Love is not envious or boastful

Bible

Before we start, let’s read the whole of chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians again.

1 Corinthians 13 (NIV)

1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have 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 do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have 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 does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Context

This chapter is a favourite at weddings, even non-Christian weddings. People adore the other-focused nature of the love that Paul speaks so beautifully of here. And they especially adore it when they are the focus of that love!

But that’s not the context of this passage at all. Rather this section on love is a lesson for a broken church. The Corinthians were a proud church. They believed that their practice of the spiritual gifts, especially speaking in tongues, demonstrated how spiritual and holy they were. And yet their lives were full of self-indulgent sin. Sin that hurt one another and blackened Jesus’ name throughout the region.

Paul’s message in this chapter is simple: nothing we do matters if we don’t do it with love. And the only sort of love that counts is God’s love.

Also, Paul is speaking to the church, not to individuals. In the previous chapter he describes the church using the metaphor of a body, explaining how each part of the body is equally important. This love of God, then, has a very specific context—the body of Christ—the church. But, of course, this love should not be constrained to the church, it should spill out into the world beyond.

In the book of Leviticus chapter 19 we find one of the most famous moral commands in the world.

But at the end of the chapter there is another, equally astonishing command that you have probably never before heard. I came across it this morning in my devotional time.

Leviticus 19:34 NIV

34 The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.

Has anyone heard that one before? Love the resident foreigner as you love yourself?

So this love that Paul speaks about starts inside the church, but it doesn’t stay there—it reaches out into the world and transforms it!

Let’s keep that in mind as we look it more closely.

What is love?

If a friend asked you to give a one-sentence definition of love, what would you say?

I might say, “love is a commitment to act for the good of another.” But that then raises the question, “what is the good of another?” We talked about this in our Bible Study this past Tuesday: how do we love someone, especially when their values are radically different to ours?

Paul faced this problem with the Corinthians—their values were very similar to our modern world’s values, and so he had to define what love really meant. Perhaps if the Corinthians had been asked to define love they might have said, like many in our society, “love is love.” Not really helpful.

1 Corinthians 13:4–8a (NIV)

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails.

The Holy Spirit used Paul’s situation to guide him to craft a powerful definition of love that we now benefit from for all time.

You might notice that Paul starts with two positive definitions; long-suffering and kind, then presents eight negative definitions, then a positive alternative to the last negative and finishes with four positives, before wrapping up with a double negative (love never fails).

[slide of one thing crossed, all others ticked] Why so many negatives? Apart from addressing the sins of the Corinthians, the Bible uses negatives very often, because a prohibition is much more open than an exhortation. If I say “don’t eat the ice-cream” I’m actually saying, “you can eat anything except the ice-cream.” And that is how the Mosaic Law works—God gives us almost unlimited choice, with only a few things fenced off. Paul seems to be saying, love is incredibly rich, here are a few examples of what it does, but here are things it never does.

What does it mean to be envious?

The first thing that Paul says love is not, is that love is not envious. Envy is not quite the same thing as jealousy, especially if we define jealousy as the desire to be the sole possessor of something. Sometimes jealousy is a good thing, such as God’s jealous love of us (it is bad for us if we have other gods). But envy is never good.

How would you define envy?

The Greek word used here, zeloou, is the verb form of zelos, which is the root of our words “jealous” and “zeal.” Like English, Greek doesn’t distinguish between envy and jealousy as I have. The NIV translates this word in all sorts of ways, as you can see in this chart, both good and bad. The Greek word just means to have a really strong desire for something or someone, where the desire itself crowds out other considerations and leads inevitably to action.

This sounds like our society’s concept of passionate, true love, right? Tragically, such single-minded desire is almost always focused on pleasing ourselves.

For example, envy or jealousy plays an ugly part in the story of Joseph. Remember how Joseph was his father’s favourite, and how his father gave him a special robe to wear. And then Joseph had two dreams where he became a ruler over his family, and he rashly told his brothers and father. Unsurprisingly, the result was this:

Genesis 37:11 NIV

11 His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.

This led, of course, to his brothers plotting against him and selling him into slavery. In their envy, they discarded Joseph and broke their fathers’ heart. They certainly did not show love.

Can you think of any examples of envy from stories or your own experiences?

Envy is not limited to the Bible, is it? In fact, envy is an emotion that our society has built into its DNA! Here’s a funny example from Wix, a website company—yes, you can get jealous of someone’s website technology!

[video]

We’ll talk about how to avoid envy in a moment, but first let’s quickly look at the second thing God’s love is not.

What does it mean to be boastful?

Love does not boast. The word Paul uses here, chresteuomai, is found only in this verse, not in the rest of the Bible. Just like the word for kind last week, we need to go to other sources to see what it means. Fortunately this word is used in other ancient Greek documents, so we can be confident that it’s talking about a kind of boastfulness that focuses on puffing oneself up with words.

What do you think is the purpose of boasting?

If you want to understand what boasting is for, here’s a great clip to demonstrate it in action:

[video Muhummad Ali]

Boasting is useful when you want to defeat someone, when you want to frighten them or chase them away. But what use is it when you want to love someone? Have you ever known anyone who felt loved because someone talked about how great they were? Boasting builds up the boaster, love builds up the one who is loved.

Being better lovers

So how can we be better lovers?

First, keep our eyes focused on the needs of the person we are loving. If we are thinking, “I deserve better than this,” then we’ve confused Christian love, God’s love, which gives and gives, with the world’s version, which expects give and take.

It’s crucial to remember that we cannot love as Christians on our own. We don’t have the capacity to give and give. But God does. We have to be in constant prayer, asking God to provide us with the strength and wisdom needed to build up the one we are loving. If we try to love on our own, we can do no better than the world’s hopeless mess, where “love is love” and half the people who commit their lives to one another end up divorced because “I deserve better.”

Paul tells the Philippians that he is happy to be poured out like a drink offering for the benefit of their faith. That is what love without envy looks like! It pours itself out as an act of worship to God and for the benefit of another. What a challenge! And, again, we can only do this in Christ’s strength.

What about boasting? Perhaps we had best remember that love is an action. It is not mere words. Love doesn’t need to call attention to itself because it’s goal is to serve, not to seek recognition. Again, this is not something we can do on our own.

We don’t need to boast when we can trust God to provide us with people who will build us up and recognise our obedience and sacrifice. Because God is faithful, we don’t need to blow our own trumpets. In fact, what sustains our Christian love is not the quid-pro-quo—the give and take—of our society’s relationships. Rather, what sustains us is found in one of Jesus’ parables:

Matthew 25:21 NIV

21 “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

When you are sharing God’s love and you think, “I deserve better than this,” or when you are tempted to brag about all the sacrifices you’ve made, remember that image: a servant standing before his Lord, receiving that ultimately meaningful praise: “well done, good and faithful servant!”

And now, a final thought to ponder:

Apart from not thinking “I deserve better,” how can you avoid envy and boasting?

Let’s pray:

Lord, we know that you call us to be holy like you, but so often we forget that this means that we need to be really different to the world around us. Help us to understand how the presence of your Holy Spirit, dwelling in our hearts, can transform the way we love one another, and love those around us. Help us to rely on you so that we can love with supernatural power, and so show the world that we are your disciples.

In Jesus name we pray, Amen.