Love is patient, love is kind — Paul's working definition of love.
Read at every wedding, but written to a fighting church. Why Paul's love list is more challenging than romantic.
The episode in a glance.
- 01Written to a church that was tearing itself apart, not to a couple in love.
- 02Every quality is an action verb, not a feeling.
- 03Love is mostly defined by what it doesn't do — envy, boast, demand its own way.
- 04Replace 'love' with your own name and see how it reads.
Read along.
1 Corinthians 13 gets read at almost every Christian wedding. But Paul didn't write it for newlyweds. He wrote it to a church in Corinth that was fighting, dividing, and using their spiritual gifts to compete with each other.
'Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful.' That's not romance. That's a rebuke wrapped in a definition.
Notice every quality is an action, not a feeling. Patient. Kind. Doesn't envy. Doesn't boast. Love in the Bible is something you do, even when you don't feel like it.
And most of the list is negative — what love doesn't do. Doesn't insist on its own way. Isn't irritable. Isn't resentful. Real love spends a lot of energy on what it refuses to be.
Try this: replace the word 'love' with your own name. 'Jordan is patient. Jordan is kind. Jordan does not envy or boast.' If that reading makes you wince, you're reading it right.