Christian Fellowship (5) What is Love? (2)

Introduction: The Context of Christian Fellowship and Love's Standard

0:03 The following message was delivered on Sunday morning, October 24th, 1993, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Now I trust that those of you who were with us last Lord's Day will have no question as to the passage that I will ask you to turn to momentarily, namely 1 Corinthians chapter 13, and follow as I read verses 4 through 7. Then we will pray, asking God's special help in the light of the truth that our Heavenly Father knows our frame, remembers we are dust, and as so many of you entertained and gave of yourselves the price you paid with short nights of sleep, some of us paid that price plus the price of unusual things. Expenditures of energy in preaching and teaching an inordinate number of times for one week, and yet we have a loving Father who knows our frame, remembers that we are dust, and stands ready to hear and answer our cry for help. 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verses 4 through 7.

1:27 Love suffers long and is kind. Love envies not. Love vaunts not itself, is not puffed up, does not behave itself unseemly, seeks not its own, is not provoked, takes not account of evil, rejoices not in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth, and bears all things. Believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Let us ask God's blessing upon his own holy word. Our Father, as we bow again in your presence in this place, where we have known so much of your gracious nearness in recent days, we are thankful that we bow with knowingness, so suspicion that you have somehow exhausted your grace,

2:51 or that you have turned away your heart, having determined to grant us a certain measure of blessing, and then no more. But we come this morning confident in the light of your holy word, that in your beloved Son there is a fullness of grace and of truth, and that of his fullness, have we not only received in past days, but that even now you are prepared to give to us out of the fullness of grace that is in your beloved Son. And we remember the words that were preached into our ears and into many of our hearts on Tuesday night, according to your faith, be it unto you. And, O Lord, we do believe, that you stand ready and willing to give to us in this hour every needed dimension of grace to quicken the weary bodies, to give attentiveness to tired and exhausted minds, to give alertness and facility of utterance to weary preachers. Lord, this is your province to come in our felt weakness and manifest your strength,

4:15 to give us the strength and the strength and the strength and the strength that is the very bridge to divine strength and enablement. And we stand, O Lord, as parts of that bridge, one mass of human weakness. Come to us in your grace and strength, and so minister to us that when this hour is over, each one who is in vital union with your Son will know that indeed, you have given us the strength and the strength and the strength to minister to his or her heart, and that even the most careless, the most indifferent who sits here even now with his or her mind running a thousand miles from this place, as we pray, ere this hour is over, may such a one know that you have arrested him and brought him to know his accountability to you. And may such a one repent and close with the offers of mercy, in the Lord Jesus. Father, we have asked largely of you, but surely we have not asked things beyond your power or your grace to grant. Therefore, in the expectation of faith, we commit our petitions to you, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

5:37 Amen. In the 68th Psalm, a psalm of majestic praise to God for his glory, mighty acts on behalf of his people. The psalmist declares in verse 6 of that psalm that the God who performs mighty acts on behalf of his people is also the God who sets the solitary in families. Or as the marginal reading of the 1901 renders it, he is the God who makes the solitary to dwell, in a house. Now in his greatest of all works, that work of redemption of his people under the blessings of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, God continues to set the solitary in families. We no sooner read of his mighty work in bringing 3,000 men and women to repentance, and faith in Acts chapter 2, but that we find those 3,000 incorporated into that initial gospel family,

7:07 that initial ecclesia of the Lord Jesus, the church in Jerusalem. For Luke tells us that as many as received the word were added unto them, in that day. They were incorporated into the family of God at Jerusalem, and immediately entered into the full range of both the privileges and responsibilities of that family relationship. And according to Luke, they did it with zeal and with principled consistency.

7:50 For Luke goes on to say, And they continued steadfastly in that family relationship in the apostles' teaching and in the fellowship and in breaking of bread and in the prayers. And as we continue our studies in that balanced doctrine of the Christian life, which we are determined to maintain among us, we are still concerned to establish that there are no effects, effective substitutes, for the God-appointed means of grace and in living the Christian life. And while unfolding the public means of grace, we've come to the matter of corporate fellowship or the shared life of the people of God as it is set before us in the broad contours of Acts 2 and verse 42. And so, and as we have been concentrating our attention on what it means to continue steadfastly in distinctive Christian fellowship, we've sought to lay out the basic biblical idea or concept of fellowship, which is at its most elementary level,

9:16 shared life. Then we looked at the context of distinctive Christian fellowship. In terms of those great redemptive realities which form the basis of such fellowship. And now we are examining the content of distinctively Christian fellowship of what is the thing comprised.

