Characteristics of Christian Love (Part 3 of 4)

1 Corinthians chapter 13 says, love does not keep a record of wrongs.

So does that mean we should just sweep offenses under the carpet without dealing with them? Well today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg explains how love guards and guides us. We're continuing a message titled, Characteristics of Christian Love. Paul writes to the church at Rome, and he says, Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him. Not even the remotest possibility that it will count against us.

Why? Because he loves us with an everlasting love. And when people come to confess to us and remind us of things, we need to remember that we've been treated with such grace in response to the enormity of our offenses that surely we ought to forgive and forget the offenses done against us.

Seems to me that one of the great arts in life is learning what to forget. It's part of our fallenness, and the perversity is none clearer than in a life or in a home or in a church that harbors the record of wrongs. So we proceed through the minefield of 1 Corinthians 13. You will never again believe this to be a cozy chapter up to which you cuddle.

Never again. It is one of the most challenging sections in the whole Bible. Next, love does not delight in evil or rejoiceth not in iniquity, as the King James Version says. Oh, well, says somebody, we can just gloss over this one.

It's not a problem, is it? Well, think it out. There's a perverse streak in human nature which actually is intrigued by and even enjoys evil, especially in others.

Isn't it true? You're halfway through Jeopardy, if you watch Jeopardy. And they have one of those twenty-second promos from one of our famous little news channels to which we all look forward at eleven o'clock at night, I'm sure. I want to ask you a question. When that little twenty-second thing comes on—you can run your own check on this—how often do they come on to tell you something good?

Not often. It came to me vividly, because I was in preparation for this during last week, and I was thinking along these lines. I'm watching Jeopardy, it cuts away, the man's face comes up and goes, and it shows a picture of some gentleman, and it says, grandfather involved in the molestation of his grandchildren. More about this at eleven o'clock. Oh, yes, sure.

I want to stay up for more of the filthy trash out of the gutters of life. And yet there is a perversity in human nature that says, Oh, I wonder what that's about. Oh, we're not gonna do that! We don't do that!

But that evil intrigues us, vicariously involved in other people's badness. Stand in the grocery line and look at the folks try to sell us magazines. Even the little old Reader's Digest is in it now. They don't leave it permanently on there, I've noticed. They have one of these sticky sheets that they put on the front of it—have you seen that?—so that you can tear it off, and it goes away, and then you can keep the Reader's Digest in your bathroom, and no one will know what it said on the front. But they're into it now as well, because that boring little missive, as it appears, is gonna need to get jazzed up next to people and Cosmo and all the others.

And what's on the cover? Adultery? Indecency? Cheating? Lies? Corruption?

Filth? Why? Because it sells.

Why? Because men and women have an appetite for it. You see, the transforming power of Jesus Christ is what Paul is addressing here, and he's saying when the love of Christ invades a fellowship, it's gonna transform all this stuff about coming to the temples of demons. It's gonna transform the way we relate to one another. It's going to make us the kind of people who learn to live in love and therefore rejoice not when evil is exalted. It's Philippians 4, essentially, and verse 8, Whatsoever things are true, and whatsoever things are holy, whatsoever things are of good report, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if there's anything excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. And yet we can too easily, as Christians, fall into the trap of delighting not in those things but actually in what is murky and sordid.

Let me tell you one of the key ways in which it happens in the life of the Christian. Gossip. Gossip.

Any time I gossip, I violate this facet of a gappy love. Because usually when I gossip, I take a vicarious delight in passing on bad news or poor news concerning another person. I somehow manage to elevate myself above it by mentioning it and thereby distancing myself from it, but there is a perversity even in the heart of the Christian that kind of likes to send that news down the line and often under the disguise of a prayer chain or something.

I don't, if you have a prayer chain, for goodness sake, think that I know about your prayer chain, because I don't know about your prayer chain. But I do know about prayer chains in the past, and there's more gossip that goes down telephone lines under the disguise of prayer than I've had hot dinners. Because when we gossip, we gloat over the sins and shortcomings of others, and we derive a perverse form of satisfaction from restating them. So what Paul is saying, instead of condoning sin by passing it on, we're to confront sin. That's why in Matthew 18 we have the nature of church discipline. So that we may confront sin in the lives of one another and go directly to them and bring before them witnesses and bring it to the church, because if you don't do that in a church, the church just gossips about it. Some of the greatest antagonism that I've faced over the years here has been directly related to what we've done or attempted to do in church discipline.

How could you possibly do that? People say, isn't this supposed to be a loving church? Well, yeah, we're following the words of the loving Christ who said to lovingly do this, because if we don't do this, what happens is that people pass it on by way of gossip. The challenge is clear. We ought to gauge our reading, our viewing, our listening habits from this positive perspective.

Let's go one more. Love rejoices in the truth. It does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

Let me give you Phillips. It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails. It's a wonderful paraphrase.

