But how powerful? What does love do for someone who has it? Is love an "it" or "thing" or "verb"? Is it wrong to say that Love can encompass all of those things? I want to offer something I have been talking with God about a lot: loving others. More specifically loving the people in our lives who we find it difficult to love. Maybe for you that's a friend, teacher, brother, sister, mother, or father. Maybe it's yourself. Regardless, it's really helpful to know what it looks like and feels like and is like to love the person who is difficult to love.
I want to contend that everything means absolutely nothing if that person does not have love.
In the words of one of my favorite movies: "love lifts us up where we belong." -moulin rouge
(This movie is also a case in point for why I find it crucial to know what this highly potent thing called love is, otherwise we could end up dead or miserable like Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor's characters in the film.)
"If I speak human or angelic languages but do not have love, I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I donate all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body in order to boast but do not have love, I gain nothing."
(1 Corinthians 13:1-3 HCSB)
Maybe in these opening verses Paul is trying to say that it is possible to do many things that appear good, but in actuality reek of meaningless NOTHING. Without love in all of the above mentioned things...it's useless.
Stop right now. If you're doing something or anything that has no love (which we will define in the next section) then it's pointless.
Love is NOT faith.
Love is NOT knowing God.
Love is NOT prayer.
Love is NOT giving your advice, words of encouragement, or any kind of talking.
Love is NOT even helping the poor or serving the needy.
Confused yet? Good.
So what is this love? Is it a simple feeling? An audible gesture or an abstract chemical reaction that we have no control over? Is love buying someone flowers? Is it hugging someone? Buying someone an extravagant gift? Donating an organ?
Maybe. Could be. But maybe not. Maybe those are all loving actions, but they are not love in and of itself. They're more like copycats or projections of love. The real deal, genuine love as described in the infamous love chapter, is so in your face and concrete that there is no denying what is and is not love. It's not a grey area, and there are no maybe or what ifs. It's the real Love. The ONLY love, and everything else is a copycat or phony. But I could be wrong and I would highly encourage you to search and seek for answers of your own between you and God.
The basics of love are much more than what they appear to be, and refreshing ourselves with the truths found in 1 Corinthians 13 can help us examine where love is needed for our lives to be full of deep and rich grandiose meaning!
Let's begin part 1 of looking at the simple definitions of love in 1 Corinthians 13. I borrowed some definitions from the dictionary to help us remember that words have meaning and these meanings can lose their meaningfulness at times, so let's get real basic.
Love is patient,
Patient: adj.
- bearing provocation, annoyance, misfortune, delay, hardship, pain, etc., with fortitude and calm and without complaint, anger, or the like.
Synonym: untiring
---> I know for me, when someone annoys me or gives me pain the first thing I want to throw back or let fester in me is either anger or indifference. So this area, for me, definitely needs more grace and help. This love sounds heavy: bearing, bearing, bearing. I think patience resembles the "take up your cross and follow me" directive of Jesus in Matthew 16:24. Loving through patience is heavy, but it is a powerful act of commitment to follow Christ as He bore all of our provocations, annoyances, misfortunes, delays, hardships, pains, and everything else without complaint or anger. The most difficult times to be patient will probably be with your closest family members. Lord, we need Your help! Can I get an amen?
love is kind.
Kind: adj.
- of a good or benevolent nature or disposition, as a person: a kind and loving person.
