“Love Is Not Resentful”
1 Corinthians 13:5
In our day-to-day relationships, we cannot get very far without stepping on some toes. It is hard to live in community with others, our neighbors, our family members, our congregation without making offense, however slight, either in our words, our gestures or deeds. We do it naturally, because we are prone to sin. It is in our bones. It is in our spirit. It’s our natural condition (Psalm 51:3,5). So how do we remain in relationship with one another, one little hurt after the next? If we were to keep account, which we are inclined to do, we could make an endless tally of offenses committed by us and against us. No relationship could ever stand under the weight of the evidence that love and trust and loyalty and kindness and patience (to say the very least) had been violated. The contract for justice has been breached. The business of reckoning accounts between people leads to the business of dissolving accounts. So, Paul, in his wisdom, asserts that “Love is not resentful.” Love does not keep a record of wrongs.
The Greek word, logizetai, means “to reckon” or “to consider”. It is an accounting term that can mean “to store up” or to keep a record of an account. The Greek word that follows it in
1 Corinthians 13:5 is kakon, meaning “bad” or “evil”. So, it makes sense to translate the phrase, “love does not keep a record of wrongs” as the NIV does. We do that to people, don’t we? We count their sins. We nurse our anger. We harbor resentment, which leads to hate, not love. Love is not resentful. Love does not keep a record of wrongs.
Paul is once again drawing upon the character of God demonstrated throughout the Bible. Though it is clear God knows our sins, and is just to condemn sin wherever it thrives, He is also a God who loves and is able to forgive, or “put away” or “remove” our sins from us. “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” (Psalm 103:12)
Only God is able to do such a thing. We know all too well our own inability to put away our sin, even when we earnestly, painfully, desire to do so (Romans 7:18). Only through the work of the Lord Jesus on the cross can we experience the freedom of sin “put away” and the freedom of life, where our every word or action is not (and will not be) held against us. This is how love is.
Jesus was the reckoning. Even Jesus himself said it was always the plan to be “numbered with the transgressors.” (Isaiah 53:12, Luke 22:37). Yes, an accounting has taken place. The tally of all our offenses fell on him. Every sin was accounted for on the cross, for all time – past, present and future. For those who believe, every sin will be removed from us, forgiven, put away. Like a debt being removed from the great divine ledger, we will be counted as righteous. (Isaiah 53:11) His righteousness is imputed to us as a credit. No, God did not turn a blind eye to sin. He did not look the other way out of some weak-willed, sentimental feeling for us. He accounted for it himself, out of love. He did for us, what we could not do for ourselves. As a result, we will be counted in the great number of the righteous who will forever live and sing and worship in the Presence of the Lord (Revelation 19:1,6,8). Marvel upon marvel, the scriptures tell us that he no longer remembers our sins. We are truly clean.
And what did Jesus say in his last words on the cross; humiliated, beaten, maligned, slandered, falsely accused, tortured as he was? He said “Father, forgive them.” (Luke 23:34). This is our example. We have not only the power but the obligation to do to others what has been done for us. No matter the offense. We can place any sin committed by us or against us on Jesus and know that God makes the final accounting. Whatever is owed to us, He will reckon to us. Whatever is required of us, He has paid. He is faithful to make us whole. Therefore, we are free to live in love with each other. We can put away the offenses. We don’t have to keep a record of wrongs against us. Love is not resentful.
Oh, Lord Jesus,
Where do I begin?
You have searched me and you know me.
You know my every failing,
my worst side, the great divide in my soul,
where I can never be all that You would have me to be,
all that I want to be,
without You.
Never once did you turn your head away from me.
Never once did you throw it all in my face.
O Lord,
where do I begin to praise?
You took all my ugliness, my impurity, my hate
And everything else I would never dare to say,
could never bear to say,
Upon yourself.
That I could begin to know and experience
Your beauty, your purity, your love,
All the goodness I could only imagine.
You have clothed me in righteousness.
You have clothed me in yourself.
Remind me again and again,
I have no right to turn my head from another,
To keep an account of their sins.
I gave up that right, when I gave you my sins.
I have no right but to walk in the way of love,
In the freedom of forgetting.
Take care of the rest for me, please,
God of love, God of justice.
Amen.