#1: Love is…
1 Corinthians 13:4–6
“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 is patient”-
Love waits and allows ample time for one to take care of whatever they may need to. Love does not rush someone into circumstances that aren’t safe or comfortable.. unless of course one acts upon instinct rather than being patient.
“Love is..kind”-
Love focuses on being kind to others no matter what. Kindness being: the act of being friendly, generous, and considerate. Continually being “nice” to someone. Now of course if you’re needing to move someone to an outer circle (study the relational circle demonstration shown below), then you can still be kind to them. It’s 100% possible. You just won’t allow them to have as much of an influence on you anymore. You’ll still need to be intentional about being kind to them though.
“Love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude”-
These go hand in hand in my mind. Envy is wanting something and not wanting anyone else to have it. No, that is not jealousy. Jealousy is simply wanting something someone else has, but you don’t necessarily want to be the only one who has it. Boasting (or being proud as it says in some translations) is the negative context of being proud.. This one’s confusing, even for me, the person writing about this topic. Basically, as I understand it, you can be proud of things, but there’s a point where it becomes a negative contextualized thing where you’re claiming to be the best out of anyone else and nobody can ever be better than you and your thing.. Arrogance goes right along with all of that. As for being rude, it’s pretty simple. Don’t be rude to those you claim you love because then it’s not actually love. It’s just another random relationship you happen to have. You will always have disagreements with people but, when you are continuously rude to someone and you make absolutely no effort to correct yourself or fix the problem.. that is not love.
“Love is not irritable or resentful”-
This piece of this verse actually goes along very well with the beginning piece dealing with patience. At least the irritable part of it does. As for the resentful part of it, this verse is telling us that we need to realize that even if we have been treated unfairly, we can either be quiet about it, or respectfully speak up about it. Hence this entire publication I’ve been writing. Basically, we can rightfully feel as though we’ve been wronged, and we can feel and believe that something is unfair. But we cannot act like grumpy toddlers and mope over circumstances without doing something.
And finally..
“Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth”-
This part is one of the most straightforward parts of this section of verses. Love isn’t defined by wrongdoings. It is defined by the truth (aka what has been presented in the verses beforehand, and afterwards). The truth being what is told to us by Paul in this book of the Bible, which is what was told to him by God.
Love is complex and ultimately beautiful. Though hardships will still present themselves, proper, true love will ultimately help and heal throughout them.
To find other studies on this set of verses: https://www.bible.com/reading-plans