1 Corinthians 13:5-7

1 Corinthians 13:5

I. Love is not easily provoked. This characteristic follows upon "seeketh not her own," and very naturally self-regard is the great secret of easy provocation. It may be hidden self-regard, lurking in the by-ways of the character; the generous and self-denying man is often easily provoked, but it is just because self-love has been driven, it may be, from the citadel, yet is still in possession of the outworks. We are, in this wreck of our nature, such strange inconsistent compounds, that self may be subdued in one province of our being, while it is reigning with full sway in another nay, may seem to be deposed and bound, while at the same time and place it is dictating its laws and all but supreme. The very nature of the case compels us to say that wherever there is the habit of sudden provocation there self is as yet unsubdued, and the love which was Christ's is not yet completely established in the character.

II. Love thinketh no evil, or better, imputeth not the evil viz., the evil intended in the slight or insult at which it refuses to be provoked. This slowness to provocation, like the other qualities of which we have treated, is no mere accident of disposition, no mere insulated excellence; it arises from, and is the natural sequence on, a whole chain of causes, all sprung from the highest fact, the existence and ruling in the heart of that pure self-renouncing love, of which it is one of the signs.

III. Love rejoiceth not over iniquity, but rejoiceth with the truth. Her sympathies are with the truth, and by the truth is meant that whole class of words and deeds which is opposed to the former thing in which she rejoiceth not viz., iniquity: in other words, all those things elsewhere mentioned by the Apostle, as being true, honest, and lovely, and of good report.

IV. The concluding clauses of this description of the attributes of Christian love surpass, by generalising, the rest. "Love endureth all things." This surpasses all the rest, and worthily concludes the goodly catalogue of Love's excellences.

H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons,vol. vii., p. 179.