The Definition of Love, Part 1

Tom Shrader works through 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, arguing that love is not a feeling or abstraction but a visible, active commitment demonstrated in everyday relationships. He examines patience, kindness, jealousy, bragging, and arrogance as Paul's concrete markers of what love is and is not, drawing on personal stories and a letter from a church member to illustrate sacrificial care in marriage. He closes by connecting these qualities to the fruit of the Spirit, challenging Christians to live supernaturally rather than defaulting to self-preservation.

“Love is not passive, it's active, it's tangible, it's visible — I ought to be able to demonstrate my love for you.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: The Definition of Love

Recorded: 2001 at East Valley Bible Church

Duration: 45 min

Themes: love, patience, kindness, marriage, relationships, fruit of the spirit, selflessness, pride, struggling with selfishness, husband, wife, navigating conflict, new believer, married couple, feeling unloved, young adult

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, 1 Corinthians 13:8-13, 1 Corinthians 4:18, 1 John 3:18, James 3:14-16, John 1:27, John 3:30, Ephesians 5:22-33

Theological Themes: agape love, sanctification, fruit of the spirit, biblical love, self-denial, pneumatology, sacrificial love, christian ethics

Full Transcript

Review of the Supremacy of Love

We are in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, known simply as the love chapter. This chapter falls into three segments. Verses 1 through 3 address the supremacy of love. Verses 4 through 7 address the definition of love, which we begin to examine today. Verses 8 through 13 address the permanence of love.

Paul wrote these words concerning the supremacy of love: "If I speak with the tongues of men and angels, but I do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, if I know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but I do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but I do not have love, it profits me nothing."

What Paul is doing here is not in any way diminishing the importance of gifts. He is not de-emphasizing or minimizing them — those are all significant. What Paul is saying is that as important as gifts are, love is supremely important, and without it you are deficient.

Notice the phrase that repeats itself three times. If I do not have love, verse 1 says, I am just making a bunch of racket — just making a lot of noise. If I do not have love, verse 2 says, I am nothing. Verse 3 is particularly strong: the word "give" there means to give in a systematic way. If I respond systematically, giving away everything I own, and I even present my body as a sacrifice — ready to die for my faith if necessary — and yet I do not have love, it does not do me any good.

What Paul is saying is that for ministry to honestly take place, there has to be love in the heart of the minister. When we use words like minister and ministry, we are talking about servants — not someone who is paid to do this, but every Christian. In your specific life, there will be no ministry if the heart of the servant is not prepared and if that servant is not marked by love.

Defining Love

Today we want to try to define love. A search of the word "love" on the internet yields over seventeen million entries, and even a brief glance at the first page — a site called lovingyou.com — reveals hundreds of user-submitted love quotes. One says, "When it rains, look for a rainbow." Another: "To see unconditional love, look in the eyes of a child, especially one you have just denied something to." Another: "Love is like a rose, the special one that grows in winter." And then this one: "Love and electricity are one in the same, my dear. If you do not feel the jolt in your soul every time a kiss is shared, a whisper is spoken, a touch is felt, then you are not really in love at all."

There are 2,700 of these quotes on that page. One reads: "A failing love is like desperately hanging on to something precious, not wanting to give up, but your hands feel the pain, and when you finally let go, you are free from the pain, but your hands are empty." Then a man weighs in: "Love is like a rhinoceros. It is short-sighted and hasty. If it cannot find a way, it will make a way." And finally: "For a while I thought I would never love or hate anyone. I have come to realize that I have loved and hated the same person." And: "I cannot live with you, I cannot live without you."

Paul's definition, by contrast, is concrete. Verses 4 through 7 read: "Love is patient, love is kind, and it is not jealous. Love does not brag and is not arrogant. It does not act unbecomingly. It does not seek its own. It is not provoked. It does not take into account a wrong suffered. It does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."

What we get from this is that love is far more than a feeling or something abstract. Are there emotions and feelings attached to love? Obviously there are. Anyone who has watched someone newly in love knows the giddiness, the sprint to answer the phone, all those little things. But by and large, we are reminded that love is not passive — it is active, tangible, and visible. We ought to be able to demonstrate love. Writing a poem is fine, but love must be backed up with action. Love is an active word.

Love Is Patient

So Paul begins to define love. The first thing he says is: love is patient. Some translations will say long-suffering or long-tempered. One commentator writes: "Like the agape love itself, the patience spoken of in the New Testament was a virtue only among Christians. In the Greek world, self-sacrificing love and non-avenging patience were considered weakness, unworthy of noble men and women." Aristotle, for example, taught that the great Greek virtue was the refusal to tolerate insult or injury and to strike back in retaliation.

