16 Days of Biblical Love #5: Love is not Arrogant

Today I was teaching my year 6 Scripture class about the fruits of the Spirit, which as I mentioned yesterday bear quite a resemblance to this whole 1 Corinthians 13 definition of love. (For what it’s worth, when you only have a black, green, red and blue texta to work with, it’s incredibly difficult to draw a banana.)

And as I taught these kids about the fruits of the Spirit, I had a little bit of a mind-crisis, which somewhat feeds into what I’m doing here, too. Because while everything I taught the kids (love, joy, peace, patience etc) is very good stuff for them to learn and to practise in their own lives, it really kind of misses the point. Paul’s point to the Galatian church is that those virtues are the fruits of leading a Spirit-filled life – that by being a Christian, these virtues should follow. By my teaching the kids the virtues, it’s skipping a step. Sure, they’re learning solid stuff, and if they act that way it will be a very good thing for their family, their school and society at large.

But isn’t teaching them to act like Christians when they’re clearly not just a case of putting a bandaid on a man’s arm, when in reality he’s stone-cold dead? Paul argues that the virtues come out of a relationship with Christ, and until the kids have that, they can act good all they want, but it won’t actually change their spiritual state.

I was able to console myself by the fact that I’ve taught those kids the straight Gospel message every week that I’ve had them, and keep elaborating that “This is how Christians should live – and what makes you a Christian? Belief in Christ” or variants thereof. I still ponder though, especially when confronted with verses like “I decided to know nothing among you except Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).

That brings us to these descriptors of love. Paul writes these to Christians, showing them what true Christian love should look like. I would think that, like the fruits of the Spirit, Paul is simply describing something that should be happening anyway. So does that make studies like this pointless?

I don’t think so, because otherwise it wouldn’t be put in the Bible in the first place. And especially when dealing with something so integral to the Christian faith as love is, it’s important that we know what it looks like. For my Scripture kids, it’s important that they know what true Christianity looks like, so that they know what they’re getting into (and I often pray that many of them willget into it!).

All of that is a round-about way of getting to my point for today’s point – love is not arrogant. If Paul has written these things as a list of stuff to do, and by ticking off each box you can be self-assured that you’re loving and Christian, then we have a dilemma. If that’s the case, then we can earn our own salvation, and we can do all of this in our own strength.

That’s not why it’s written here though. It’s written here for us to be more Christ-like. Christ is the only person who has ever loved perfectly, and He showed every single one of these virtues. Especially not being arrogant – have a read of Philippians 2 when you get the chance to really take in the vast amounts of humility that He had.

My journey through 1 Corinthians 13 is proving to me just how much I need God to help me to love properly. I’m only five days in, and every single virtue is one that I suck at, and need God’s help to become better at. All it takes to tear down your arrogance is to compare yourself to Christ – and judging by the amount of arrogance that I still see in me every day, I don’t do that nearly as much as I should.

What’s my point for tonight? I think all my thoughts are still in a tangled mesh. But you know, I’m cool with that.

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