Characteristics of Love – Part 1

Transcript

GR 1351
04-29-07
Characteristics of Love – Part 1
1 Corinthians 13:4
Gil Rugh

We're studying the book of 1 Corinthians together, and we're in chapter 13, the love chapter. So you can turn there in your Bibles. We will look at a couple of other passages before we come to the details of this chapter. We've been looking at the concept of love as dealt within the Bible and particular word that we are focused on is the word that is used in the overwhelming times in the New Testament, the word agape and its various forms. It's not a word that was created for the New Testament because it is used outside the New Testament, but its full meaning has to be derived from its use in our New Testament. And this particular love, the Greek had various words for love, but this particular word has to do with a self-sacrificing love, and this is how it is developed in the New Testament. And it gives it a richness and a fullness that it cannot have apart from divine revelation. And we noted in our previous study that the defining characteristic of this love is sacrifice, and in particular, the sacrifice that God gave in having His Son come to this earth and be crucified on the cross to pay the penalty for our sin. This controls and shapes everything that the New Testament says about love. And the Bible is clear, you cannot understand anything of any depth or significance about the love of God if you do not put it in the context of the sacrifice of His Son as the payment for sin.

Out of that fact that God sent His only begotten Son into the world to be the Savior of the world, comes the truth that those who believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior are born into God's family. Remember John 3 Jesus told Nicodemus, you must be born again, you must be born from above, have a new birth, a second birth brought about by the action of God in a heart. How does that happen? John 3:16, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son in order that whosoever believes in Him might not perish but have everlasting life. So it's true, the new birth, we are born into God's family, become partakers of the life of God. And now we manifest the character of God in our actions and at the heart of that is a demonstration of His love, even being carried out in and through us.

Come over to 1 John. We spent some time looking at various passages in 1 John in our previous study, and so we're not going to spend a lot of time here. But I just want to remind you of a few key facts. We're talking about the love that is being presented in 1 Corinthians 13, the love, using the word that is used about 350 times in various forms in the New Testament, we're talking about a love that is characterized by sacrifice, a love that is characteristic of God Himself, and a love that flows through people who have a relationship with the living God. In John 2:29, for example, if you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him. So you'll note the order here. God is righteous, everyone who practices righteousness is born of God. Now you don't enter into the new life. You aren't born again by trying to do righteous things. Rather, as a result of being born again you will manifest God's character in your conduct, which is righteousness. For example, we could talk about characteristics of being a human being, there are certain things that are true of human beings. For example, we could say a human breathes in oxygen and breathes out carbon dioxide or whatever we would want to say. If someone develops a machine that breathes in oxygen and breathes out carbon dioxide, that doesn't make that machine human. They've just created a machine that functions in one way like a human being. But by the same token there is a genuine characteristic of human beings that they function this way. So it is, a person can try their hardest to be righteous and thus be pleasing to God, but God says all our righteous deeds are like filthy, polluted rags in His sight. And it's not be our righteousness we can be saved. But when you are born into God's family you partake of the divine nature. You don't become divine, but you partake of God's character. Peter says we become partakers of the divine nature. And so God is righteous, so when you see someone who is practicing righteousness and living a righteous life, that is an indication they are a child of God.

Chapter 3 verse 1, “See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we would be called the children of God. And such we are. For this reason the world does not know us because it does not know Him. Beloved now we are children of God . . . “ So you see that emphasis. We are children of God. We became children of God through faith in Christ, in Christ alone, in His finished work as the payment for our sin. Now how do God's children live? They live righteously, manifesting God's character. Verse 7, little children, make sure no one deceives you. The one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous. The one who practices sin is of the devil. What I want you to see here, this flows out of whom we are now as the children of God. We partake of the character of God, and you cannot dissociate your conduct from your character. The one who practices sin is a child of the devil, the one who practices righteousness is a child of God. They are manifesting who their father really is.

