WHAT LOVE DOES AND WHAT IT DOESN’T
1 CORITHIANS 13:4-8
WHO AM I SUPPOSED TO LOVE?
Other believers- John 13:34-35
Husband love their wives- Ephesians 5:25
Wives love Husbands and Children-Titus 2:4-5
Our enemies- Matthew 5:43-48
God and everyone around us- Mark 12:30-31
1 CORINTHIANS 13
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends.
1 CORINTHIANS 13
4 Love is patient and kind;
Love is long-tempered
Love is Kind (useful - ministers to others)
It seeks other well-being
1 CORINTHIANS 13
Love does not envy or boast;
Love is not jealous
Love does not brag
Love does not want what someone else has.
Love does not aim to make others want what you have.
1 CORINTHIANS 13
(Love) it is not arrogant
Philippians 2:3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Am I concerned with my wants or the well being of others?
1 CORINTHIANS 13
(Love is not) rude.
(Dishonorably or inappropriately, out of order)
1 CORINTHIANS 13
It does not insist on its own way;
1 CORINTHIANS 13
it is not irritable or resentful;
provoked or irritated-roused to anger.
Does not take into account a wrong suffered-
Not holding a grudge - pardon
Hebrews 8:12 “For I will be merciful toward their iniquities,� and I will remember their sins no more.”
1 CORINTHIANS 13
6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing (unrighteousness),
Rejoice at wrongdoing?
1 CORINTHIANS 13
but rejoices with the truth.
Summary of Loving Attitudes
7, "Love bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things."
LOVE BEARS ALL THINGS
“to cover with silence” Love covers with silence.
It doesn't mean that love won't confront, love is truthful.
Truth: just because a wrong is confronted doesn’t ensure that the wrong will never be repeated or another offense will not be made against you.
LOVE BEARS ALL THINGS
What it does mean is that
“out of genuine, passionate, honest, legitimate concern for the value of another person for the real worth of that other person, love will do everything it can to cover their weakness...cover the failing, to cover the sin.”
To bear with them
LOVE BEARS ALL THINGS
“It bears all things, not in the sense of putting up with everything, but in the sense of being disposed to cover the ugliness rather than make sure everybody knows about it.”
LOVE BEARS ALL THINGS.
It's natural to make yourself feel better about yourself by exposing all that's bad about the people around you. Or to want others to see that you are hurting by sharing how that person has hurt you.
We wrongly believe that others seeing how we have been hurt will help us feel better.
However, this is unforgiveness, not love and it enslaves us to the past and enslaves the one who hurt us to the past.
1 Peter 4:8, "Love covers a multitude of sins."
LOVE BEARS ALL THINGS.
Love covers a multitude of sins.
Love throws a “kindly covering” over the faults, weaknesses and failures of the one being loved.
Love dismisses the sins of others because of its affections for them.
It doesn't pounce on the person. It doesn't announce their sin.
Love does warn, it encourages to do better, it rebukes and it covers.
LOVE BELIEVES ALL THINGS
Love is not eager to believe the worst but eager to believe the best about others. Not suspicious of the person loved.
Love is not suspicious, it chooses to believe the best.
One way that you can tell if you are being loved is that in spite of your failures they believe what you say because they love you, they want so much to believe you.
Over time you will find that what you believe about a person eventually will shape that person, either positively or negatively.
LOVE HOPES ALL THINGS
As long as the grace of God is operative in the person, you never give up on them.
Love is fully optimistic, it just keeps on hoping.
This hope is not ultimately in the person but in the Lord.
As long as the grace of God is operating, human failure is never final.
Failures may be great, they may be painful, but they're never final, as the Holy Spirit is always in the process of sanctifying someone.
LOVE HOPES ALL THINGS
That's why Jesus told Peter to forgive seventy-times-seven.
Repeated sin can break and batter trust in your relationship, hope may fade to only a small glimmer, a flicker, an ember.
But where Christ is involved, there is always that flicker of hope.
The flicker may not become a flame overnight, but love hopes.
The hope of others can be a rescue for a person feeling stuck in a long series of sinful behaviors.
LOVE ENDURES ALL THINGS.
Love endures all things. You cannot kill it.
“Endures all things”
Think of "Endures" in its use as a military term.
Endures means to sustain.
Like sustaining a soldier in the face of a violent, life or death battle.
The word does not refer to putting up with a minor inconvenience. We are talking war, violence, life and death, suffering, mistreatment.
Love survives all that. It just doesn't die, it never really gives up.
WHY ARE WE SO AFRAID TO LOVE LIKE THIS?
16 SO WE HAVE COME TO KNOW AND TO BELIEVE THE LOVE THAT GOD HAS FOR US. GOD IS LOVE, AND WHOEVER ABIDES IN LOVE ABIDES IN GOD, AND GOD ABIDES IN HIM. 17 BY THIS IS LOVE PERFECTED WITH US, SO THAT WE MAY HAVE CONFIDENCE FOR THE DAY OF JUDGMENT, BECAUSE AS HE IS SO ALSO ARE WE IN THIS WORLD. 18 THERE IS NO FEAR IN LOVE, BUT PERFECT LOVE CASTS OUT FEAR. FOR FEAR HAS TO DO WITH PUNISHMENT, AND WHOEVER FEARS HAS NOT BEEN PERFECTED IN LOVE. 19 WE LOVE BECAUSE HE FIRST LOVED US. 1 JOHN 4