Love is About Others (God is Love part three)



"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs." - 1 Corinthians 13:4-5

And here we continue in the God is Love series with two things that love does not do, and two things that love isn't.


"[Love] does not dishonor others"

Honor and dishonor are values that in some cultures and of central value, but in America, they aren't commonly used, so it's important to ask, what does dishonoring others mean?

To dishonor is to insult, to shame others. It is to attempt to take honor (respect, reverence) away from someone through hurtful means. 

Dishonor never comes from a place of love, dishonor tries to hurt others,  it comes from places of jealousy and malice, but clearly not from places of love.

Because love doesn't shame others. It doesn't try to hurt them or to lower them.

Love seeks to build others up, to encourage them, it seeks to honor them.

God does not dishonor others, He doesn't seek to bring us down, to shame us, or to hurt us.

Instead, God seeks to build us up. He seeks to encourage us and to give us honor.

That can be hard to see, sometimes. The Bible talks again and again about how we are sinners, the psalms are full of phrases akin to "Woe is me! A sinner, the absolute worst of the worst!" The whole of scripture is full of the message that we are lacking, that we are not enough, that we are in desperate need of forgiveness.

But, God's not dishonoring us through that. God isn't seeking to bring us down, but to help us see how far we have truly fallen. God knows that until we see how far we have fallen we can't recognize how great His mercy is. We can't see just how much grace we're given when we're invited to be on the highest heights with Him until we see how low we've sunk.

God tells us the truth about our sinful condition, not to dishonor us, but to get us to accept his offer of renewed honor. He offers us a place at His table, a new life where we are forever secure in His honor and don't need to worry about anything ever being able to take it away.

God gives us renewed honor, and tells us to honor others like He does.



~~~


"[Love] is not self-seeking"

Selfish. Proud. Putting itself first.

This is a hard one, because we see ourselves in this. We all know that we're selfish, I've put myself first time and time again. Selfishness is one of the sins that we all fight, and we will all fight until we're in heaven.

Selfishness is yet another reason we'll always need Jesus, always need grace.

If we let selfishness win in us, it will wreck our relationships, it will corrupt our thinking, and it will work its very hardest to wreck our relationship with God.

It's not hard to see that selfishness isn't a part of the patience and kindness that is love. Selfishness is at odds with patience and kindness, which is why it's so important to fight our sinful nature and seek to be patient and kind, like God.

See, God isn't self-seeking. He sets the perfect example of humity. I talked about how God isn't selfish in a previous post (http://wonderingaboutgrace.blogspot.com/2017/08/love-is-humble-god-is-love-part-two.html), so I won't go into great detail about today, but I do want to talk a little about it.

God isn't self-seeking in that He wanted us in the first place. We were messed up and corrupted, we hated God and we rebelled against Him every day, yet He chose to put all that aside and offer us forgiveness, He was selfless as He offered us renewed honor and eternal love, all for free.

God's love is a selfless love, a giving love, He loves and doesn't hold anything back, and He tells us not to hold anything back, but to be selfless in our love towards others.


~~~

"[Love] is not easily angered."

This is one that we can be eternally grateful for. God demonstrates His love in His patience, holding back His anger. The Old Testament repeatedly talks about how God withheld His anger and wrath against His people, choosing again and again to postpone the day of judgement, though He had every right to pour out all His anger on His people.

Far from being angry at us, God loves us. He is angry at our sin, yes. He hates sin, rebellion against Him, but He chose a long time ago to love us even though we sin, and to hold back His anger against sin, delaying His wrath until He Himself went to the cross and took on that wrath Himself, so that we might be free to be united with Him.

Now we can revel in the fact that God's anger is no longer directed towards us at all, He forgives us every time, and He works in love towards us. His anger is forever poured out on the cross, and we are freed from it. We are freed from God's anger, His wrath towards our wrongdoings is directed somewhere else, we are forever free of condemnation that comes from sin.

God also tells us not to be easily angered, and are far more easily angered than God is. His anger is always just, but our anger rarely is.

We get angry at traffic. When our Mom's forget to get our stuff from the store. When the Wi-Fi stops working. When we don't understand math. We get angry at politicians because we think they're wrong, and we're convinced we're right.

Our anger comes easily, and it comes from our selfishness, but we can forever take refuge and strength from the fact that God's anger is not like our anger, and His love is so great that He forgives our uncalled-for anger.


~~~

"[Love] keeps no record of wrongs."

This is something I forget sometimes.

I forget that God doesn't keep a list of all the things I do wrong. I forget that He forgives my sin once and forever, and I am free from guilt and shame.

More than that, I keep records of my wrongs. I forget that I am called to be like God, and God forgives.

I forget that love forgives. Love sets things right, and then it lets them go. There's a Bob Goff quote that I've used before in this blog, but is worth saying again here because it so well portrays God's love.


"Insecurity wants us to keep track of our failures, grace doesn't even write them down."

That's God's kind of love. His kind of grace. He satisfied His anger once and for all, and now that we're His, He lets go of our sins just like that.

God calls for us to let go of the records we keep of wrongs because He throws the records of our sins into the ocean of grace and forgets about them as soon as we turn to Him.


~~~

Throughout all this we can see how God calls us to freedom. We may not see it at first, but there's freedom in no longer feeling the need to pull others down to push ourselves up.

There's freedom in knowing that the world is not about us, and we don't need to put ourselves first. There is someone greater than us who will take care of us.

There's freedom in letting go of anger. In knowing that we have to right to be angry when God forgives.

There's freedom in blotting out the lists we keep of our wrongs and others, in knowing that God forgets the sins of all His children and tells us to do the same.

God calls us to love like Him, and His love is a love that's greater than what we can comprehend.

His love calls His people to freedom, freedom from the lie that it's about us. Freedom to worship the one true God, to find real purpose in life.

God is love, and love is about others.

~Rebecca P.

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