Synonym: gentle, thoughtful, understanding
---> this is a nature. Meaning it comes naturally. I think the more I see myself as morally limbless, and incapable of anything good (being tactfully redundant here) the more I see how beautiful Jesus is to clothe me in His perfect kind gentleness. So is this "clothing" mere mental imagery so that I remain the insensitive or rude jerk or do I actually become naturally kind and soft and gentle from the inside out? When Christ clothes me, I am a totally different person. I go from being naturally selfish to naturally compassionate, and that's because I use my past to recall when and where He reached out and gently held me; which He did when I was willfully out of control, rebellious, cynical and apathetic towards Him. I still am somewhat dubious towards Him at times, and even then He is gentle to me, thoughtful of my fears, and overall understanding of my weaknesses. It's His nature. Love being kindness, I think, is the love that thinks and thinks until it convinces the other of your compassion rather than judgment. If someone constantly feels judged by you, perhaps this is an area of love that you can pray about. How many friends do you know that will take your crap and give you compassion over judgment? Or how many people have opened up to you about their crap (I mean the real freaky stuff, the secret sins that go on behind the smiling face kind of stuff?) If a lot then you probably have this facet of love well in progress, and I'm sure your life is reaping much from it. It's tricky, for sure. But this is love that requires higher thinking from our end in order to get the ball rolling in all our relationships. It's asking questions from the other angles, aside from the ones that first come to mind (ie: when someone offends you or yells at you, the first questions you might ask are "what the hell is wrong with them?" or "why are they so dumb?" But the higher question born in love through kindness might be: "what's going on in that person's personal life that I might not know about or what might I have done to make this person become angry?") The kind of questions that empower the other person rather than shame them. Nobody wants to open themselves up to judgment, but everyone needs compassion--each year the rate of depression rises and with that so does the need for compassion. Judgment will often tune your words out to the other, but compassionate love are the keys you need to search for to open the doors. The more you search and search for those keys with the Holy Spirit, the more this aspect of love is becoming your nature.
Love does not envy,
Envy: noun
- a feeling of discontent or covetousness with regard to another's advantages, success, possessions, etc.
Synonym: Ill will, lusting
---> so this one, I must say, surprises me more than any of the other attributes of love. This is what love is NOT, so it's a negative, meaning it's probably going to be easier to spot in your life. (Because, after all, we are first naturally sinful before we are regenerated into becoming like Christ.). One moment I'll be satisfied and joyful over how much God has blessed me and continues to surprise me, the next minute I'm creeping some hot couple on Instagram living vicariously through their photos. I have to stop myself and examine what's going on, and maybe I'll try to momentarily make myself feel better by thinking they are probably miserable inside because they don't know God the way I do, but that's so wicked of me! (although I'll be honest, the thought does make me feel really great for a few minutes because I go from missing out to having more, but that's not love, that's arrogance, and even though I do so love God and am loved by Him any sign of arrogance is quickly chastened away with the fact that I am still single and don't know how to file taxes or one of my eyes starts twitching like crazy) Love doesn't wish bad on others. Love is rejoicing with those who have something beautiful like companionship or a hot guy or a nice body or a creative career. Haha clearly, my love in this area has much work to go, but thank God He brought me this far! It's definitely helpful for me to take note of where love stands in this area of envy. Someone will always have something you want, but seeing love in your life is noticing how happy you are when or that they do have what you want. Love that does not envy is another way of saying love is content and satisfied.
is not boastful,
Boast: verb
- to speak with exaggeration and excessive pride, especially about oneself.
Synonym: loudmouth
---> Some root their "boasting love" (or acceptance) in their job, some in their workout regime, still others in their poverty. What makes you lovable? What gives you the oomph to tell someone something you did that was good? I tend to rely on my outstanding humor and charm, but I've recently learned that I actually have very little of that in certain circumstances--it easily fails me the more I am aware of others or the more I let others get close to me. What makes you feel good about yourself? This isn't a trick or rhetorical question. What fills you up with that good feeling? Or are you not full of that? Are you chronically depressed? Maybe you boast in your ability to stay quiet while you judge everyone on the inside. What are you full of? Are you empty? What's to boast or brag about in your life? Do you have rank at your work or in a social organization? Do you get the point yet? You're going to boast from something. Nobody boasts from nothing. For me, my blog is my feel good. Sometimes I think my ability to get along with anyone feels brag-worthy, my hair, my voice, my friends, my traveling history, my parents, my brother, my confidence, and on a really good day my accomplishment of a DIY project. It's not bad to "feel good" about something. The point I wanted to make about love on this was that love doesn't show and tell of itself. It's so secure and deep that it doesn't need any proof beyond itself. Feeling good is proof of something we might boast about. However this facet of love, that love isn't boastful, reveals our insecurities most. We might place our identity in this or that "feel good" but there is nothing that defines us that will last more than our years on earth. For some that could be 20 years, for others up to 101 years. Everyone dies eventually. You might boast in your body, but that will get saggy and rot eventually. You might boast in your job, but you might lose the ability to work by old age or accident. You might boast in your money, but everyone knows money is a poor indication of someone's happiness. Paul makes a statement to boast only in the cross, he said this because people kept trying to show and tell their Christian lifestyle, but someone who knows how wide and how deep is the love of Christ requires no proof. Love is not boastful because it doesn't need proof of its power to empower. The only reason you have a job or achievement is based on God's gift of breathing and muscle movements and brain functioning, and so forth. Every good thing is a gift from God (James 1:17). The next time you feel like bragging to yourself or to someone else remember that whatever you have or did is a gift that God gave you regardless of if you thanked Him for it or not, because God's love is not boastful--it's sure. Likewise, a good way to tell if you love someone with this pure kind of love is to examine how much it affects you when they don't notice. If it affects you a lot then your love IS boasting, but if it affects you very little how they respond to your "acts of sacrificial love" then perhaps your love is less boastful than most. If someone is straight up angry or annoyed with you, that's a whole other story. Love is not boastful, it's sure to empower.
