Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Cor 13:7)
So far, we have looked at several aspects of love. And again, we are not talking about the romantic love popularized in movies, books, and people’s surface relation with each other. We are talking about the kind of love that prompted God the Father to give His son on our behalf and prompted God the Son to die on our behalf.
So does �love bears all things� mean that I should be a door mat, never objecting when people mistreat me? Certainly not!
Perhaps it means a wife should keep her mouth shut if her husband insults her, or wastes the money for the house. Again, certainly not!
Or perhaps it means if I have an abusive boss I should keep my mouth shut and my shoulder to the grind stone. No, that�s not true either.
When we read this passage, in fact when we read the entire section, we tend to read it in light of our Western, 21st century culture. And that reading almost automatically reaches for our emotions and the misty-eyed version of love we are often so eager to experience.
But as pointed out in an earlier article, this love, the love spoken of in 1 Corinthians 13, is much more mature, much more willing to sacrifice than that first.
In order to understand the magnitude of what Paul is saying, we have to look at the rest of the letter he wrote to the Corinthians and keep it in mind. One of the reasons he had written them was to fuss at them for being such a bunch of weenies with each other. The Corinthians, like the modern church, had a wide variety of people in it. Those people had a variety of personalities, faults, and failings. Some were difficult to live with, some were a pleasure to be around, others were a challenge just to talk to.
Paul talked about some of this when he spoke of the cliques, the arguments, the greed and selfishness that showed themselves in their dealings with each other. He pointed out the spiritual arrogance that many of them exhibited.
Love is presented as a solution to these problems. And specifically, bearing and enduring all things is one of the ways the difficulties will be repaired.
The word �bear� is used in the New Testament to mean to hide, conceal the errors and faults of others. But please understand, this doesn�t mean that I help someone hide some secret sin. Rather, it means that I am not going to be eager to go out to the rest of the church and broadcast what I have seen. If I am wronged, then I won�t immediately go to my friend and tell him what this person has done. Instead, I will forgive the offender and try to work with them.
If I am mistreated, I will endure it. That is, I will not immediately run of and whine to my buddies about how badly I have been offended or insulted.
But how often are we willing, when insulted, to go crying to someone else, tell them what evil has be perpetrated against me and enlist their aid in disliking my offender.
If this happened in a workplace, the environment quickly becomes poisonous, and we as Christians should not contribute to such an environment, even � or especially- around the unsaved. But put that same behavior in the church and the entire environment quickly winds down to a bunch of back-biting, power hungry, mean-spirited people playing at church.
As a Christian, be willing to bear all things and endure all things.
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