The Biblical Characteristics of Love

By Mark W. Christy, PhD

In the hyper-emotionalism which pervades much of what is labelled American Christianity, many have failed to realize that love, as the Bible defines it, is never to be divorced from truth. Nevertheless, this rise in sentimentalism has led many professing believers to set aside Scripture as their sole guide for right action in favor of their own emotional barometer. By lowering the value of God’s Word in this way, they have made themselves guilty of elevating themselves above God Himself. Though their words and witnessed behavior may make them seem to be authentic, the reality is that their lives have become filled with mere pretense and outward displays of righteousness that find more similarity with the self-righteous Pharisees than those who truly believe in Christ. Before it’s too late, they should examine themselves as Paul declares multiple times and consider whether or not the true love of Christ is pervasive in their lives. To this end, Paul offers some characteristics of such love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, and this article will examine these in detail.

Within Paul’s list, only behavioral features of authentic love are provided. Such features, unlike sentimental ones, should be readily apparent both to the believer and those who know him/her. In this list, Paul uses fifteen verbs to demonstrate that love is active and vibrant as opposed to lethargic and static. True love, therefore, must go beyond words and express itself via the actions of its possessor.

The first sign of true love, according to him, is patience (1 Cor 13:4). To express this quality perfectly, one must remain patient and be willing to suffer long even during the most trying of moments. While such a quality does not demand inaction when a situation dictates that such action is just, it does require that a person remain steadfast in their commitment to just living even if that means their temporal suffering must remain. When properly expressed in believers’ lives, they will suffer willingly if the situation calls for it, even if that means their suffering will be long in duration. As Lewis B. Smedes articulates, “The paradox of longsuffering is that we must choose to suffer long.”[i] He adds, “To earn the description ‘longsuffering’ we have to make a decision for what we do not want, choose to live indefinitely with what we hate.”[ii]

For those who rightly choose to suffer long, they may not only face trials where they must wait an extended period and/or endure various sufferings, but they should also face sufferings imposed unjustly upon them by others without retaliating. Tragically, these sufferings are often meted out within the Church by those proclaiming to be Christians. The intensity of the heart-felt pain in these times only increases the temptation to stray from loving patience and mete out self-imposed justice on behalf of God. Nevertheless, the faithful and loving believer should remind themselves of Christ’s words in Matthew 5:39: “But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.”[iii]

In the face of suffering, regardless of its form, one who loves rightly, according to Paul, must also manifest kindness (1 Cor 13:4). This response of kindness is birthed when sufferers choose to forgive any and all who have caused offense. Furthermore, to manifest this kindness at all times, the believer must avoid allowing the fruit of bitterness to form in their lives by holding grudges against those who have hurt them. Should they find within themselves this unholy fruit, they should take action by choosing to forgive any and all who may have injured them. From that point, they should hold tightly to their decision to follow Christ by faithfully and immediately forgiving offenders. By doing so, they will find themselves ready to show loving kindness to all regardless of the constraints imposed on them in a given situation.

The third characteristic of true love is its lack of jealously (1 Cor 13:4). In the Scripture, jealously is sometimes portrayed as a positive aspect when the jealously is related to the intense seeking of God and His glorification (1 Cor 12:31; 14:1). This zealous form of jealously, however, was hard to find among the Corinthians to whom Paul was addressing his teaching on love towards. In Paul’s condemnation of their behavior, he demonstrates that those who possess the wrong type of jealously express it by sowing seeds of dissension among others (especially their fellow believers) and constantly seek for ways to advance themselves and their agenda above others (1 Cor 3:1-3).

The Corinthian Christians at the time of the biblical record were steeped in sin to the extent that Paul felt forced to address them as “men of flesh” and “infants in Christ” (1 Cor 3:1). Their sinfulness had robbed them of the possibility of expressing the love of Christ because it had rendered them inwardly focused. Instead of following this example, those who love in an absence of jealously choose to seek after the welfare of others before themselves. Such a choice, however, runs counter to the inherit self-centeredness that resides within one’s fallen flesh. Paul himself demonstrates the overwhelming difficulty for Christians to abide in such self-denying choices when he recognized only one person as properly fit for pastoral service among the Philippians. As he put it, “For I have no one else of kindred spirit who will genuinely be concerned for your welfare” (Phil 2:20).