9:41 What is the stuff of distinctively Christian fellowship? And we discovered from Romans 15, 7 that whatever it is, it has its starting point with this unfeigned and unreserved acceptance of one another for that which God has made us in Christ. Wherefore receive ye one another even as Christ received you to the glory of God. Then we have gone on to assert that it can only grow and flourish and develop and carry on without its many facets of biblical expression in a climate marked by certain distinctive Christian graces. And at the head of the list of those graces is the grace of mutual love and brotherly affection. And in our three previous studies on this subject, I have sought to underscore the manifold witness, to the centrality and absolute necessity of this grace of mutual love and brotherly affection among God's people. And then we began to address the question

11:07 of what is the objective standard by which to assess whether or not I have this true mutual affection and mutual love and brotherly affection. And assuming I do have it, by what standard shall I seek to determine how it ought to express itself within the family of God? And I've suggested that the scripture set before us three major categories of truth which constitute the objective standard by which to assess the presence and guide the expressions of mutual love and affection. And those three categories are the precepts of the law, Romans 13, 8 to 10, the pattern of Christ, John 15, 12 and 13, Ephesians 5, 1 and 2, and then the principles of 1 Corinthians 13, 4 through 7.

Review: General Observations on 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

12:17 And last Lord's Day, after a rather lengthy review for the sake of our visiting pastors, we took up our first study of 1 Corinthians 13, 4 through 7. We noted the place of these verses in the overall structure of 1 Corinthians 13, and I trust you'll remember the homely sandwich illustration. Verses 1 to 3, Paul underscores the supremacy of love. In verses 8 to 13, the permanence and the priority of love.

12:53 But in verses 4 to 7, he gives us the practical manifestations of love. And we had time only to make three general but very necessary introductory observations concerning verses 4 through 7 of 1 Corinthians 13. We noted that the grace of love is set before us in an exclusively practical way. There is no formal definition, certainly no philosophical definition.

13:29 There is no romantic poetry about love. Rather, there are 15 verbs which tell us what love always does wherever love is present and whenever love is active. 15 present indicative verbs saying love does, does this, love does this, love does not do this, love does not do that. There isn't an atom of reference to feeling.

14:04 There is no suggestion of philosophizing or psychologizing. Do you want to love the brethren? Then do what Paul, by the Spirit's inspiration, says love will always do in the presence of its brethren. Do you want to know if you love the brethren?

14:25 Then see if you are refraining from those things which love does not do. And if you are not doing what love does and refraining from the things love does not do, I don't care if you sit here today and feel like you've got an ocean of love so big that it would overflow the boundaries of the Pacific. You are set. This entire description of love is exclusive.

14:55 It's simply practical. The second observation we made was that the grace of love is set before us in an intensely realistic way. Paul is not describing how love will act in heaven. He's describing how love acts here on earth.

15:18 Here on earth particularly in the family of God where though all the true members of the family have had God's initial work in them experienced to the point where the dominion of sin is broken and the image of Christ is beginning to be formed in them, there are still many things about us that are the remnants of what we were in Adam. What we were when we were nothing but old men and women. And even though we are new, creations in Christ, we are imperfect new creatures. And even though sin's dominion has been broken, there is still the problem of remaining sin. And the grace of love is set before us not in the silly romantic notions of love songs where Mr. Right on a moonlit night has seen Miss Right and in all of her perfection she has captured herself with her heart. And they go off hand in hand on a moonbeam into the never-never land of continuous bliss forever and ever.

16:35 That's the stuff of fairy stories. And that's not the stuff in which the word of God tracks. The grace of love is set before us in an intensely realistic way. It is that grace which will enable us to resist the temptation to burn with jealousy when a brother or sister is advanced beyond us and preferred before us and blessed in measures that we are not blessed spiritually, materially, and in any other way.

17:08 And then thirdly, we noted the grace of love is set before us in a wonderfully balanced way. A wonderfully balanced way. Of the 15 verbs, 8 are negative and 7 are positive. So that those of you of a more negative nature aren't turned off, you say, well, I like when I'm told what not to do.

17:31 All right? The Apostle Paul by the Holy Ghost says, I'll help you folk. Love does not do this and does not do this and does not do this. But, lest you have all of your perspectives on love purely negative, he puts in 7 positives.

17:45 And whether you're of a more positive bent by nature or not, if you're subject to the word of God, you'll be just as concerned to know what love does as you are concerning what love does not. And then, there are others of you who by background and temperament and inclination, you're all positive. You wish there were 15 positives. Love does this.

