1 Corinthians 13:5a ~ 20141123 ~ Pastor Rodney Zedicher ~ Ephraim Church of the Bible ~ www.ephraimbible.org
11/23 1 Corinthians 13:5a Love is Not Rude; Audio available at: http://www.ephraimbible.org/Sermons/20141123_1cor13_5a.mp3
4 Ἡ ἀγάπη μακροθυμεῖ, χρηστεύεται ἡ ἀγάπη, οὐ ζηλοῖ ἡ ἀγάπη, οὐ περπερεύεται, οὐ φυσιοῦται, 5 οὐκ ἀσχημονεῖ, οὐ ζητεῖ τὰ ἑαυτῆς, οὐ παροξύνεται, οὐ λογίζεται τὸ κακόν,
1 Corinthians 13 [ESV2011]
12:31 But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.
13:1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
We are looking at love, God's love, the love with which he loves us. We are looking at what love is, what love looks like, so we can know how to love one another. God's love is long-tempered; it does not retaliate when wronged. His love is kind, doing good to the ungrateful and evil. His love is not displeased when good comes to someone else. His love is not bragging, claiming more than is true; and it is not puffed up, holding an inflated unsubstantiated view of self. Our love for others is to be a reflection of and a response to God's love for us, an overflow of the fullness of being perfectly loved by a perfect God.
Definition of Rude
Next on Paul's list is 'Love is not rude, or love 'doth not behave itself unseemly' (KJV).
This particular verb 'to act unbecomingly' is used only two places in the New Testament, here and in 1 Corinthians 7:36.
1 Corinthians 7:36 If anyone thinks that he is not behaving properly [v; G807 ἀσχημονέω aschemoneo] toward his betrothed, if his passions are strong, and it has to be, let him do as he wishes: let them marry—it is no sin.
There it is translated 'not behaving properly'. The Corinthians were thinking that it is more godly to live a celibate life than a married life. Responding to their questions, he affirms that sexual intimacy between husband and wife is not only good and right and beautiful, but is an obligation each owes to the other. For singles, if they have been supernaturally gifted by God for celibacy, that is good, but if not they should marry. In verse 36 he is addressing betrothed or engaged couples questioning whether it is more godly to stay single and not follow through with the marriage. Paul's answer is that if they are so gifted, it is good to remain unmarried, but if their passions are strong and they need to be married, if they are acting unbecomingly or not behaving properly, they should marry. It seems in this context that the word primarily has sexual impropriety in mind. Sexual intimacy is appropriate only within the context of marriage, between husband and wife, so any expressions of sexual intimacy outside of the marriage covenant are improper. Notice, this directly addresses the justification many use today that 'we love each other and we are planning on getting married some day, so it's ok'. Paul is clear that before you say your vows and enter into the covenant of marriage, any sexual intimacy is improper. To claim love and then to act indecently or rudely is to contradict the very nature of love.
If we look at how this word group is used in the Old Testament, we see that it is often used to describe sexual impropriety. In Genesis 34,
Genesis 34:2 And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her, he seized her and lay with her and humiliated her. 3 And his soul was drawn to Dinah the daughter of Jacob. He loved the young woman and spoke tenderly to her. 4 So Shechem spoke to his father Hamor, saying, “Get me this girl for my wife.”
Understand, Shechem had very strong feelings for Dinah, he claimed to love her, and intended to marry her, willing to do anything for the right to marry her.
Genesis 34:7 The sons of Jacob had come in from the field as soon as they heard of it, and the men were indignant and very angry, because he had done an outrageous thing in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter, for such a thing must not be done.
The rape of Dinah was an outrageous act of impropriety. And This word group is used over 30 times in the section of Leviticus dealing with God's instructions on appropriate and inappropriate sexual relationships.
Leviticus 18:6 “None of you shall approach any one of his close relatives to uncover nakedness. I am the LORD. [Also v.7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19; 20:11, 17,18,19,20,21 (32 x)]
In Deuteronomy 24 people used this word as grounds of divorce.
Deuteronomy 24:1 “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house,
Because this word is used in more ways than sexual impropriety, this created a debate among the rabbis on what constituted legitimate grounds for divorce. Some believed that 'some indecency' was restricted to sexual immorality, while others extend it to anything that a wife did that the husband considered improper, even things as trivial as burning his toast.
