Every Christmas churches around the world reenact the story of the birth of Jesus. Proud parents look on as little Johnny leads little Sally down the church aisle pretending to be Joseph to her Mary.

Year after year as the tradition plays itself out people are touched by the sweetness of this young couple, lost in an unfriendly Bethlehem. Congregants smile and maybe shed a nostalgic tear as the children/magi gather around the altar to bring homage to the Christ child and his mother.

In every portrayal I have seen Joseph is left off in the corner. No one is looking at him, not the shepherds, not the magi. Joseph’s job is done when he gets the girl to the stable. But what a job that had to be!

“Love is not rude.” I Cor. 13: 5

Now that may seem rather a violent segue to you: Christmas story… Joseph… “Love is not rude” On the surface they don’t seem to have a lot to do with each other. Just bear with me.

“Love is not rude” is actually, “love is not aschēmoneō.

      Here in 21st century America being rude means being impolite.

When your mother says, “Don’t be rude!”, she means “Stop burping at the table” or “Quit picking your nose in front of Aunt Rosie. She’ll never pay for those piano lessons you want so much.”

But in first century Corinth, When Paul wrote “Love is not rude.”, the word had a much different connotation. Rude to Paul was unseemly behavior that not only brought shame and reproach to you but to someone else as well.

Paul was saying, “Love does not engage in behavior that puts other people in a dishonorable light.”

In First Corinthians 7:36 Paul uses the word aschēmoneō  when he is explaining how an unmarried man should treat the girl he is betrothed to.

“If anyone thinks that he is not behaving properly toward his betrothed, [fn] if his [fn] passions are strong, and it has to be, let him do as he wishes: let them marry–it is no sin.” I Cor. 7:36 ESV

Paul is teaching that a man needs to marry his fiancée if his passions are strong and that he should not bring disgrace upon her by behaving in inappropriate ways with her outside of marriage.

You see love cannot bring disgrace on other people because it considers not only the wants of others but the honor of others as well. It is not love when a young man takes his girlfriend to bed and ruins her reputation. It is not friendship when a buddy asks you to break the law so that you can join his gang. It is biblical rudeness.

Let’s  go back to Joseph. In the eyes of all Nazareth Joseph had the right to not only divorce Mary (even though they had not been officially married breaking of an engagement required a legal divorce in their culture) but to have her stoned to death. But Joseph was loving. He was not rude. He did not want to expose her to any dishonor if it could be avoided.

In the end and with a little prodding from God and His angels Joseph took away Mary’s dishonor and Jesus’ by becoming the earthly husband and father Heaven had appointed him to be.

Joseph was a man who protected the honor of his wife and the  child she bore. In that way he was not rude. In that way he loved greatly.

What are some of the ways you can preserve the honor of those you love? How do you keep yourself from being rude?

I hope you have enjoyed this study on love. What was the biggest life application for you?

      Many different kinds of power exert their force upon our universe: Electricity, wind, water, gravity, atomic fusion and fission, all move nature to their whims.

Sin also is a power exerting its force upon the universe. Now maybe you have never thought of sin like that before. Maybe you  are among the millions who consider it to be weakness, but the Bible doesn’t describe sin that way. The Word of God declares sin to be a slave master under which the whole creation groans in hopes of liberation (Romans 6-8). Sin is a power!

Love also is a power. But of all the powers in the universe it is the one which will survive and never fade away.

“Love never fails.” I Cor. 13:8 NIV

“ἡ ἀγάπη οὐδέποτε πίπτει”

“agapē oudepote piptō”

      ” Agape” is the Greek word we have been using for love.

“Oudepote” is the Greek word meaning never.

“Pipto” is this little word just chuck full of meaning. Are you ready?

1) to descend from a higher place to a lower

a) to fall (either from or upon)

1) to be thrust down

b) metaph. to fall under judgment, came under condemnation

2) to descend from an erect to a prostrate position

a) to fall down

“1) to be prostrated, fall prostrate

2) of those overcome by terror or astonishment or grief or under the attack of an evil spirit or of falling dead suddenly

3) the dismemberment of a corpse by decay

4) to prostrate one’s self

5) used of suppliants and persons rendering homage or worship to one

6) to fall out, fall from i.e. shall perish or be lost

7) to fall down, fall into ruin: of buildings, walls etc.

b) to be cast down from a state of prosperity

1) to fall from a state of uprightness

2) to perish, i.e come to an end, disappear, cease

a) of virtues

3) to lose authority, no longer have force

a) of sayings, precepts, etc.

