By Pastor Mitch Horton | January 2007 | Posted in • Featured Content | (0) Comments

We'll continue to discuss the characteristics of Agape in detail from 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 in this issue. In our last two issues, we've been discussing the love (Agape) of God and how it works in our lives. God is love. The more we develop spiritually, the more we will walk in love. Our flesh will fight this walk of love, but we must renew our minds and allow it to rule our daily behavior. Each of us as believers has been given a rich deposit of love (Romans 5:5), and we must become aware of it and use it so it will develop in us.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 reads, Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; (5) does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; (6) does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; (7) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (8) Love never fails…

We will begin our discussion this month with the fact that love does not seek its own. Agape is not self-seeking in that it brings with it a self-last characteristic! Agape causes us to seek the welfare of others before ourselves and does not calculate what benefits we may gain in return. We become others minded. As Mrs. C. Nuzum states in her book The Life of Faith : How many of us, when we have a real right to a place, time, honor, benefit, or possession, refuse to strive for it, refuse even to keep it, but cheerfully, gladly let another have it.

For instance, this quality allows us to keep cool when we're not recognized for difficult work we accomplish for our company, or when someone else is recognized for work that we performed. It allows us to be genuinely excited when we are passed over for a promotion and someone else is promoted with less skill and ability than we have. When Agape rules supreme, we lose sight of ourselves, and think of God and others first.

Next, love is not provoked. The Greek word is paroxuno and means to sharpen alongside, or figuratively to exasperate. It means to rouse to anger. This is when we get upset at another's actions or words, and we become sharp, pointed, and irritable in our responses to them. Anger stemming from offense is in view here as well. Psalm 119:165 reads, Blessed are they who love thy law, and nothing shall offend them. Again to quote Mrs. C. Nuzum: If I am offended, no matter how much cause I have to be offended, the problem with me is that I have not the love which nothing will offend.

Love thinks no evil. The Greek word here is logizomai and means to take an inventory. It means to make a list in your mind of what someone does to harm or bother you or to remember when someone does you wrong. Agape keeps no record of wrongs. I think that the Amplified Bible of 1 Corinthians 13:5 sums up this characteristic of love best: Takes no account of the evil done to it: pays no attention to a suffered wrong.

This characteristic is perhaps one of the best gauges of whether or not we're walking in love. We have left the love realm when we start holding others' offenses against them and start making lists in our minds of their offenses against us.

I was ministering to a man who had problems in his marriage many years ago. He sat in my office and began to tell me how difficult it was for him to live with his wife. He began to mention a plethora of problems he had with her. I decided to sit back and let him talk for a bit. I was taken aback by his next move. He stood up from his chair with a stack of computer paper in his hand, the kind that was joined and folded together. As he stood he said, Here is a list of each offense my wife has committed against me. As I examined the page after page of paper, I saw for each offense one line with a date, a time, and the nature of the offense. His action to indict his wife of all these "crimes" against him proved his own guilt of self-centeredness! This is a great example of the opposite of what we should do to others. Instead of remembering his wife's offenses, he should have made a decision to take no account of them, and to treat his wife as if she had never done wrong. The flesh loves to brood over past offenses. But love will move us away from the past, and will lead us to forget what others have done to harm us, and will urge us to treat them as though they had never harmed us in any way.

Many years ago while attending Bible school, I worked for a large grocery chain that was unionized. The winter of my first year there, a section of the labor force in the grocery chain decided to go on a strike to protest their benefits package. I was in charge of the night crew at the store, and decided to cross the picket line and go to work in spite of the opposition of union employees. One of the men who worked in the area that called the strike was holding up a sign in the picket line and challenged me as I went to work, calling me all sorts of names. I just smiled at him each day as I crossed the line and went to work.

When the strike was over, this man that had made the harsh comments to me came to the front door of the store the first morning back from the strike and knocked so I could open it and let him in for work that day. When he saw me open the door and heard me greet him with "Good morning," he acted as though I was the invisible man, and walked past me without speaking. Later, before I left work, I saw him in a circle of people talking and walked up to the group and briefly entered the conversation. I made a comment to this man, and on purpose he acted as though I had said nothing and began abruptly talking to another person in the circle of people. For weeks thereafter, I was invisible to him. He never acknowledged my presence or spoke to me. He intended to ignore me to rub in the fact that I crossed the picket line.

I remembered the first day he acted this way that I was to walk in love and treat people as though they had never wronged me; that I was to take no account of the evil done to me; that I was to pay no attention to a suffered wrong. I decided to see what the love of God would do in this situation. I remembered that 1 Peter 4:8 (Amplified) says that love forgives and disregards the offenses of others.

I greeted him each morning for weeks with a hearty "Good morning" as I called him by name. I spoke each time I saw him in the store. And I said not one word to anyone else about how he was treating me. He continued his invisible man treatment towards me for many weeks.

One day weeks later, I opened the door for him, expecting the same cold shoulder I had received in the past. But this time, he greeted me with a "Good morning, Mitch," and a hearty handshake. And thereafter, he was warm and pleasant again, and conversed freely with me and others. I never mentioned the incident, and I did not bring it up to him. Love had won!

As a young man in my early twenties, this incident taught me an invaluable lesson as to the power of agape love. Love never fails! We do have the ability to love the unlovely and the cantankerous!

You may be involved in a difficult home relationship or a troubled relationship at work. It may be a relationship with a family member or neighbor that has become testy. Be the person that chooses to walk in love, choosing not to take account of the wrongs committed against you. Treat the offending party as though they had done no wrong. Treat them the way you want to be treated yourself. Act in love towards them. Ignore the emotions of revenge or ill-will. Focus on loving with this supernatural agape that God has placed in your spirit. Meditate on 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 until it oozes out of you in words, tones, thought, motives, and actions. Don't wait on the other person to change or improve; you set the tone of the relationship with agape, and never one moment cower to the self-centered ways of the flesh. It may take time, but you'll find that love always wins. We can't make decisions for others, nor can we make them change. But we can live in such a way that nothing they do or say affects us. Their negatives simply roll off like water off of a duck's back! And in return, we sow acts of love. The end result in our lives will be peace, joy, health, and blessing.

The only thing this costs is the giving up of fleshly, selfish responses that harm and that give the enemy room to kill, steal, and destroy. It always pays to obey God. Make your choice today to be a lover. And then watch as God works supernaturally on your behalf!

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