How does Paul define love? (I’ll be honest this is about to be long)

Paul gives us 15 characteristics of genuine Christian love.

1. 1. Love is patient. Paul does not mean that love takes a long time so wait on it. The idea is that love endures through suffering and difficulties. Love patiently bears with those who don’t love you. Love patiently comes alongside those who may not seemingly deserve it at a certain moment in life. Love patiently endures and is present even when it shouldn’t be or doesn’t seem to be.  
   2. Love is kind. You can be patient and still be mean. You can put up with people and look loving, but still hate them in your heart. Paul is saying that love produces feelings and affection of tender-heartedness towards others. 

• Love does not envy. Remember Paul is talking about love as the way of life in using spiritual gifts. Envy has the ability to easily enter into the discussion when someone has what maybe you want to have, but love says no to that. Envy says I want what they have. Genuine love encourages and builds people up even when they have gifts that you don’t have. 

• Love does not boast. Again in this conversation on spiritual gifts, it is easy to flip the coin of envy and enter into boasting. Boasting brags that you have what they don’t have. There’s no place for boasting in genuine love.

• Love is not arrogant. Continuous boasting leads to living in arrogance. Paul is again pointing to the fact that the gifts are gifts! They are not earned, but they are given graciously by God. Don’t let arrogance become the norm. 

• Love is not rude. Rudeness is never pretty, but it is pretty common. Rudeness may look like being pushy or demanding when it comes to using the gift you have been given. A rude person is inconsiderate of others and their needs. Maybe a rude person doesn’t listen to advice or heed wise counsel. Again Paul is defining love as what it is not to show us what it is. 

• Love does not insist on its own way. Love even when it is entitled to something defers. Love takes the low road. Love doesn’t seek the limelight or attention. Love seeks to be second and not first. Love prompts us to ask “How can I promote and build up others rather than myself?”

• Love is not irritable or love is not easily angered. The person who is extremely touchy or overly sensitive, to the point where explosive and defensive anger is hiding just beneath the surface is not defined by love. We live in a culture where irritability allows us to erupt in anger and self-defense when the slightest offense or criticism comes our way. Genuine Christian love does not live like this. 

• Love is not resentful or love keeps no record of wrongs. Paul now shifts to those times when you are truly wronged. Those times when someone truly offends you or sins against you in a way that you have a genuine argument that it was uncalled for. What do we do then? Love doesn’t keep track of wrongs and wait for a time to throw them back in someone’s face and use it against them. Love is not just being quick to forgive, but quick to forget. Our response to wrongs done against us when we are acting in love can never be “I forgive you, but I will never forget.”

• Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing. We live in a culture that is obsessed with failure that is far past the desire to protect others. We love to share and gossip about the failures of others so that when we look in a mirror we can naively say “I would never do that!” The sin in us loves to pat ourselves on the back so that we can assure ourselves that we would never mess up like that. Love doesn’t do that. 

• Love rejoices with the truth. Love shines a spotlight on the truth. It seeks to expose and affirm those who have done well and walked in truth. 

• Love bears all things. Love empowers us to endure even in the worst of circumstances. This is not to say that we let wrongdoings and evil run rampant, people are to be held accountable for what they have done. Love does though allow us to not look at everything from the perspective of how it will affect us. 

• Love believes all things. Paul isn’t telling us to be gullible or naive. There are things that we should not believe in this world! Paul is saying love breaks us of our cynicism and suspicion which is the natural stance of this world. Love gives the benefit of the doubt till all the facts are known. Love holds us back from assuming the worst about others due to selfish concerns. 

• Love always hopes. Hope can be hard to find these days. Love empowers us to keep going because the future is bright. Love desires us to be filled with hope for the best!

• Love endures all things. Christian love endures all things in this life because we know that Jesus was crucified and resurrected. Love endures all because we know that God causes all things to work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. This includes the painful and distressing situations that cause us to despair. 

If you made it this far, congrats. After writing all of that though I have this overwhelming feeling of insufficiency. My love is not like the genuine love that is defined by Paul here and not to be offensive, but I think yours probably doesn’t look perfectly like it either. The truth is that’s okay. We are not loved by God because our love looks like his. Instead, we have a Savior in Jesus who loves us when we are unlovable. Jesus, seeing us exactly as we are, chose to enter into time and space. He lived a perfect life and died a brutal death for our sins. Resurrecting on the third day so that we can be free from guilt and sin. We love because we have been loved. We do not love to earn the love of God. Remember, the Spirit is our Helper in all of this. He fills, empowers, and transforms us to look like the love of God in this world. Trust him with it.