Love as Patience with People

Retaliation for the slightest offense was once considered a virtue. The world has always tended to make heroes out of those who fight back, who stand up for their own welfare and rights above all else. But love — God's love — is the very opposite. Its primary concern is for the welfare of others, not itself. It is much more willing to be taken advantage of than to take advantage, let alone avenge. Love does not retaliate.

The word translated "patience" carries a meaning that applies almost exclusively to patience with people — not dealing with circumstances, but dealing with individuals. It means, "I am hanging in there with people." A great way to remember it is this: I am long-suffering. I am patient with that person. I will wait and wait and wait for God to do His work in that person's life.

Application Across All Relationships

What struck me as I put this together was that we are going to touch a lot of nerves with this lesson. It expands to all relationships — at work, at the club, in every relationship. But ultimately, you are going to look at it most specifically in the husband-wife relationship. What you see before you is God's prescription for true love, real love. This is what love looks like. This is how you know whether you are a lover or not.

Inevitably, what happens — and I anticipated this — is that people will send emails and make calls, because we are going to talk about kindness and gentleness and all of this, and people are going to say, "But my situation is not like that." You need to understand that the vows themselves anticipate difficulties: for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. The commands apply precisely when they are hard to obey.

"Wives, submit to your husbands." But what if he is making bad decisions? Well, it would seem to me that is exactly when submitting becomes a challenge — it would not be that hard the other times, would it? "Husbands, love your wife." But what if she is not responding? I think that is exactly what God has in mind. Love her. Nurture her. Whether she is responding or not is not the issue.

The issue for me is not whether Susan responds, and for Susan, it is not whether I respond. The issue for each of us is: Am I the husband I am supposed to be? Is Susan the wife she is supposed to be? That is the deal.

Renewing Vows After Thirty-Seven Years

I want to share something that happened on Friday. I will admit I thought it was going to be a little strange at first. I received a call from a couple who do not attend this church — they are in a PL study connected with another church — but they have really enjoyed the studies and they said they wanted to renew their vows. I assumed they would want to do it at their home or gather some people together. The husband said no, they wanted to do it at the church. I said fine, and asked when. They said Friday at three. I said fine, and asked about guests. He said no, there would just be the three of us. I thought, really? This is going to be strange.

So I agreed, not having anything planned. I figured something would happen when I got there. She arrived with all these wedding pictures, and it was beautiful — there they were as a young couple walking down the aisle, taking their vows. We sat there for forty minutes as they told me their story, and the whole time I was thinking, what am I going to do here?

Finally I said, let me go get the book I use for weddings and simply read from that. So we sat together and I walked through the ceremony, skipping the processional and getting to the message. I talked about a few things — how it is absolutely essential that you not attempt to have the other person meet all your needs, because only God can do that. How you must understand that marriage provides almost infinite opportunities to forgive. How you must yield to the other person, and share your dreams and your life with one another.

As I was speaking, the husband moved closer and put his arm around her, and she placed her hand on his leg. It was incredible to watch unfold. They said, "You know, those young people getting married cannot possibly understand what you are saying yet. Coming back to this now is so meaningful — it is such a great reminder."

The sanctuary was already set up for a wedding the following day, so I said, why don't we go up and do the vows at the front? We went up, and there was a kneeling bench there. They knelt down facing each other, and I said, let us do the vows — repeat after me. "I, Jim." And he started to cry. "I, Jim." Then she said, "I, Cheryl." They were both in tears. And then he said, let me — and from memory he recited Ephesians 5:22 through the end of the chapter. We took communion together. It was unbelievable. It was so good.

I went home and told Susan about it, and she asked, "Does that make you want to do it?" I said, "Oh, no." But it was really moving — I had not anticipated it at all. We started talking about the vows and about the fact that, being a little older now, those vows carried a different meaning. "In sickness and in health" — you get a little stiff now. "For better, for worse" — they have lived so much of it together.

Love Is Patient

Patience is active and real. As 1 John 3:18 says, "Little children, let us not love in word or with a tongue, but in deed and in action." The idea is to love even when being inconvenienced, even when being taken advantage of.

I received an email this week from Melinda McCrane, and she happens to be in this service. I didn't know she would be, but that doesn't change anything — I'm still going to read it. Melinda has gone through three surgeries in the last six or seven weeks. Her husband Sam, who heads up the children's ministry team here, had chest pains Friday night and was taken to the hospital, so he's there even now and should be out today or tomorrow.

