The Big little word "All"
The twelfth item in Paul's description of divine love is, in the NIV, "love always hopes." Here is where a literal translation is helpful. Four times in a row Paul says "all."
Here's the ESV:
Love "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." (1 Corinthians 13:7)
The NIV uses the word "always" instead of the word "all" to capture the everlasting time-nature of what Paul is teaching. Paul is saying that love keeps on bearing, keeps on believing, keeps on hoping, keeps on enduring. He means to tell us that love never gives up - he will write that explicitly in a moment, "love never fails."
"All" may be a small word, but it's a really Big Idea.
Covenantal Love
Fathers give up hope on their kids. Husbands give up hope on their wives. Wives give up hope on their husbands. Neighbours give up hope on neighbours. Christians give up hope on their churches.
But divine love always hopes and never gives up: "always." The reason? Divine love is based on a covenant, a binding agreement that God makes with sinners. A covenant "signed in blood" if you will, the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, when he suffered to take away our sins.
God's love does not depend on emotions. God's love does not depend on circumstances. God's love does not depend on the behaviour of the one loved.
God does not love us less when we have let him down. He does not love us more when we are "good." His love is steadfast.
Love always Hopes
So what does Pual mean when he says divine love always hopes?
Any parent of a drug addict knows exactly what Paul is referring to today. Parents love their children and are torn to pieces when they start on drugs. Numerous times on the journey they bail them out. Numerous times the addict says "this is the last time;" "I will never ask for money again;" "I will keep this job."
It would be so easy to give up hope, and declare "we've come to the end of the road, they will never change, we give up." And parents have done that.
But divine love hopes against all hope.
Does this make divine love foolish? After all, some people never change - that is a fact. No, because even the drug addict needs to know that someone hopes in him or her. The very fact that someone perseveres with you and continues to hope against all hope, gives you hope. Hope is infectious. Hope births hope. The moment someone loses hope in you, you lose hope in change.
Summing it All Up
Is there someone you are on the verge of saying about, "I give up on them? There is no way they will change, no chance they will repent?" If we are to love as God loves, we can't give up on them, we must continue to hope.
Sometimes, of course, the hope challenge is more about our impatience. We want people to change must faster than they can, faster than the Spirit of God has planned to work.
To always hope therefore is also to repent of impatience.
A SONG FOR THE DAY
God of grace, I turn my face to You; I cannot hide
My nakedness, my shame,
my guilt, are all before Your eyes.
Strivings and all anguished dreams in rags lie at my feet,
And only grace provides
the way for me to stand complete.
And Your grace clothes me in righteousness,
And Your mercy covers me in love.
Your life adorns and beautifies.
I stand complete in You.
Chris Bowater
Sing along HERE
A PRAYER FOR TODAY
Our loving father in heaven,
We thank you for the unworldly nature of your love. How much higher, how much better, how much deeper is divine love.
We thank you that you always hope in us.
We pray that by your Spirit you would teach us to always hope in others, even when there seems to be no good reason to hope on.
Teach us these things so that our love might more closely resemble the love of the Lord Jesus for us,
In whose name we pray,
Amen.
Photo by Rosie Kerr on Unsplash
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