Love is Not...

This is part of a series. Part 1 can be found here.

Alright, after that brief little distraction, it’s time to return to our analysis of 1 Corinthians 13. We left off by saying that love is not jealous.

No, not this kind of pride.

Up next, “Love does not boast. It does not become conceited.” I put these two together because they are very similar. The point is that love is not proud. What does this mean? Love is not in it for itself. The lover is placed second to the beloved. Love does not brag about its own accomplishments. It forgets its own interests when the beloved is involved.

“Love is not rude.” The Greek here can actually be translated much more accurately than this. Love does not “behave disgracefully.” A definition for disgraceful that I think fully captures the sentiment here is “shockingly unacceptable.” This means that love is always dignified. It always conducts itself with a sense of propriety. This bit is incredibly relevant today, in a world becoming more and more shockingly vulgar, where boundaries to acceptable behavior are coming down day by day. Love, though, is dignified, though not proud. For an example of this, look to Christ being tormented by the guards on Good Friday. They spit upon him and ridiculed him, yet how did he respond? With quiet dignity, not stooping to the level of those attacking him.

“Love is not self-seeking.” This would fall under the category of not boasting or becoming conceited, though is slightly different. Love does not seek its own gain. There is no concept of a “political marriage” or “missionary dating” in love. Love does not seek itself. This is not to say that love neglects itself, but rather that love will focus its efforts on the betterment of the other, rather than anything for the gain of itself. Love is not about happiness, because to seek happiness is to seek itself. In fact, this line implies that love requires sacrifice.

“Love is not easily provoked.” This is a rather bizarre phrase. It only appears one other time in the entire New Testament in the Greek, at Acts 17:16. It’s a difficult one to bring into English, but a decent attempt at it would be to say that love is not “inflamed by passionate anger.” What does this mean? Love is slow-tempered. It takes much to arouse those flames of anger in the lover. Instead, he will wait patiently and bear the wrongs, as mentioned earlier.

“Love keeps no record of wrongs.” This is the modern translation. However, an alternate translation of the Greek, and the one the Church Fathers used, was, “Love thinks no evil.” In the first definition, it seems only that love will not bear a grudge. However, with the alternate, traditional translation, the meaning is completely changed. Love not only will not get angry, but it won’t even let the idea of evil cross its mind. In the midst of not being provoked to anger, love will refuse to see an evil motive for anything from the beloved. For the lover, though, the fact that love will not think evil means that the lover cannot commit evil, because the thought of it will not even cross his mind, in the case of the truest love.

“Love delights not in evil…” Love does not delight in evil because the concept of evil is so foreign to the mind of the lover that he can see no reason for any sort of evil to be committed, if it has been proven. This is a level of serenity that most humans can only dream of. Love takes no delight in wrongdoing, because love wishes the best for all. In order to take delight in evil, one must wish harm upon the one who did evil, which the lover does not even consider, as love “thinks no evil.”

“…but rejoices in the truth.” Love rejoices in the truth everywhere. Any good done at all is a cause for celebration. Love is so concerned with the good of others that any time good is done, it will rejoice in the fact that good has been done, regardless of whether or not it has played any role. Love rejoices when the best has been done for anybody.

We’ll stop here for this time. Next time, we’ll finish up discussing this passage from Corinthians and begin to apply this information into our discussion.