Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – 1 Corinthians 13

We return to 1 Corinthians 13 today for the sermon text. We’ll be looking particularly at verses 4 to 7, but we’ll read it in context. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. 1 Corinthians 13.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself. Is not puffed up. Does not behave rudely nor does it seek its own. Is not provoked. Thinks no evil. Does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail. Whether there are tongues, they will cease. Whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child. I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now, we see it dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. And now abide faith, hope, love, these three. But the greatest of these is love.

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Let’s pray. Father, we come to you as the source of all love, of all patience and kindness, knowing that you have called us to this very image that we read here in 1 Corinthians 13. We thank you, Father, that our identity is found in these verses because of our union and communion with you through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and the empowering Spirit.

Help us, Father, to look at this mirror today to see who we are in Jesus Christ and then to be further strengthened and transformed by the power of the Spirit that we may turn away from lies about who we are in Christ and may embrace more fully the love that comes from you and is you. Bless us, Lord God, with this text and by your Spirit in Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. It’s a delight to return to this text. We began talking about it two weeks ago and we’ll conclude today, and next week I’ll begin a series on life in exile or living in exile. And while it’s an analogy, it’s not a direct one-for-one. We’ll look at some of the exilic, post-exilic texts rather—written to people in exile in Babylon—and glean from them an understanding of how we’re to live in the context of a culture in which we are increasingly a minority in terms of our allegiance to Jesus Christ.

And I think we’ll glean out good things from that. This text really is—I mean, everything’s directly related to our life in Christ. But 1 Corinthians 13 is very important for understanding how we’re to do this as well. How we’re supposed to not just survive what this country is going through in terms of its rejection of Jesus, but to thrive and to be loving to the world and bring the light of Christ back the way the church has kind of let it be extinguished in our day and age.

So, if we’re going to have good solid communities, if we’re going to have children brought up in the context of the nurture and admonition of the Lord, if we’re going to put together legal structures that are useful for our communities, if we’re going to develop parallel systems to the systems of our culture, what we read here is absolutely critical and vital for doing all those things. That’s what we want to do.

I mentioned last week, you know, that in the context of a culture in which judicial actions relative to divorce will no longer enforce biblical Christianity, then it’s simply an opportunity for us to develop written contracts or covenants relative to our marriage that brings back fault divorce in the context of the church where both parties agree to this before sin occurs. Kim Frazier has a new job in Spokane, so he won’t be able to get down here until the fall.

So in the fall we’ll bring Kim down for a seminar or a time—several hours in the evening or a Saturday morning—at which we can think more about marriage contracts and write up a bunch of them hopefully for most of our married couples here at RCC. And this is a way that we’re supposed to kind of go around the system. I was thinking that one thing that’s useful to our wives—and that’s what kindness means here: usefulness—is providing a way for them to easily handle things should we die or should we go to the hospital for an extended period of time.

And there’s lots of good ways to do that now, whether or not you trust the internet with your money. If you do, then there’s all kinds of ways to set up automatic payments that make it quite easy—a lot easier on our wives or on our husbands if the wives are the ones doing the finances. And it’s an example of how, in light of a government monopoly in the 80s on communication through the post office, free market people, Christians, have developed alternative sources of information to just sort of go around all of that.

And today, at least with me, there’s probably only one or two bills a month that I pay anymore via mail. It’s all done electronically, which has nothing to do with the government. So that’s what we’re talking about doing by living in exile: creating systems that go around what is atrophying and going away, which is not based in Jesus, and building structures that will continue.

Now, as we do this, it’s difficult. You know, we’re in the CRC. The CRC, you know, we don’t have a long-established denominational tradition in which everybody’s agreed to certain terms and certain practices. No, we’re kind of the cave of Adullam where people from different kinds of backgrounds and perspectives are all trying to sort out what a church is and what’s proper worship and what do we do as presbyters. It’s a good thing to have happen. And here in the context of RCC, discussions about Christian education—what’s best for me or my family, what should we do with our kids’ education? Both in primary school and secondary school and in colleges—great conversations to have if we have them in love. If we don’t have them exercising the sort of politeness that 1 Corinthians 13 admonishes us to, then we probably won’t be as effective in developing these alternative structures that God wants us to develop as light to the world in which we live.

Augustine wrote, “In essentials unity, in doubtful things liberty, but in all things charity.” So essential things we must have unity, but in things that are, you know, good men disagree on—good Christian men based on the scriptures disagree on—you know, we have to have liberty in those things, but before and at the end of all of it we need charity. We need love as the mechanism by which these things are dealt with and derived from.

So we’re going to return now at the outlines to 1 Corinthians 13. Most at the top of the outline today is review. As I said, the first section of 13 gets our attention. Everything else is useless. You can even do acts of charity, know all kinds of neat things. And no doubt the Corinthians were—remember, I almost, you know, I sort of wasn’t sure if we should put the order of worship cover on or not. You know, it’s this plaasis problem that Jay Adams talks about. It’s taking verses out of their context.

