Daily Journal: 2 November

What Love Looks Like

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (NIV)

When I think about how I treat others, and how others treat me, I can go to 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 to measure that behaviour. This passage is a clear brush stroke of what perfect love looks like in action.

While we cannot fully live up to this standard, there is one who perfectly exemplifies love.

1 John 4:9-10 (GNT)

And God showed his love for us by sending his only Son into the world, so that we might have life through him. This is what love is: it is not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the means by which our sins are forgiven.

God’s love is righteous and we can forever base our relationship with Him on having, first, a reverent fear of Him that leads to repentance and, second, a gratitude and responding love that exemplifies the same grace towards others as He's shown us.

Galatians 6:7-8 (NIV)

Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.

God loved us first, and these are the outworking attributes of that love - His love towards me and towards you.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (ToL)

Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not brag, it is not puffed up, it does not behave inappropriately, it does not seek its own way, it is not provoked, it keeps no account of wrong, it does not rejoice over injustice but rejoices in the truth; it bears all things, it believes all things, it hopes all things, it endures all things. Love never fails—