Love is also neither boastful nor proud. Being proud or boastful is taking the focus off God and placing it on ourselves. True love keeps God first in everything. The world teaches us that the other person "completes us." Not so; God completes us! In order for God to have the supreme place in any relationship there can be no pride; no boasting:
To fear the LORD is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech. -- Proverbs 8:13
Boasting is arrogant behavior. God hates pride and arrogance. You cannot be Christ-like and exemplify these qualities. You cannot choose to love and embody these traits. They oppositional to each other. A relationship where there is no boasting and no pride, keeps God on the throne. It keeps God in control. If man builds the relationship, man will have to maintain it. If God builds the relationship, God will maintain it. One just needs to look at the divorce rate in this country to see what happens when man builds it. The truly sad thing is that the divorce rate in the church is not much better. That is because we choose the distorted worldly view of love over the true intent of God. These five facets of love found in verse four lay out the foundation for love the way God intended. Verse five however, starts to get into the details.
The first detail once you have chosen to lay the correct foundation is that you need to change your mindset to being sacrificial. We are not sacrificial by nature -- we are inherently selfish. In a lot of ways that is the great irony in these verses. These things that Paul lays out are all things that we are NOT within our flesh. They are all things we can only accomplish through God. They are choices, not emotions. The sacrificial mindset in verse five begins with our attitude. The opposite of rude is to be considerate, placing the other person above yourself. This is closely related to the following three admonishments, which is that love cannot demand its own way, be irritable or keep a record of wrongs. True love is always sacrificial at heart. In any true Godly relationship, God is always first, followed by the other person. In his letter to the church at Philippi, Paul outlines this approach using Christ as the ultimate example:
If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. -- Philippians 2: 1-4
That certainly grates against the flesh! The world encourages a me-centric mindset. But God wants a sacrificial mindset. You cannot demand your own way -- you must think about the other person first. You cannot be irritable -- you must consider the other person first. You cannot keep a record of wrongs -- you must think of the other person first. Take the ultimate loving relationship, God and you. For God so loved the world (you!) that He gave His only begotten Son to save it (you!). Now think for a moment about the record of wrongs God could hold against you. Yet because of His love, He chose to not hold these against you. Because when He sees you, He only sees the blood of Jesus Christ! The same should hold true in a godly loving relationship! If Christ is first in your lives and your relationship, then you should only see Christ in the other person first and not the temporal list of wrongs we normally would hold against a person! We must choose to not keep that record of wrongs the world so encourages us to keep. We must choose to not be rude and self-seeking. We must choose to love as God intended.
Verse six deals with a simple oppositional statement. Love must choose to rejoice in the truth and be against injustice. The NIV says love must not delight in evil. Too often we use these verses as a framework for our wedding ceremony instead of a foundation for our marriage. If love is not rooted firmly in the truth of God's Word then it will succumb to the evils pursuing it in this world. It is the protection for the love:
Every word of God proves true. He is a shield to all who come to him for protection. -- Proverbs 30: 5 (NLT)
But once again note that we must choose to come to Him. This is always a choice. We cannot read these verses at our wedding and then ignore them during our marriage that follows. The enemy is roaming to and fro looking what marriage he can devour. The relationship that is rooted in love the way God intended will have God as its shield and protection by delighting only in the truth of His Word.