The fourth characteristic of authentic love is humility (1 Cor 13:4-5). To demonstrate this quality, Paul offers bragging and rudeness (i.e., to act unbecomingly) as characteristics that should not be found in a truly loving person, and thereby demonstrates that Christians should exhibit humility in both word and deed. Unfortunately, the immature and sinful Corinthians had already run astray of this expectation. Their arrogance ultimately led them to tolerate extremely gross and unrepentant sin in their midst (1 Cor 5:2; cf. 4:6, 18-19). In 1 Corinthians 8:1-3, Paul offers a remedy to address the problem: “Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies. If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know; but if anyone loves God, he is known by Him.” Put simply, Paul is calling these arrogant believers away from a love of self which can be maintained alongside a knowledge of God and toward the manifestation of true love for God that must be made manifest by their edifying and others-focused actions.

Outwardly, many people will portray themselves to be humble so as to please others and avoid their condemnation. At other times, they will have an intrinsic selfish motive to manifest what is actually false humility. To properly discern whether one’s humility is true, D. A. Carson offers an inciteful word: “It is well said that you can spot a gentleman not by the way he addresses his king but by the way he addresses his servants. The former may not be courtesy at all, but merely enlightened self-interest.”[iv]

The fifth characteristic of love is a selflessness that extends even to the abandonment of perceived entitlements (1 Cor 13:5). As Paul points out in Romans 15:3, “For even Christ did not please Himself.” By His willingness to forgo self-love, Jesus prioritized His obedience to God and His mission to purchase salvation on behalf of the Elect of God. In keeping with Christ’s example, Paul writes, “Let no one seek his own good, but that of his neighbor” (1 Cor 10:24).

Despite this clear admonition of Paul, the innate self-centeredness common to all fleshly sinners will still present a challenge to the spiritual readiness of any congregation that sets out to honor God as holy. The Corinthian Church to whom Paul penned these words on love offers multiple examples of selfishness penetrating the church. To begin with, some of their members were expressing their Christian liberty by eating food sacrificed by idols even though this practice violated the consciences of weaker believers (1 Cor 10:24-33). Some among them were denigrating the Lord’s Supper by prioritizing themselves when partaking of the Love Feast, an Early Church tradition, which proceeded it (11:21-22). Beyond these loveless acts, some Corinthian believers willingly violated the propriety, solemnity, and order in the worship service by speaking out of turn (14:29-33). Some among them insisted on speaking in tongues even though the activity offered only personal gratification with no apparent benefit to the other members in the congregation (14:27-28). Finally, the overwhelming self-centeredness within the Corinthian congregation and the sole focus of many of its members upon their own perceived rights and entitlements can perhaps best be seen in their willingness to take their charges against their fellow parishioners into human court (6:1-6). The egregiousness of this action alone demonstrates to any onlooker that these believers had lost connection to Christ’s words in Luke 9:24: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.”

The sixth characteristic of love is its steadfastness in the face of situations and people that might otherwise lead to outbursts of anger (1 Cor 13:5). Such love will indeed coincide at times with varying degrees of indignant anger which concerns itself with God, His Word, and a selfless desire for the truth to be correctly received. Such anger was displayed by Christ Himself during His public ministry.

While teaching at a synagogue on a Sabbath, Jesus opted to heal a man with a withered hand despite consternation of the religious elite who were waiting to judge Him for having broken the Sabbath by displaying such mercy (Mark 3:1-4). Unfazed by their disapproving glances, “looking around at them with anger, [and becoming] grieved at their hardness of heart, [Jesus] said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored” (Mark 3:5).[v]

Christ’s righteous anger remained within the bounds of love because it never was allowed to reach a pique where it would have been allowed to unjustly wound another as it gave way to uncontrollable rage. At its center, such love operates with a self-abandonment that forgoes the pride from which selfish anger is rooted and replaces it within a sincere desire to found one’s life upon the truth of God’s Word. As those who exhibit this sort of controlled anger find themselves under pressure from those willingly seeking to provoke self-glorifying anger, they find themselves to be more concerned about the proclamation of the truth and their proper alignment with it than with the offense that has been personally rendered unto them.