18:06 Love does that. Love does the other. Just the word not gets you unstrung.

18:13 Just the word love does not. You don't like that. That's why you always get irritated when there's preaching that has any negative overtones in it. Psychologically, in terms of your upbringing, in terms perhaps of absorbing some silly religious notions, that have no roots in the Bible, you've got a negative attitude toward anything negative.

18:37 The only thing you're not negative about is negatives.

18:43 Everything should be positive, positive, positive, positive. But about one thing you are really positive, there should be no negatives.

18:50 But you see, God doesn't kowtow to your temperament nor to mine. But in a beautifully balanced way, He sets before us as He does everywhere in the word of God. For men will go to hell not only for what they did do, but for what they didn't do. You see, the same Lord Jesus who said in Matthew 7, 23, and He shall say unto them, Depart from me, I never knew you, you that work iniquity.

19:21 There they are damned for what they did. They worked iniquity. But the same Lord Jesus speaks in Matthew 25, 45, and 46 and says,

19:32 Because you did it not. Unto the least of these, my little ones, you did it not unto me, and these shall go away into everlasting punishment. They're damned for what they didn't do. We have no mannequin virtue recognized in the word of God.

19:54 You see, you might come up to a mannequin in a store in the after hours, spit right in its eye, and it wouldn't even blink. You could call it every single insulting name in the book, and it would never insult you back. You could kick it in the shins, it wouldn't kick you back. You could slap it on the face, it wouldn't flinch.

20:13 But you could also walk in the presence of that mannequin starved and hungry and thirsty, and it would never reach out its hand to feed you. You could walk in the presence of that mannequin with a broken heart, and it would never put its arm around you and speak words of comfort to your heart. It's a dead mannequin. Mannequin religion will take people to hell.

20:35 As surely as an active religion that fights and claws and scratches and screams against all that is God and gospel and Christ and his people. And I am amazed the more I study this passage of its wonderfully balanced structure. Now, having given that review of the overview of the passage, we come this morning to take up the first part of verse four. Do you want to really know if you love the brethren?

The Foundational Nature of Long-Suffering and Kindness

21:10 Do you want to know how to love the brethren? Do you want a directive for that love that you're convinced you feel in your heart for the brethren? Well, the apostle begins with these words, Love suffereth long and is kind.

21:33 Then, after those two statements, we have the eight negatives. Love envies not. Love wanteth not. Then we don't have any positives until the contrast at the end of verse six.

21:47 Rejoice is not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth. And now we're back to the positives. Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Now, as I wrestled with this passage, and as I prayed, and as I studied, and as I read the commentators, I was continually, irritated, agitated in my mind, is a better word, not irritated, with this question.

22:19 Why did the apostle begin with these two positives? Before he launched into the list of the eight negatives, why didn't he group all the positives together and all the negatives? He would have made it a lot easier for us preachers who are trying to teach the truth of God according to the mind of God, and yet to do it in a way that is easy to follow, easy to remember, has good, hooks on it, and burrs on it without disrupting the mind of the spirit. And the more I poured over the verses, the more I studied the meaning of the words, love suffers long, love is kind, I was coming to a more and more settled conviction that Paul began with these two positives because in them there is a sense in which we have a distillation of everything that follows. There is a sense in which under these two initial affirmations of a positive nature with regard to love that suffers long and is kind, we have the distilled essence of all that follows. But then I had a problem because in my standard commentary taters that I consulted, I did not find anyone asserting this until reaching the breaking point of weariness last night

23:49 around 10.30 in my study, I found G.G. Finlay who was the author of the Expositors' Greek Testament, the section on Corinthians who wrote as follows.

24:03 The first line supplies the general theme defining the two fundamental excellencies of love. Her patience toward evil and her kindly activity in doing good. Finlay viewed these first two qualities of love in terms of the fundamental excellencies of love and asserts that this is why by the guidance of the Spirit, the Apostle placed them where he did. And then as I turned to old Matthew Henry after a few brief comments on the meaning of the words, he said this. Love suffers long and is kind, he writes. This is love's general character. She is patient under injuries and apt and inclined to do all the good offices in her power.

25:14 And under the power of love, and under these two general characteristics, all the partitions of the character of love may be reduced. And so Matthew Henry came to the same conviction that these are not placed here merely by the inspiration of the Spirit. That was enough for me and that should be enough for any one of us. Even though we cannot discover the rationale for the power of love.

