Tuesday, February 19, 2019
1 Corinthians 13:4 ESV . . . Love is patient . . .
DIVINE CHRIST-LIKE LOVE IS . . .
To many people love is a feeling or emotion. It may be so with “friendship” love or “sexual” love, but it is hardly the essence of DIVINE LOVE. Rather, God’s love was an action: “God so loved the world that He GAVE . . .” (John 3:16). Think of the Gospel record. In deeds as well as words Jesus showed His great love for sinners, finally dying on the cross for us.
And so St. Paul here tells us what divine love DOES: “It is patient . . .”
That so-called “American’s Prayer” says “Lord, give me patience . . . and I want it right now!” In our push-button day, the godly virtue of patience is in short supply. How easily we can become bitter or resentful of or towards other people, and maybe even of or towards God as He is working out His plan for our life.
Think of Job who went through the blast furnace of affliction, losing all his children and possessions until only his life was spared. He sat in ashes with boils from head to toe until his wife encouraged him to curse God and die. What did Job say? “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Oh, it wasn’t easy! Read the book of Job and hear his struggles of faith with his God. Yet through it all -- as God’s mills ground slowly but surely in his life -- Job learned the quality of DIVINE LOVE, patience, which previously he had in short supply. After he learned to wait on his God, everything taken from him was eventually restored in equal measure.
So then, one purpose our loving God has in sending suffering and tribulation is to teach His children patience. As Paul says in another place: “. . . We know that troubles produce patience, and patience produces [godly] character . . .” (Romans 5:3-4 NCV).
With Paul Gerhardt, himself a “theologian sifted in Satan’s sieve,” let us pray and sing:
If God Himself be for me, I may a host defy;
For when I pray, before me My foes, confounded, fly.
If Christ, my Head and Master, Befriend me from above,
What foe or what disaster Can drive me from His love?
This I believe, yea, rather, Of this I make my boast,
That God is my dear Father, The Friend who loves me most,
And that, whate’er betide me, My Savior is at hand
Thro’ stormy seas to guide me And bring me safe to land.
(The Lutheran Hymnal, 528:1-2)