is not conceited,
Conceited: adj.
- having an excessively favorable opinion of one's abilities, appearance, etc.
Synonym: phony, self-important
---> We are all phony. Image is such a beast of an idol in practically everyone. We all want to matter, we want to have meaning, and so we all find ways to make ourselves matter. Most of us try to find that one thing that we are good at: photography, engineering, cooking, designing, communicating, writing, administering, teaching, and so on. If you're like me you may have ended up exhausted from all the trying, searching, quitting and failing. Maybe some of you have succeeded and found your niche, that's great, and I hope you're not conceited about it because when success happens it becomes easier to get caught up in conceit (pride, vanity), but that doesn't make it any less of an exception to the definition that love is not conceited. If someone excels and is not not conceited, I would say that person has a deep and anchored fullness of real love, such persons, when you come across them are usually unforgettable. On the other hand, I came to terms with the fact that I'm just not that good at anything! At first I was self deprecating about it, and in fact I was pretty discontent with the massive failure that I was, but the more I pressed into the love that God has for me the more I found worthiness and beauty as a day that brightens with piercing light and clarity after a stormy rainfall. I mattered when I looked at the cross and my past, present and future in God's perfect plan. My life had meaning and it gave me wings! It was glorious. I still forget often, but when I recall who I am in Christ and the love that God daily gives me through every single second, then I'm satisfied again and again. I have no demanding voice in my head telling me I need to matter or that I must do something or have something in order to be fulfilled. That natural proclivity to matter may rear its ugly head and begin to weigh down on me on any given day, but when I examine my heart for where love should be, and when I ask God to make it very clear to me that He loves me, that pure love, that love that needs no other thing to satisfy, that becomes my importance and value. From the love that God fills me with, from that love that is pure and so satisfying, from such love I notice an overflow of my contentment doing things more light heartedly. Serving others becomes a by-product rather than a chore of who I am (which is always an amazing experience to notice after the serving has been done). Love is not conceited, it is humble and meek. It finds no need to have more than what it is. It has no extra demands or longings. This aspect of love shows an obvious overlapping of the other facets of love mentioned above. Love without conceit bears all things from having so much love within to give for those without, it is naturally more kind because it lacks nothing and knows that it depends on nothing, it is fully satisfied, and the purity of its contents within a person drives out whatever might try to dilute it (fear, worry, anxiety, anger). When love is not conceited it is not looking for more value, worth or meaning outside of itself. This love, like all the other facets of love, looks at Jesus, the only saving Love that gave me everything for nothing of my own. When you love others without conceit it is loving from a fullness of love given to you and practically (and often accidentally) spilling out to others. You hardly notice when love such as this is even happening! It's usually more recognized by you in retrospect.
-1 Corinthians 13:4
Recap: love is...
Patient- cross bearing (feels heavy to bear with someone's obstacles)
Kind- thinks and thinks to convince the other of compassion not judgment (naturally)
Not envy- content and satisfied
Not boastful- empowers without words or works
Not conceited- unaware of when it's happening
God is love.
God loves you.
Be awestruck in love!
Jmegrey
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