The seventh characteristic of love is the lack of resentment (1 Cor 13:5). This quality of love is intimately associated with kindness as the aforementioned discussion demonstrated. By refusing to keep a record of those who have caused personal offense, a faithful Christian will offer no fertile ground for the root of bitterness to sprout. Instead, they will hold tightly to Paul’s words in Ephesians 6:12: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” When a person causes offense, those committed to a loving witness for Christ will rightly understand that the source of that person’s action ultimately lies in the spiritual powers of darkness which have invaded the physical world and manifest themselves in the wicked behavior of those who offend.

The eighth characteristic of love is the hatred of evil and the corresponding love of the truth (1 Cor 13:6). Unlike those committed to the love of God, the unsaved are “haters of good” (2 Tim 3:3) and will often choose to operate secretly when they are in the company of the redeemed. Such was the case among some of the Israelites, despite their physical membership among God’s holy people and their corresponding pledge to remain holy. According to the Word of the Lord, many were guilty of secretly sinning; nevertheless, their sins were readily apparent in their false worship that did not accord with God’s revealed Word along with their pride which was on full display as their lives moved consistently down the path of disobedience (2 Kgs 17:7-23).

Within many American churches, the relationships between members are so paper thin that identifying those who lives suggest a heart that loves evil becomes an overwhelming challenge. Therefore, Christians must bound together in tight fellowship so as to keep themselves and others from taking a wayward course. Those who, after being properly warned, reject calls to Christ-centered and God-glorifying wholesome fellowship make it apparent to all that their lives at best have yet to fully align with truth.

This sincere and consistent love for the truth, which should be on full display in all aspects of faithful believers’ lives, is a strong indicator that the saving love of Christ resides within them. As David E. Garland observes, “Love does not suppress the truth (Rom 1:18), exchange it for a lie (Rom 1:25), do anything against the truth (2 Cor 13:8), or become upset when face with the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it is (Gal 4:16).”[vi]

The ninth characteristic of love is its capacity to bear all things (1 Cor 13:7). Drawing from the context of this verse, Smedes argues “that Paul’s thought here is not that love bears up under things, but that it bears all things up.”[vii] While such love cannot tolerate evil, it does willingly take the greatest of pains to help the guilty by faithfully confronting them in their error in the hope that they will turn to Christ in saving humility. It is precisely in these lovingly corrective actions that Peter could write that “love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Pet 4:8).

That these actions are loving can be readily seen in how they are carried out. If they are done in the love described in 1 Corinthians 3:4-7, they should be done with the utmost patience to ensure that the supposed violator has indeed been found to be in error. When this is so, they should take every precaution to make sure that whatever rebuke is necessitated is delivered in manner that is faithful to Scripture. Those who fail to lovingly address the obvious sin among their fellow Christians for whatever reason end up providing visible testimony that they themselves are still operating under the guise of sin (1 Cor 11:19).

While those who are truly loving should always remain committed to lovingly correct the sins of their fellow members by addressing them according to biblical standards, they should not seek to uncover the secret sins that may lie in a person’s inner being. These sins, if they are to be bared, must be publicly exposed by the sinner themselves. They themselves must cast aside their pride which has concealed such violations and once again position themselves at the foot of the cross as a humble sinner in need of mercy. Whether it be for obvious sin that is address by faithful believers or secret sin that is made apparent by the repentant sinner, authentic love that bears up in all circumstances will always be motivated toward living the victorious life to which all Christians are called.

The tenth characteristic of true Christian love, according to Paul, is that it “believes all things” (1 Cor 13:7). Apart from its immediate context and its place within the rest of the Pauline epistles, this divinely revealed aspect of love can critically be misinterpreted and lead therefore to enumerable problems. To avoid this, one must be aware that true Christian belief is founded upon the Word of God which offers both wisdom and discernment so that its possessors might avoid the folly of the world which believes any and all things without ever carefully delineating them in light of Scripture.