Verse 10, by this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious. Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God. Now note the connection in the next statement. Nor the one who does not love his brother. You see now, it's not only practicing righteousness, but in a particular area, loving other believers is also a required evidence and manifestation of a person who has truly been born into God's family. This is crucial to understand because we have multitudes of misguided people who think even though they don't practice righteousness, and even though they don't love fellow Christians, they are still God's children. The Bible says that is not true.

Verse 14, we know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren. He who does not love, abides in death. Never moved out of death into life. Verse 16, we know love by this. How do you know what love is? How do you recognize love? How do you understand love? We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us. You see the defining characteristic of this love is sacrifice, self-sacrifice. So what do you mean by love? Look at Jesus Christ, He came to this earth, suffered and died on the cross, gave His life for me, for you. What does that mean for us? Verse 16, we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. So we talk about loving others, we're talking about, in the context, of a willingness to totally give ourselves completely for the good of others. That runs totally contrary to the world's thinking of what we deserve, and we are worthy, we deserve it, you've earned it. We're talking about biblical love, we're talking about the love that doesn't think about itself, but thinks about others and acts accordingly.

Verse 18, little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and in truth. We'll see as we come back to 1 Corinthians 13 in a moment that what you say is not what matters. It's what you do. So it's not the fact you say, I'm a loving person, I love them. They could be just empty words, but you love in deed and in truth. Verse 23, this is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as He commanded us. Puts that together as a commandment. You must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation, then out of that you must love others, just as He commanded us.

We looked in chapter 4 verse 8, God is love. So if you don't love, you don't know God, because you have never come to partake of God's character, you've never entered into that love relationship with Him. Verse 10, remember, He initiated love. This is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us. And what did He do? He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. It's not that God sits there and says, I have these warm feelings for those people, I think nice things about them. No, the love we're talking about is He did something for us, He sent His Son to be the propitiation, the satisfaction for our sins. Down in the middle of verse 16 we are reminded again, God is love. That's part of. His very character and being. That is most significant to us because it's in love that He provided a Savior so that we would not have to endure the wrath of God and spend eternity in hell. He gave His Son. So verse 19, we love because He first loved us. Verse 21, this commandment we have from Him that the one who loves God should love his brother also. True love like we're talking about is a result of the love of God being placed on our lives. We love because God first loved us.

This controls and dominates everything we do. Come back to 2 Corinthians 5. We sometimes refer to the Apostle John as the apostle of love, and there is good reason for that, both in his gospel and in his epistles he talked much about love. But you know it's not John who uses the word love most often in the New Testament. It's the Apostle Paul who most often uses the word love and writes about it. And in 2 Corinthians 5:14, for the love of Christ controls us. What is the dominating, motivating factor in our lives as God's children? It's the love that Christ had for us, it controls us, it has seized us, taken hold of us to now control us. Having concluded that one died for all, therefore all died. And He died for all that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf. The fact that Christ loved me and died for me has so taken hold of me now, it is to control everything I do. And now I want to serve Him with all my being, be obedient to Him.

Back up to 1 Corinthians 13. This is rightly called the love chapter, but remember this is in the context of Paul talking about spiritual gifts, how we use those special, supernatural abilities that God has given to each and every believer to enable them to function in a way that will build the church to maturity. He began chapter 13, the first three verses, by emphasizing, if you have the greatest of the gifts and have the greatest of the gifts to the greatest degree, but you exercise that gift without love, you are worthless. You are worthless, you are nothing, the end of verse 2. In verse 1 you are just noise, the end of verse 3 it doesn't profit anything to do great spiritual things, but do it without love, because then you're doing it in your own strength and your own energy, ultimately, for your own purposes. And that does not bring glory to God Himself.

