In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul describes the kind of love that we should show our neighbors and each other. In this series of articles, I propose to examine Paul’s description verse by verse, beginning with the verse, “Love is patient and kind.”
Someone who is patient, has patience, “the ability to accept delay, suffering, or annoyance without complaining or becoming angry.” They are able to prevent themselves from saying or doing things that do not show self-control, good judgment, or kindness to others. They are slow to lose their temper and do not hurt others out of frustration with them. They put up with other people’s failings and mistakes.
Someone who is kind behaves in friendly and pleasant way toward us. When we interact with them, we may feel happy and comfortable. Kind people have an attitude, or they act in a way, which shows that they like people and want people to like and trust them. They are generous and helpful and show a genuine caring for other people and sincere thought for their feelings. They are open and honest and not secretive.
Kind people treat people with respect. They show the admiration that they feel for us. They are not only polite to us, but it is also evident from how they act and speak that we are important to them. They take time to listen to us. Indeed, they may give more of their time than is usual or expected.
Kind people are sympathetic. They show especially by what they say that they understand and care about our problems or suffering. They are supportive. They are active in not only giving us help but also offering us encouragement.
Kind people see the good in us. They do not focus on our bad qualities or our faults. Kind people do not look down us, act or speak as if they are better than us, and treat us as unimportant. Kind people try to put themselves in our place as well as to understand how we may feel.
What struck me as I was putting together this list of qualities was that when it comes to these qualities, most of us are a mixed bag: bad qualities are mixed in with good ones. We may aspire to be patient and kind, but we may at times fall short. Our intentions are good, but we do come across as patient or kind as we might have liked.
It brought to mind Jesus’ words about not being critical and judgmental, making allowances, and measuring others by the same measure as we would wish to be measured by them. It also brought to mind his words about removing the log from our own eye before helping someone else to remove the speck of sawdust from their eye. And treating other people exactly as we would wish to be treated by them.
We may think to ourselves that our friend Sally Ann could be more loving towards us, more patient with us, and kinder with us. We hint in a roundabout way, in a way that is not simple, direct, or quick, that Sally Ann could more loving, more patient, and kinder. We may come out and directly say it. At the same time, we forget that we could more loving, more patient, and kinder with Sally Ann.
Before we go around, telling other people how patient and kind we are, we might want to examine our interactions with other people more closely. Are we really being patient with them? Are we really being kind to them?
Jesus taught us to love our neighbor as our self. Or, as John Wesley put it, to love everyone as our own soul.
Jesus also taught us to love our enemies. To paraphrase John Wesley again, we love our enemies and the enemies of God. And if it is not within our power to do good to those who hate us, we do not cease from praying for them, even though they spurn our love and still out of anger toward us misuse and mistreat us.
Love, Wesley tells us, purifies us of unkind attitudes and feelings. It cleanses us of pride which leads only to arguments and disagreements. In their place we become more merciful, kinder, humbler of mind, meeker, and more long-suffering.
Most importantly Jesus taught to love one another. What Jesus is saying is that we are to like each other very much and to treat each other in a way that reflects our strong liking for one another. Jesus is not talking about being romantically and sexually attracted to one another. We live in a culture that tends to think of love in terms of romantic and sexual attraction and we, whether or not we recognize it, are influenced by our culture.
Jesus is talking about the kind of love that we would have for a family member or relation or a friend. We have affection and concern for them. We care about them deeply.
We do not want them to have a lot of trouble with things that hurt them or to have to deal with a lot of hurtful things that cause problems. We do not want anything bad or harmful thing to happen to them. At the same time, we have friendly and helpful feelings toward them, a friendly attitude in which we wish good things happen to them.
We want them to grow and flourish as a human being and a brother or sister in Christ. We want them to blossom.
We may hope good feelings blossom between us and them and they may develop and become stronger.
We do not see them in as bad a light as they might think we do, and we hope they will not see us in a bad light too. Rather we can be ourselves and love another as Jesus wants us to.
I must give the Cambridge English Dictionary a lot of credit for the explanation of the meaning of words and phrases used in this article. It uses simple and clear language, and I have developed an affection, a feeling of liking, for this particular dictionary.
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