In retrospect, it is with this same belief that Christians come to know Christ through His Word. As Smedes clarifies, “Trusting the book is a consequence of trusting the person, not the other way around.”[viii] The love with which a Christian approaches God’s Word is a love that submits itself willingly, even when His Word charges them with sin. In the same way, Christians love others not by ignoring and refusing to confront obvious violations of God’s Word, but by believing that the person is supremely valuable and redeemable. They love others by confronting them in their sin even when the reality of their sinful disposition suggests that all hope is lost.

In support of this sort of tough love which willingly and faithfully charges sinners with their sin, Smedes writes, “Love does not turn its head away from the facts. Love looks the ugly, cruel facts straight in the face. Love looks at the liar and calls him a liar. Love looks at the sadistic dictator and calls him evil. Love does not excuse the rapist, the looter, or the corrupt politician. Love just sees the person beneath the facts, the hardest facts, about him.”[ix]

To isolate Paul’s meaning when he says love “believes all things” (1 Cor 13:7), John MacArthur explains,

“Love is not suspicious or cynical. When it throws its mantle over a wrong it also believes in the best outcome for the one who has done the wrong—that the wrong will be confessed and forgiven and the loved one restored to righteousness. Love also believes all things in another way. If there is doubt about a person’s guilt or motivation, love will always opt for the most favorable possibility. If a loved one is accused of something wrong, love will consider him innocent until proven guilty. If he turns out to be guilty, love will give credit for the best motive. Love trusts; love has confidence; love believes.”

From MacArthur’s comments on Paul’s meaning which accord with those of Augustine, C. K. Barret, John Calvin, Gordon D. Fee, Ceslaus Spicq, and the aforementioned scholars Garland and Smedes, it would seem that Paul is referring the consistent maintenance of an upbeat and positive outlook on the intentions of others.

The eleventh characteristic of love is its hopefulness. On the surface, this quality appears to have a degree of overlap with the previous one (that is, believing in the best of others). Even so, hopefulness has the power to stay the course even when one’s positive views of another give way to negative revelations about a person. This hope derives its stability and persistence from its source, the grace of God through Jesus Christ. It is rooted in the love of God, so that even the most dire circumstances still allow the faithful believers to hold out hope. Conversely, those who remain committed to their sin have no such capacity to express love in this way (Jer 18:11-12).

The final characteristic of love, revealed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, is its endurance (7). The term employed by Paul which can be translated as ‘endure’ is the word used of soldiers who must hold their position at all costs. True biblical love remains steadfast amid whatever is thrown at it. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:8, “Love never fails.” Such love becomes apparent in the lives of believers as they choose to die to themselves, set aside their pride, and humbly follow Christ through whatever comes their way. Such behavior is exemplified most poignantly by Christ Himself on the cross:

“For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously; and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed” (1 Pet 2:21-24).

As the ultimate example of love, Jesus rooted Christian love in self-denial. As Christians learn to “die to sin and live to righteousness,” authentic Christian love will become increasingly apparent in their lives. When faced with suffering and the various hurts and pains associated with it, they will not give way to the emotional complexities that pervade those unjust experiences and will, instead, build their lives squarely upon the Word of God. By doing so, they will prove themselves to be faithful Christ-followers who will be able to look forward to Christ’s commendation of them when they ascend unto heaven.

---

[i]Lewis B. Smedes, Love within Limits: A Realist’s View of 1 Corinthians 13 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 2.

[ii]Ibid.

[iii]All Scripture references are taken from NASB1995.

[iv]D. A. Carson, Showing the Spirit: A Theological Exposition of 1 Corinthians 12-14 (Great Britain: Cox and Wyman, 1987), 57.

[v]See Mark W. Christy, “Jesus was Angry and Called People Fools: Can We?,” available at: https://battlehardenedbeliever.com/?p=2179.

[vi]David E. Garland, 1 Corinthians, in Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: BakerAcademic, 2003), 619.

[vii]Smedes, Love within Limits, 85.

[viii]Smedes, Love within Limits, 98.

[ix]Ibid., 99.