What we talk about then, the importance of love, the question comes, what is love? How do I know when I'm functioning in love? You know, things haven't changed in two thousand years. People are people and sinful people are sinful people. You know the Greeks had a variety of words for love. They could talk about eros, we get the word erotic from it, a passionate love, a love that desired to possess. And there is a good side of eros in the context of a marriage relationship, a passion that often carries a sexual connotation. That word is not used in our New Testament. You have the phileo love, that friendship love and family love that is mutual, and we get words like Philadelphia from it. They had the word storga that referred to physical family love. It's not used in the New Testament except twice in the negative—astorga, being without natural affection, normal human family affection.

But we want to talk about what word that God has taken to emphasize His love, the agape love, that self-sacrificing love. How do I know when I have this kind of genuine love that God produces in a life? What the Spirit of God does through Paul in verses 4-7 is list 15 characteristics, attributes, perfections of love. It's interesting, in our English Bible, most of our translations translate these as though they were descriptions of love, adjectives. But every one of these 15 is a verb, a verb in the present tense, denoting what is the characteristic of one who is functioning in love. How do I recognize love? How do I know what love is? So it's not static like you're describing the picture hanging on a wall and pointing out its various characteristics. No, when you're talking about love, you're talking about what love does or does not do. Agape love is not a static love, it's not a passive love that does not act. It can only be described in what it does. So a person can say, of course I love them, I don't do anything bad to them, I don't particularly do anything good for them but I love them. That's not the kind of love the Bible is talking about, because you can only describe the love the Bible is talking about by using these verbs. Here you have 15 of them in just four verses. Put your heart at rest, we're not going to cover all 15.

And there is always a danger as we get a list that we just run through the list. We're going to take our way patiently and look at each of these. None of us have arrived yet at perfect love, demonstrated it perfectly in a completely self-sacrificing way the way our God has done for us. But we desire to be manifesting His love more fully and more completely, and a love that is pleasing to Him and reflects His love. There are going to be both positive characteristics, positive actions and negative actions. We can describe love in what it does and what it does not do. This doesn't say everything that could be said about love, but it gives you in a compact way some comprehension of what love really is. Hard for us in our day, people fall in love and out of love, not to get so tied up, even as believers, with the feelings we associate with love, and so begin to think we're not in love anymore. I don't love them anymore. A person says that, I want to know, are you not a child of God then? Because it's the one who abides in love that abides in God. And you say I no longer live in love, then you're saying you don't belong to the living God. Is that what you're trying to say? Well, no, I'm still a Christian, I just don't love them anymore. Well it's hard to find the Bible allowing for that. Now it does happen, the Bible does recognize the truth of it, but it's never an acceptable state. It is always an activity of rebellion against God not to be loving others.

And so let's look at what it means. We already have noted in a previous study that love is a fruit of the Spirit. Galatians 5:22, the fruit of the Spirit is. The first one mentioned is love. This is what the Spirit of God who now dwells in us produces in us as we submit to Him and obey Him and exercise our will to do as the scripture instructs us. Let's start with verse 4, and the first statement is love is patient. We all know what that is, so let's go to the second one, love is kind. No, we have to stop. Love is patient. Again Greek has several words that they use for patient. King James here has longsuffering. That's a good translation of the word. The word is a compound word, we use the word short-tempered, but we don't use the word “long-tempered.” But that's what this word would literally be translated. It's the word “wrath,” anger with the word “long” on the front—long-angered, long-tempered. It's a word that is always used in the New Testament in the context of being patient or long-tempered with people, not circumstances, patience with circumstances, but that uses other words. This word is used in the context where people get on your nerves, provoke you, antagonize you, and yet you are long-tempered. You don't lose it with them. Love is long-tempered. Love puts up with a lot of things.

