Charity suffereth long, and is kind; chrity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
Here we have hit on the issue no only of Lent but of our whole life! What is St. Paul saying? We have to get this right. Poorly interpreted Scripture leads to a poorly lived life. What does Paul mean when he writes:
(Love) Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
Is he saying that if we really love one other we will always look on the bright side? Does true love ignore wicked behavior? Are we to bear up under mistreatment and ignore our very real experience of misbehavior of being mistreated and sinned against? Is Paul saying that Christians ought to forgive and forget? Let me say right out, absolutely not. Paul is saying no such thing. But in order to understand what Paul is saying, the first thing we need to do is to look at the whole text:
Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth…
First, verses 4 – 6 teaches us that love is patient, kind, without envy, and is humble. Love does not tally up injuries, but love does love alethia, truth, reality. Verse 7 sums up the matter:
(Love) Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
There are four verbs that describe love as an activity: the first verb is stego which means something like “bearing up under,” as in to bear with and to endure. The second verb is pisteuo which means to believe or to entrust. It could be used in a sentence like “I have been entrusted with…” The third verb is elpizo which can be mean simply to trust, but also “I hope,” or “I expect.” The fourth verb is hupomeno and it means, again, the act of enduring or awaiting. The big question — and this is the whole matter — the big question is, the object of these activities is whom? Love as you all know is theological virtue and these verbs help us understand what love, as a theological virtue looks like in action.
But before we go any further in our quest to understand what Paul is saying in First Corinthians 13, we have to know what a virtue is. A virtue is a power and a disposition. It is a power that I am already disposed to effectuate, to appropriate. To say that one has the virtue of courage means that one has within one’s power the ability to behave courageously. The courageous person is not the person who is fearless, but she is the person who acts in the right way even when there are things to fear. To say that one has the virtue of justice means that one has within one’s powers the ability to behave justly, to act with fairness with regard to other persons. Courage and justice are natural virtues. A virtue is the power and disposition to good behavior.
The 13th chapter of First Corinthians is primarily about the theological virtue of Charity and the superiority of Charity over the other virtues of Faith and Hope. Now the Theological Virtues are not natural virtues, but supernatural virtues that are infused into the Christian through the grace of Baptism. The Liturgy of Baptism in the BCP refers to a child or adult being baptized as being “endued (infused) with heavenly virtues,” which is a way of designating their supernatural origin. They are what the BCP says — “That which by nature we cannot have.” In other words, we will not just eventually grow the heavenly virtues, they have to be given to us by God. We have talked about this before: the word the Church uses to speak of the grace bestowed in Baptism is the word “infusion.” Christian Baptism infuses the child with the virtue of supernatural love. What do we mean by “infusion?” Ok, this may seem preposterous given the seriousness of baptismal infusion, but a common experience of infusion is the morning cup of coffee that many of us enjoy. What happens to water when it is boiled and added to ground coffee beans is that the water is “infused” with the essence of the coffee bean. It is still water — what we call coffee has not ceased to be water — but in accordance with the nature of water it has been transformed into something richer; even so the transformation is not something contrary to its nature, nevertheless coffee is an impossibility without infusion. A cup of water will not simply become a cup of coffee by nature no matter how much time you give it. It has to be infused. And silly as this example may be, Christian behavior is impossible without the infusion of the supernatural virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity.
Generally speaking, first and foremost, Faith, Hope, and Charity are virtues that have God, not one another, as their object — that is, we are given the gift of Faith to believe in God and his goodness, we are given the virtue of Hope to trust in God’s finality or will for ourselves and all that that is, and we are given Charity or Love for God as the supreme and right object of our Love. St Paul ends the chapter (vs.7-13) with the fact that God is the rightful and highest aim of these heavenly virtues, albeit there may be some application, in a secondary sense, to our relations with one another within the Body of Christ and I suppose outside as well to some extent. In that secondary sense St. Paul is reflecting our Lord’s declaration of the two-fold nature of the Great Commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.” But I hasten to say that I find it difficult to apply the secondary command to individuals in any strong sense. This chapter is all about our love of God first and foremost:
Charity beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
So when it come to v. 7, it makes perfectly good sense when applied to God:
Charity bears up under all things, continues to entrust one’s well-being to God in all situations, keeps on looking to God’s finality — come what may — and awaits his resolutions for my life and the life of the world whether my personal circumstances or the circumstance of the world appear to be good or bad at the moment.
As popular as First Corinthians 13 is to be used as readings at weddings, that is a basic misapplication of the text. What v. 7 most certainly does not refer to, is the believer giving to the creature the love that belongs to the Creator. Verse 7 cannot be applied to our relations with one another. It has nothing to do with assuming the best about other people, of allowing another person to mistreat us, lie to us, or generally disregard honorable and truthful behavior toward us for the sake of love. That is not love, but abuse. Nor is Paul suggesting that you behave anti-intellectually with regard to a person who habitually sins and breaks promises. But when we apply chapter & verse to God and we exercise our very real, infused virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity in God, it keeps us from participating in a lie and it helps us and the people we love stay to in touch with Reality. And if we are to achieve anything worthwhile in Lent, it is to live more and more in the Really Real, which is to say live more consciously and intentionally, intelligently and responsibly in Jesus Christ our God and the Land of the Blessed Trinity. May God grant us a holy and fruitful Lent!