Love Never Fails.  By Sara Cain.

Romantic movies make me giggle when someone speaks this line:

“I love you, but I’m not in love with you.”

For a language that has more than 12,000 words, we sure do struggle with communication. Why is the word love so confusing? It looks pretty clear in the Love Chapter in the Bible, doesn’t it?

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Then immediately following the descriptions of how love looks in verses 4-7, it is followed up by this:

⁸ Love never fails.

This is a bold statement, one that is sometimes heckled, challenged, and even called out as an outright lie. If you search government offices, you’ll find the failure of love documented in the various divorce decrees, restraining orders, domestic violence reports, and criminal filings of all sorts. No wonder the popular quotes and home decor stop with verse 7, leaving out this last declaration.

So, how can it be true that love never fails?

First, we must define love. The English language divides this one word “love” into 5 kinds of love, and that creates a lot of problems and misunderstanding. When Jesus talks of love, He is talking about agape love, which is God’s love for His creation, us, and is only attainable through Holy Spirit and communion with God and Jesus. It is selfless and always benefits others. In the flesh, our natural idea of love is really about what and who makes us feel good and makes us happy. Even kind, generous, generally known as unselfish people, in their natural state, love others because they like what they get or feel in return. That’s simply nature.  But when we have a restored relationship with God and are adopted into His family and filled with Holy Spirit, we are filled with agape love, part of our inheritance. God is love itself. To be filled with His Holy Spirit is to be filled with agape love. When we understand this, then we can truly declare, “love never fails” because God’s love never fails. But when God is left out, when Holy Spirit is not present in us, our human heart of flesh is not able to sustain this kind of love.

As adults, most people reading this understand the simply stated traits of genuine love found in I Corinthians 13:4-7, and there’s no need to expand on every one of them. However, this one in particular trips up a lot of people.

Love keeps no score of wrongs.

No relationship, especially marriage relationships, can afford the habit of keeping a list in their heart of what the other person has done wrong. This is a dangerous slippery slope that will land you in brokenness. It sets one up as a judge rather than a partner and creates a desire for payback of doing an equal injury to them, or a hostage situation based on “you owe me”.  If Jesus told us to even love our enemies, how, then, can we engage in this kind of behavior regarding someone we say we love? It’s a quick path to the death of the relationship, and possibly destruction of a life.

Don’t be too quick to brush this off as something you have never done or will be tempted to do because we are very good at rationalizing our behavior to fit our opinion of ourselves.

Evil will never leave the house of one who pays back evil for good.   – Proverbs 17:13

Keeping a record of and paying back on a “record of wrongs” actually works as a curse on our relationship according to this proverb, which was written by King Solomon, whose wisdom was a gift directly from God.

On the other hand, The Living Translation says in verse 5b of our I Corinthians 13 passage,

It [love] does not hold grudges and will hardly even notice when others do it wrong.

There is no room in a loving heart to hold grudges. This behavior is also known as being easily offended, holding onto offense. Measuring everything spoken to us by our flesh’s self-central heart, we’ll have our feelings hurt over and over again, because without Holy Spirit filter, the enemy of our soul will convince us that everything that isn’t complementary is an attack, and praise withheld is an indictment that “I’m not good enough.”  This might be the result of misunderstanding, but sometimes, unfortunately, intentionally unkind things are said to us. This is one of satan’s most successful tools to separate believers from their faith and destroy churches. People are imperfect, often selfish, and sometimes ignorant, and the result is that every time you meet with other people, there is opportunity to be offended if you allow it.

Ephesians 4:32 says, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”

Kindness and forgiveness are inside of Love. By Jesus standards, you don’t love someone if you are not kind in difficult circumstances or refuse to forgive the moment an injurious word or action occurs.  We are to extend kindness and forgiveness to all just as we would our most dearly loved family and friends. And then Jesus raises the ante again: we are to love our enemies in this same way.

Our flesh is weak, and our heart is “deceitful and desperately wicked above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9) so we cannot rely on our own ability to live in love or we will fail.

This is why Jesus came, why Holy Spirit is given to us, so when you “feel the burn,” surrender it to Jesus, and forgive the person without skipping a beat from hearing the offense to moving on. One of my spiritual heroes Corrie ten Boom said this,

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you.”

The Passion Translation of I Corinthians 13:4-7 is a simple summary of how living in love – Agape Love- should look, so I’ll close this final message of our 3-part Love Chapter discussion, but I challenge you to post these scriptures 4-8a in whatever translation or paraphrase you prefer so that you are constantly reminded of them. Jesus said the world will know we are HIs followers by our love, and if we are going to carry His family resemblance, this is how we will look:

Love is large and incredibly patient.

Love is gentle and consistently kind to all.

It refuses to be jealous when blessings come to someone else.

Love does not brag about one’s achievements nor inflate its own importance.

Love does not traffic in shame and disrespect, nor selfishly seek its own honor.

Love is not easily irritated or quick to take offense.

Love joyfully celebrates honesty and finds no delight in what is wrong.

Love is a safe place of shelter, for it never stops believing the best for others.

Love never takes failure as defeat, for it never gives up.

_________

As you enjoy your Memorial Day weekend, remember the reason for it. Our respect for the sacredness of human life comes from God, and the best way to thank Him and the men and women who gave their life for our freedom is to live a life honoring the words of this scripture,