You think of your physical family. You love your children. How does that characterize you? You want to be long-tempered with them. There is something wrong with a parent who is always flying off the handle. If you love them, you will want to bring them along, be patient with them, be long-tempered. And even when discipline and rebuke and correction is taking place, we don't want it to be in the context, I just lost my temper. Because if I'm really demonstrating love toward them, I will be patient, long-tempered. Incidentally, this is one of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22, as you might expect. This is what the Spirit produces in the life. We sometimes think, I can't help it, it's in my genes. Dad was short-tempered. My grandfather was short-tempered. I don't argue with that. Take it all the way back to Adam—great, great, great grandpa. I mean, it is in your genes to be short-tempered. But we're talking about people who now have become partakers of the divine nature. So if my excuse is I just can't help it, I always lose my temper, you need to back up and say, I have to evaluate. Am I really a child of God? Remember, the one born of God practices righteousness, manifests His character in their conduct. One of those areas would be being long-tempered.

All right, I do well. I have my short list, my exceptions. There are certain people who would drive me crazy, I just can't keep my temper with them, But I only have four or five on that list, so really I'm pretty good. Then I read 1 Thessalonians 5:14, Paul says, be long-tempered with everyone. That's a terrible verse, terrible in its convicting power. Be long-tempered with everyone. Doesn't say be long-tempered most of the time, be long-tempered with most people. But be long-tempered with everyone. I had to go erase my short list. Doesn't count, because you know everyone is long-tempered with people who don't get on their nerves, don't provoke them, don't irritate them. Right? When do I really get a chance to manifest the character of God with the people who just . . . . All they have to do is sit down next to me and I'm irritated. You say things in your family, every time they open their mouth they get on my nerves. It's that kind of person. Why does the Lord bring those people into our lives? So I can learn to be long-tempered, so I can grow and mature and learn to manifest love to those it doesn't come easily to. Be long-tempered with everyone.

Back up to Romans 2. As you might expect, this is a characteristic of God. Romans 2:4, or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and long-temperedness, patience? Don't take that lightly. Do you think lightly of it, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? And keep in mind, the next word in our list in 1 Corinthians 13 is kindness. Don't think lightly of God's patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance. Because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. God is long-tempered and He is long-tempered to give people an opportunity to respond to His kindness and His invitation. I sent my Son to die on the cross for your sins, turn from your sin and place your trust in Him. We all get frustrated, we look at people who are so open and flagrant in their sin, they think nothing of mocking God. Why doesn't God do something? Because He is long-tempered, He is demonstrating His love toward them, giving them opportunity in this day to believe in His Son and escape the wrath to come. Now long-tempered does not mean He will never display His wrath. Being long-wrath doesn't mean wrath will never come, because you are storing up wrath for yourself. The Day of Judgment will come, but God is long-tempered. We are here today, it's a day of grace. We give the invitation to salvation. Why? Why should God put up with sinners so long? Why did He put up with you so long? Me so long? He is a God who is long-tempered.

You must go to another passage, 2 Peter 3:9, the Lord is not slow about His promise as some count slowness. In the context, some people were saying, they've been talking about the Lord's coming for thousands of years and He hasn't come yet. But the Lord is not slow about His promise regarding His coming, regarding coming judgment, as some count slowness. But is long-tempered toward you, patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance. Why hasn't God destroyed this sin-cursed world, destroyed His enemies and established His kingdom for us who have believed, to enjoy? Because He is more loving than you or I, He is long-tempered, he doesn't want anyone to perish. You have family members who aren't saved. Aren't you glad God has given another day for them? Of course. We love them, we want them to be saved, so God is long-tempered in dealing with sinful people.

Look down in verse 15, regard the patience, the longsuffering, the long-temperedness of our Lord as salvation. Recognize this is a wonderful time. God is being long-tempered, long-wrathed in the sense of delaying His wrath to give chance for salvation. Count the day as of great blessing. So when we manifest long-temperedness, patience in that sense, we are manifesting a characteristic of God. We are His children. Someone might say, I'm surprised you didn't get upset, I'm surprised you didn't lose your temper with them. Well, that would be my normal reaction, but by the grace of God I'm not the person I used to be. I'm not short-tempered, I'm long-tempered. That's the characteristic of love.

