your gifts, only much more of them. You will find people who surpass you in every way. What will you do then? This one test of love. And if you live long enough, you are certain to encounter people who are less talented and less gifted than you in every way, yet they seem to catch all the breaks and end up ahead of you in the great game of life. How will you respond when an inferior person passes you by? This is even sterner test of love.
How do your react when other Christians receive blessings or benefits that we lack?
Do you allow the sparks of envy to burn and them to a full flame?
No one is more miserable than someone filled with jealousy or envy. They rob us of happiness and make our good accomplishments seem bad. Furthermore, they exact their own punishment.
On the wall of a chapel in Padua, an old city in northeastern Italy, hangs a painting by the Renaissance artist Giotto. The painter depicted envy with long ears that could hear every bit of news of another’s success. He also gave Envy the tongue of a serpent to poison the reputation of the one being envied. But if you could look at the painting carefully, you would notice that the tongue coils back and stings the eyes of the figure itself. Not only did Giotto picture envy being blind, but also as destroying itself with its own venomous evil.
If we resent the success and accomplishments of others and find ourselves striking out at them with damaging words or insidious innuendoes, we have a problem with jealousy. But God wants to administer the antidote of love. That alone will keep us from becoming jealousy’s victim.
LOVES DOES NOT BRAG
“Perpereuomai” is the Greek word for brag. It means to talk with conceit or to behave as a braggart or windbag, exhibiting self-display and employing rhetorical embellishments in extolling one’s self excessively.
Love does not try to prove itself and say, “Watch how loving I can be” but instead works behind the scenes.
Love does not parade it accomplishments. It does vaunt oneself so as to parade one’s imagined superiority over others.
Love does not vaunt itself even regarding gifts which it really possesses, which is clearly an indirect rebuke of those at Corinth who used their spiritual gifts for display. Love creates a self-effacing stance rather than giving in to the temptation to assume an air of superiority.
William Barclay writes that there is a self-effacing quality in love. True love will always be far more impressed with is own unworthiness that its own merit.
A. C. Thiselton comments that again the verb underlines the issue of status seeking and triumphalism at Corinth. Even believers seemed to have come to act the part of braggarts, which was at odds with cruciform, Christlike love.
S. J. Kistenmaker adds that such a person parades his embellished rhetoric to gain recognition. His behavior is marked by egotism, subservience toward superiors, and
Condescension toward subordinates. A braggart exhibits pride in himself and his accomplishments. But such bragging is devoid of love to God and to one’s fellow man, and is blatant sin. Further, bragging and arrogance go hand in hand.
John MacArthur has an interesting not explaining that bragging is the other side of jealousy. Jealousy is wanting what someone else has. Bragging is trying to make others jealous of what we have. Jealousy puts others down; bragging builds us up. It is ironic that, as much as most us dislike bragging in others, we are so inclined to brag ourselves. C. S. Lewis called bragging the “utmost evil.” It is the epitome of pride, which is the root of all sins. Bragging puts ourselves first. Everyone else, including God must therefore be of less importance to us. It is impossible to build ourselves up without putting others down. When we brag, we can be “up” only if others are down.
LOVE IS NOT ARROGANT
“Phusioo” is the Greek word for arrogant, which literally means to puff up like a pair of bellows, and is used figuratively to describe one who becomes “inflated”, proud, haughty or puffed up with pride.
It means to cause one to have an exaggerated self-conception.
William Barclay illustrates the complete opposite of arrogant writing that Napoleon always advocated the sanctity of the home and the obligation of public worship, for others. Of himself he said, “I am not a man life other men. The laws of morality to not apply to me.”
The really great man never thinks of his own importance. Carey, who began life as a cobbler, was one of the greatest missionaries and certainly one of the greatest linguist the world has ever seen. He translated at least parts of the Bible into no fewer that thirty-four Indian languages. When he came to India, he was regarded with dislike and contempt. At a dinner party a snob with the idea of humiliating him, said in a tone that everyone could hear. “I suppose, Mr. Carey, you once worked as a shoe maker.” “No, your lordship,” answered Carey, “not a shoe make, only a cobbler.” He did not even claim to make shoes, only to mend them. No one likes the “important” person. Man dressed in a little brief authority can be a sorry sight.
A. C. Thiselton comments that Paul hammers home the incompatibility of love as respect and concern for the welfare of the other and obsessions about the status and attention accorded to the self. How much behavior among believers and even ministers is actually “attention seeking” designed to impress others with one’s own supposed importance? Some “spiritual songs” may appear to encourage, rather than discourage, this preoccupation with the self rather than with others and with God.
Matthew Henry adds that those who exhibit “agape” will do nothing out of a spirit of contention or vainglory. True love will give us an esteem of our brethren, and raise our value for them; and this will limit our esteem of ourselves, and prevent the tumors of self-conceit and arrogance. These ill qualities can never grow out of tender affections for the brethren, nor a diffusive benevolence.
LOVE DOES NOT ACT UNBECOMINGLY
“Act unbecomingly” comes from the Greek word “aschemoneo,” which means to behave in an ugly, indecent, unseemingly or unbecoming manner.
It means to be ill mannered or rude. This verb speaks of an act in defiance of social and moral standards, with resulting disgrace, embarrassment, and shame. It describes one who acts improperly or with rudeness. It means to behave unmannerly, disgracefully or dishonorably.
