“31 But eagerly desire the greater gifts. And now I will show you the most excellent way. 1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient. Love is kind. it does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. 5 It is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. 6 It does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It always protects...”
In 2012, Janaye Kearns suffered a traumatic brain injury. She has been having seizures ever since. When Janaye has these seizures, she is at risk of involuntarily slamming her head against the floor. Thankfully, Janaye has a service dog named Colt. Colt has been trained to protect Janaye. We are about to see a video Janaye put together showing Colt in action. Janaye isn’t actually having a seizure in this video, but she is reproducing one to show what Colt does when during one of her seizures. Please show the video.
Colt protects Janaye. He bears the brunt of her seizure for her sake. That is love and that is a picture of the love we will study this morning. Born again love, like Colt’s love, protects. Born again love, like Colt’s love, bears anything. Love always protects and it bears anything. That is the claim of this sermon: love always protects and it bears anything.
We will study this in two points. First: love always protects. Second: love bears all things. We are looking at two understandings of the first Greek verb in verse 7 this morning. First: love always protects. Second: love bears all things.
First: love always protects. The verb Paul used for “protect” has the implication of acting as a roof. A roof protects. A roof covers what is vulnerable. Love protects what is vulnerable just like Colt protects what’s vulnerable.
Sin uncovers what’s vulnerable. Imagine a wife who uncovers her husband’s shortcomings. She grumbles about his laziness and the fact that he has been putting on weight. She grumbles about his salary, which isn’t as large as that of many of his friends. She grumbles about his lack of ambition. If her husband overheard what she was saying, he wouldn’t feel loved. He would feel uncovered.
Paul said that love always covers. I’m sure you want all your weirdness and vulnerabilities covered by love.
But what about your sin? Imagine that every week that same husband gambled away his paycheck over at Grand Falls. Twice in the past year, that wife has had to borrow money from her parents to buy groceries and to pay the mortgage. What does “love always protects” look like in that situation?
Well, “love always protects,” means that “love always protects.” “Even when sin is certain,” says John MacArthur, “love tries to protect with the least possible hurt and harm to the guilty person. Love never protects sin but is anxious to protect the sinner.”
That wife is called by God to protect her husband but never to protect his sin. He must be protected. The sin must be confronted. Rather than running him down to her friends and parents and their children, she is to speak all the good that she can honestly speak of him even as she and others confront his sin. He is more than a gambler. He is her God-given husband and an image bearer of God and she is to treat him as such. That sort of love has a much better chance of bringing him to repentance than uncovering his shame for all the world to see. This is the love the NIV has in mind when it says, “love always protects.”
If you are a Christian, you know that this is how God has dealt with you. He has never protected your sin, but He has always protected you. He protects you by only exposing your sin to you a bit a time. If in this moment, God were to expose the immensity and complexity of the sin of the most sanctified saint in this congregation, that person would be undone. He protects you by calling you to repent by way of your own conscience before anyone else needs to get involved. He does everything He can to protect you even when you are in sin. He clearly did everything He could to protect you even when you were dead in sin. He loved this sinful world in this way: He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life. “Love never protects sin but is anxious to protect the sinner.”
The only way this or any church can be a hospital for sinners is by simultaneously protecting sinners and refusing to protect sin. That is part of what Peter was after when he wrote, “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.” If a church protects sin, it is no longer a hospital for sinners; it is the world. If a church doesn’t protect sinners as it addresses sin, it is no longer a hospital for sinners; it is judgmental. To be a hospital for sinners, the church must never protect sin but be ever anxious to protect the sinner, and, of course, the sinner is all of us.
Now this sort of love is difficult. It is far easier to ignore sin and call it protecting the sinner. It is also far easier to crush the sinner and call it confronting sin. Neither are love. Love is difficult. Love is so difficult that we often botch it and so if you are currently thinking of a time when someone crushed you in an attempt to deal with your sin or ignored your sin in an attempt to protect you, have some grace for that person. Have the grace you wish that others had with you. This love is so difficult that it is a work of the Holy Spirit when it goes right. It is so necessary that God gave the Holy Spirit to make it possible.
