1 Cor 13:7 Charity… believeth all things,
Love is not gullible. When Jesus was kissed by Judas, he didn't say, "Oh you sweet boy. I'm so glad you changed your mind about betraying me."
No. Love still recognizes the kiss of a traitor, but love is willing to believe anything until it knows it is wrong. This means if someone wants another chance, love can grant it within Biblical parameters and structure.
Love is not easily deceived. Love is not blind, but it is absent a suspicious nature. Puppy love is blind; God's love simply takes the best possible view of others in every circumstance. Love will consider good motives. Love will make every allowance for failure.
When a man or woman falls, after he has repented and stood back up again, love will think about the battle he or she must have fought! Love will think about the struggle he or she must have had before being cut down. That’s why my personal favorite poem is Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth.
Say not the struggle naught availeth, the labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth, and as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; it may be, in yon smoke conceal'd,
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers—and, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making, comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only, when daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly, but westward, look! the land is bright!
—Arthur Hugh Clough, 1819–1861
My favorite quote is by Teddy Roosevelt.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to he man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew niether victory nor defeat.
—Theodore Roosevelt, 1858-1919
1 Cor 13:7 Charity… hopeth all things,
Even when belief in a loved one's goodness or repentance is shattered, love keeps hoping on. That way, as long as God's grace is operative, human failure is never final. Shakespeare speaks of this quality of charity in one of his sonnets.
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Oh no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wan'dring [ship],
Whose worth's unknown, although his [height] be taken.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
I think the Shake was meditating in his Bible that day. This is a photograph of Jesus Christ. We will produce these qualities of a Biblical love—not by self-improvement, not by self-attainment—but we will do it by responding to life's challenges in the character of Christ, who has already shed abroad the love of God in our hearts (Rom 5:5). These are the only qualities that make life worth living.