And even preaching on verses 4 to 7 in their full context is a little, you know, it can be deceptive to us if we don’t remember the context. The context is he’s writing to a church that had all kinds of personal problems. Love was not being exhibited. Patience and usefulness to each other was not their hallmark. And so he was writing to this church to tell them, “Look, you may have really theologically astute people and you may have people doing love in, you know, every day of the week, but if in the context of this there’s not biblical love, then it’s all worth nothing.”

So he gets our attention with the first few verses. And then love in action—as I mentioned, it’s about a bunch of verbs and one noun: love. Now we don’t want to go too far that way either, though, because he just told us that if we engage in the action of feeding people or clothing people but don’t have love, it’s pointless. So we don’t want to, you know, we’re not talking about external actions that aren’t related to a change of heart and to God’s concern and love for people in the abstract sense or emotional sense as well.

So there’s covenantal faithfulness, which involves actions but also the right attitude. So we don’t want to go so far in stressing the fact that these are actions involved that we lose the context. Actions by themselves aren’t cutting it. That’s what Paul has just told us. So but we have this love in action, and there’s a header set of header verses. The first two characteristics—God is love, or God is patient rather, or love is patient and kind, or useful—is love. These things are a header for everything else.

And again, I sort of feel bad, but one of the sheets on the outline is 4 to 7, but again, it’s kind of taken out of its immediate context in Corinthians and in the rest of the Bible. And if you just paste that up on your refrigerator, you could go around thinking improperly, as we’ll talk about today a little bit. But that’s what that handout is meant to do: to show the relationship of everything that’s talked about to patience and kindness.

And as we said two weeks ago, Exodus 34 says these are the two characteristics of God throughout the Old Testament: that God is described as being patient and useful, or kind. And the prayers of God’s people to him recorded in the text on your outline plead God’s love. Right? We’re asking God when we pray to be loving, to be patient with us, and to be useful or kind to us. That’s what the prayers of saints recorded in the Old Testament were about—that basic character quality described in Exodus 34 as God reveals himself to Moses and to a sinful people.

They had rejected; they had sinned. The first set of ten commandments were gone. Moses was back to get the second set. And in the context of that, God declares himself to be patient and long-suffering and also kind. And that’s real important to remember: that to the first hearers of these words, they would have linked it to Exodus 34. It was like the “for God so loved the world” thing—they would have filled in the text.

And the rest of the text in Exodus 34 says he by no means clears the guilty. So, right away, we’re sort of saved from sloppy agape, from a view of love that isn’t biblical, by reminding ourselves that this is talking about God. And this is talking about God who is characteristically patient and kind, but who will not in that patience and kindness hold back from punishing ethical rebels.

Now, remember, this is written to the Corinthians. And it’s written just a chapter or two after he’s told them that God is making some of them sick and even killing some of them. So this same God who is patient and kind is the God who, to the Corinthians, in his kindness to them, is punishing them, getting them sick. It’s not unuseful. It’s not unloving to, you know, take an ethical rebel and for God, through the context of the Lord’s Supper, bring judgments upon him.

In fact, it’s a very useful thing to do. When I get out of line, I pray that God would keep me in line, that he’d bring judgment so I know what I’m doing. We’re prone to self-deception. You know, several—and I know we’ll get to the specifics, don’t worry—we’ll get there. But this is so important to point out again because we rip these things out of their context. In Corinthians, God’s patience and kindness, just like in Exodus 34, doesn’t obviate judgments. Judgments are useful.

I was speaking to another elder in a Reformed church this week, and I was amazed that we’re talking about a man who’s been excommunicated by a large reformed church. And you know, this fellow is befriending this excommunicate. So I was talking to him—I had need to talk to him about the situation—and you know, I was just kind of amazed that first of all the man wouldn’t recognize, he wouldn’t actually come down and say that, yeah, the guy’s been excommunicated because, you know, was excommunicated by a reformed church, not in his denomination.

So we continue to struggle with that in Reformed circles. But even if he is excommunicated, this man said that he wanted to be loving and kind to the excommunicate. And so, yeah, so do we. But we think that Matthew 18 tells us that the way to be useful, kind, godlike to a person that’s been excommunicated from the church is to treat him as if he’s not a Christian. That’s not unkind. That’s not unloving. That’s not anti-First Corinthians 13. To every time you see an excommunicate, to urge him to repentance for his sins and to tell him, “We’re not the same kind of friends anymore, cuz I’m to consider you as outside of the body of Christ as an ethical rebel.”

Now, it’s a consideration. We have hope for the excommunicate. We think this is exactly the way that God says—this is the way the rule book says—you’re to treat this situation. And we trust the rule book. We trust God’s patience and kindness more than our own vision of what those things are. And we trust that it will be efficacious. Excommunicants in our constitution—John added this to our understanding of it—they’re still in the rolls of the church. So we still continue. The discipline is a process, and the process is intended for the recovery of the excommunicate. And 1 Corinthians is all about that. 1 and 2 Corinthians—same situation.