25:45 And now, for the Spirit's directive upon the mind and pens of the penman, if we can discover it, if God has put it there, then surely it can only help us in our understanding of the mind of the Spirit to recognize it as such. And given this perspective, it should not surprise us that men such as Jonathan Edwards preached an individual sermon on each of these first two descriptions of how love behaves itself. In his classic work on 1 Corinthians 13 entitled Charity and Its Fruits, Edwards preaches a separate sermon on love suffers long. And a separate sermon on love is kind. And I found no fewer than two other series of sermons, one by a Welshman not well known, and a third series in which all of the preachers did the same thing. When they attacked these verses, they preached a whole separate sermon on each of these first two characteristics of love, perceiving them to be, if not a canopy under which all of the other particulars could be ranged.

27:14 Surely they stood out as, standing mountain peak characteristics of love among the lower peaks of the whole range of love's characteristics as set forth in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. Now, if nothing else, I hope that gives some of you a little more appreciation of what we preachers go through when we're trying to be honest with the Bible. You just think we stand up here, push a few buttons about an hour or two before we come, and it just comes out, no, no, my friends, it doesn't happen that way. It doesn't happen that way.

Love is Long-Suffering: Explained

27:52 So we come this morning, and in the time that remains, I believe I can do justice to at least giving you not an exhausted, but what I hope is an accurate and helpful and workable exposition of these first two characteristics of love, and I'm going to state it in this way, hoping it will stick. True mutual love takes it on the chin while stretching out its hand in kindness to the fist that struck us. True mutual love takes it on the chin while not quenching its fist to give back, while stretching out its hand in acts of kindness to the one who struck us. So then let us consider the long-suffering and the kindness of love, explained, and then very briefly, the long-suffering and kindness of love applied. The long-suffering and kindness of love explained.

29:10 First, love is long-suffering. Now, there are two major New Testament words rendered, long-suffering, the other one mostly patience or patient. They are hupomeno, patient, and that word refers to the believer bearing up under the sustained pressure of trials, of difficulties, and afflictions which come to him in the will of God. He is to run his Christian race with all of its difficulties with patience.

29:51 He is to be patient and bear up under, in the midst of tribulation, pressures, flipsis, phlebo, and those family or that family of words. However, this word used here for long-suffering applies to God and to man, but the other word, hupomeno, is never used with reference to God. There is no trial, there is no pressure, there is no afflictions, concerning which the Scripture says God bears up under it. But the word in our text, macrothumeo, as found here in its linguistic cousins, macrothumia, they are words used both of God and of man. Of God, it's used in the verbal form in Luke 18 and verse 7, and you remember when Jesus taught a parable that men ought always to pray and not to faint, particularly earnest, fervent prayer in the overlapping of the ages, while the Lord's people are like the oppressed widow crying that they will be avenged.

31:20 We read in Luke 18 and verse 7, And shall not God avenge his elect that cry to him day and night? And yet he is. Here's our word, long-suffering over them.

31:37 Macrothumeo. God suffers long over them. And then in the well-known text, 2 Peter 3 and verse 9, The Lord is not slack concerning his promises. Some men count slackness.

31:55 That is, long-suffering to you were. Not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Here is God suffering long over his suffering people. Here is God suffering long with the impenitence and the unbelief and the lifestyle of the unregenerate and the impenitent as he waits for the repentance of those who will be brought to him.

32:30 In its noun form, in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, it's that word used when God discloses his very character to Moses in Exodus 34 and verse 6. And here God reveals himself and the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness and truth. God is the God abundant in this disposition of suffering long. And again in its noun form, we find it in several key texts in the New Testament, Romans 2 and verse 4. Romans 2 and verse 4, where the apostle is reasoning, to those who know the goodness and blessing of God upon them and yet they do not turn from their sins. Or do you despise the riches of his goodness and forbearance, here's our word, and longsuffering, knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance.

33:52 What does God experience as he showers blessing down upon the heads of impenitent men and women, boys and girls, men and women, boys and girls in this place, to whom he's given life and breath and all things for another week, kept all the valves and the arteries in your heart functioning, kept you from choking on a piece of gristle in the midst of your meal last night, guarded you upon the highways, upheld and protected you while you slept, showered his goodness upon you, and yet you continue to throw up into his face the vile, the vile, the vile, the vile, the vile, the vile. The vile stench of your life lived indifferent to his glory and honor and his law. The vile stench of your unbelief with respect to his son and his gospel. The vile stench of a life lived absorbed with yourself and yet he, what, suffers long.

