Love has long patience, is kind; love is not emulous [of others]; love is not insolent and rash, is not puffed up,
Paul has just said that gifts, knowledge and faith count for nothing without love; now he turns to what love looks like. The verse names two things love does, then a run of things love refuses to do — and the question is why.
Description, Not Definition
The verse does not tell us what love is in the abstract. It shows how love behaves in a world like ours.
Next we come, not to a definition of love, but to its qualities as they appear in this world. They are described for our instruction. Here we see what Christ was on earth: active in love as well as patient under suffering, rising above evil… Patience in the middle of trial is the first mark of love mentioned. Love even shows real kindness instead of holding on to a wish for revenge.
Patience That Stays Kind
The first mark is staying power. Love outlasts what the commentators call "the flesh" — our natural self left to itself.
"Love is patient." The flesh is always impatient. Love can bear long with others and wait for God's time. The flesh soon runs out of endurance. Love does not wear out.
Patience on its own could still be sullen. Kindness is added because the standard behind the words is God's own dealing with people.
First comes a positive feature. Love is patient and kind. Nothing can surpass the long patience and kindness of God's dealings with rebellious people. God is love. So the more we show the divine nature, the more we will show long patience and kindness — to everyone, and to our brothers and sisters.
Why So Many Negatives
The verse spends more words on what love avoids than on what it does. There is a reason for that.
The description is not so much of what love does as of what it does not do. That shows that the heart of love is self-denial and self-forgetting. How easy it is to take up active, demanding service instead of suffering. Yet the first thing mentioned is, "Love is patient and kind." We hate to suffer at the hands of others. We are quick to hit back.
The faults listed are not random. One thread ties them together.
Love has none of the ugly deformities of character and behaviour that come naturally to us in the flesh… (1) Envy of others. (2) Boasting about oneself, or vainglory, or as some translate it, being "insolent and rash." (3) Being puffed up, or swollen with one's own importance… The string that runs right through these eight things is love of self.
No Place for Envy
Envy is no small weakness. It has a long and dark history.
Love comes from God; envy comes from Satan. Envy was a main part of the first sin, and it drove Cain's murderous hatred of his brother… Envy can find no place in God's presence, though it often waits at the door of the place of worship. Moses was meeker than his helper Joshua, because Moses spoke with God, while Joshua only spoke with Moses. When the disciples argued over who was greatest, they did it behind the Master's back.
Where envy is gone, someone else's gain becomes a joy instead of a wound.
The flesh always wants a place above others. It is jealous when favour or position goes to someone else instead of to self. Love can delight, without a thought of envy, in honours given to another.
Boasting Outside, Pride Inside
Commentators differ on the third phrase. Some translate it "does not boast," others "is not insolent and rash." Either way it names the outward push to be seen. "Puffed up" names the pride inside that feeds it.
Self-importance is the inside version of self-display. Both are foreign to a love that forgets itself. It grows best where people know themselves least, and that is why there was so much of it at Corinth… Love is not like this. Love flows most freely from a heart that truth has first broken and then healed… Its best cure is to turn and look again at Him in the place His love has chosen for our sakes.
Paul uses "puffed up" again and again in this letter.
Four times the apostle speaks of the Corinthian believers as being "puffed up." In 1 Corinthians 4:6 he says they are "puffed up for one against another." In verses 18 and 19 of the same chapter he points to people puffed up in their speech, it seems against the apostle himself. In 1 Corinthians 5:2 he has to rebuke them for being puffed up when they should have mourned over what was going on among them.
Seen Whole Only in One Life
These traits appear here and there across Scripture. Only one life held them all together.
Some of the beautiful traits of love have marked God's people in every age. We see the kindness of God in men like Joseph and David. We see unselfishness and meekness in Moses and Paul, and patience and endurance in men like Job… But Jesus showed every feature of love in perfection, blended together and expressed in everything He did.
Summary
- Root — Love's patience and kindness start in God's own dealings with rebellious people, and grow in us as far as His nature shows.
- Reach — Our own endurance soon runs out. Love does not wear out, and it waits without turning sour.
- Rival — Envy comes from Satan. It drove Cain, and it set the disciples arguing over who was greatest. Love can delight in honours given to someone else.
- Reputation — Self-display outside and self-importance inside are one disease. The cure is to look again at the place His love chose for our sakes.
- Reflection — Joseph, Moses, Job and Paul each showed a piece of this love. Jesus held all of it in one life.