Every local church and ministry needs to remember that it is by this great qualification—love—that God assesses all our giftedness and service. It is no exaggeration to say that without these characteristics, a church will drift away from its mission and may even disintegrate. So while we can be known for any number of things, let us be known always as people who seriously, humbly, and realistically ask the Spirit of God to make our hearts and minds so full of love that it will overflow into the church and the world.

Though 1 Corinthians 13 is largely regarded as a cozy part of the Bible, a closer look reveals that these “feel-good” verses confront us, humble us, and begin to show us that the things we think matter most are not what matter most to God.
The church in Corinth faced circumstances from within that threatened its existence. So, in 1 Corinthians 13, Paul showed the church “a still more excellent way” (1 Cor. 12:31)—that is, the way of love, of agapē, rooted in the very character of God and revealed in the life of Jesus Christ. It is only by growing in Christlike love that the Corinthians could grow in Christian maturity and effectively handle such difficult situations.
Paul describes the beauty of God’s love with fifteen characteristics, like the facets of a diamond. His emphasis here is not so much upon what love is as what love does. Love behaves itself in a certain way. It is not only felt but acted on. And these actions and attitudes are to be habitual in the lives of those who love as God does.
Each facet of this Christlike love is worth taking a moment to meditate on. In a previous article, we considered the first eight. In this article, we consider the latter seven.
Love Keeps No Record of Wrong
Think of how the Lord Jesus has treated us:
Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,and whose sins are covered;blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. (Rom. 4:7–8)
The Lord will not count forgiven sin! When we enter His presence, He’s not going to run the video and show it to us all over again. And when we try to play it back ourselves, the Lord essentially says, “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
One of the great skills in life is learning what to forget. When people come to confess sin to us, we need to remember the grace God has shown us in response to the enormity of our offenses. Surely, then, we ought to forgive and do our best to forget the offenses done against us. When love invades a life, harboring a record of wrongs received ceases. Love knows there are greater truths worth remembering.
Love Does Not Rejoice in Evil
Human nature is intrigued by evil. To a certain extent, people seem even to enjoy witnessing evil, especially in others. The covers of newspapers and magazines are filled with adultery, indecency, cheating, lies, corruption, and filth because men and women have an appetite for it. But such hunger is inconsistent with godly love.
One of the primary ways Christians fall into the trap of delighting in the murky and sordid is in gossip—often even under the cover of prayer. When we gossip in this way, we violate agapē love by gloating over the sins and shortcomings of others.
Paul says that when the transforming love of Christ marks a fellowship, it’s going to make us the kind of people who do not rejoice when evil is exalted but turn their attention to better things: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil. 4:8). The challenge is clear: we ought to gauge our reading, viewing, speaking, and listening habits by this measure.
Love Rejoices with the Truth
J. B. Phillips gives us a wonderful paraphrase of verse 6b: love, he says, “is glad with all good men when truth prevails.” Love cannot rejoice when truth is denied. Love and righteousness cannot be separated. There is no love that is indifferent to moral considerations.
This is one of the ways cultural ideas of love fall short.
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When the news stirs fear in you, do not choose distraction and pretend all is well.  Instead, hide in a healthy way – running into the fortress that is our God.  That is, our God, the God of angel armies, the God who has chosen to be with us.

For several generations, some of us have lived with relative stability.  Yes, our cultures have shifted and changed.  And yes, we have seen our military forces participate in conflict.  But seismic shifts that rock our world have not been so familiar to many of us.  The past few years have changed that.  If the world can change so suddenly, then maybe we would do well to be ready for significant events.  Actually, if we are involved in church leadership, we should be both preparing our people for the future and preparing ourselves for major moments that will surely come.
Recently, my wife and I enjoyed another anniversary and took some time together in Psalm 46.  This is a great passage to soak in for your own benefit.  And it is a great passage to be ready to share with others both before and when the need arises.  It is a Psalm of healthy hiding.
When the constant stream of news is suddenly shattered by something genuinely significant, where can we go?  When the normal rhythm of daily tasks grinds to a halt because something huge is happening, how can we find safety?  And when we look beyond the normal news narrative and see such significant and terrible agendas at play, who can be trusted?  Psalm 46 points us to the answer.
Psalm 46 falls neatly into three stanzas, neatly demarcated by a Selah to give us the opportunity to contemplate.  The first stanza establishes a key thought that is then picked up in a refrain at the end of stanzas two and three.  It is a clear Psalm, easy to read, and probably well worth committing to memory!
Stanza 1 serves to establish a truth that will weave through the whole Psalm.  Our refuge and strength is God himself, and our God is always accessible to us.  The result is that we will not fear.  Four situations are described to underline how secure we are in our God.  Even an earthquake, even mountains being relocated, even raging seas, even the normal secure boundaries of creation trembling – even if the whole created order should revert to utter chaos, we will not fear.  The character of God is more trustworthy than the apparently permanent mountains and boundaries of the seas?  Yes.  Selah.
Despite appearances in the first three verses, I do not think the writer is really focused on natural disasters.  He seems to be using them as descriptions of having your world rocked.  Even a hypothetical upheaval that impacts everything considered permanent and stable would not undermine the reality of God being our ever-present refuge and strength.
In the second stanza, from verses 4-7, the writer zeroes in on the threat of war.  He begins with two verses describing the tranquil city of God, the place where he reigns and is present.
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How do you get from London to Edinburgh? Even if you’ve never visited either city, you’ll likely know that there’s more than one answer to the question. Plug the destinations into a maps program and you’ll be offered a host of routes, and even those will be just the major ones. In reality, there are thousands of connections between the two capitals, an almost endless number of ways you can travel between them. Of course, some are more obvious than others, the large motorways cutting a clearer trail than the winding country roads. But the point remains: there are many ways to make the journey.
When it comes to Scripture, what links Genesis to Revelation? We know that the Bible is one book, giving a coherent, unified message. It is, ultimately, the product of one Author, revealing one way of salvation to mankind. But is there only one theme that binds the Bible together? The answer, surely, is no. Just as on any other journey, there are multiple paths we might follow as we trace God’s great redemption story. To change the image, Scripture is a book woven together by many threads, a rope of many intertwining cords. To search for “the one theme” of the Bible is a pointless exercise; rather, we can enjoy discovering dozens, perhaps hundreds, of different melodies that combine to create the final symphony.
Let’s consider some of the major roads. It’s sometimes noted that the Bible nowhere uses that common evangelical phrase “relationship with God.” This is not, of course, because there is no relationship with God. Rather, the Bible’s word for that bond between Jesus and His people is covenant. Unsurprisingly, therefore, covenant is a major road through the pages of Scripture. Beginning in the garden of Eden, God entered into a covenant with Adam. Although the explicit word covenant doesn’t appear in the text of Genesis 2, all the elements that make up a covenant are there: the two parties (God and Adam), the terms of the relationship (wholehearted obedience, expressed in the command not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil), penalties if the covenant is breached (death), and rewards if it is kept (eternal life, symbolized by the Tree of Life; Gen. 3:22). Indeed, Hosea later refers to this arrangement as a covenant (Hos. 6:7).