Here is what Melinda wrote to me on Thursday: "Hi Tom. Well, I'm finally back home and I feel much better than I did in the hospital. I'm hoping to be at church this Sunday, but we'll wait and see how it goes. I'm anxious to hear your message from last Sunday on love. I was thinking about the fact that you'd be teaching on that while I was spending Sunday in a very comfortable — yeah, right — hospital bed. And while I was laying there, I thought of some of the things I wanted to share with you."

"I felt an overwhelming love from the body of East Valley Bible Church ever since this whole ordeal started. I've received so many letters and cards and expressions of concern and I've treasured them all. God has truly used His people to show me love in so many ways as I make my way through the surgeries and treatments. The number of prayers being offered up to the throne of God on my behalf is unbelievable."

"But the most overwhelming show of love has been from Sam. I think it's easy to assume that a husband would naturally show love to a wife, but this goes beyond that. I am moved to tears to think of all that he's done for me to this point. My hospital stay put him over the top on the love scale. He cared for me in a way that no one ever has. Every need I had, he met, and he met it with joy. Even when I took out my frustrations on him, he responded in gentleness and love."

"He took on the role of my personal nurse, choosing to care for me instead of taking the easy road and just letting the nurses, who were strangers to us, do everything. He spent all but a few hours at the hospital with me and slept on a very uncomfortable couch in my room. He helped me in and out of bed. He held my hand as I attempted to walk through the pain. He dried my tears when it hurt. He even gave me baths, got my juice and blankets from the nurses' station. He changed the sheets on my bed several days that I was there."

That last one gets back to something I mentioned a while ago — I changed a bed this year and it was really hard. That's a long story, but that's the gist of it.

"He protected me from evil night nurses. He helped restrict visitors when I was too tired. He did things that were small errands as well as things he never dreamt he'd have to do. All I could think of was that this was truly what 1 Corinthians 13 means. He was patient and kind and didn't want his own way. His thoughts and his time were devoted to my care."

"Seeing God work through my husband has been a source of unending joy for me. I saw in him the level of love that I should have for him every day — and for that matter, the kind of love I should have for everyone. I don't think I'm even doing a good job of explaining the love and the extent of his willingness to do anything for me. But I look at him with new eyes now."

"I am thankful for all that God is doing during a time that most people would consider a nightmare in my life. But the fact that I was privileged to see the love of God pouring out of my husband is one of the greatest blessings of all. It wasn't the love of just a husband caring for his wife — it was God using one of His children to comfort another. It's so amazing what God teaches us when we aren't expecting it, isn't it?"

That is exactly what we are talking about. Love is patient. There is a sense in which you would expect a husband to care for his wife, but there is a point at which it goes over the edge. Love is long-suffering — not just when somebody is physically ill, but when somebody is simply unbearable. You are still there.

Love Is Kind

Not only is love patient, love is also kind. Kindness means to be useful, to be gracious — sweet to all, as one author writes, courteous and pleasant to people.

The first test of whether you are kind, and I think the greatest test, is home. We can all go into a room with others, set a table, and sit down to eat with a "please" and "thank you, that was very good." The environment at home is very different. I was with a man last week and he said to me, "I don't understand why I'm kinder to a waitress I don't know in a restaurant than I am to my wife that I love."

The Mills Brothers captured this perfectly in the mid-1930s. Here is what they wrote in one of their songs: "You always hurt the one you love, the one you shouldn't hurt at all. You always take the sweetest rose and crush it till the petals fall. You always break the kindest heart with a hasty word you can't recall." And then the conclusion: "So if I broke your heart last night, it's because I love you most of all." The reason I'm a jerk, apparently, is that I really care. That is a fascinating piece of reasoning.

Kindness is patience moving into action — being pleasant with people. Now Paul begins to list things that love is not, what you might call love blockers. These are the things that can stop kindness and disrupt patience.

Love Is Not Jealous

The first love blocker is jealousy. Love is not jealous. The word means to have a strong desire, and it is used both in a positive and a negative sense throughout Scripture, but here it is clearly used in the negative sense. James writes in James 3...

Love Is Not Jealous

This jealousy manifests itself in two ways. One, a person wanting something that another person has. Two, a person not wanting you to have what you have — not because they want it, but simply not wanting you to have it. That second one is worse than the first. The first is simply envy: I want what you have.