It wasn’t unkind of Paul to turn an excommunicate over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh. That’s useful to him, and it was useful to bring him to repentance. And Paul had him, you know, readmitted to the church. So, you know, you just have to keep in mind, you know, the context of what we’re dealing with here. And the context reminds us of these things.

The Bible also says that we are to be loving and kind because the Holy Spirit brings about godlike qualities. We are partakers of the divine nature. We have these communicable attributes of God. We’re imaging him. We’re Christians. And so, as such, we’re supposed to be imitators, conveyors, transmitters of the character of God. So, if the character of God is patience and usefulness or kindness, then we should be that same way. And the scriptures tell us that’s what we’re to be as well.

So, patience. This first word, patience—Chrysostom said that it’s the word used of the man that is wronged and he has it easily in his power to avenge himself and who yet will not do it. So slow to anger, patience, long-suffering. It’s not gnostic. There is suffering going on. And we can do something about it, to avenge ourselves, but we’re not going to do that. That’s patience. That’s the way God is toward us, right? I mean, if he struck out at every sin we did, we’d be dead. So God is patient and long-suffering. It puts up with many slights and neglects from the person it is patient toward.

Now, 4:7, 15 characteristics begins with patience and ends with endurance. And patience is used in reference to people in the New Testament—that particular Greek word—and endurance relative to everything, which might include people but includes non-people things too. So the difficulties we go about within our lives—now, that term is never used relative to God. God is patient toward people, but he’s never having to endure, you know, the world because he made it and he’s using it for his purposes.

So, but we have to endure things. And so there’s a, there’s kind of a—again, there’s bookends to this entire text that talk about patience and endurance, similar terms. And it moves through a there’s a structure to all of this. It’s not just, you know, poetic language that doesn’t have a form. And the form moves from patience to endurance and shows us that the movement of these characteristics is we look at what God is like and we become like that.

So endurance is always used in terms of Christians. So Christians are now taking on the patience of God relative to everything else that we’d be impatient against as well. But this first patience is in terms of people, and you don’t get worked up over a just resentment. Somebody’s really done you wrong, but you don’t strike out. You don’t avenge yourselves. Love suffers long.

And then secondly, love is kind. And as we said two weeks ago, it is useful. Love is useful. That’s what the word means. It’s the only occurrence of the particular word here in the New Testament. But the root makes it obvious that it means to be useful to other people. God is said to be patient and kind in Exodus 34. When we pray, we ask God to be loving, patient, and kind to us. And God’s Spirit makes us like him—patient and kind.

So love is kind, or useful. And as I said, God was useful to the Corinthians by punishing them for their abuse of the Lord’s Supper and agape. God was kind, useful, to the congregation of Israel by striking out against some ethical rebels, by doing judgment sort of things. He’s not being unkind. Now, to those particular individuals, you know, God’s love and kindness for his Son and for his church results in a proper sense of hatred against enemies. But it results—that’s the result of love at the get-go.

So, you know, God is—we remember the context for this. I had another discussion with another pastor this last week, and he was talking about homeless ministries and stuff. And you know, he was saying that he has a friend in Teen Challenge, I think in California in some major city. And he asked the friend from Teen Challenge—the homeless people—”How many of them could we actually get into homes?” And the guy from Teen Challenge said, “All of them, if they wanted to.” There’s no end of resources for the homeless in our culture.

And he said that if you talk to most homeless ministries, the homeless people are well fed because there’s lots of churches giving them food. There’s lots of government agencies. So now the idea is we want to give them other things. And so you got hair cutting stations being proposed for Oregon City and foot massage stations.

But the point is that I thought to myself—I didn’t do it because I feel like I’m always kind of the guy on, you know, coming from left field—but I wanted to ask him, “Do you think it’s a good thing that the homeless are not hungry?” Because I don’t think it is a good thing. The Proverbs say that if a person is slothful—not all homeless people are. There’s mental issues, et cetera. But there are some people that are lazy. That’s why they’re doing it. They want to live a lifestyle, permanently camped out.

Now, the Bible says, “If a guy doesn’t work, he shouldn’t eat.” Now, that’s in the context of the church. And the Proverbs says that the sluggard—his hunger is an incitement from God to him to work. It is not useful to a slothful person to provide him perpetual food. It’s not loving, you know, as these verses define love.

Love is useful. Love isn’t, you know, an attempt to feel really good because I did something for somebody else. That’s the opposite of love. We’ll see that in the next five characteristics. The center of the five negatives is pride. It’s thinking about ourselves. We’re not supposed to be self-interested. We’re supposed to be serving the other. And if the only reason I’m helping people is because it makes me feel good, that’s the opposite of love.

So another example—remember, we don’t want to slip into a wrong way of thinking about this stuff. The Bible says that kindness is usefulness. It could be said to be inclined or disposed to be useful. Haj says it means “inclined to perform good deeds, to make oneself useful to others.” I don’t care if you think you’re a kind person in your speech and—well, I do care; that’s good. But if you’re not disposed to be useful to the people that you supposedly are kind to, then you’re not meeting this qualification.