You see a picture of this roof like love in Robert Boughton in the book of Gilead. Robert confronted and protected his wayward son Jack. Jack had gotten a girl pregnant in high school and took no responsibility for the child. Jack had come back to Gilead because he had nowhere else to go. He was now leaving again even as his father lay dying. The author writes, “old Boughton, if he could stand up out of his chair, out of his decrepitude and crankiness and sorrow and limitation, would abandon all those handsome children of his, mild and confident as they are, and follow after that one son whom he has never known, whom he had favored as one does a wound, and he would protect him as a father cannot, defend him with a strength he does not have, sustain him with a bounty beyond any resource he could ever dream of having. If Boughton could be himself, he would utterly pardon every transgression, past, present, and to come, whether or not it was a transgression in fact or his to pardon. He would be that extravagant.” Boughton would be like a roof covering his boy.
Jesus acts like a roof covering his loved ones. He is anxious to protect us sinners even as he gives no quarter to our sin. No man has ever hated sin more than Jesus. No man has ever loved sinners more than Jesus. “While we were still sinners Christ died for us.”
Now if you recognize yourself as one of those sinners for whom Christ died, then you know that something amazing has happened in you. You have been born of the Spirit. That means that you can love with a more remarkable love than Colt the service dog.
By and large people consider dogs more loving than humans, but I don’t think that anyone could read the gospels and say that the most loving dog is more loving than Jesus. I don’t think anyone who knows their Bible could say that Colt is quicker to protect than Jesus. You have the Holy Spirit not so that you can be more like Colt, as admirable as that dog is. You have the Holy Spirit so that you can be more like Jesus.
He always protects. He also bears all things. Some translations render this phrase “love always protects” others render it as “love bears all things.” These are two very different translations and you can’t say that Paul meant both at the same time. After much consideration, I’ve found myself at a stalemate of which one to choose. Since love certainly does both, we will consider both. We’ve seen how love always protects. Now, in our second point, we see how love bears all things.
Perhaps you noticed a transition when we reached verse 7. It was signaled by the word “always”; love “always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” Most other translations render this using the words “all things”; love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
I do think that this part of the clause is better translated as “all things” because these are fighting words. The Corinthians believed that now that the Holy Spirit had come all things were permitted. This is why they saw nothing amiss with the incest within their congregation as seen in chapter 5. They believed that anything was fine now because they were the people of the Spirit.
Paul is making clear that the people of the Spirit aren’t typified by living as if all things are permittable. The people of the Spirit are typified by “bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, and enduring all things.” If you are into Christian freedom, which you should be, then be free to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things.
As was said, this Greek verb translated as “bear all things” has the connotation of providing a roof. A roof bears whatever falls upon it for the sake of what’s underneath. “It is the character of love to put up with anything,” as Gordon Fee put it.
People put up with anything for the sake of love. Imagine for a moment that a stranger came over and raided your fridge. He then scratched one of your wood panel doors with a screwdriver. He followed you around the house for an hour demanding your attention. He then dirtied his own pants and screamed until you changed them. If you have a toddler, you bear with that every day. Why? You bear all that for the sake of love. Love bears all things.
The church is the group that bears with one another in all things, meaning when we bear with one another at our worst. Imagine that you knew without a shadow of a doubt that the people of this congregation would put up with you at your worst. Imagine that everyone in Inwood knew that all the congregations would put up with them at their worst. What changes do you think would take place in our community?
We all want to know that people will bear with us for the sake of love. That is what people want when they get married. When people are preparing for marriage, they are simultaneously excited and nervous. They are excited because they found someone who will bear with them no matter what. They are nervous because they fear that this person might not actually bear with them no matter what. Church, according to Paul, takes this same no-matter-what type love and applies it not to one person whom you are marrying but to a bunch of people many of whom have very little in common with you. That is hard in marriage. That certainly takes the Holy Spirit in church.
