“Love never fails.” 1 Corinthians 13:8 NIV
“Love never fails; people fail to love.”
My thoughts today are about “a love that lasts.”
A lot of emotions masquerade themselves as love in today’s world, but none of them could be accurately described by today’s Bible verse. Most of what is claimed as love seems fickle, always subject to human foibles and frailties, changing due to whims and moods, circumstances and comparisons, feelings and seasons. When someone fails to love, it is painful. A person feels betrayal of trust, and hearts and homes are broken. The person hurt and disappointed can find it hard to trust love again.
In just days from now, it will have been 47 years since Gayle and I stood at an altar and pledged our love to one another. Sadly, in spite of my best intentions then and now, there are times when I fail to be loving – to speak in loving tones, to act in loving ways, to be as selfless as I could have – no, should have been. So by a person’s own experience this claim of Scripture may seem hard to accept at face value. With what you may have seen and/or experienced, you might struggle to confidently say or believe that “love never fails.” Have you ever felt that love failed? Can’t you recall instances where you have seen your own attempts to love fail?
Love never fails; people often fail to love. That statement might sound like God is saying that no love can fail, but you have seen people’s attempts to love fail. It also may sound like love will never “let you down or disappoint you,” but you may have been let down by someone. I think it might be more accurate that God’s Word is promising that God will never fail to love and God’s love will never fail to be loving, as is true to His own essential nature.
How can that be said so confidently? Because love is not something that God feels, or expresses, or does. Love is what God is! “The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” 1 John 4:8. God has promised, “I will never fail you or forsake you.” Joshua 1:5. If God never fails, God’s love can never fail! The Bible tells you the kind of love that never fails.
First, it is true about God’s love, not yours or mine, or others’ intentions to love. Your best efforts will fail unless you learn how to fully experience and faithfully express God’s love.
Secondly, the love that never fails is evidenced by these qualities: “patient, constructive, not possessive, not anxious to impress nor with an inflated sense of importance. Mannerly, unselfish, not touchy, never keeps account of wrongs, finds no joy in unrighteousness, but rejoices when truth prevails. Love knows no end to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope: it can outlast anything. Love is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen.” 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 JBPhillips. That is the character of love that never fails.
Those qualities of moral character and relational integrity are uniquely the true expression of God’s own character. There is never a moment when God is untrue to Himself, nor a circumstance where He is an exception to His own eternal nature.
Can you learn to be more like God? “Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God . . dear friends, if God loved us this way, we also must love one another.” 1 John 4:7/11. You can have, and give, a love that lasts.
My prayer for you today is to know the true love that never fails, and give that love.