God is not just sort of, you know, a kind person in the abstract sense or in the polite sense. There is that involved. We’ll see. But in general, he’s useful to people. So if we’re going to evaluate our long-suffering characteristic or our kindness component, we have to do it relative to how many people are being useful to. Who are you doing good deeds for? That’s what kindness is about here. It just doesn’t desire another person’s welfare, but it actually works toward the other person’s welfare.

And there’s all kinds of New Testament verses about God’s requiring us to be kind. Uh, Ephesians 4:32, “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other.” So kindness is the basis for forgiveness of each other as well. So kindness is usefulness.

And then the next characteristics show the opposites of kindness. And then the couple showing the opposite of patience. Love is patient under injuries. And it is apt and inclined to do all the good offices for other people in her power. So said one commentator, love is useful.

Now then we have some a list of contrasts. And the way I’ve done it on your outline is there’s five contrasts to kindness. And as I put on your outline, I think there’s a structure there: the center of those five opposites to kindness is pride. So you got patience, kindness, five opposites, five anti-kindnesses centered in pride, and then two anti-patience elements, and then you get into a rejoicing thing.

So the rejoicing thing and the bearing thing at the end of the text—there’s movement there. The basic sort of stuff you’re supposed to do specifically is in those seven characteristics: five that you’re not supposed to do if you’re kind and two that you’re not supposed to do if you’re patient.

And so these five relative to kindness, I think, sort of center on pridefulness. Okay. So let’s talk about them a little bit. First of all, let me rearrange. Okay, so verse 4 says, “Love suffers long and is kind, and love doesn’t envy.” So envy is the first thing that love is not to do.

You know, envy involves jealousy of somebody else. When somebody else gets something, you don’t want them to have it. It’s in our human nature to be envious. The fallen man, the old man, is envious. He doesn’t like it when others are happy and prosper because he’s not getting—particularly if he can’t have the same thing.

Envy strikes out at people that have things that we can’t have. So envy is all about really ourselves in relationship to others. And envy says, “I don’t like it when other people are doing, are being blessed, or when things are happening to them that are good.” Envy is a really bad deal. So, at the head of this list of what it’s like not to be kind, to envy, is very significant. It’s a horrible thing. I say that because Acts 7:9 and 17:5 says this is why the brothers of Joseph sent him into Egypt.

Verse 9 says, “And the patriarchs, moved with envy, sold Joseph into Egypt, but God was with him.” So, you know, it’s a really big sin—big sin demonstrated. And this is why they sold Joseph into Egypt. But even worse, in Acts, we read in 17:5, “In terms of Jesus, the Jews, which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the base sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city in an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people.”

So this is an indication that the attacks on the church, against the house of Jason, were motivated by envy. And there’s other texts that say specifically that the Pharisees were moved with envy, which is as to why they crucified our Savior. So the very opposite of brotherly kindness is brotherly hatred spurred by envy. So it’s kind of the beginning of the list here, and it’s and we should ask ourselves: How do we respond when others get blessings that are really better than our blessings? They got a bigger house. They get an inheritance. They have ways of communicating that we can’t attain to. They got a bigger church, in the context of pastors—bigger ministry. You know, how do we respond to those things?

As we mature, children respond poorly. They want what the other person has, and if they can’t get it, they’re going to kill the other person to get at it. It’s kind of the idea. So envy does that. It strikes out. It actually moves to murder because of its own self-interest being compared with other people. That’s immaturity. As we become mature Christians, taking on the characteristics of God, we’re supposed to not be like that.

And you, as you ask yourself, “How do I respond to the blessings of other people that God gives them?” You know, ask yourself that. It’s a great indicator of whether you know how far along on your Christian walk you are. And of course, these are put-offs, right? The basic Christian sanctification is put off, put on. We’re to put on patience and kindness by putting off envy.

So, you’re supposed to, as soon as that starts to come up in your heart or soul, or as soon as you see it manifested in your kids, bring them to repentance. It’s a killer deal, left to go on. It kills, you know, symbolically at least, enslaves Joseph. It kills Jesus. It attacks Christians in their homes. So envy is a real bad deal.

And we, our children, should think about this. What do they feel like? Envy is the opposite of love. Love is happy. Love is pleased. Love is happy with other people’s successes. Okay? You see somebody else in the church that got some great thing going for him. You’re happy about it. Now, that isn’t your natural reaction, particularly when you’re a kid, because the old man isn’t happy about it. But that’s who you are in Jesus. This is a description of who you are as a Christian. And as a Christian, it’s a lie against yourself and it’s acting outside of your basic nature and character now to envy people. Get rid of it, confess it, move away from it. And you can’t put off something and not put on something else. Or, you know, you drive a demon out, and comes back and seven worse than himself come back on you. You have to replace envy with looking to the well-being of other people. That’s what kindness is.

