Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8, ESV
This well known passage from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians describes the nature of love, what it looks like in action, and how ultimately, it consistently shows up, persevering through everything. It is this love that is the foundation of our relationship with Christ and one another.
The thing that really stands out to me in reading this passage is that after listing out all of the characteristics of love, Paul describes the consistency in which love maintains these characteristics. Love always hopes, trusts, protects, perseveres, and ultimately, love never fails. This kind of never-failing love maintains the above characteristics consistently, and this is the love in which Jesus modeled for us and gives to us. This is the love that we aspire to as Christ followers, the kind of love in which we are transformed by to then share with others.
The consistency and faithfulness of Christ’s never-failing love allows us to maintain a secure attachment with him, knowing that we can trust him to always be patient and kind, generous and content, humble, honoring towards others, seeking the good of others, slow to anger, forgiving, and rejoicing in the truth. Because we know we can trust him to always maintain these characteristics, we can know that despite life’s ups and downs, we are safe and secure in him. We know that regardless of our failings, He will be there to love and support us, transforming us through our mistakes and forming us to be more like Him.
Whether it is someone within the Church, or outside of the Church, we know that we are secure in Him and can therefore seek to consistently embody those characteristics of love to everyone. This consistency, this security, is what reinforces our relationships with one another and allows us to go forth and love others as Christ has loved us, just as John says, “We love because he first loved us.”¹
May we more fully dwell in our secure attachment to Christ, so that we might be transformed and compelled to go out and share such a consistent, faithful love with all those around us. And may this love bring transformation in our relationships with others, both within the Church and beyond it.
¹1 John 4:19