Monday, August 7, 2006
"Love thinks no evil" [NKJV]; "Love keeps no record of wrongs" [NIV] (1 Corinthians 13:5).
IDEA: You can’t really love the person you feel has hurt you if you dig up grievances.
PURPOSE: To help listeners understand what happens when we keep account of evil.
We’ve been looking at this list of virtues that Paul says are about love. He begins with two positive virtues that are sort of like headlines: what are they?
Then he follows with a list of things that love does not do. Review those we’ve covered thus far [doesn’t envy, doesn’t parade itself, isn’t puffed up, doesn’t behave rudely, doesn’t seek its own, isn’t provoked].
What is the next one? Love thinks no evil.
Suppose you’re reading in the New King James Version that “love thinks no evil.” What possible interpretations would we have for that?
Voice #1 (female): I think love doesn’t attribute bad motives to people. For example, if you tell me something and I’m not sure it’s true, if I think no evil, it means I’ll not immediately assume that you’re lying to me. I think “love thinks no evil” means that love cuts other people some slack.
Voice #2 (male): I think it has to do with pornography. I think we want to keep our minds pure. Didn’t Jesus say that if a man looks at a woman and lusts after her, he commits adultery in his heart? So if I see a woman and I really act in love toward her, I’m not going to have improper sexual thoughts about her. I won’t think evil.
Voice #3 (younger voice): Well, when you say that love thinks no evil, you know, it’s like you don’t plot to kill somebody. For example, you don’t think about how to hurt somebody, or how you would rob somebody. It’s like when you watch television and guys are beating each other up. You don’t think about beating up on somebody else in school or shooting somebody. You don’t think about hurting somebody real bad. You don’t think about evil.
Voice #4: You don’t think about evil things happening to you. When you’re walking down the street, and it’s a new neighborhood, you think positive thoughts. You don’t think there’s gonna be somebody who’ll jump out at you and hit you over the head and take your money. You’re not suspicious. I think that’s what it means that love thinks no evil.
[back to regular team]
Haddon: If someone read these words that way, would it get them into any trouble?
All of these could be true:
- Love doesn’t attribute bad motives to people.
- Love won’t indulge in pornography.
- Love doesn’t think about hurting someone else.
- Love isn’t suspicious about what other people might do to hurt them.
I. The Greek word behind the phrase “love thinks no evil” was a word used by an accountant.
The accountant enters items on a ledger.
Why does an accountant “keep books”?
What does that mean when it says that love thinks no evil?
A man or woman “takes no account of evil” -- they don’t mark it down because they don’t plan to recall the offense.
Other translations have “love doesn’t keep an account of the wrongs done against it.”
II. Why would people keep an account of evil?
Can you think of people who kept an account of evil and why they did it?
Example: A couple at dinner talked of friends at the church who had wronged them. It took place 10 years earlier. For a decade they kept records on a wrong done to them. There was no statute of limitation.
James Broderick in Progress of the Jesuits said of Pope Paul IV, “He never forgot slights done to him, which was his fundamental weakness. He might bury the hatchet for a time, but he gave the impression of always marking the spot.”
Have you ever done that?
Do you even find that, like a dog with a bone, your mind goes back and digs up dirt about past insults? Why? What causes you to do it?
III. Love forgives and forgets.
How do you remember something?
- For example, how do children remember spelling words?
- How do actors remember their lines?
- How do you remember the names of people you want to remember?
- How do you remember slights and hurts done to you?
How do we remember slights and hurts done to us? We keep digging them up. When you nurse the grievance to keep it warm, you can’t really love the person you feel has hurt you. Love doesn’t keep books on the wrongs done to it.