And so you should be happy when other people have done blessings—to those that you see. You have to put off envy with a positive happiness, joy at the success of others. Hard work. Hard work. But that’s what we’re called to do.

Secondly, love doesn’t boast. And so, you know, this is kind of obvious what this means. Love isn’t a braggart. Love doesn’t embellish rhetorically things about itself. A person who’s loving doesn’t, you know, brag about themselves. They don’t dominate the conversation. It’s not about me. And we know, again, here that’s hard to do. We do tend to think of us. It is all about us.

The Bible says bragging about who we are is to be put off and replaced rather with kind of a, I guess, sort of a self-effacing manner, you know, self-effacing. So you say things in a way that will not appear prideful or aren’t prideful, and instead you sort of put yourself down a little bit. Self-effacing.

So you don’t brag. And secondly, or thirdly rather, you’re not puffed up. So love doesn’t brag. And then the third of these five anti-kindness things is being puffed up. So if you think about this, there’s a backward progression. If you’re puffed up, if you’re prideful, okay—that’s what this basically means. It’s an imagery of being puffed up with yourself and prideful. You’re going to brag about yourself in your speech and that’s going to lead to attacks on other people in terms of envy, which include character assassination, whatever it might be, trying to hurt other people’s reputation.

But the root is this view of who you are. You know, it’s really funny. I mean, I know that the Puritans had their faults, but one of the things the Puritans had, I think, important to contribute to what we believe and what we know and what we practice, is to warn themselves. They warned themselves over and over again. They warned their children about pride. Pride is seen as the root of the seven deadly sins.

And our culture warns and warns and warns against not being prideful. It, I mean, it’s absolutely, given the culture. Okay, if we’re going to live as a cognitive minority in the midst of exile here, we got to recognize that we become like those we’re around. And the culture builds self-esteem. It builds pride. That means we got to redouble our efforts in our hearts not to be prideful. It’s the opposite of God. It’s antichrist, right? To be prideful is antichrist here. It’s anti-kindness, anti-usefulness. And it’s not useful because it’s all centered upon yourself.

So, we’ve got to work really diligently at not being prideful and not incurring sinful pridefulness in our kids. Now, there’s a proper sense—all the seven deadly sins are perversions. These things are perversions of good things. Nehemiah could say, “Remember me for my work.” So, there’s a proper sense of accomplishment and things we do well. That’s not pride. Pride is a self-centered kind of, you know, “I’m the best. I’m what’s important.” All I hear is good things.

If we never criticize our children or chastise them for what they do wrong, or talk to them about their sins, we instead think that positive reinforcement is where it’s at, then what we’re going to do is produce pride. And pride is at the heart, I think, of the five characteristics that are the opposite of kindness and the love of God.

So pride is very important to being put off. And again, what you put on is a sense of humility. I mean, as Christians, we’re the last ones that should be prideful. We know the depravity of men. As Calvinists, we know the depravity of men. We know that the only reason we’re here is the grace of God. There’s no reason for us to become prideful at all. But the culture will tempt us to that.

So, pride—hate it. Hate pride. Try to, you know, work against it, you know, apply diligence in rooting out pride, because it spawns out these other actions of nagging and envy.

So what does the Bible say? What we’re supposed to put on? In Romans 12:10, it says we’re to prefer one another. Right? In Philippians 2:3, all of these characteristics, of course, describe the Savior. But what does Philippians 2:3 say? “They’ll do nothing out of a spirit of contention or in glory, but rather Philippians 2:3 rather, but in lowliness of mind will esteem others better than themselves.”

Now, you know, thinking of the other as more important than yourself—this is humility. This is the opposite of pride. And this is the characteristic we’re supposed to put on. Love is not prideful. Love isn’t puffed up. Love is not prideful.

It also isn’t rude. This is the fourth characteristic. Just as pride results in bragging, it also results in a rude conduct as well—speech primarily. So this rudeness is—it means to be rude is to not know your place in the context of a setting. It means to act indecorously, not in decorous manner, to not be in the proper form, manner, or way of being for a particular context. Okay. So it’s rudeness is what this verse is talking about: doing things for which one ought to be ashamed. That’s what this word basically can be said to mean here. Unbecoming. Another way to put it: love doesn’t act in an unbecoming way. Coarse, suggesting, that sort of stuff.

You know, that’s what we’re to put off. If we have a prideful belief in who we are, we’re tempted to brag. And the bragging itself is rude, of course, but that will lead to other actions as well. So, we’re to put off rudeness. We’re to put off base, vile communication, actions, et cetera. It doesn’t do anything out of place or out of time. It does things with reverence and respect to superiors, with kindness and condescension to inferiors, with courtesy and goodwill towards all men. It is not for breaking order.

