Explain Like I'm 5: Love = God, Part 1

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

“Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, NASB

(This is Part 1 of a three-part post; there’s just too much to wrangle into a single post. Part 2 & Part 3 to follow soon.)

This isn’t one of my usual amateur exegesis posts.

Normally, I approach a Bible verse and try to dive deeper into the context of the verse to understand its meaning. I look at the translation of the Greek, try to understand the verse in relation to surrounding verses, and I delve into the mindset of the author. I do this to build an argument around my discernment of the verse’s meaning, and then I go into the Bible commentaries to find support for my argument.

I’m not taking that approach today.

Of course, me being me, I’m not abandoning logic and I’m going to do a bit of deep diving. I’ll also walk you thru my thought process to illustrate how I get from Point A to Point B.

But instead of building a logical argument, I’m going to create what I call a “theological mnemonic”.

So what is a mnemonic?

A mnemonic is a word, sentence, poem, etc. that helps you to remember something. Typically, we use a mnemonic to remember difficult things like phone numbers, grammar rules, or even a new acquaintance’s name.

My difficult thing is remembering that God loves me.

Oh, I believe that God loves me, but I really qualify what the nature of that love looks like. I tend to imagine how I would love myself and then I project that limited version of love onto God.

But if as 1 John 4:8 states that “God is love” then we should be able to swap out “love” for “God” in Saint Paul’s words and get a truer picture of the essence of God and how God feels about you and me.

So let’s get to it!

(I’m going to do this exercise from my personal point of view, but I encourage you to sit with each of these statements, to completely soak in their meanings, then write out your own hang-ups and misgivings, and see where you are limiting God.)

God is patient:

I imagine God is running out of patience with me as I’m a long way from being the man He intended me to be. So like Adam in the garden, I can hide like a silly child.

But God is patient: “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9) He just asks that I repent (SCARY WORD…but all it means is to turn towards Him).

As typically is the case, the Greek has a richer definition than the translated English equivalent. The Greek word for patience is “makrothumeó” which Thayer’s Greek Lexicon defines as “to be patient in bearing the offences and injuries of others; to be mild and slow in avenging; to be long-suffering, slow to anger, slow to punish.”

And as God knows my silly mind, He knows that I am a SLOW work in progress, and as God is God, He has perfect patience.

(I should note that His perfect patience cuts both ways: He will allow me to go as far down the path to Hell as I want. He will encourage me to turn towards Him, but He will never force me.)

God is kind:

The Greek word Saint Paul uses for “kind” is “chrēsteúomai” which is only found in the Bible in this verse but according to the TDNT it describes “the work of love as an actualizing of “chrēstótēs” or the actualizing of kindness.

Again, the Greek meaning is much richer. According to the TDNT, “chrēstótēs” has a robust meaning that encompasses kindness, friendliness, and clemency.

And I complicate things because I have my own limited idea of kindness. I believe in kindness…to a point (i.e. don’t mistake my kindness for weakness, givers have to set limits, etc.).

But I can’t set limits on God.

Granted, Saint Paul is talking about kindness in humans, but where he uses “chrēstótēs” divinely in Romans “it denotes God‘s gracious attitude to sinners” and “the fullness of salvation in Christ elucidates it”.

God is not jealous:

This is a tough one because the Old Testament is chalk full of verses talking about God being jealous: Exodus 34:14, Deuteronomy 4:24, Joshua 24:19, and Nahum 1:2 just to mention a few.

So how do we square this circle?

When I look at the use of “jealous” in the OT verses, I see a God who is possessive of his children, and He is speaking of having no other God or idol in place of Him. I think of a mama bear reacting possessively if she saw her cub being nurtured by another bear.

This is not the jealously that Saint Paul is discussing.

But before we dive into Saint Paul’s meaning, I should note that “jealousy” is the first of eight anti-attributes of love in this section of the Epistle (Baker 2009), and that all eight “refer directly or indirectly to Paul's criticism of them earlier in the letter” (Horsley 1998).

With jealousy, Saint Paul is referring to 1 Corinthians 3:3, “for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?” (ESV)

And here is where it hits me. This petty jealousy and envy is of the “human way”; it is only a human characteristic so I cannot put this on God. Plus, it makes no sense that God would be jealous of me. He’s God!

I don’t struggle as much with projecting jealousy onto God, but I used to worry that God would cut me down to size when I was doing well. But that’s never the case. God wants all of us to live our best life and, truth be told, I do good enough job derailing myself on my own.

God does not brag:

On the surface, it seems straightforward that bragging is not love. Bragging or boasting is self-centered whereas love is other centered.

However, when I find where Saint Paul refers to boasting in the Epistle, as he did with jealousy, Saint Paul writes, “as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:31, ESV)

So while that doesn’t explicitly state that God is bragging or boasting, I can certainly entertain an argument that He’s holding a gun to our head demanding that we boast about Him.

Is God going to escape on a technicality?

No, and here’s why.

Yes, we should give all glory to God. We should 100% boast and rejoice that He created us, breathed life into us, and we are our best when we are Christ actualized.

But if we believe that we are created merely to stroke God’s ego then I think we once again shackle God with human limitations, and we see ourselves in a dysfunctional child/parent relationship.

I am less than a perfect parent, but when I am at my best, I never seek glory for the accomplishments of my children. Their triumphs give me joy because I love them and want them to succeed. I am grateful only that I am able to participate in their success not that I would claim it for myself.

And our God is the Perfect Parent. He poured Himself into us and He even became one of us to save us. This isn’t self-indulgent bragging or boasting, its simply the pleasure of being in relationship with His children.

I hope you enjoyed the first part of this three-part post, and that I gave you some food for thought.

As I mentioned at the outset of this post, this isn’t meant to be conventional exegesis. But what I love about reading Scripture is that we can often draw meaning from it that the author may not have intended.

I struggle to internalize a “perfect” God, and therefore I limit God to my flawed and limited understanding. But creating this theological mnemonic and working through it has been invaluable to incorporating that belief into my faith.

So if this applies to you as well then get to work on these first four statements of Love = God, and I’ll see you again when we tackle “God is not arrogant”.

References:

Baker, W. (2009). 1 Corinthians. Tyndale.

Horsley, R. (1998). 1 Corinthians. Abingdon Press.

Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., Bromley, G. (1985). Theological dictionary of the New Testament, abridged in one volume. Eerdmans.

Thayer, J. (2019). Thayer’s Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament. Hendrickson.