G. G. Findlay alluding to this verb writes that: Love imparts a delicacy of feeling beyond the rules of politeness.
A. C. Thiselton does not hold back commenting that love does not elbow its way into conversations, worship services, or public institutions in a disruptive, discourteous, attention-seeking way. The background here may allude to the intrusion of tongues or prophecies at inappropriate moments. But today it may also include any kind of monopolizing of a congregation’s time and attention in the service of the self; in the tone, style, and vocabulary adopted in notices or sermons, or worst of all, the minister over familiar chat show host or “prophet’ of ill mannered rebuke.
Steven Cole relates a tragic illustration. I read of a man who was generally lacking in manners. He never opened the car door for his wife. “She doesn’t have two broken are,” he would say. After many years of marriage, his wife died. At the funeral, as the pallbearers brought her casket out to the hearse, the husband was standing by the door. The funeral director, who knew the husband by name, called out to him and said, “Open the door for her, will you?” He reached for the car door and the, for one second, froze. He realized that he had never opened the door for her in life; now, in her death, it would be the first, last, and only time. A lifetime of regret came crashing down around him. Love is not rude.
LOVE DOES NOT SEEK ITS OWN
Seek its own means that the loveless person desires to have his or her own way, or the highway! Such selfish behavior is the polar opposite of sacrificial love. And the church at Corinth was rife with this sin for they were selfish in the extreme not sharing their food at love feasts, protecting their “rights” and even suing fellow believers in non-Christian setting and using their spiritual gifts not to benefit others but their own advantage.
They did not use their gifts to edify or build up the church but to try to build up themselves up.
Alan Redpath strikes a painful chord to most of us who have been married for any length of time writing that the secret of every discord in Christian homes, communities and churches is that we seek our own way and our own glory.
A. C.Thiselton adds that agape spells judgment on the life that centers round the ego and its interests. For when God’s agape I shed abroad in a man’s heart through the Holy Spirit his life thereby gains a new center. The emphasis is transferred from his own ego to Christ.
Elisabeth Elliot was once speaking on the subject of selfless love to an audience that included some young children who were sitting right in front of her. As she spoke, she wondered how she could make this plain to them, so that they could apply it. Later, she got a letter from one of those children, a six-year-old boy, who wrote, “ I am learning to lay down my life for my little sister. She has to take a nap in the afternoon. I don’t have to take a nap. But she can’t go to sleep unless I come and lay down beside her. So I lay down with my little sister.” That boy is learning to love! If husbands and wives, as well as children, would apply this verse as that little boy did, our homes would be free of conflict.
LOVE IS NOT PROVOKED
Figuratively “paroxuno,” the Greek word for provoked, came to mean to spur on, to cause to be upset, to stimulate as used in this verse to arouse of stir some to anger.
Paul is referring to sinful anger that is never provoked in one who is living out selfless, supernatural love. They are willing to endure slights and insults even as did the One Who is the essence of these attitudes of agape love. And it is His life in us as the Spirit of Christ that enables us to manifest this love, which is not possible in our own strength.
A. C. Thiselton notes that the heart of the word conveys the semantic force of to exasperate, to irritate, as metaphorical extensions of to make sharp, to make pointed, to make acid.
Virtually every lexicon and primary source indicates the notion of reaching a level of exasperation. But how does this express itself.
The English word “pique” combines the same range of nuances as the Greek: something between irritation and anger which takes offense because one’s self-regard has been dented, wounded, or punctured by some sharp point.
Love, Paul urges, does not become exasperated into pique, a transient feeling of wounded vanity, partly because patience delays exasperation and partly because of lack of self interest diverts a sense of self importance away from reacting on the ground of wounded pride: “it is not embittered by injuries, whether real or supposed.
J. B. Phillips paraphrases it well writing that love “in not touchy” which conveys the readiness of overreact on one’s own behalf.
Henry Drummond in “The Greatest Thing in the World” wrote the following about this negative trait noting that the peculiarity of ill temper is that it is the vice of the virtuous. It is often the one blot on an otherwise noble character. You know men who are but perfect, and women who would be entirely perfect, but for an easily ruffled, quick tempered, or “touch” disposition.
John MacArthur has some pithy thoughts regarding the individual who is easily provoked writing that the great colonial preacher and theologian Jonathan Edwards had a daughter with an uncontrollable temper. When a young man fell in love with her and asked her father for her hand in marriage, Dr. Edwards replied, “You can’t have her.” “But I love her and she loves me,” he protested. “It doesn’t matter” the father insisted. Asked why, he said, “Because she is not worthy of you.” “But she is a Christian isn’t she?” “Yes,” said Edwards, “but the grace of God can live with some people with whom no one else could ever live.”
Surely the number one reason both for mental and physical illness in our society today is the overwhelming preoccupation with our rights and the consequent lovelessness. When everyone is fighting for his own rights, no one can really succeed or be happy. Everyone grabs, not one gives, and everyone loses, even when one gets what he wants. Lovelessness can never win in any meaningful or lasting way. It always costs more that it gains.
We get angry when another person gains a privilege or recognition we want for ourselves, because it is our “right.” But to put our rights before our duty and before loving concern for others comes from self-centeredness and lovelessness. The loving person is more concerned about doing what he should and helping where he can that having what he things are his rights and his due. Love considers nothing it right and everything its obligation.
Telling our wives and husbands that we love them is not convincing if we continually get upset and angry at what they say or do. Telling our children that we love them is not convincing if we often yell at them for doing things that irritate us and interfere with our plans. It does no good to protest, “I lose my temper a lot, but it’s all over in a few minutes.” So is a nuclear bomb. A great deal of damage can be done in very short time. Temper is always destructive, and even small temper “bombs” can leave much hurt and damage, especially when they explode on a regular basis. Lovelessness is the cause of temper, and love is the only cure.
Love that takes a person out of himself and centers his attention on the well being of others is the only cure for self-centeredness
