At The Feet Of The Shepherd: Love is patient

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

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; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13, ESV

Many things are called 'love' today. Movies today churn out lots of tragic or lust-laden scenarios that supposedly depict true love. Complete with a heroic act of selflessness and a moving orchestral score, we come away feeling more in love than before with the significant other in our life, or we invent that longed for person in the image of what we have just seen. Real love is a pure substance because God is its source. In just the same way that a half truth is still a lie, and just like doing only some of what God has commanded is still disobedience, love cannot actually walk hand in hand with lust or selfishness and still be of God's love. At any given point in time, we are either walking after the flesh or walking after the Spirit. Nevertheless, love is an act of the will that a Christian is expected to cultivate, having been supernaturally endowed by God to walk in love. It will involve a process of consistently choosing and placing someone else above yourself.

It is also important for us to know that love has many counterfeits. An outward act of kindness, generosity, or affection, may be motivated by many things which have little to do with love. The insecure person who tries to 'buy' love with gifts may appear very generous. The emotionally scarred, codependent person may desperately cling to an abusive relationship because they cannot stand the thought of being alone - and not because they have hope of change and are patiently waiting for it. And the gushing compliments and accolades of one person to another may be based on flattery, deep-seated envy or many other ulterior motives.

Many good Christian books have been written on this inexhaustible topic, so my intent in a series of upcoming posts is simply to highlight, in each case, one or two passages of Scripture as reminders and guidelines for you to examine how much love you actually walk in. They will also allow you to assess any personal relationships in your life and the claims others have made of their love for you. Knowing what God says about what love looks like and does is very important. While we can surely continue to love someone who does not love us in return, we need to be wise about where to invest our hopes towards a future or enduring relationship, and to be careful not to undiscerningly subject ourselves to the abuse of evil or harmful people.

Love is patient

The patience of God is evident from the books of Genesis to Revelation. Indeed, it is because of His patience, His long suffering love, that He has prepared and been calling us to reconciliation for all the past millennia. To the descendants of Jacob, God says that it was because of His compassion for His people that he was often rising up early and sending His messengers to warn them and turn them back to Himself. If you would do a historical analysis of the books of the prophets, in many cases, they were prophesying judgment and disaster decades before the judgment would arrive and only after the persistent disobedience of the people. The reason is because God's love is patient. Similarly, to the modern day scoffers who laugh at preaching that 'Jesus is coming soon', Peter's warning that God is 'not slack concerning His promise...but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish' still stands.

Love that is patient will accomplish what is impossible to others or what others are unwilling to tolerate. In Genesis chapter 29, we have a real life love story. Jacob willingly worked for Rachel's father for seven years so that he could marry her at the end of those seven years. When the seven years ended, he was purposefully deceived by the woman's father and instead given her sister. When he discovered this, he willingly served another seven years for Rachel. In the second instance, he was finally allowed to marry Rachel at the end of the first week after his marriage to Rachel's sister, but because of his agreement to serve seven years for Rachel a second time, he had no freedom to leave her father, go out on his own and build up his own household by his labor as free men usually would. Jacob did all of this willingly. We have that real life awww factor when the Scripture says in verse 20, "So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her."

This type of patient love is not common. Lust has blinded and marred relationships so that pressure to have sexual relationships is common, or there is pressure to get married under circumstances that are not to the benefit of at least one of the individuals at a given point in time. All the while, the 'love sick' individual claims this lack of self-control to be evidence of their love. We have been taught by our culture, movies, and music to embrace this selfishness and label it desirably as passion. It is indeed passion. It is the "passion of lust" which 1 Thessalonians 4:5 explicitly describes as part and parcel of the lives and nature of "those who do not know God." Furthermore, a word search for the word 'passion' in the Bible will reveal that every case specifically refers to something ungodly which proceeds from the carnal nature, which is opposed to God. The person who loves truly, sets the object of its affection above all its own desire so that everything necessary will be sacrificed willingly for the well-being of the other person. No wonder then that Jacob's love for Rachel stood the test of time. Despite having his other wife, concubines and children, Rachel and her sons, Joseph and Benjamin, were special to him. In Genesis 48:7, Jacob relates that Rachel died 'to his sorrow,' a touch of personal grief that is not often so communicated in Scripture. Love is patient.

Finally, let us consider that love is patient with the faults of others. Love, therefore, forgives. In Matthew 18:21-22, the disciples of Jesus learn that they are not to set a limit to the number of times that they must forgive a brother who sins against them. In Ephesians 4:1-3, we are commanded to walk in way that is worthy of the calling of Christ and what this looks like includes, "with patience, bearing with one another in love." The patient love that comes from God seeks reconciliation between those of the same faith in Christ and seeks peace even with those who are outside of the faith. Real love is patient.

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Ephesians 5:1-2