Envy is not just of material things, although it may be. It may be jealousy of a car, a house, or a lifestyle. It may be jealousy of a relationship, a skill, a talent, an intellect, or a beauty. At our first service this morning we did a baby dedication. Jeff and Sherry Grimes dedicated Bailey. Jeff is one of the linebacker coaches over at ASU, and he looks like one — he is a huge, giant man, very young, very handsome, very chiseled. When he spoke, it was like God would speak.

I thought this has got to be very hard for this guy to sit here every week, watch me, and not have envy. He has got to be sitting there saying, "Man, I wish that was me. I wish I looked like that. It'd be easier to get under doors." Somebody sent me some statistics the other day on cosmetic surgery and just how it is exploding — people saying, "I want to look like her," bringing in a picture and saying, "Make me look like her."

Years ago I went to a woman to get my hair cut, and she asked how I wanted it cut. I told her I wanted it cut like a friend who had recommended her, because his hair always looked so good. She said, "You know why his hair looks good? Because he has great hair. You know what you have? You have stringy, thin hair. You are not going to look like him." His follicles are what I am jealous of. And it is destructive.

Something even more hideous is when you have something and I do not want you to have it — not because it is something I want, but simply because I do not like the fact that you have it and receive recognition for it. I do not want to see you do well. We used to have a saying at Coal Banker that the next best thing to making a deal is seeing someone else lose one. Love is not like that. Love is seeking the best for the other person. Love is not jealous.

Love Does Not Brag

Two more things this morning. Love does not brag — it is not braggadocious. It is the only time that word is used in the New Testament. In a sense, what we are trying to do when we brag is make others jealous of us. What we are doing is lifting ourselves up, and by that very action putting other people down.

There is a man I speak with regularly — however infrequently, since I never call him, he always calls me. It is literally impossible for him to go sixty seconds, in those first sixty seconds, without telling me who he has been with, what he has done, and where he has been. I cannot stand it. Everybody hates it. And you know why? Because we all have a little of it in us. The natural thing is simply to brag.

William Carey is thought of as the father of modern missions, and here is the attitude to have. He was a bright man, especially in the area of languages, and he translated the Bible into thirty-four dialects or languages. He was raised in a very simple home in England and ultimately made his way to India. One evening there he was dining at a party, seated next to a nobleman, who said, "I understand, Mr. Carey, that you were once a shoemaker." "Oh no, my lordship," Carey replied, "I was not a shoemaker, just a shoe repairman. You see, I could not make one — I could only fix them. Those men who made them, they are really talented."

There is something so supernatural about that kind of humility, and that is why I come back to it. Our natural impulse is to inflate ourselves, to promote either you thinking more of us or us somehow feeling better than you.

Keith Erickson — some of you know Keith. Keith played on a couple of national championship teams at UCLA in basketball and then went into the NBA, played several years for the Suns, and won a title with the Lakers. John Wooden called Keith Erickson the best athlete he ever coached. Keith is 6'6" and actually went to UCLA on a half-baseball, half-basketball scholarship. He was a shortstop at 6'6", so you know he is a marvelous athlete.

We were having lunch one day, and I said to him, "I know you are a great athlete and I know you played baseball. I am surprised — weren't you raised in Southern California? I am surprised you did not play volleyball." He said, "Well, I did play some volleyball." I said, "Did you play volleyball at UCLA?" He said, "Yeah." I asked whether he then went into basketball or baseball, since there is not much left professionally in volleyball. He said, "No, I did not play professionally." I asked if he played anything after that, and he said, "Yeah, I won a gold medal in the Olympics."

I am thinking: if I won a gold medal in the Olympics, I am wearing it. It is right here. You have seen the picture of me with the gold medal, and there is my gold medal. Everything in me wants to get that out. And Keith was just so cool about it — he simply let it come out quietly, without fanfare.

Love Is Not Arrogant

A good friend of mine, Charlie Hickox, swam in the 1968 Olympics and won three gold medals and a silver medal. Whenever we are out and someone doesn't know Charlie, I'll introduce him and then say, "You may not know it, but Charlie won a silver medal in the 1968 Olympics." That's all I say. It's incredible to watch, because they'll respond, "A silver medal? That's pretty incredible. What was it in?" And you can just see Charlie thinking, "I won three golds too" — but how do you get that into the conversation without looking like a jerk? That is my very favorite thing to do, and sometimes I just let it sit there. I'm not kidding — laminated in my pocket is a picture of me with those medals.