Come back to 1 Corinthians 13. You know if we stop there, we just have love is patient, long-tempered, we'd think love is passive. As long as I didn't lose my temper I did what I needed to do in love. But the next characteristic tells us it is not enough not to do the wrong thing, you must do the right thing. Love is kind, it actively moves to treat that antagonistic, unlovely, irritating person with kindness, with thoughtfulness. The root word for this word translated kind is to be useful. And when you're being kind, you're making yourself useful to someone else, you're doing what is beneficial and helpful to them. So it's not just you're not losing your temper with them, but more than that you are treating them with kindness, with thoughtfulness, doing what is helpful for them, what would be useful and beneficial to this person that could be so irritating to you. Again, it's connected with patience, as we saw in Romans 2 and several other passages that we won't take time to look at.

We're manifesting the character of God. Turn over to Ephesians 4. We see this concept in this passage and related word to the one we're talking about—kindness. Verse 31, this is in the context, we are not to grieve the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God who has sealed us, who dwells within us and will until the day of redemption, not grieving Him would involve these things. Verse 31, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice. Be kind. There is a form of the word we're talking about. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has forgiven you. Again, you see we are to manifest the character of God. A person who has done that which irritates me, gets on my nerves, provokes me, goads me, whatever. Well what did God do? Here I was a vile sinner shaking my fist in the face of God, denying His handiwork in the world, pursuing sin, and He forgave me. He was kind to me, tenderhearted. So you get the flavor of the contrast—the bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander and all kinds of evil things. But kindness in the context of being tenderhearted, forgiving. So looking for what I might do would be useful, helpful, thoughtful and kind to that difficult person. As you might expect, this is another fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22.

Back in Ephesians 2 where Paul talks about our salvation is by God's grace through faith. Verse 7, God saved us in Christ so that in the ages to come He might show, now note the piling up of words here, surpassing riches of His grace in kindness, there's our word, toward us in Christ Jesus. You just can't talk about God's grace, he has to talk about the riches of His grace, and not enough to talk about the riches of His grace, you have to talk about the surpassing riches of His grace. And it's not enough to talk about the surpassing riches of His grace, it was in kindness. You know what? In the ages to come throughout eternity we'll be trophies of His grace. The very fact that you are going to be in the glory of God's presence, I am going to be in the glory of God's presence will display for all eternity the magnificence of God's grace poured out on us in kindness. How could we be so small to withhold our kindness from those who irritate us, think that we are excused from having to love them and do anything that would be thoughtful and kind to them? I'm not talking about being thoughtful and kind to those that we know deserve it and it's easy to be kind to. This is dealing with people that aren't so lovable and yet they deserve our love because we have experienced the love of God. Remember Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, if you love those who do good to you, you're no different than anybody, no different than people who don't know God. It's when you love your enemies that you show unique characteristic, loving those who are not loving to us.

Come back to 1 Corinthians 13. So love is long-tempered, but not just passive, it's kind, it acts to show kindness, thoughtfulness, being beneficial for the good of someone else. And this love is not jealous. Now we're going to move toward negatives, describe love by what it is not. And we're going to have five negative statements—the end of verse 4, all of verse 5, and the first part of verse 6 are going to give us eight negative verbs, telling us what love does not do. We talked about what it does—it doesn't lose its temper, it is kind, conducts itself that way. But it is never jealous, not jealous. This word translated jealous has in its root meaning to boil, to be zealous. It can be used in a positive good sense or a negative bad sense. Look at chapter 12 verse 31, earnestly desire the greater gifts. Earnestly desire is a translation of this same word, to boil, to be zealous. Chapter 14 will open up, pursue love, yet earnestly desire spiritual gifts. Earnestly desire, be zealous, boil for. So you can have a good zeal. But most often in the New Testament it's used in a negative sense and the sense of being jealous or envious kind of way, and envious or jealous in a broad sense. Envious, jealous in the sense of coveting what someone else has and I want it for myself. There is a commercial on TV now that compares a neighbor buys something and trying to be one-up on his neighbor. And it turns out the neighbor one-upped him and bought it, and you're supposed to rush to that store, I guess, and buy the top so you're already ahead of your neighbor. But that idea of covetousness, it's used in a humorous way, but there is a reality to it that conveys what they're trying to say.