4) to be removed from power by death

5) to fail of participating in, miss a share in” (Blueletterbible Lexicon)

As we finish this study on love I want you to grasp just how powerful this thing called love is. The Bible teaches us that all other powers will be undone. Electricity will become a thing of the past. Water power? Undone at the end of time when the universe is unmade. Wind can’t exist where there is no atmosphere. Nuclear fusion and fission will be completely subdued when the elements are melted with a “fervent heat” according to 2 Peter chapter 3. Even sin will be done away with when God breaks its power, as He undoes the works of his hands at the end of the thousand-year reign (Rev. 18-22). Yet through it all love will remain supreme exerting its force upon everything that God does.

According to I Corinthians 13:8 Love will never fall down from its high place of strength. It will never be diminished by anything in this world or the next. Love will never perish, come to an end, disappear or cease. It will never lose its authority or lose even one iota of its reconstructive force.

Why will love never cease? Because according to I John 4:8 “God is love”. God and love…love and God. They are unexplainably intertwined. You can no more do away with love than you can do away with God.

One last time, I am not talking about the poor imitations of love the world system we live in has offered up. I am talking about the I Corinthians 13 love we have been discussing all these long weeks. I am speaking about the love that looks to us like a ferocious lion waiting to gobble up all our selfishness and pettiness. I am talking about the love we have looked at in the Bible and declared before God “I cannot love like that!”.

This love is the one power among the many powers in the universe that will never fade! It is the greatest power, and Christian it is the power that lives inside of you if you have given your life to Jesus.

Let us stop saying “I cannot love like Jesus did.”

Let us realize that if Jesus is in our hearts then that love of His is already there. We have only to believe, receive, and act on that which we already possess!

“And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” I Cor. 13:13 NKJV

A-men!!

I’m the guy who missed the football in gym class and ended up on his butt. I’m the one whose kite always got stuck in the tree. I’m the one who walked to bat and the whole out field moved in. Heck, I even played Charlie Brown in our eighth grade school musical.

Now Charlie couldn’t kick a football. He couldn’t throw a baseball. He couldn’t fly a kite. He never could talk to the little red-headed girl. His dog belittled him and Lucy Vanpelt called him a “block head”.

Yet there is one quality, at least, which the Brown boy had in spades. He never gave up. Every year he walked to the mound with a renewed determination to win the pennant. Every year at camp he promised himself “this year I am going to talk to that red-headed beauty”. Every year he trusted Lucy to hold the ball again. He charged ahead with abandon believing this time would be different.

The apostle tells us, “ Love ‘always perseveres.’” I Cor. 13:7 NIV

The word is hypomenō- 1) to remain

a) to tarry behind

2) to remain i.e. abide, not recede or flee

a) to preserve: under misfortunes and trials to hold fast to one’s faith in Christ

b) to endure, bear bravely and calmly: ill treatments

Love in us is that thing which refuses to give up or give in. It won’t recede even when it has to back off. It is the grandma who loves the grandson in jail and keeps sending him Scripture letters. It’s the parent who keeps praying for the salvation of the prodigal even after the child has told him “I don’t want to hear it anymore!”.

Love like this almost always looks like foolishness to those on the outside.

“Just give up.” the voices of the crowd say.

“It’s too much for you. You’re going to make yourself sick with this thing.” the masses intone.

If you have a Lucy Vanpelt in your life then perseverance has probably earned you the epithet, “idiot” or “blockhead”.

Now I’m not talking about boundariless co-dependence. I am talking about faithful perseverance. While on the outside the two things may look a little alike the roots are as different as ginger and strawberry.

Co-dependence like most “love look-alikes” is based in self. In a co-dependent relationship the enabler holds on because of what letting go says about her.

Perseverance is other centered. I persevere in the relationship not because of what I will ever get but in hopes of benefitting the other person. When such benefit becomes my sole motivation then I can persevere without ever worrying about earning something back on my investment.

Now if perseverance is the quality of a block-head, then I say “Let us Embrace our inner block-heads. For to such belongs the Kingdom of God!”

        Love “always hopes.” I Cor. 13:7

” I hope I get the job. I have bill collectors calling me all the time.”

“I hope she recovers from surgery. But chances aren’t good.”

“I hope I get the Gameboy I want for Christmas.”

“I hope I win the lottery. It would take care of so many problems.”