What is love like? It's glad with all good men when truth prevails. So it rejoices in seeing truth. Joy and truth and love are interwoven. Love cannot rejoice when truth is denied. The guy says to his girlfriend, You know, I really love you, and I want you to do this, but it violates truth. He doesn't love her. So tell him to take a hike, for love and truth are interwoven. And there is no rejoicing that is indifferent to moral considerations. This is one of the great ways in which love falls down, and this is where 1 Corinthians is so helpful to us.

Love and righteousness cannot be separated. Oh, well, I'm hopelessly falling in love with you. I was speaking to the singles the other night, and I was quoting this song—I don't know who the fellow is who sings it—it's a bunch of nonsense. You've heard it on the radio, and I don't care what's right or wrong, and I don't know what'll happen next, but I'm hopelessly falling in love with you.

Oh, I've been walking the wire, but now I'm going down the other side, because I'm hopelessly falling in love with you. So somehow or another, this hopelessly falling experience legitimizes any kind of lifestyle at all. You know how many marriages are breaking down under that kind of silliness, even in Christian churches? Love rejoices when all good men see truth exalted. This is something that we need to hold onto and understand clearly. Let me just quote to you from John, who was the apostle of love. In 2 John, he writes, "'It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us.

And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command, but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another.'" And then he defines it, "'And this is love, that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.'" So how do we know we're in love when we walk in obedience to his commands?

It's simple. And any love relationship between a husband, a wife, a boy or a girl, a brother or sister, members in the family of God that does not walk in obedience to God's command is less than the love that is here described. And the encouragement of it is that by the impulse of the Holy Spirit walking in the truth of Scripture, we may enjoy this kind of love, and indeed, we should settle for nothing less than it. So in contrast to the previous facet, which is a denial of that which is evil, here he turns it on the other side, and he says, love is seen to focus on the good, on the true, and on the wholesome. It doesn't embrace wrongdoing, it doesn't embrace heresy. That may be embraced by weakness, by sentimentalism, or by foolishness, but not by love. Well, how are we doing?

You want to put your name in there yet? Parkside Church is not easily angered. It's not full of a bunch of touchy people who are always bursting into animosity. Parkside Church keeps no record of wrongs. If there is discipline, it is within accord with Scripture, it is done, it is dealt with, it is passed over, and it is gone. Parkside Church does not delight in evil. It's not a hotbed for gossip being passed around concerning what people have done in terms of offense. Parkside Church rejoices with the truth.

And finally, we'll just take one more. Parkside Church is a protective place to be. Because love always protects. If you have a King James Version, it reads, Love beareth all things.

Phillips, love knows no limit to its endurance. The Greek word is stegei, which actually means to cover as a roof or to bear a load as a roof would do. Therefore, it is variously translated to bear patiently or to protect. In relationship to itself, love endures. In relationship to others, it protects. Reminds us of the words of Solomon in Proverbs 10. He says, Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers all wrongs. Now, that doesn't mean—and sometimes people fall foul of this.

They say it's the same as you get in the New Testament. Love covers a multitude of sins, or love covers all wrongs. They see that in terms of lifting up the corner of the carpet and shoving a bunch of stuff underneath. Oh, love covers all wrongs?

I see. You don't talk about it, you don't expose it, you don't deal with it, you don't confess it, you don't ask for forgiveness for it, because love covers all wrongs. Therefore, you stick it under the carpet, and you just fold the carpet over it. And you don't have to do that too many times till everyone's tripping over the carpet. And every church that tries to pull that stunt will eventually fall on its face together. It does not mean that. It doesn't mean that love is in any way dishonest. It doesn't mean that love justifies or conceals sin. Rather, love warns, love corrects, love exhorts, love rebukes, love disciplines.

That's what love does. Love risks friendships. Love puts itself on the line in order to bear another's burdens, in order to protect. I read the letter this week written by a young man to his friend, and his friend is on the very brink of the total destruction of his marriage.

The young man wrote to him to say, "'I love you too much to allow you to do this. It would be like sitting on a railway line with a locomotive coming at you, and I am prepared to risk your friendship for the sake of seeing you reclaimed.'" It's not the covering up of sin, it's the exposing of sin and the protection and the bearing up. Someone put it like this, "'God pardons like a mother who kisses the offense into everlasting forgetfulness.'"

Oh, I like that. You go to your mum when you're a wee boy, you've been down over at somebody's house, and you did their apple trees for them, and I don't mean you pared them or pruned them. You rifled them, and you have a dreadful, guilty conscience, and your stomach is sore, because there were lousy apples in any case, and you've been riding your bike around and around and around, and you can't get yourself sorted out at all, and you know you've got to speak to somebody. And you go to your mother, and if she is anything worthy of the name, she's gonna discipline you and confront you and kiss your error into everlasting forgetfulness. She will not, the following Monday, when you fail to pick up the towels in the bathroom, say to you, "'Aye, there you go, leaving the towels in the bathroom you wee sinner, the same way you stole the apples from Mrs. Robertson's garden.'"