Now, bearing all things can be hard because the phrase “all things” includes a lot. People can be nosy. People can be needy. People can be moody. Some people act like wet blankets. Other people are pushy. Some people are often anxious. Others are apathetic. Some people have colorful language. Others are tightly wound. Some people make wrong decisions. Bearing with people no-matter-what can be hard because people can difficult. What you need to remember is that you are difficult too. Bob Goff was right when he said, “love difficult people. You’re one of them.”
Someone has needed to bear with you. If you have any significant relationships in your life right now, someone is bearing you right now. You are the sort of person who necessitates 1 Corinthians 13:7 love; “love bears all things.”
Now, if you are born again, you know that you are the sort of person who necessitates 1 Corinthians 13:7. You know that because you recognize that God has been bearing with you each and every day of your life.
God bears with far more from you than you can begin to comprehend. David explained, “He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His love for those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him; for He knows how we are formed, He remembers that we are dust.”
God knows that you are weird. He knows that you are moody or pushy or tightly wound. He knows that you are a sinner who sins. We tend to think that God doesn’t get what it’s like to be us. He gets us. He puts up with far more from us than we will ever know, and He does it out of love.
God loves you this way, in part, so that you can love others this way. Now loving this way, as in bearing all things, might sound like a burden, but it is actually a remedy to treat what is wrong with you. As John Calvin explained, “we are naturally too much devoted to self, [and this selfishness] renders us morose and peevish… The remedy for this disease is love, which makes us subject to our brethren, and teaches us to apply our shoulders to their burdens.”
One of the remedies that treats your moodiness and peevishness is bearing with others. This is why individuals who are so sick of people that they cut off all contact with anyone actually wind up more miserable. They are more miserable than before because bearing with all those difficult people was the remedy to their misery. That is also why people who cut themselves off from church because the church is full of messed up people like themselves wind up more miserable. Christ calls you out of yourself not only for the sake of others but also for the sake of you. James Brennan is right, “it is in this that Christianity consists; in the charity that conquers selfishness.”
Now bearing all things in love doesn’t make you a doormat. It actually allows you to correct the behavior that is so frustrating or hurtful. If you try to correct such behavior without bearing with the other person in love, you often produce more resistance than repentance. Think back to a time when someone corrected you and you received it well. I dare say that you accepted it because you knew that the person who corrected you had born with a good deal of nonsense from you.
If you are a Christian, you take Jesus’ correction because you know that he has born with a good deal of nonsense from you. His cross is the clearest demonstration of how love bears all things. I can’t begin to fathom how much offense, shame, guilt, pettiness, and wrath Jesus put up with on that cross for my sake. How could I not take his correction? He bears with me in everything.
Now I dare say that you find the fact that Jesus bears with anything from you to be quite attractive. You are attracted to it for similar reasons that more than 2.6 million people have seen that video of Colt. That video went viral because people know a love that bears all things when they see it and the see it in that dog bearing those seizures. You know a love that bears all things when you see it and you see it in Jesus. Who wouldn’t want that sort of love? In other words, who wouldn’t want to become a Christian?
But perhaps you find yourself thinking, ‘that’s not my question. My question is, “who would want to become a Christian? If you weren’t born into this, who would sign up for this?”’ If this is you, consider that perhaps for you Christianity has become something quite different from anything to do with Christ. Perhaps it has become a way to avoid shame. Perhaps it has become a way to be good. Whatever your reason, if you find yourself wondering, “who would want to be a Christian?” go to Jesus. When you meet him again, you will remember what this is all about. You will remember this is about a love that if it had been filmed would get far more than 2.6 million hits on Youtube and not a single person would watch it because they felt as if they should. They would watch the love of Jesus in action because it warmed their hearts far more than that video we saw of Colt or ever could.
Perhaps you don’t know much of anything about this love. You might know about it in terms of doctrine, but you don’t know anything about it in terms of experience. You know nothing about this love that always protects. You know nothing about this love that bears with you in anything. You would give anything for it. That’s good because it will cost you everything. It will cost you your very life, which is to say that you will be born again to a new life that is not your own. You will be born again to live the life of Jesus. That would make your life a far better demonstration of love than the love you see in Colt, and that is the plan of God. Amen.