34:53 He bears your spittle in his eye. He bears your slap upon his face. He bears your insulting walking. You come by him and not so much as grunting a word of gratitude that he's kept you in the land of the living.

35:10 That's the long-suffering.

35:15 Love suffers long. God himself is the great example of that very disposition as it's described in Romans 2 and verse 4, and then it's referred to the Lord Jesus in 1 Timothy 1 and verse 16. But I want you to turn to one other use. To get the feel of the meaning of the word, 1 Peter 3 and verse 20.

35:42 Albert Barnes says, He who expounds the word must do so not under the impress of a vivid imagination, but with a mind disciplined to give the meaning of words and to set forth the meaning of those words to carry the judgment of God's people that that's what God means when we assert that this is what he means. 1 Peter, 1 Peter 3 and verse 20. Speaking of that period of the flood in the which he went and preached unto the spirits in prison that aforetime were disobedient when the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah. While the ark was a-preparing, wherein that is eight souls were saved through water, the macrothemia of God was waiting. And you go back, back to Genesis, and you remember the picture? Man's violence and wickedness had reached such a fever pitch that God says, I repent that I ever made man. I'll blot out the entire human race.

36:51 I'll spare Noah and his family. But he didn't do it the very day he made the declaration. For a hundred and twenty years, God suffered over a long period as that generation became more and more. More and more wicked.

37:08 As its wads of spittle got larger when they spat in his face. As they became more and more emboldened. As they clenched their fists and defied the God of heaven by their lifestyle of licentiousness and sensuality and materialism. Even with the word of the prophet ringing in their ears.

37:29 And there the ark is growing before their eyes as the living monument that the prophets, the word would come to pass. That a judgment was to come. And what did God do? God suffered law.

37:45 God bore with all of this.

37:50 And then it is this very quality that is referred to in man's dealings with his fellow man. Let me give you just a couple of illustrations in Matthew 18. You remember the parable of the man who had a great debt? And he comes to his fellow preacher.

38:08 Aware that it was pay-up time. And what does he plead in Matthew 18, 26? The servant therefore fell down and worshipped him saying, Have patience with me. Have long-suffering towards me.

38:28 Have macrosemia in my direction. Yes, I have a debt. Yes, you have a right to call in that debt. But I have not.

38:39 I have nothing to pay. Please suffer this inequity. Bear with me in this inequity. And we find it used by the apostle Paul as one of the characteristics of his own life in ministry.

38:56 One other example, 2 Timothy 3 and verse 10. 2 Timothy 3 and verse 10. We are seeking now to just grasp the concept of long-suffering. For we are told love suffers long.

39:15 Paul writing to Timothy can say, But thou didst follow my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith,

39:26 suffering, love, and patience. You see, it's something akin to, but not identified with, patience. In patience one is bearing up nobly under circumstances, circumstances imposed in the will of God. But in long-suffering, one is suffering long with the conduct of fellow human beings.

39:55 One is bearing long with insults, bearing long with injustices, bearing long without any retaliation without. A pent-up spirit of revenge or retaliation within. W.E. Vine summarizes the biblical materials in this way.

40:20 Long-suffering is that quality of self-restraint in the face of provocation which does not hastily retaliate or promptly punish. It is the opposite of anger and is associated with mercy and is used with reference to God. And he cites, the Exodus 34.6 usage in the Septuagint, and then the very text that I have cited, Romans 2.4 and 1 Peter 3 and verse 20.

40:56 In fact, one could actually say that etymologically, the word is just the opposite. We say so-and-so has a quick temper. This means long-tempered. Thumos.

41:13 Macro-thumos. Macro-thumia. A long temper. In other words, instead of a short fuse, it has both a long and a very wet fuse.

Love is Long-Suffering: Applied to Church and Family

41:26 In fact, it has no fuse. It's that described by Solomon when he speaks of the man who is slow to anger, who is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit than he that takes a city. So in summary then, the suffering wrong is the spirit-wrought quality of love that brings a man, a woman, a boy or girl to that place of restraint when his face is slapped, when his shins are kicked, when names are called out, when warm greetings given to another are ignored and spurned, where looks of love and affection that go out to others are met by the icy, chilly, blank stare of evasive, non-looking and shifty eyes. You know anything about that? The heart full of love, walking up to people right in the walls of Trinity Baptist Church, saying, good to see you. There's no sparkle in the eye of the one to whom you say it.

42:46 There's just a very quick, if any, handshake, a glancing meeting of the eyes. You know what that is? That's unrequited love. Your heart is full.

