Love is Patient
Everything we do should in some way or another edify those around us and help them to understand God and His relationship with man a little better. And in this section of Paul?s letter to the Corinthians, he goes out of his way to help the Corinthians (and today?s Christians as well) understand the best way to do this. The gifts are good. They are given to the Church by the Holy Spirit in order to edify the Body (1 Cor 12:7). But we often think the gifts are an end in themselves; that they are prepackaged and ready to go. But they?re not. The recipient of a gift has to learn how to use it. And that is where love comes in. A teacher who makes it clear that he loves those he is teaching is much more effective than one who doesn?t seem to care. And how does a person demonstrate love? We can best understand that as we step through the list Paul presents at the top of the section.
The first descriptor states that love is patient. The Authorized Version phrases it as ?long suffering.? But, as we usually ask in this section of the web site, what does it mean to be long suffering or patient? What does it look like in the life of a believer?
Ephesians 4:2 begins to answer this question. There Paul tells the saints in Ephesus that they should bear with one another with love. And in Galatians 6:1 we are instructed to bear one another?s burdens.
Let?s say that God has given me the gift of teaching and all that goes with that gift. I study. I like to study. I see the Bible in a particular way and am well pleased to spend time understanding what it says and figuring out how it applies in my life. However, another saint within the local body has the gift of hospitality. If I am a fool, I will assume that the person with the gift of hospitality is a slacker. After all (I might say to myself), all this person ever does is have people over for dinner or arrange events with people at church. If I fail to understand them and instead quickly condemn them, then I have not been patient. I have not shown love.
Then let?s top this off with someone telling me that Mr.
Hospitality has accused me of being more interested in dry doctrine than in helping hurting people. How do I react? If I am patient then I am willing to bear the offenses of another. Calling him a name or condemning him is not my first choice. I am willing to bear the offenses of another, even as Christ bore the offenses of those He came to save.
Does this mean that I never say anything? Does it mean that I allow bad doctrine to grow? Certainly not! But it does mean that I should not react in anger, or try to get even with him for talking about me.
Most of us know how that works. Someone says something derogatory about me. I hear about it and respond with something equally or more insulting. This goes back and forth until a rift forms. And it all started because I was not willing to recognize that the two of us, while different, contribute to the well being of the Body. I was not, from my point of view, willing to bear with those differences. Mr. Hospitality made exactly the same mistake. He was not willing to bear with what appeared to him to be a cold and calculating approach to the Word of God.
Patience is the opposite of being quick to judge. Those who are not patient look for the opportunity find fault and then condemn the source of the fault. And how can a local church grow into a single body if the individual parts are constantly snapping at each other?
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