It is amazing to me how many of the terms associated with love have been redefined and weakened with time and use. It is no wonder “love” itself is a term so loosely thrown around in our society.

So what is hope? First as it is used here in I Cor.13:7 it is a verb. It is something we do. When I love someone, in acting out that love, I hope.

The word is : ἐλπίζω elpizō – 1) to hope

a) in a religious sense, to wait for salvation with joy and full confidence

2) hopefully to trust in

Today when someone says “I hope so.” it is usually in the sense of a wish or a fond longing.

Most people really mean “That would be nice.”

But to hope is really to confidently expect and wait for something you know is going to happen to come to pass. Our kids are hoping when they stand out on the corner waiting for the school bus to show up on those chilly winter mornings. We are hoping when we write a check on Saturday against our direct deposit that goes in on Fridays.

Now in order to hope we have to have a hope. 

      I love one of the Hebrew words for hope,  tiqvah . While it is usually translated as “a hope”, it can also be translated as “a cord”. How neat is that? Hope is a cord. Now what do cords do? They tie us to things.

Picture yourself hanging off a sheer cliff a hundred feet from the ground below. Between you and a fall that would bring certain death is only the strong rope tied about your waist and the anchor above. Your hope is the cord and the thing it is tied to above your line of vision.

Let’s make the obvious observation then that the problem with many people is that they have tied themselves to a dead birch tree with a ball of kite twine. Their hope is placed in something that can never support the weight of their lives. If I am climbing down a hundred foot cliff I want a mighty, powerful climbing cable wrapped snuggly around my chunky form. Further I want that cable wrapped around a great big oak tree in the prime of life. In short I want God the Infallible, Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent as my Tiqvah.

When Paul writes “love always hopes.” He is saying that love is a God thing. He is saying love is powerful because it ties itself to The Great Oak with The Mighty Cable of Jesus Christ.

When in love I hope, I am actually involving God in the working out of my relationships. Further I am believing that He will take care of those issues in my “love life” which are beyond me. In this way I am able to do the next two things on Paul’s “love list.”

Send me your thoughts! I can’t wait for tomorrow!

      According to the New King James version of the Bible love “believes all things” I Cor. 13:7

The NIV says love “always trusts”. I Cor. 13:7

Even the RSV tells us love, “believes all things”. I Cor. 13:7

I have to admit I really struggle with that. It wouldn’t be so bad if the Word was “love trusts the trustworthy.” or “love believes the things that are true.”  But that is not what the Word says. It says love “pisteuō pas”.Love believes everything!

So what? We are supposed to believe everything we hear? We’re supposed to trust the hoodlum on the corner with the keys to our car while we are delivering groceries  to the homeless? We’re supposed to believe the religious claims of every televangelist just because we are loving people? Well that’s ridiculous. Anybody who tries to get you to believe that this is what the Scripture means is definitely not to be trusted even though you have to “always trust”!

The trouble comes in translating the Greek to English. Here is whatpisteuō means in its fullness:

to think to be true, to be persuaded of, to credit, place confidence in

a) of the thing believed

1) to credit, have confidence

b) in a moral or religious reference

1) used in the NT of the conviction and trust to which a man is impelled by a certain inner and higher prerogative and law of soul

2) to trust in Jesus or God as able to aid either in obtaining or in doing something: saving faith

3) mere acknowledgment of some fact or event: intellectual faith

2) to entrust a thing to one, i.e. his fidelity

a) to be intrusted with a thing

In short pisteuō   is the condition of faith. Paul is saying that a true lover “faiths” all things. In other words a lover approaches every situation with an attitude that is full of  faith.

The New Living Translation captures it best when it says, love “never loses faith.”

We cannot love without having faith, a trust that there is Someone out there who has the power to intervene no matter what the situation is. If we do not have faith then love eventually will degenerate into desperation and then despair in the hard times.

Love that walks in faith cannot fall apart when the situation gets difficult because it is attached to a power that is stronger than the fragile framework of human emotion.

Love doesn’t trust the one it loves in all things. It trusts God in all things.  So even when the one you love isn’t trustworthy or believable you can stick it out because you trust in the Great Power as you walk with your beloved through life.

Paul is not saying you parents should leave your daughter at home alone with her boyfriend because you have to trust the kids in order to show love. He is saying that even after the worst has happened and you are dealing with an unwanted pregnancy you can hold onto a positive attitude and walk in love towards your child. Faith can help you still believe the best even in the worst.

“Love never loses faith!” I cor. 13:7