43:03 You can say, I love this brother, I love this sister. And the look in my eyes, and the movement of my arm, and the tone of my voice are all conduits to say, I love you. And I get nothing in return. That's one thing, to walk away and say, well, maybe they had a rough night and were distracted, and bear it patiently and feel the suffering.

43:31 But then, you get the same treatment the next week, and the next, and the next, and the next, until what was one incident becomes a pattern. Ah, now, Paul says, love suffers law. Whatever you're suffering extends over a lengthy period of time. Oh, no, the person, when he sees you, does not go, the person, when he sees you, doesn't, doesn't spit at your feet, but he may as well.

44:13 As far as any tangible reciprocation of love, there is none. Now, if we are to know true Biblical fellowship, we must have the kind of love that's prepared to suffer law under that kind of provocation. Now, I'm not saying eventually that we may not have the responsibility to go to the brother or sister and say, look, the problem may all be with me, it may be with my receptors and my sensors, may all be out of whack, but it appears to me over the last month or two that every time I've greeted you, your eyes have just glanced by mine, your handshake, if I dared call it that, has been as though you were at one-third paralyzed. I've sensed, my brother, that your heart has not gone out with your eyes and your hands. Have I offended you? Please tell me my offense.

45:11 I've done that many a time over the years in this place, so I'm not talking about letting things go forever and never addressing them, but I'm talking about what do you do in the interim period where the case is not clear enough to go? Can you find it in your heart to suffer and to suffer law? Think of God. How many days did He take your stinking, rotten, and snubbing of His claims over you?

45:49 When you sucked in His air and ate the food from His earth and enjoyed the good things of His bounty, and you snubbed Him by your life of self-centered, willful rebellion against His law? How long did God take that from you? He took it 18 years from you. And since that time, I'm ashamed how many times I've partially snubbed Him and partially ignored Him and tragically manifested ingratitude for His saving, keeping, beneficent mercy to me, and yet He has been a long-suffering God. You see, this grace must be operative in any congregation that's going to enjoy true fellowship, while there is still remaining sin. And though our subject as a focused concern is that of the fellowship of the church, I cannot touch on this subject without branching over into the realm of the family. You husbands, when your wife has snapped at you

47:19 where you didn't deserve to be snapped at, you asked a perfectly legitimate question. You didn't know whether you ought to change the oil before or after supper. You said very sweetly, Honey, when is supper ready? And she turned and said, What do you think I am?

47:37 Superwoman? I'm working as hard as I can. She assumed that you were on her back because supper wasn't ready. And I mean, she chewed your head off and spat back your ears in pieces.

47:49 What do you do? Do you stand your ground and start a verbal battle royal in front of the kids? Or do you have the love that suffers long that says, Well, that's not the way my wife usually responds. And I probably should have prefaced my question by saying, Honey, I don't want to put any pressure on you at all.

48:13 I know you've been busy. You've got your plans. But I don't want to disrupt your plans. Do you think I have time to go?

48:20 You see, really, the fault was your stupid way of asking the question. Even for 30 seconds of your wife's carnal response to your question, and you, wife, suppose your husband was insensitive the way he asked this question. Couldn't you suffer a few lines of an insensitive question without blowing your cork and acting like he was ready to hand you over to the county sheriff? In God's name, treat one another that way when both of you say you live and you're not in hell because you're saved by a long-suffering God. Be so ungodly and claim to be saved by a long-suffering God the way some of you couples go at one another's throats or give up your profession of being Christian. They are inconsolable. Can you be so short-fused with your spouse when you say you're saved

49:45 by the long-fused who is long-suffering over us, not willing that we should have perished but were kept alive? Until in grace and mercy he called us in his own way and time into the orbit of his saving mercy in Christ. How can you be saved by a God like that and a God who continues to be long-suffering over you, bearing all of the cheek of your disobedience, bearing all of the insults of your prayerless days, bearing all of the pain of your ingratitude and yet he doesn't cast you off but in the person of his Son intercedes for you day and night, committed to bring you home safely to heaven. How can you be saved by a God like that and claim to have fellowship with a God like that and be so unlike him in the way you deal with your husband and your wife? Your conscience working on your husband? I hope it is.

51:01 Your conscience working on your wives? Or are you sitting there saying, Well, that's what she...

51:09 All right, go ahead. Damn your soul by your rationalizations. But I remind you that he that loveth not knoweth not God. And love is long-suffering.

