1 Corinthians 13:4 - Love suffers long and is kind…
Love suffers – Isn’t it fascinating
that the very first thing Paul says about love is that it will suffer; it will
undergo and experience some form of pain, hurt or hardship. It almost seems as
if love must suffer and it must undergo testing, in order for it to be proven
to be real love. Love cares and feels deeply; hence it has the potential to
suffer. If I do not love someone or care for them, then their hurtful actions towards
me, or their negligence of me, could not cause me to suffer. Genuine love is
completely exposed and vulnerable. It removes any defences and drops its guard,
thus exposing itself to the possibilities of being hurt and suffering pain and
damage.
C. S. Lewis, in his book, The Four Loves,
writes something very pertinent regarding this; “…There is no safe investment. To
love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and
possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it
to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little
luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of
your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will
change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable,
irredeemable…”. There is something about
love that allows itself to suffer; it never defends itself, but takes each blow
as it faithfully absorbs the pain. Paul says earlier to the Corinthians, ‘Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not
rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?’ I believe it is important, because many people
live in abusive and boundary-less relationships, that we are clear about what
it means to walk in love. While we know that love is so strong that it can
stand any kind of treatment, that doesn’t mean that one is supposed to stay in
an abusive relationship. Every person needs to allow the Holy Spirit to lead
them; there is different guidance from God for different situations.
Love suffers long – Love suffers, but not
just a momentary, fleeting suffering, but it suffers for a long time. It is
never tired of waiting, it is never in a hurry, and it will continue to undergo
suffering however long is necessary. The reason that love suffers long is that,
by nature, it is committed and therefore the thought of quitting on that
relationship cannot be considered. Time is irrelevant to love. It is a
spiritual strength that causes one to rise above the daily grind of time. The
two words suffer and long, are actually one compound word in the original text;
macrothumia is the word in the Greek
and it is translated longsuffering. We use the word ‘macro’ to describe the big
picture. It is a word of perspective. We sometimes say, ‘He can’t see the
forest for the trees’, in other words, he is too close to the situation to see
it in perspective. He has a micro view and needs to step back and look at it
from a distance. That is the word ‘macro’, it means ‘from a distance’. Love has
a macro view, it sees the big picture, and it suffers long. When your teenager
is struggling with various temptations normal to those years, you, as a parent,
have a bigger picture and so, therefore, you can calmly deal with it. The word
‘thumia’ is the word for temper or anger. The opposite of long-tempered is
short-tempered and we know how quickly that gets us in trouble. Love is not
short-tempered; it doesn’t easily blow a fuse, we might say. Being
short-tempered demonstrates that we do not have a big picture and proper
perspective of what we are facing. If we respond to our circumstance too
quickly we can make matters worse. Proverbs tells us, He that is slow to wrath is of great understanding: but he that is
hasty of spirit exalts folly. Expressing love comes easier to those who
have developed the skill of understanding another person. Stephen Covey has
left us a powerful legacy in his book on the ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective
People’. One of those habits is to ‘seek first to understand, then to be
understood’. The macro view enables us to have perspective which, in turn gives
us an understanding of the person or situation we are having conflict with.
Many years ago I heard the phrase, ‘Understanding is the key to forgiveness’.
If we can truly understand how that person could do what they did, then
compassion can flow unhindered. I understand how that could happen. Given all
the same circumstances and pressures, over time, any one of us could have done
that very same thing or worse. Perspective and understanding are linked.
Perspective shows how things are connected and how they stand in relation to
another. Once you get that bigger picture, understanding occurs. Understanding engenders sympathy and sympathy
releases compassion.
Love suffers long and is kind – Love never draws attention
to the fact that it is suffering, it suffers long and it suffers quietly and it
is kind through the whole process. To suffer long, in this context, is more
than simply to put up with something or someone; the most noble of us can do
that. But to suffer for a long time and to be genuinely kind while one is
enduring the suffering, this is a supernatural trait. Kindness is a very rare
quality in this world of cynical bitterness. Our world is not a kind place; it
can actually be quite the opposite. It is one thing to be kind to people who
are kind to you, but God’s love is kind even when it is being mistreated and is
suffering from the abuse of another. Jesus said that our Heavenly Father is
always kind, even to unthankful and evil people. The stark reality is that there
is no one who has suffered like God has. He continues to suffer as he endures
with silence and with kindness the misunderstanding, the mocking, the insults
and the slander of people. Kindness looks past the mistreatment. It looks past
the insults and the injury. According to J. B. Phillips, kindness looks for a
way of being constructive. Anyone can be destructive. Have you noticed how easy
it is to destroy something that may have taken years to build? When we are in
the midst of hardships and disputes can we respond calmly and not react quickly?
Can we be constructive? Can we be someone who, even while being slandered,
misunderstood or misjudged, does not become defensive, or vengeful, but instead
looks for an opportunity to solve the relationship trouble and the confusion? God’s love, as it grows within us and is
released through us, causes us to be precisely that type of person, and that type
of person is the one whom God and this world will notice; they do shine as
lights in the darkness.
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