This word group has a wide range of meaning in the Old Testament. Several times it is used to describe appropriate clothing to prevent indecent exposure. It is used of being shamed or publicly embarrassed. It is used in Deuteronomy 23 of the rudeness of, to bring it up to date, not flushing the toilet.
Deuteronomy 23:13 And you shall have a trowel with your tools, and when you sit down outside, you shall dig a hole with it and turn back and cover up your excrement. 14 Because the LORD your God walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you and to give up your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy, so that he may not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you.
That's simply gross or offensive. It's indecent, it's rude. His reason for not being gross or indecent is that the Lord walks among you.
This word is a compound word that is made up of a neutral root word and a negative prefix. We could liken it to the word 'form'. A negative prefix gives it a negative meaning 'malformed' or 'deformed'. If we put a positive prefix on it, we could form a word like 'well-formed'. We can get a clearer picture of the meaning by looking at all the different forms of the word.
In 1 Corinthians 7, dealing with issues of marriage and singleness, he uses the positive form of this word:
1 Corinthians 7:35 I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order [adj; G2158 εὐσχήμων euschemon] and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.
Paul's intent is to promote both decency or propriety and undivided devotion to the Lord. Earlier in this chapter, he uses the root word, translated 'form', which points to the external condition.
1 Corinthians 7:29 This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, 30 and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, 31 and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form [n; G4976 σχῆμα schema] of this world is passing away.
The fact that the external form of this world, good or bad, is passing away should cause us to hold loosely to the things of this world.
In 1 Corinthians 12, the chapter immediately preceding the love chapter, Paul uses the different forms of this word in his metaphor of the body as a picture of the church. His picture is that each of us individually are body parts, organs and limbs.
1 Corinthians 12:22 On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor , and our unpresentable [adj; G809 ἀσχήμων aschemon] parts are treated with greater modesty, [n; G2157 εὐσχημοσύνη euschemosune], 24 which our more presentable [adj; G2158 εὐσχήμων euschemon] parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, 25 that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.
'Unpresentable' is the negative adjectival form; 'greater modesty' is the positive noun form; 'more presentable' is the positive adjective. Some parts of the body are unpresentable or indecent. They are not meant to be exposed. They need to be clothed and covered. This has to do specifically with outward form and appearance. Those parts of the body are necessary and their function is valuable to the health and well-being of the body. But it does not mean that those parts should be exposed to the public eye. They are shielded, protected, clothed.
Paul closes this section at the end of chapter 14 with this admonition:
1 Corinthians 14:40 But all things should be done decently [adv; G2156 εὐσχημόνως euschemonos] and in order.
All things in the church, among the believers must be done decently, with good propriety, with appropriateness, with proper sensitivity to social norms.
The Corinthians Were Rude
When we look at the conduct of the Corinthians, we see what this ought not to look like in the church of God. Some in the church in Corinth were engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct, conduct that would even offend pagans, and rather than being ashamed of it, they were proud. Some were visiting prostitutes. Married couples were depriving one another of their conjugal rights. Engaged couples were acting inappropriately. The Corinthians were shaming and defrauding one another in court rather than being wronged, rather than going privately to their brothers and working out their differences. In the context of a fellowship meal, each went ahead with his own meal, not waiting for the others. Women were disregarding discretion and propriety in the gatherings of the church. The Corinthians were rich, acting like kings while the apostles were 'hungry, thirsty, poorly dressed, buffeted and homeless' (4:11). They were brashly involving themselves in pagan feasts, not concerned that their participation in idolatry is unfaithfulness to the one true God. In their rude impropriety, they demonstrated a lack of genuine love for God or one another, and they damaged their reputation and hindered the advance of the gospel in their community. Love is not indecent.
God is Not Rude
God, who is love, is not rude. To better understand what love is, we look to the God who is love, and to the clearest expression of the invisible God, Jesus Christ his Son.
Never in any circumstance did Jesus act indecently. He always did what was appropriate. We can learn what is appropriate by looking to him. We have the threefold testimony at the end of his life from Pilate that 'I find no fault in him' (Jn.18:38; 19:4,6). Even when the religious leaders sought false testimony against him, they could find none (Mt.26:59-60).