51:22 And if there is nothing of this long-suffering in your heart, in the real world, of your real man, with the real woman or man to whom you're married, not that fantasy that you say with whom you'd have such an idyllic relation. No. You'd carry your own rotten, stinking heart into that relationship and ruin that one just like you're ruining the one you're in now. The answer's not a different spouse.

51:48 The answer's a different heart. For some of you, perhaps a new heart. For others, a heart that no longer grievously continues to grieve the Holy Spirit by blame-shifting and finger-pointing and self-justification but says, Oh God, your word says, that love suffers long. And oh God, I see that kind of love in you and in your son.

52:19 And I say I'm saved in the virtue of that love. But oh God, I don't have a gram of that kind of love to my wife, to my husband. But oh God, I will. I will!

52:36 And I will to begin to exercise it. Now Lord, you come and do what I cannot do in myself. Work it in me by your grace, by your Spirit. Love suffers.

Love is Kind: Explained

53:03 But then, far more briefly, because it's just the flip side in a positive way, love is kind. The verbal form of this word is found only here in the New Testament. Christ you are mine. Its linguistic cousins, Christos and Christotes, are used about a dozen and a half times.

53:24 So you can, by consulting their usages, get a very clear understanding of the significance of the word. It's used of God in Luke 6.35. And it says, God is kind to all men, saved and unsaved.

53:44 Luke 6 and verse 35 is this word in its substantive or noun form love your enemies, do them good, lend, never despairing, your reward should be great, you should be sons of the Most High, for He is kind, there's our word, to the unthankful and evil. And how is He kind? The parallel passage in Matthew 5, 44 and 45 tells us He sends His rain upon the just and the unjust. He sends His Son upon the just.

54:21 And upon the unjust. It's the word used in Romans 2 and verse 4 with respect to God's continuous kindness to the unconverted. Despisest thou the riches of His goodness and forbearing and longsuffering, knowing not that, here's our word, the goodness of God, the kindness of God, the kindness of God leads you to repentance, you see, the kindness of God is the positive aspect of His longsuffering. He suffers long with our impenitence.

55:01 He bears long with our unbelief, our insulting of His Son, His law and His gospel. But He not only in that marvelously passive grace suffers long, there is the active side of it. He is kind. He stretches out His hand to us and ultimately even the coming of the gospel is described in Titus 3, 4 as the coming forth of the kindness of God.

55:31 The goodness and the kindness of God are manifested in the sending of His only begotten Son. You see, the meaning is clear. It is the other side of love's ability to bear up under injury and provocation over the long haul and while bearing that provocation it stretches out its hand to do good to the very one that is causing the provocation. That's why I said we're going to look at love taking it on the chin while all the while stretching out its hand to the one that strikes us.

56:12 And isn't this exactly what God does to us? The hymn writer captured it in that beautiful hymn, Depth of Mercy. Can there be mercy still reserved for me? I have long withstood His grace, long provoked Him to His face, would not hearken to His calls, grieved Him by a thousand falls.

56:41 There for me the Savior stands, shows His wounds and spreads His hands. God is love. I know, I feel. Jesus weeps and loves me.

56:58 Still, God is no mannequin God who merely bears the insults of our sin and unbelief and rebellion. But He's the living God of infinite kindness who stretches out His hand to those that insult Him, that mock Him, that reject and spurn Him. God can say, all the day long have I stretched out my hands to a gainsaying and disobedient people. It's interesting that the Apostle Paul couples these two things, the makrothumia, the longsuffering, and the chrestates in 2 Corinthians 6.6. He speaks of these two things as marking his ministry. In Galatians 5.22

The Interplay of Long-Suffering and Kindness in Fellowship

57:54 they are put within three words of one another as part of the ninefold fruit of the Spirit. In Romans 2.4 with one word in between they describe God's dealings with impenitent, unregenerate rebels. Now, my brothers and sisters, this is the kind of love which alone will foster true koinonia.

58:22 The love that suffers long and God knows there'll be enough about me and about you to make us all suffer with one another. But if we have this kind of love shed abroad in our hearts by the power of the Spirit of God, we shall indeed suffer long with one another. And we will not merely passively suffer long. We will choose and actively seek ways to do specific acts of kindness to those who make us suffer.

58:59 Love not only suffers long. It is kind. It is beneficent. And it doesn't say it feels kindness.

59:10 It says it is kind. It verbalizes the word that's found everywhere else as a noun. Here alone is it used as a verbal form. Love is engaging in kindness.

