What does it mean that love is not easily angered (1 Corinthians 13:5)?

Love “is not easily provoked.” It is not touchy. Love will put the best construction upon what is questionable. For instance you meet a brother in the Lord in the street. He takes no notice. Love would not be affronted at being apparently cut dead, but would believe that the brother had not seen you, and would not have acted in that way if he had. In such simple things divine love helps.

(8) Love “is not quickly provoked”. The flesh is ever touchy and quick to take offence and resent insults. Love is slow to anger and not easily provoked. Love, indeed, can be provoked, for in this very Epistle we are warned that it is possible to provoke the Lord (1 Cor. 10:22); but the Lord is slow to anger; He is not quickly provoked.

"Is not easily provoked;" for it knows the arduous nature of its work, and expects both difficulties and obstructions; but because its labour is not for itself, it is exempt from the rufflings of personal disappointment. Just indignation may match well with love, irascibility does not. Jesus could feel the former on occasion,4 the latter never. But even the most devoted servant is not always as his Lord; and a flush of self-consciousness may perhaps have visited the face of the apostle, when inditing this brief sentence, as he called to mind the "sharp contention "which had once separated him from Barnabas, and which his true yoke-fellow has distinguished by a corresponding term.5 There is, however, another kind of provocation in which, love delights, and of this he stands among men as our chief example still.6

"Does not impute evil;"7 for its office is to hide sins rather than expose them. What God did not do in His righteousness to us, we who are sinners should not do to one another. Love shows this aspect most distinctly where grace is most appreciated. Nor is it a virtue likely to be idle for want of opportunity. Not a day can pass without an appeal to it in some shape; for besides the multitude of real offences, there are appearances of an ambiguous kind which continually tempt our censure. But where a choice is possible, love chooses on the favourable side. It does not shut its eyes to sin, but openly rebukes it as God's witness, while forgiving freely all that is against itself. The apostle's assertion of this property of love is, at the same time, an implied protest against the unworthy insinuations which some of those at Corinth had not been ashamed to entertain against himself and his fellow-helper in the Gospel.8

The opening descriptions are all of a passive character, and show that love demands the renunciation of self. Long-suffering and kindness head the list. These are the attributes of our loving God and Father, and we are to imitate Him as His children and forbear one another in love. Love does not envy. God does not envy. Envy is of Satan; all self-seeking has its origin in pride, which is the crime of the devil (1 Timothy 3:6). Love vaunteth not itself. It never seeks the applause of men. Self-display is self-love. True love is not puffed up. Love doth not behave itself unseemly. Its ornaments are meekness, modesty and unobtrusiveness. It seeketh not its own; it is self-neglect and is expressed in devotion to others. Nor is it easily provoked, for self-consciousness and self-seeking being absent, sensitiveness becomes impossible. Love thinketh no evil. The better translation is, "does not impute evil." It rather hides than exposes. Furthermore, love "rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth with the truth." The last four characteristics show its positive energy. It beareth all things--it puts up with anything but that which is wrong and sinful; believeth all things; it does not suspect, therefore it hopeth all things and also endureth all things. Finally the permanence of love is stated. Prophecies, tongues and knowledge will fail, cease and pass away. Love never. It is abiding eternal, the greatest of all.

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.

"Thinks no evil" scarcely expresses the clause, but rather not having the evil in the mind and tongue. "No evil" would answer to the phrase if anarthrous. Here it is an actual evil done, which would rankle but for love, which is ever above evil, always free and always holy.

Fathers are to especially guard against being unfair or unduly hard or demanding. This might easily provoke a child to act badly and to be discouraged, so the discipline would fail to fulfill its proper objective, and would only result in the opposite behavior of what the father hoped. We know how easy it is for a father to make a snap judgment when his child has apparently done something wrong, and because he is angry, to punish the child severely. Then he may find out afterward that it was not as serious a matter as he thought, and he knows he has been unfair to the child. His only recourse then is to humbly apologize to his child for this. Let us never discipline in a fit of anger, but seek grace to calmly consider before the Lord what discipline is necessary. For it is true that discipline is sometimes required. The Lord said of Eli that he himself and his house would be judged by God because he had failed to discipline his sons (1 Sam.3:11-13). How often it has been true that children, in later years, have thanked their parents for disciplining them when they needed it! - while many others have sunk into crime and misery because they were never disciplined in youth.

Verse 26. "Be ye angry," etc. Anger is allowable in a believer, but must not be suffered to become a settled feeling. It rests only in the bosom of fools (Ecc. 7:9). But the wisdom which is of God is peaceable (James 3:17). There is a holy indignation, which may be excited by the spectacle of shameless evil, and which is far removed from private animosity. Jesus knew this feeling (Luke 13:15), and knew it as we cannot know it; for in Him it was excited by the contact of His own intrinsic holiness with those deep workings of human wickedness, the springs of which lay clearly open to His view, while hypocrisy threw over them her unavailing mask. But personal anger is a very different thing. Provocation may, no doubt, abound, and flesh is weak. And He who has borne unupbraiding witness to its weakness seems, by the limited toleration which His Spirit here allows to the feeling of anger in a Christian, to be rather making a merciful concession to our infirmity, than to approve the sentiment itself. As a rule, it is better to pacify it in another, than to yield to it ourselves (Matt. 5:9). When harboured as a lasting sentiment, it is sin; and in its results is nigher to cursing than to blessing (Gen. 49:6-7. Cp. Matt. 18:35). The grace in which we personally stand should be the law of our conduct towards others. Love is never angry long, and cannot work evil to his neighbour. It is not easily provoked (Rom. 13:10; 1 Cor. 13:5). While evil of every kind is to be perfectly abhorred, men are always to be loved in God (Matt. 5:44). Vengeance belongs to Him, and not to us (Rom. 12:19). Our anger, therefore, should be slowly kindled, and soon quenched; for the wrath of man works not the righteousness of God (James 1:20).

First, such action on our part will require self-discipline or self-judgment, in the measure in which we are concerned for the good of others. Lowliness (v.2) is the willingness to be thought little of, not natural or easy for the flesh, but normal for the one who truly delights in Christ, the meek and lowly One. Meekness is the character that is willing to sacrifice personal rights for the Lord's sake with no selfish resistance. Thus, lowliness gives no offense and meekness takes no offense. Longsuffering continues patiently to bear hard things -- misunderstandings, injustices, even insults -- without frustration or anger. Forbearing. is more than bearing, for it implies no resentful reaction whatever, even inwardly, for it is motivated by genuine love.

To be longsuffering is literally to be long-tempered. Where there is this quality there is not a rash reaction to provocation but self-control. If a response is appropriate, it is a considered one. We are to bear with one another, remembering that ‘we all often offend’ (Jms. 3:2). How much Christ bears with in us! Should we not bear with one another?

We have seen a brother with tight lips and menacing manner say to another, “I forgive you, but I will never forget.” There was no trace of love in this. It is easy to see what is right, but it takes very great grace to practice these precepts. Would it not be a wholesome practice when ruffled and tried, not to sit down and write a scorching letter in the heat of the moment, but instead to read 1 Corinthians 13, that great love chapter, where we read of long suffering and being kind, not easily provoked. Thinking no evil, and then kneel down and ask grace to practice it?