And you know there is also that jealous envy when someone gets the honor or the recognition that I thought I was more deserving of. So it's not just possessions. Someone else, I wanted something so badly and they got it. I wanted the promotion at work and someone else got it. I wanted to be selected to be the preacher for this, and someone else was selected to be the preacher for this. I did a lot of the work, probably most of the work for this and they gave the credit, honor and recognition to someone else. But love is not envious, not jealous. It is happy when someone else is honored, it is happy for the good thing, it is pleased for the good thing. Isn't that the way it is with your children? A loving parent is not in competition with their children, they delight to have their children do better, excel more, accomplish more, be more beautiful, be more handsome. Someone says, your daughter is prettier than you are, you don't go away and say, I hope she gets in a wreck and gets some scars. No. Why? You love her. You’re glad. You go away saying, yes she is beautiful. Most of us hope our kids turn out better looking than we. You love them, you want them to be better. Now sometimes it's a little harder when it's someone you see in competition who gets the recognition or the honor or the credit or whatever. Do not begrudge them that. That's manifesting jealousy because love always delights in someone else being recognized, someone else being honored, someone else doing well. It's never unhappy with the success or good things that come to other people.

Sadly, this is not a characteristic of the Corinthian church, not being jealous. Back up to chapter 3, I am writing to you like spiritual babes. I couldn't write to you as mature people. Why? Look at verse 3, you are still fleshly, since there is jealousy and strife among you. Are you not fleshly? Are you not walking like mere men? You're walking like people who don't have the Holy Spirit, just like mere men, just like you're nothing more than any other human being. You're not walking as those who have the indwelling Spirit. You have jealousy among you. And interestingly as you look through a number of the passages on jealousy in the New Testament you will find that strife is often connected with it. Because what happens? When I'm jealous of someone I become critical of them and envious of them. So I try to find ways to discredit them, to undermine them, to make them look worse. What's the context of chapter 3 if you remember? Different parties in the church—I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas. Jealousy and envy among competing groups. It's sad when siblings in a family are jealous of one another and try to put down a brother or a sister to make themselves look better. We say that's not the way family ought to treat one another. We are the family of God, there is no place for jealousy and envy here.

Turn over to James 3:13, who among you is wise and understanding. Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy, there's our word, and selfish ambition, there is the word for strife. Here we have it translated selfish ambition, but you have a marginal note probably in your Bible that says strife. It's the word we see in other places translated strife. So you have jealousy and conflict going hand-in-hand. If you have bitter jealousy and strife in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above. This isn't what God produces in a life, but this wisdom is earthly, natural, demonic. Remember what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 3? You walk like mere men, earthly, unspiritual, without the spirit, devoid of the work of the Spirit in the life. In fact you are walking according to demonic wisdom, for where jealousy and strife and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing. There is no love going on there. We become totally turned in to self. One of the works of the flesh is jealousy, envy. It's a work apart from the work of the Spirit in a life.

Happens in the church, it was happening in Corinth, happens in our church. We all battle with it. We can delude ourselves, and only by God's grace and determination in the power that only He can provide to do what He says is a manifestation of love, that we put this aside. Doesn't matter who gets the credit, doesn't matter who gets the honor. I am delighted when someone else is honored. Happens when I have someone else preach. I like his preaching better than yours. He's not so good, I've found a lot of problems in what he preached, you know. Besides, I know a lot of things about him you wouldn't think. Or do I say, that's wonderful. He is one of the best preachers ever, has a way of opening the truth up and make it alive. Praise the Lord. We all have to deal with it. And when we don't we don't manifest love and the church suffers.

