Paul’s description of love clearly highlights the Corinthians’ faults (and ours too…) The Corinthians were impatient, but love is patient. They were envious of others (1 Cor 3:3), whereas love doesn’t envy (‘it doesn’t want what it doesn’t have’, as the Message version puts it.) They were ‘puffed up with pride’ (1 Cor 4:6, 18, 5:1, 8:1), whereas love is not proud. They were boastful about many things (1 Cor 3:18, 8:2, 14:37), but love ‘doesn’t have a swelled head.’ Their behaviour was not always proper, for they acted selfishly in meetings (1 Cor 11) instead of thinking of others more highly than themselves. They were selfish (1 Cor 8:9), not understanding the need to consider each other, putting themselves in someone else’s shoes.
Whilst we can readily identify with the abstract idea of ‘love is…’ and can easily relate Paul’s description of love to God’s character, what is far more challenging for us is to put our own name in front of each sentence. We are, like the Corinthians, often unkind, unloving, impatient, inconsiderate, envious, boastful, judgmental and selfish. The life of Christ, however, grows within us if we are new creations in Christ. The fruit of the Spirit (which greatly resemble this description of love) develops as God works from the inside out. All of us are ‘works in progress’. The ‘complete’, ‘whole’, ‘perfection’ has not yet arrived, but when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:2) Instead of tearing our hair out in desperation at our failings, we need to pursue ‘the most excellent way’ of love by remaining in Christ (John 15:1-8), not striving in our own strengths.