Illustration and Final Application: The Widow's Love

59:26 The disposition must clothe itself with deeds. I conclude by reading this true incident that I came across in one of the volumes of sermons on 1 Corinthians 13 that I was reading in preparation for this morning. It's a brief story. The writer, underscoring the necessity of this kind of love, said, The Lord Jesus gave us his own blessed life, in his own blessed life, the example of one who lived all his years amidst ingratitude and enmity and never lost the sweetness out of his spirit.

60:07 He poured out love and then rejected it. He scattered kindness today and tomorrow where forgotten. He helped people in the sorest need and distress, and they turned about and became his maligners. And then he goes on to say that he exemplifies these graces and then gives a beautiful example of it.

60:30 There was a widow whose children had left her one by one to go to the new country. They were in Europe. And she heard each one of them as they leave promise to save money and send for her, quote, very soon. Time passed.

60:48 The children married and had children. But no mention came of sending for the old mother. She longed to see them, but thinking they lacked the means, she saved up enough money herself to pay them a surprise visit. Alas, her reception was the reverse of what she had fondly anticipated.

61:08 Her children who had prospered seemed annoyed at their mother's coming, criticized her old-fashioned dress and speech and had no room for her. The disappointed woman came back and entered a home for the aged where she proved a boy a blessing to all about her, shedding on those around her the love that her own children had rejected. No bitterness remained in the heart of the aged saint. She said, It seems to me that I knew what our Lord suffered, she told a friend, when he came to his own and they gave him the cold shoulder.

61:49 Just think, he came to his own and his own received him not. I can understand how that wounded his loving heart. Yet she could praise God for the experience since it drew her closer to her Savior and made her more compassionate to others. She knew the love that suffered long and is kind.

62:15 Some of us have had to learn it in the crucible of unwarranted slander, vicious, venomous slander. And God would give us no rest until our hearts by His grace were free of any desire to strike back and our hands could joyfully stretch out where appropriate in acts of God. God does suffer long. This is not some noble ideal for heaven, folks. Remember, this was for the Corinthian church in all of its cacophony and jockeying for position and schism and division and immorality and insensitivity. Paul says, what you people need is for your hearts to be suffused with that love which is supreme above all gifts. That love which will never fail.

63:30 That love which suffers long. Do you know that love at work in you today? That means God's going to bring some people across your path who make you suffer and make you suffer for a long time. How else will you see love that suffers long?

63:57 God will put people in your path who don't naturally elicit kindness, who don't draw it out of you as a magnet draws the filings from a piece of iron. There will be everything in them that is abrasive and turns you off. If you can reach out and to do what is in their best interest you are kind to them and you can sit yourself down and look in the mirror and say to yourself there's no explanation for who you are but that God's made you a new creature. If you love those who love you Jesus said, what thank have you?

Call to Prayer and Confession

64:38 Do not even the heathen the same? But when you love your enemies and you do good to those that despitefully use you, curse you, then you know something of the love that suffers long and is kind. And I emphasize again there's not a word about feelings. You can and you must say love and as you set yourself so to love and cry to God and say Lord I cannot unless you implant the grace I must but I cannot I shall but I will not unless you work in me. You will find that God does indeed work in us to willing to work for his good pleasure and by the working of his spirit grant us measures of this part of the nine fold fruit of the spirit without which we cannot really know true biblical fellowship. Above all things put on love which is the bond of perfection. Father we do earnestly pray

66:05 that you would hear the confession of our hearts that we are so unlike you. We confess our wretched touchiness our wretched self-preserving our miserable self-vindication. Lord what in the world have we that's worth vindicating? We acknowledge that we ought to be in hell.

66:33 We acknowledge we have no claims over you but your justice has grave claims over us. We come asking you to forgive us for every sin of lovelessness when we have not had the love that suffered long. We were quick to take offense quick to retaliate quick to nurse a spirit of vengeance and turn our tongues into lances and our looks into daggers. Lord wash us in the blood of your Son.

67:10 Forgive us when we have not been kind when we've had a kind of mannequin-like love that though it did not retaliate it did not reach out and minister to those that would abuse us. Oh God in mercy so work that we may indeed experience measures of that love that suffers long and is kind. We pray for those who in their lostness continue to insult you continue to mock you continue to defy you and yet in mercy you've kept them alive and kept them under the sound of the gospel for another Lord's day. Oh that your goodness would lead them to repentance. Lord would it not melt them down in brokenness at your feet crying for grace and for mercy. Seal your word to every one of our hearts and help us to live it out even through the remainder of this day. We ask

68:20 in Jesus name. Amen.