Why won't she do that? "'Cause love keeps no record of wrongs. And when I am offended by my brother or my sister, and they put in their videotape and drag up the last five deposits made in the ledger to their account in terms of the error of my ways, I know they do not love me.

And when I do it, I know that I do not love them. When we think of covering for sin, what do we think of? If we know the Old Testament, we think of the mercy seat, where there was a covering for sin. Speaking of the Day of Atonement, symbolized in all of the Old Testament's sacrificial system, and then expressed manifestly in Calvary, and when Jesus died upon the cross, he threw, as it were, the mantle of his forgiveness over all our evil and of all our rebellion. Love always protects. Peter learned that on the lakeshore, in the gracious response of Jesus.

And every humble repentant sinner will learn it too." How protective do you think is Parkside Church as a place of love? How protective are you as a lover?

Do you care enough, do I care enough, to put my life on the line because of the love I have for someone else? Stories told of a young girl in the time of Cromwell, and with this I conclude. In the time of Cromwell, engaged to be married to a young man, she discovered that her fiancé was under the judgment of the Lord Protector, namely Cromwell himself, and that he was to be executed. It was for some relatively trivial offense.

There was some question as to the legitimacy of the offense. But Cromwell, who was a proud man, refused to recant, refused to commute the sentence, despite the protestations of this girl. And he announced that at the sounding of the curfew bell, the young man would be put to death. As the evening shadows fell and the man went to ring the bell, in pulling on the rope it never rang. And the more he pulled, the more he was met simply by deadness and no resounding ring. Recognizing that there was some problem with the mechanism, he gave off attempting to ring the curfew bell, and in searching up in the housing, discovered the body of the young girl wrapped around the clapper in the bell. And they took her beaten, bloodied body down from the bell housing. And Cromwell commuted the sentence. A poet put it in this way. At his feet she told her story, showed her hands all bruised and torn, and her sweet young face still haggard with the anguish it had borne, touched his heart with sudden pity, lit his eyes with misty light. "'Go, your lover lives,' said Cromwell.

Curfew will not ring tonight. I love you with the love of the Lord. Oh, I love you with the love of the Lord, because I can see in you the glory of my King. And I love you with the love of the Lord."

What a powerful story that illustrates the protective nature of love. From today's message on Truth for Life with Alistair Begg, be sure to keep listening. Alistair will be back in just a minute to close with prayer. Our current study in 1 Corinthians demonstrates our commitment to teaching the Bible verse by verse at Truth for Life. We trust that as we do this, God will work in the lives of all who listen, that unbelievers will be converted, believers will be established, and local churches will be strengthened in the process. And we'd love to thank you for helping to support our mission of teaching the Bible.

To do that, our team carefully selects resources that you can request each month. And the book I've been mentioning the past several days is a devotional titled An Ocean of Grace. This book is perfect for your pre-Easter reading because each devotional focuses on Christ's death and resurrection.

But it does so with a bit of a twist. Each daily reading is a prayer or a reflection written by a believer from the past. This is a wonderful collection of daily entries that will give you much to meditate on as you learn from people who have followed Jesus throughout the centuries. You'll benefit from the insights and observations of people like Augustine, John Bunyan, George Herbert, just to mention a few. And in the book An Ocean of Grace, you'll not only learn from these men and women of the past, you'll also appreciate how the language has been updated.

Revisions have been made to these historical writings to make the reflections and prayers easier for us to understand. We think you'll love how this book will help you focus your attention on the saving power of the cross in the six weeks of Lent. The offer ends soon so be sure to request your copy today when you give a one-time gift. You'll find the book in our mobile app also online at truthforlife.org slash donate or call 888-588-7884. If you'd rather mail your donation along with your request for the book, write to Truth for Life at P.O. Box 398000, Cleveland, Ohio.

The zip code is 44139. Now before we close in prayer, I want to tell you about an opportunity you have to make your next vacation more than just a vacation. This summer, you're invited to travel with Alistair on a seven-day adventure to Alaska on board a Holland America cruise ship.

This trip will afford you a view of the Hubbard Glacier as you travel across the deep blue waters of the Northern Pacific. You'll also be studying God's Word each day alongside Alistair and join in worship with musicians Laura Storey and Michael O'Brien. Learn more by visiting deeperfaithcruise.com or by calling 855-565-5519. Now here's Alistair to close with prayer. Father, make these truths real in our hearts and lives, in our homes, in our workplaces, and in our church.

Forgive us for constantly replaying the video of offenses caused against us. Bring about the kind of transformation that only you can bring by your Spirit. And may the pondering of the love of the Lord Jesus Christ draw those of us who do not know him to his feet in repentance and faith, and those of us who do to his feet in adoration and praise. For we ask it in his lovely name. Amen. I'm Bob Lapine. Join us again Monday as we continue learning about the characteristics of Christian love. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.