Love Has a Face

We've heard it at a hundred weddings — “Love is patient, love is kind” — until the words go soft, a bit of lace over two people in their finery. But Paul didn't write this for weddings. He wrote it to a church tearing itself apart: proud, jealous, suing each other, getting drunk at the Lord's Table. Into that mess he drops the most beautiful paragraph in the New Testament, and it lands like a rebuke.

Here's what we usually miss. We read it as a list of traits — a standard to hit, a to-do list for nicer people. Be more patient. Be less irritable. Keep no record of wrongs. And so it becomes one more law we fail. Try it: put your own name in the lines. “I am patient and kind; I do not envy or boast; I am not irritable or resentful; I keep no record of wrongs.” How far did you get before it turned into a lie? A phrase or two, if you're honest. It's a mirror, and none of us love the reflection.

Now do something else. Put a different name in. “Jesus is patient and kind. Jesus does not envy or boast; he is not arrogant or rude. He does not insist on his own way; he is not irritable or resentful; he keeps no record of wrongs. Jesus bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Jesus never fails.” Every line is true. Not one word has to be softened. Read that way, 1 Corinthians 13 is not first a set of virtues to achieve — it is a portrait of a Person. It is the face of Jesus, drawn in words.

And that turns even the hardest phrases inside out. “Love keeps no record of wrongs” — at the cross he took the record of your wrongs, the whole ledger, and nailed it there (Colossians 2:14). “Love bears all things” — he bore all things, literally, up a hill on his back. “Love endures all things” — he endured the nails and the forsakenness and did not quit on you. This is not poetry about love in the abstract. It is the transcript of what he did.

So the chapter is worse news and better news than we thought. Worse, because it proves we cannot love like this — not for a day. Better, because the love it describes is not a demand hanging over us; it is a Person who has already come and loved us this way. We were the impatient, the boastful, the record-keepers. He was patient with us, and kind, and bore all things, and never failed.

And notice why we could never simply try harder into this list. Strive to be patient by willpower and you become patient but brittle — patient and cold. Work up generosity and you grow generous, and proud of it. Willpower is a zero-sum budget; spend it on one virtue and you overdraw on another, robbing Peter to pay Paul. But Paul calls this the fruit of the Spirit — fruit, singular, not fruits (Galatians 5:22). It is one fruit with many facets, ripening together on the same branch, because it is one Person's life reproduced in us. Jesus was never patient at the expense of kind, or honest at the expense of gentle; in him they all move in unison. You cannot assemble that a trait at a time. You can only abide, and let the Spirit grow the whole of it at once.

So you will not become patient by gritting your teeth over a list. You become patient the way a cold room warms near a fire — by drawing near to the One who is Love, until his life becomes yours. We love because he first loved us. Our loving is only ever the echo.