Love doesn't do that. The last thing we'll look at this morning is that love is not arrogant. Its synonym is proud, haughty, and it is always important to remember context: that was a problem in the church at Corinth. In 1 Corinthians 4:18, Paul says, "Some of you have become arrogant." You've started to think you're really something, that you're better than other people.

Here's the ministry application. I am never going to minister, never going to genuinely serve someone I think I'm better than. I may serve pridefully, but it will never be real service — it will always be out of responsibility, duty, or hoping you notice me. This is a heart check. What's in the heart?

John the Baptist: The Model of Humility

Consider John the Baptist. Jesus says no one greater has ever lived than John the Baptist. Take Moses, Abraham, Joseph, Elijah — get them all together. None of them greater than John the Baptist. Yet as Jesus comes onto the scene, John says in John 1:27, *"It is He who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie."* He's saying he's not even worthy to perform the most menial task for Him.

Don't sterilize this — try to be honest. John has a ministry, he is very popular, he is the main figure on the scene, and along comes Christ. That would be very hard for most people. Yet what does John say? In John 3:30: *"He must increase, and I must decrease."* There is the essence of service right there.

Your number one besetting sin — and I guarantee this, I may not know you at all, but I know this about you — is pride. What about me? How is this going to affect me? What does this mean for me? And in the context where Paul is talking about the supremacy of love over gifts, what he is saying is that you are never going to be a real servant, never going to use your gift in a beneficial way, if you have arrogance in your heart, or if you are bragging, or if you are jealous.

How These Qualities Shape Every Relationship

When we think of all the qualities of love Paul portrays here, we can see them realized, actualized, and incarnated in the life of Jesus Himself. When you say you want to be like Christ, what does that mean? For us, it means wanting to look like Him — to have present in our lives the same characteristics that were present in His life. That means patience and kindness, not being envious or jealous, not bragging, not being arrogant, not saying "look at me."

This is why relationships have problems. You can bring in just about any married couple who are struggling, and somewhere in there is a violation of these very principles. You have a wife who is not submitting, or a husband who is not loving — that's it. It manifests in different ways, but that is the core of the problem.

Think about what a marriage could look like. If all I think about and all I'm concerned about is meeting Susan's needs regardless of how she responds, and if she is concerned only about meeting my needs regardless of how I respond, how can that marriage not be exciting and vibrant? The same is true of any relationship.

Friendship and the Natural Self

Let me expand this for a moment. Maybe you are someone who simply doesn't have many friends. A man came up to me a while ago and said, "Will you be my friend?" And I told him I didn't have time, that I was too busy. He said he couldn't find a friend. Do you know what I told him? Why don't you make a list of the characteristics you're looking for in a friend, write them all down — and then rather than going on a search to find a person like that, why don't you be like that? Because if you are like that, it will be like bees to honey.

If nobody wants to spend time with you and nobody wants to be around you, I would guess you are probably not patient and probably not kind. You probably are jealous, you probably do brag, and you probably are arrogant. And the truth is, that is the natural way to live. Looking out for yourself is the most natural thing in the world.

Living Supernaturally, Not Naturally

Barry made a comment that I've heard him make before, and I love it. He said the reason capitalism works is that it's the only economic system in the world that acknowledges the depravity of man. It assumes that you're going to get the best deal for yourself that you possibly can. It assumes that when I pay this price, you're getting as much out of me as you possibly can. That's the natural way things work.

But God says, don't live naturally — live supernaturally. If you're sitting here saying, "I can't live this way," then what it probably means is you aren't a Christian. Or you've underestimated the power that you have. If you're a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit living in you, and He produces the fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. There it is.

So if you say, "I can't live this way," what you're really saying is you don't want to live that way — because you can. You're a Christian. You have the power of the Holy Spirit in you.

Closing and Prayer

I want to encourage you to join us Wednesday night. It's a time for us to come together, thank God for who He is, for what He does, and what He's done. It will take less than an hour — we'll worship together and set the table, so to speak, for real Thanksgiving on Thursday morning.

Father, help us see this truth and let us live this way. God, thank You for Jesus. Thank You that He didn't just say, "Go do this" — He did it. Thank You for John the Baptist, who understood that Jesus must increase and we must decrease, and that people must see more of Him in us. God, I confess to You these are not natural instincts for me — to be patient and kind. My natural instinct is to preserve and protect myself. That's why I ask You, God, to help me yield and submit, to be the man, the husband, the father, the friend, the person that You would have me be. God, would You do that work in my life. I ask it in Jesus' name, amen.