Back to 1 Corinthians 13. Sadly, among husbands and wives sometimes a conflict develops. Instead of supporting one another, loving another with a biblical love, a competition develops and the husband becomes jealous of the wife over something, or the wife becomes jealous over the husband or something and they are competing with one another. Any wonder that conflict ensues out of that? We need to examine ourselves and make sure we are really manifesting and producing biblical love.

Love does not brag. There is a self-effacing quality about love. One person wrote, “True love will always be far more impressed with its own unworthiness than its own merit.” We're not walking around thinking, she really lucked out when she got me, God was sure good to her. Is that how true love would function? In the first place I come to the Word of God and I find out, he who finds a good wife has been blessed of the Lord. But you know I become self-centered, and all of a sudden I see everything in light of me. But love doesn't brag, love doesn't promote itself, love isn't trying to draw attention to itself, get honor for itself, get recognition for itself. You know a person who brags, craves attention. Look at me, I told you what I accomplished, told you what I've done. I just thought I'd share with you because some of what I've done hasn't gotten recognition. We think too much of ourselves, all because we want honor. And yet by its very nature love is looking to honor others. Proverbs 27:2 says, “Let another praise you and not your own mouth, a stranger and not your own lips.”

Come back to Jeremiah 9. We'll look at this passage because of its clarity and because Paul quotes it twice—once in 1 Corinthians and once in 2 Corinthians. Verse 23, “Thus says the Lord, let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches. But let him who boasts, boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on the earth, for I delight in these things, declares the Lord.” I don't brag about my accomplishments, don't brag about my possessions, don't brag about my influence. This is nothing to boast about, what would I glory in. I know the living God, His grace has been bestowed upon me, He is a God of lovingkindness and justice and righteousness. It's about Him. So love does not brag. It is contrary to the character of those who have been born into God's family to be self-focused and braggarts.

Paul put it this way in writing to the Philippians, Philippians 2:3, “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves.” You see the opposite characteristic of being a braggart, a boaster, is humility. And with humility of mind regard others as more important than yourself. The old preacher said, every person I meet is my superior in some way. I like to elevate myself by comparing my strengths to someone else's weaknesses, comparing my accomplishments with their failures. But you know everyone that I meet by the grace of God is stronger than I, more effective than I in some area. Do I delight in giving God praise? Lord, thank you for the way you have blessed and gifted them, used them. How gracious you are. How blessed I am to be able to serve with them, to have fellowship with them. Love doesn't brag. Paul quotes this in 1 Corinthians 1:30-31 and 2 Corinthians 10:17-18. I encourage you to take some time and read those later and you'll see it's in the context of what He has done for us in Christ. Always puts things in perspective. Never forget what God has done for you in Christ. What do you have to brag about? Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.

Come back to 1 Corinthians 13, the last characteristic we will look at. And it connects closely, and as you would expect some of these characteristics would overlap. Love is not arrogant. It doesn't brag and boast about itself, but where would bragging and boasting come from? Inflated thoughts of your own self-importance, and this is the word we've seen earlier in 1 Corinthians several times. It means to be puffed up, inflated. Here is a person who is inflated, puffed up with their own view of themselves. There is a fish on TV, when he's threatened he puffs himself up to look bigger than he is. We could use this word, fusios, filled with air, trying to make himself look big and important. And so that's the person here.

This is a problem in the Corinthian church. This word is used seven times in the New Testament, six of them are found in 1 Corinthians, a church that has problems about their own self-importance. That's why they have conflicts in the exercising of the gifts. This will come out in chapter 14. Everybody thinks, I ought to have the stage now, I ought to be up front now, I ought to get the recognition now. They are all inflated with the sense of their own self-importance. The other use of it outside of Corinthians is in Colossians 2:18 about those who are inflated, wrongly so, because of misunderstanding and lack of comprehension.