Now again, look how difficult this is in our context here. When we go to the movies or when we listen to music, we usually are exposed to a great deal of rudeness, baseness, vileness, are we not? And the culture sort of thinks this is a cool thing to do and to be. And so we tend to imitate those that we’re in the context of. It’s going to take work and effort not to be rude in the context of our lives as Christians.

Love is polite. It’s polite.

Now, speaking of movies, you know, No Country for Old Men—it’s got an interesting scene. It’s very—the evil incarnate is walking about in this movie. And two sheriffs are discussing how bad, you know, modern life has become. And I think the thing takes place in the 80s. I mean, what would it be like now if they were discussing? I mean, things have socially and culturally just blown apart in our lifetime. I mean, the things that are openly discussed in our culture that never were before—things have become quite vile, base, and non-decorous.

Well, in the movie No Country for Old Men, these two sheriffs are talking about how weird things are. And one of them says, “I think it all began when kids stopped saying ma’am and sir.” Yes, ma’am. Yes, sir. He says, “And we don’t do that much, do we?” In our church, we don’t hear a lot of that. Some of you families do. And I’m not saying you got to do that. That’s not what I’m—the point is. But the point is that there was a loss of civility and politeness. There was rudeness that began to become part of our culture, primarily through the 60s, I suppose. And the end result of that is just horrific. It’s just evil all over the place.

So love doesn’t do that. Love, you know, puts off impoliteness. Love puts on a sense of propriety and decorum about its speech, its actions, et cetera. This is what love is, the scriptures tell us.

And then finally in this list of five anti-kindness verses, love doesn’t insist on its own way. It isn’t self-seeking. See, so pride is at the center. It’s all about me. It results in indecorous or braggadocious sort of speech and a way of being. And it ends up insisting on our own way and thus engaging in acts of envy, which include character assassination, whatever it might be, trying to hurt other people’s reputation.

If we can’t kill them, we can at least slander the reputation. In a way, the Bible says the reputation is more important than life. It’s the biggest thing we got going is our name. So the evil that comes away from pride is all set as a group. I think the way it’s structured here in opposition to kindness, and it kind of finishes with this idea that love insists on its own—there’s a core selfishness, the opposite of love. Rather, it insists on its own. There’s a core selfishness going on.

And Lenski in his commentary on this text says that if you can cure selfishness, you plant the Garden of Eden all over again. That this selfishness, pridefulness, seeking our own way, insisting on what we want out of a conversation, a set of occurrences, a community, et cetera, and then walking away if we don’t get what we want individually—this is the opposite. This is being kicked out of the garden.

And when we can cure that thing, hey, in ourselves, we planted again the blessings of God, the Garden of Eden, so to speak. So Jesus came, you know, putting others as more important than himself. He’s the ultimate example of usefulness because he was humble. Didn’t come to be served, but rather to serve, to put others’ interests above his own—the Father’s and then those that he came to redeem as well.

So all these things are the opposite of the kindness section here. Love doesn’t insist upon its own rights, its own privileges, its own way. Love remembers responsibility. So this whole rights versus responsibility language in our culture—love doesn’t insist on rights. It insists rather and thinks about its responsibilities to others.

So you see, it’s not an inward focus. It’s an outward focus. Not rights but responsibilities. They think less and less of their own rights, the loving Christian, and he thinks more and more of his duties to God and to his neighbor. His duty.

So those are the opposites of kindness in terms of action. Love thinks about how to help others. It’s not selfish. It thinks about how to help others. Love is giving and caring. So, are you a taker? Are you a giver? It’s the same kind of thing. Are you interested in your own self-interest or serving other people?

And then there’s two characteristics that are opposite to patience. The first is love isn’t touching—verse 8, or yeah, it’s not provoked. The end of verse 8: it’s not easily provoked. It isn’t touching. You know, people that are touching—you talk to them, and you’re more likely than not to get kind of a reaction, you know, if you say anything that they don’t like, you know, quick to anger, spontaneous sort of reaction against people.

That’s what’s being described here: kind of a touchiness, a sensitivity, over-sensitivity to what people say to them or about them. So, you know, this is the opposite of being patient. People are going to say things that might set you off, but patience is long-suffering when those things happen. Well, you just, you know, grin and bear it, so to speak. You endure what’s happening. You don’t strike out right away. You don’t have a sudden outburst of anger in relationship to other people.

The original word is used in terms of lawsuits and dissensions in the context of Greek culture. So you’re not quick to go to court against somebody. You’re not anxious to do that kind of thing. That’s the opposite of being patient. Okay? So love doesn’t fly into a temper. It doesn’t get exasperated. Exasperation is a sign of defeat. But love is victorious, as we’ll see in a couple of minutes.

If we lose our tempers, as someone said, we lose everything. Love doesn’t do that. It isn’t easily provoked. Now, anger is a good thing at times. God is not saying it’s always wrong to be angry. But if you’re quick to anger, if you’re touchy in that way, that’s the opposite of being patient. Love isn’t prickly. Prickly. It isn’t prickly about every little thing.

