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Monday 29 June 2020

Daily Devotions for Difficult Days [104] Sonnet of Love (14) Love always Protects


A Lesson in Greek

My Greek teacher got the class to read through Mark's Gospel, one student chapter after another. When we were struggling with pronunciation she said that she did not mind how we pronounced a word as long as we were consistent.

Why was she not bothered? Because no-one today knows how the Greek word was pronounced 2000 years ago! There can be no "right" or "wrong" pronunciation.

Today we're in a Greek predicament of  a different kind.

As we make our way through Paul's Sonnet of Love, the NIV  says "Love always protects." But the NIV is pretty much on its own, because most translators say this:

"bears all things"
"love never gives up"
"love bears all things"
"love bears all things"

rather than the NIV's

"Love always protects"

What do we do when translators disagree with each other? I know this is a devotional, dear reader, but we shall have to pause for a moment to ponder this pickle.

One approach is to lift one translation to the status of judge of all the others. For example, we could call the NIV the "Nearly Inspired Version" and condemn the others as being "wrong." "Love always protects" is right, "love bears up" is wrong.

But all the other translations quoted above have come from Bible-believing evangelical, faithful, confessional stables. Not a half-soaked liberal in sight. So this "my translation is best" approach is completely unaceptable - translation is always a human effort; only the original is divine, no translation ever produced can claim perfection or priority, though no doubt some are better than others.

The other approach is to compare how the same word is translated in other parts of the Bible.

The Greek word used in 1 Corinthians 13:7  is stegei, which means "to cover closely (so as to keep water out)." It can mean "I cover, conceal, ward off, bear with, endure patiently."

The word is only used four times in the New Testament, here in 1 Corinthians 13 and....

1 Corinthians 9:12, "If others have this right of support from you, shouldn’t we have it all the more? But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ."

1 Thessalonians 3:1, "So when we could stand it no longer, we thought it best to be left by ourselves in Athens.

1 Thessalonians 3:5, "For this reason, when I could stand it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith."

Clearly, in the other three passages, the word has been translated as meaning "bearing up or putting up for a long time."

So we can understand all those translations that say "love bears all things."

But persevering bearing up love appears on its own later in Paul's list, "love always perseveres," so it could be that the translators of the NIV thought, "If we translate stegei "bears up" here, then isn't Paul repeating himself?"

And so they chose the other - perfectly legitimate - translation, stegei means "love always protects." After all, the word does mean to cover something up, protect it. 

Love always Protects

One of my former pastors rebuked a Christian lady in public. We were all getting on a bus (do you remember those now-quaint church picnic outings?)The lady - in front of everyone - criticised her husband sharply. My former pastor rebuked her for disrespecting her husband in public.

My pastor was right, for "love always protects." Should he have done it "in public" for all in the vicinity to hear? Yes, because the offense was in public and my pastor did not want his flock to think that rebuking your spouse in public was acceptable Christian behaviour.

What "protect" does not mean

So what does "love always protects" mean? If a wife endures physical abuse (or a husband endures verbal abuse - it happens) and they do nothing about it because they are "protecting" the abuser, that is not what Paul has in mind.

Husbands are called to love their wives and wives are called to submit to their husbands, and help ought to be sought when flagrant breaches of that covenant persist either way.

If an individual or a family cause consistent trouble in a church, overlooking that individual or family is not obeying "love always protects."

What "protect" does mean

So what does it mean, "love always protects?" Do you remember how Jesus handled Peter after his thrice-failure? In the company of all the disicples, after a meal, Jesus did not say, "Peter you let me down three times." Instead he gently said to him - three times so that Peter got the point - "Do you love me?"

What a beautiful example of love's protection. My guess is that no-one but Peter knew what was happening; Jesus protected Peter because he loved him.

To protect someone is not to expose or parade their weaknesses, foibles and mistakes, but to hide them, put up with them and to bear with them.

We must protect others in our speech and on social media too.

Does not the Lord do that with us? How often we fail him but he does not emblazen our faults in the sky or text our weaknesses to our friends.

A SONG FOR THE DAY

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.
His mercies never have come to an end;
They are new every morning,
New every morning:
Great is Thy faithfulness, O Lord,
Great is Thy faithfulness!

You can sing along HERE.

A PRAYER FOR THE DAY

Our loving Father in heaven,

Thank you that you always protect us. When the prodigal returned home, we read, the father did not publicly list all of his sins, as the older brother did, but protected him and forgave him freely.

This is what you do with us, you do not parade our sins in public but hide them in the depths of the sea.

How wonderful is your love for us!

Forgive us for our failure to love like this.

Teach us to love others in the same way, to always protect them, to never expose their weaknesses, but to speak only what is good about them.

We ask you this in the name of Jesus

Amen

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