Love isn't occupied with itself. Let's look back at Romans 12. We have to be careful about subtle ways our bragging and inflating ourselves could work together. I could be a pastor, I can tell people I can boast about you, they are the most wonderful people, they are serving people, they give, they're faithful. And that just comes. Faithfully over the years I've taught them the Word and what else would you expect from good preaching? All of a sudden I turn around boasting about you, when really what I want to do is boast about me. I want people to get some idea of how wonderful I am and what my preaching is like. And you know in these subtle ways we work things around. We wouldn't want to be so crass as to openly declare our wonderfulness, but in subtle ways we try to work people around because you know it's hard. I do all these wonderful things and I impact the effectiveness of this ministry so much. And pretty soon we're thinking, but I don't get recognition. And so if we're not careful we look for subtle ways. Isn't it good enough to know that God is graciously using us and permitting us to serve Him and nothing every goes unnoticed by Him?

We're in Romans 12 and he's talking about spiritual gifts like he is in 1 Corinthians 13. Note what he says in verse 3, for through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, think so as to have sound judgment as God has allotted to each a measure of faith. Then he goes on to talk about we're all different in the body. All have something different to contribute. So don't think more highly of yourself than you ought to think. Come down to verse 16, be of the same mind toward one another. Do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation, and never pay back evil for evil. . . .with some things we've already talked about. So that's humility.

You know you won't fall out of love with your wife, with your husband if you put these things into practice. If you're constantly filled with thoughts of how you've blessed me, God, with the most wonderful wife I could ever desire. If I am constantly filled with thoughts of the qualities that are so beautiful and attractive in her. If you've been married a long time, pretty soon you say, I can't think of any. Well, there was a time when you did, you did marry them, you know. The times I've talked with people with marriage problems I said, there must have been something you liked about this person when you married them. Think, think. And you know that's true in our relationship. I find people who come to this church and they are thrilled and they can't say enough about how loving it is, and how good everybody has been to them and how they've treated them, and how excited they are with the Word, and what their Bible study is doing. Then you find a few years go by and they become sour and critical. What has happened? Well, I think they've changed. That’s what our excuse is. That other person has changed. But you know one of the beautiful things about love, other people can change, but I don't. I'm not supposed to because I still am supposed to love them. Right? I'm supposed to still carry out these characteristics—to be long-tempered, to be kind, not jealous, not brag, not arrogant. It's not about me. It’s what I can do for them. If I keep that as my focus, what's changed is me when things are going sour. We say you don't know how difficult my husband has become. No, but love is long-tempered and kind, even toward those that are provoking it. So have you change from not being a loving person, that's the crucial thing. Do I love you the way I did when I came to pastor this church, that's the crucial thing. We want to turn it around and because we've begun to focus on the faults of another person, the things we're critical of in the other person, because I've become self-focused. I'm not getting what I want out of this relationship, I am not as satisfied in this relationship as I once was, I . . . Love has been lost because no longer am I submitting to the Spirit, I am grieving the Spirit. No longer am I delighted to have Him produce His fruit in my life because it's not enough about me. Something is wrong, so I must come back to the Word and I'm reminded 1 John 4:19, we love because He first loved us. We love. How do you love them? How can you love them? What do you find in them that enables you to keep loving them? We love because they are lovable, we love because they do things that please us, we love because[. . .] No, we love because He first loved us. There is no other answer to it. That's why this love is so special, it's supernatural, it defies explanation. There is no other ground for it. We love because He first loved us. I can't give you any other explanation. That's what God produces.

Is this kind of love in your life? In your family? In your marriage? Among the church? This is what the Spirit will produce.

Let's pray together. Thank you, Lord, for your grace. Thank you for the power of your grace that has brought your salvation to our hearts and lives. Lord, what a transformation. Lord, we would desire to be stretched in our love, to grow in greater ways. Thank you for the trials, the difficulties. Thank you for difficult people, problem people. Thank you, Lord, for the privilege of manifesting just a taste of the magnificence of your love. May that characterize us as a church family, may that characterize us in all of our personal relationships. We pray in Christ's name, amen.