Jesus was never offensive, but he did offend. He did violate social norms on occasion, for instance, when he allowed a woman of the street to interrupt a dinner party and wash his feet with her tears (Lk.7:36-50). He offended and violated the social norms when he told a story in which a Samaritan was the hero (Lk.10:25-37). He even told a story portraying the Father as entirely undignified (Lk.15:11-32). To the son who had spit in his face, demanded his inheritance, wished his father dead, wasted everything with prostitutes, and then returned home broken and desperate, the father gathered up his skirts, bared his legs and ran to meet him. He embraced him and kissed him and clothed him in his own best robe. This was an entirely undignified way for a respectable man to conduct himself. And this is how Jesus portrayed his Father!
To our modern sensibilities, we look at him making a whip of cords and driving both people and animals out of the temple courts to be an almost inexcusable act of inappropriate irrational violence (Jn.2:13-17). We think it rude to publicly call the scribes and pharisees 'hypocrites, blind guides, serpents, brood of vipers, murderers, full of greed, self-indulgence, uncleanness, hypocrisy and lawlessness, a child of hell (Lk.23). We view this as rude and improper. But we need to let Jesus correct our view of what is proper and improper. When we violate social norms, it is typically out of a selfish disregard for others. 'I don't care what you think; I have the right to dress this way or act this way or live this way'. Jesus violated social norms, not out of a selfish disregard for others, but out of a deep care and love for others, seeking their best. He confronted sin in others, because he genuinely desires all to come to repentance, and repentance requires an awareness of sin.
To the adulteress who was dragged out from the very act, he extended forgiveness and forced justice to wait. It is appropriate for a just judge to punish sinners. But he extended mercy to guilty sinners, taking their shame on himself. He was humiliated, stripped bare, nailed to a wooden beam, and put on display for all to see. He was shamed, exposed, treated indecently. He was treated indecently for us. God is the one who clothed the nakedness of his people even after they rebelled against him. Jesus took our shame and clothes us in his own perfect righteousness.
The Follower of Jesus Must Not Be Rude
We love because he first loved us. We are not improper or needlessly offensive to others, because he conquered our shame and set us free to love others without rudeness or impropriety. Love is not improper. It is proper.
Paul encourages the Thessalonians in their love in 1 Thessalonians 4.
1 Thessalonians 4:9 Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, 10 for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, 11 and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, 12 so that you may walk properly [adv; G2156 εὐσχημόνως euschemonos] before outsiders and be dependent on no one.
Propriety or decency has much to do with how others perceive us. It is outward. We are told here to 'walk properly before outsiders'. I thought Christianity was more about the heart and not about outward appearances, after all, “man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). Yes, but Jesus said, “you will recognize them by their fruits” (Mt.7:20) and “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Mt.12:34). A genuine inward transformation will produce visible results. A caterpillar can no longer disguise himself as a caterpillar once he has gone through metamorphosis and become a butterfly.
Paul admonishes the Romans:
Romans 13:12 The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13 Let us walk properly [adv; G2156 εὐσχημόνως euschemonos] as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
We must be who we are. If we have believed in Christ and been transformed by Christ, if in Christ you are a new creation then the old is passed away and the new has come (2Cor.5:17). We must no longer act as if we had not been transformed. Good propriety is a visible daytime type of walk. There are things propriety is not. It is not orgies, drunkenness, sexual immorality, sensuality, quarreling, jealousy, gratifying the desires of the flesh. These things are contrary to decency, and contrary to love.
Our culture is rude. We have turned crassness into a virtue. Our humor is rude. Our heroes are crude. Our entertainment industry can't turn out a movie or even a cartoon without injecting some rude humor or inappropriate undertones. Children treat their parents with rudeness. Parents speak rudely to their children. We dishonor any kind of authority. Paul points us to the way of love in Ephesians 5.
Ephesians 5:1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. 3 But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. 4 Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.
We love as Christ loved us. Some things are incompatible with that kind of love. Biting witty comebacks, foolish talk, filthiness, immorality, impurity, covetousness are out of place among those who follow Jesus. In place of all that, our hearts are to overflow with thanksgiving to him for how he has loved us and gave himself up for us. Love is not rude.
Pastor Rodney Zedicher ~ Ephraim Church of the Bible ~ www.ephraimbible.org