And you kids know when you’re like that to your brothers and sisters, or everything they do and you get on your side of the seat in the back seat. “Oh, you crossed the line.” Love isn’t prickly like that. It isn’t doesn’t take up an offense easily.

And secondly, it’s patient, and so it doesn’t resentfully keep track of offenses it suffered. And here translations vary quite a bit. The basic word is an accounting term. It thinks no evil. Well, actually, there’s the perpetual evil. It’s got a definite object to evil. It doesn’t think the evil. So it doesn’t keep in its mind the evil things that people have really done to it.

So the idea is—this is why you’ve heard this talked about a lot—it doesn’t keep a ledger. You know, there are cultures where family rivalries are intended to be kept in a ledger book. There’s a Polynesian culture where the natives spend much of their time in fighting, and it’s customary for the man to keep some reminders of his hatred. Articles are suspended from the roofs of their huts to keep people of the memory of their wrongs, real or imagined. So that’s the opposite of what’s going on here in spades.

You remember that guy did—I’m going to hang that from my ceiling so every time I come in my house I think of that jerk and what the guy did to me. That’s what this is about. It doesn’t—it’s thinking about the evil that others have done perpetually. It keeps a ledger. And as I mentioned before, I know guys that have done this for 20 years, 15 years, and it’s completely ruined their effectiveness for any kind of kingdom work. And these are gifted guys. These are talented men. They’re gifted for the kingdom. But it can all be wasted because of resentment, bitterness by keeping records of wrong suffered.

We used it at the church. We think it’s still in our constitution, but we don’t do it. So should change the constitution. Made people give us a letter explaining their reasons as to why they were going to leave the church. And we stopped doing that because, you know, if you make them document stuff—well, first of all, they may not give you what they’re actually thinking. Maybe they don’t know why they’ve got to go someplace else for a while. Maybe it’s just their spiritual well-being. If you force them to give a reason, and then force them to document the reason, you know, it could be—them, they’ll think of some kind of offense, and then they’ll have that record that they typed and sent off to you. They’ll have the email in their email box, right? And maybe for a long time, about what was really the problem—why I didn’t like that church.

It’s not useful. It’s not kind. And because it’s not, it encourages impatience with the obvious flaws of every church. So, we’re not to do that. We’re not supposed to keep a record of what things people have done wrong to us. Clean the slates out right here. Right here at this table, just clear the slates. Dump all the ledger sheets. Do a data dump of your mind about keeping a record of all the wrongs suffered.

And you know, there is some need to keep some record. I mean, the Bible—there’s repeat offenders. You got to remember they offended at first. But in the, you know, what 1 Corinthians 13 is talking about is the average way we live as Christians. And the average way we’re supposed to live is doing a data dump of stuff. Don’t require a pound of flesh. You—it’ll only be it’ll be your pound of flesh that will be the result by your bitterness.

So love doesn’t do that. It doesn’t brood over the wrongs until it’s impossible to forget them. Christian love has learned the great lesson of forgetting as a proper remembering. And there’s a proper forgiving. God forgets our sins. He doesn’t keep a ledger. Love forgives and love forgets what’s happened in the past.

You know, any marriage, if you’ve been married more than a couple of years, you know the importance of this lesson. You guys know you can either be quickly irritated with each other’s foibles, you can keep a list of what they did wrong, you can just forget that stuff and live in peace and harmony. It’s a wondrous thing.

So, and then there’s the rejoicing thing. And again, in our context of our culture, very important. What do you rejoice in? Unrighteousness or with the truth? So, it’s the antithesis thing again.

So, we’ve listed the seven characteristics of love, and now it’s kind of moving toward the conclusion. And the general question for yourself is opposed to the specific seven questions that he’s just given us. Are you like these things? The general question here is: What is your joy? What gives you joy?

And what it’s saying is don’t be joyful in unrighteousness. Don’t have a good time looking at how things turn out bad or people stealing things or bad things in movies. That’s not to be your joy. On righteousness—your joy—and again, you can’t just have no joy. You have to join in something. The joy is supposed to be with the truth.

Now, “with the truth” means the personification, I think, ultimately, of Jesus, who is the way, the truth, and the life. We rejoice with Jesus in the manifestation of his kingdom and its development on the earth. Now, that’s central. You can’t get rid of all these actions and then continue to want to rejoice in things you shouldn’t be rejoicing in. You got to change your humor, your sense of humor, your sense of appreciation. You got to rejoice with the truth, which also means rejoicing with the church of Jesus Christ.

And you can ask yourself: The stuff that I really like or rejoice in—is it stuff that my wife would also rejoice in? Is it stuff that, you know, the rest of the church would rejoice in? Now, I know there’s different interests and stuff, but in general, you know, the question to ask yourself is: What are you rejoicing in?

And then finally, there’s four commendations at the end. And now this is moving into the eschatology of the thing, right? So now we’re moving eschatologically. And again, it’s related to patience and kindness, but these last four things are kind of the culmination of it, and they’ll culminate with endurance, which is quite important.

