What does it mean that love does not envy (1 Corinthians 13:4)?

Love envies not. If I love a person I shall rejoice in all that he has. I shall not envy his better looks, greater gifts, whether of mind, disposition or possessions, whether spiritual or material.

(3) “Love is not emulous of others.” The flesh ever seeks a place above others, and is jealous of favour or position bestowed on others rather than self. Love can delight without a thought of envy in honours bestowed upon another.

Love does not envy another’s gifts. If Barnabas began as an older servant of the Lord in taking the lead before Paul, the young and freshly converted servant of the Lord, and ended by having to take a second place in relation to one younger in years and in spiritual history, if Barnabas, we repeat, were governed by Divine love he would rejoice. What a test this is, every servant of Christ knows in some greater or smaller measure. Envy is as cruel as the grave.

"Love does not envy," though jealousy is in its very nature.5 God, who is the source and final object of His own desires, working as He wills, can envy none. Nor can that love which has its origin and hope in Him. Love covets earnestly,6 but not for its own sake. It is jealous over those who are its care.7 But because it knows God, it can neither crave addition to His gift unspeakable which it already has in Christ, nor can it look angrily on any who in position may seem higher than itself; for in God's light only it sees light. As love is of God, so envy is distinctively of Satan. It was a prime element in the original transgression, and was the spring of Cain's deadly hatred to his brother. And when the appointed hour came for darkness to sit in judgment upon light, it was through envy that the enemy prevailed.8 In God's presence it can find no place, though it hovers often at the threshold of the sanctuary. Moses was meeker than his servant, because Moses spake with God, while Joshua only spake with Moses.9 When the disciples wrangled for supremacy, the Master's back was turned.1 In His presence emulation takes a downward course.

Next we come, not to a definition of love, but to its qualities as in this world, specified for our instruction. It is what Christ was here, active as well as suffering in love above evil. "Love is long-suffering, is kind; love is not emulous, is not vainglorious, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeks not its own things, is not easily provoked, reckons not the evil, rejoices not over iniquity, but rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." (Vers. 4-7.) Patience in the midst of trial is the first-mentioned attribute of love, which even shows positive kindness instead of harbouring a vindictive thought. Again, as it does not indulge in envy or jealousy of another, so there is no self-display (or, as some think, forwardness), nor the arrogance whence it springs. Hence indecorum, or rude behaviour, is incompatible with love, as it is marked by disinterestedness and slowness to anger, and by readiness to forget the wrong that is done.

Now we are to contemplate more closely the features that characterize love. First comes a very positive feature. It suffers long (or, has long patience) and is kind. Could anything surpass the long patience and kindness of God's dealings with rebellious man? No. Well, God is love. And in the measure in which we manifest the divine nature, we shall manifest long patience and kindness towards men generally, as well as towards our brethren.

This one positive feature is followed by negative features. Love is marked by the total absence of certain hideous deformities of character and behaviour, which are perfectly natural to us as men in the flesh. Paul strings them together. Here they are: (1) Envy of others: (2) Vaunting oneself, or vainglory, or as it has been translated, being "insolent and rash:" (3) Being puffed up or inflated with one's own importance: (4) Unseemly behaviour which follows hard on the heels of an inflated mind: (5) Self-seeking: (6) Touchiness, easily taking offence and provoked to anger: (7) Thinking evil, that is, quick to impute evil to others: (8) Rejoicing in iniquity, that is, glad to be able to point out iniquity in others, and to denounce it. The string that runs right through these eight things is, love of self.

Envy involves both personal selfishness and ill-feeling toward another. Strife therefore accompanies it. This in turn overthrows all proper equilibrium: disorder prevails, and leaves the door open for "every evil work." It is by this means that Satanic activity thrives.

Then we have envyings. "Who is able to stand before envy?" Prov. 27:4. This is another very common fault; perhaps much more common than we realize. How often we envy the wealth, or the ability, or the gift, or the holiness of another. This spirit of envy raises in my heart a spirit of enmity against my brother, and a long list of works of the flesh may result; all started from envy. It may be that the brother I am envying has not the least idea that he has been the cause of so much evil in my life; yet the fault was not with him, but entirely with myself, as I allowed the flesh to act in envy.

Alas, it is this envy that lies at the bottom of the fretting. We are under trial, and the worker of iniquity seems to be having such an easy time. We cannot bear it! We are like a child in a nursery, who pouts and frets because the other child has an apple a size larger than the one given to it — and the possessor of the big apple was the naughty child of the nursery! Oh, what mischief can envy work in the heart of a saint! And what misery too, it can produce, and what sin!

"Envyings" are the other side and in the next place. For as hypocrisy has its spring in claiming to have the good we lack, envy seeks to deny and defame the real good of others. God be praised that He fails not to work here and there in ways of love, devotedness, patient grace, zeal for the truth, delight in His glory, compassion for the wretched and the unworthy. There is ample scope for detraction among such as manifest no such qualities, and are vexed to find others credited with what is so excellent. Here the believer must beware lest he yield an ear to this evil spirit and get defiled by it.