So first of all, it bears all things. It could be that the it’s the same Greek word here as covering over sins, not keeping a record of wrongs. It bears up, you know, and all things. Well, if somebody shoots your wife, you should call the police. So there’s certain things that should be borne up under and others that are not.

But generally, in the ordinary way of life, you bear up. You don’t let things get you all ticked off. It’s a—it’s the repetition of patience. Patience bears up over wrong suffered at the hands of other people. So, the things that should be born or endured are born. You bear up under all things. Bear patiently and suffer when we are hurt or wrong. So when people hurt you, you don’t hit back. You don’t hit back. You bear up over things generally speaking.

And then secondly, you believe all things. Even if your brother hits you, you know, you bear up under it. And then you try to believe the best about him, right? So to believe all things. You’re positively inclined to believe your brother and sister when they give you an explanation that doesn’t seem like it matches the facts. That’s what it means to have a mindset where you’re ready to give credence to the other person’s story. You want to do that.

And if you find yourself questioning other people’s stories frequently, you’re not acting in a loving way. It’s not good for you. You’re supposed to believe all things about people. Now again, it doesn’t mean all things, but generally in life, you’re to put up a small things that people do to you, and you’re to believe that they’re going to be okay, but they will—if they tell you, “Well, I really didn’t mean to hit you. I was just having an attack or something.” You tend to want to believe that stuff. If your brother or sister tells you that, you believe all things.

And even if your brother or sister tells you that, and then you find out it wasn’t true, well, then you hope all things. Hope for it, you know, focuses on the future. So, you have present problems, and somebody’s not telling you the truth. You can’t believe them anymore, but you hope the best. We hope for excommunicants. We born up under certain things, but judicial action becomes a time for it. We believe certain things they’ve told us, but then we find out that all excommunicants really are untruthful or deceitful.

But it doesn’t mean we stop hoping. There’s a progression here. In other words, we bear up with the things. We try to believe the best about people and their explanations of things. And even when all both those things are worn out on those things, we end up hoping all things for the future, for those in the context of the Christian community.

All of this assumes that there’s a lot of conversation and community going on. So, there is this progression. And then finally, very importantly, it endures all things. And this is a really interesting word. Remember that the end of this section, verses 8 and following, it’s all about how love wins. You know what Paul is saying is: It looks like this won’t work. It looks like being kind to people when they’re mean to you. It looks like trying to achieve the well-being of other people—this stuff doesn’t seem to work. It looks like we’re just a bunch of weak, ineffectual people.

But Paul is saying that if you properly understand what he’s told you and exercise it in your life, that church will end up changing the culture. That church—those people—will be victorious. Love never fails. He says love wins at the end of the day. That’s why we can hope all things. And that’s also implied in this verse that love endures things.

The word “endure” here is a military term. And it meant it was an army. You’re in the field, and you could endure the onslaught of the enemy. Not because you’re not fighting positively—the implication is that you endure it and will be able to conquer it. That’s the implication of the military term that’s used here. So there’s a victorious fortitude—a victorious fortitude that is a component of what this endurance is.

God doesn’t say to endure forever. No, he says love never fails. Love wins. Your endurance is a sure confidence in the sovereignty of God and him working all things together for the purposes of his kingdom. You can endure the assaults of other people and not strike back, to be patient, long-suffering, be kind to others even when they’re nasty to you. You can endure that way because you know that’s the way the world changes. That’s the way the gospel conquers all the nations of the earth.

So there is this bearing up with things with triumphant fortitude. You know, love doesn’t lose. Love wins. Love puts up, endures with many things to the end, that love wins in the end. Love is victorious.

Now, this is the sort of characteristics that God says should characterize us as a community. This is how we should live our lives in the context of this church. When we have discussions of things that are non-essentials, where people can disagree on methods and tactics, not on end goal, unity is required there, but we’re to put on love and charity in the context of all these discussions.

If we do that, remembering these lessons of 1 Corinthians 13, then we’ll live successfully as a community, a growing community in the midst of what’s otherwise a world that’s rejected the love of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your victory. We thank you, Father, for giving us a rule book, not to figure it out ourselves what’s best, but rather you’ve instructed us, Father, through these words here in the scriptures, through your law of the Old Testament preeminently, through the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, you’ve instructed us how to win, how to see the gospel of Christ advanced, how to see his kingdom made manifest in this church, in our communities and families, and then ultimately in the world at large.

We thank you for the optimism and hope that you give us, and thank you for giving us the way, the truth, and the life—Jesus Christ—is the example of how we’re to achieve these things. Bless us now. Help each and every one of us, Lord God. Grant that indeed, grant our prayers that we would mature in our love, in our patience and usefulness to one another. Grant each of us, Father, specific conviction over particular sins that we engage in that are not patient, kind, or loving.

And grant us, Lord God, the power of the Holy Spirit that you would transform us in those particular areas, cause us to grow and mature as the body of Jesus Christ. In his name we ask it. Amen.