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One and Four

             Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (I Corinthians 13:6-7)

 

            Here, Paul breaks the pattern he began in yesterday’s passage. We should have a sentence with five characteristics, followed by a sentence with six. Instead, we have a sentence with two, and another sentence with four. The other pattern that might be worth noticing is that Paul began yesterday’s passage with the word Love, but uses the pronoun it for the rest of what he wrote. But today’s passage again begins with Love. That suggests that each time he uses the word Love, he is beginning a new thought. So, love is not about having power over, but about sharing power and using power for the good of others.

            And now, love is about truth. In Ephesians, Paul describes truth as the belt that holds up one’s clothes, serves as a place to keep one’s tools and weapons, and protects one’s bowels (the seat of emotion.) What good would a belt be if it didn’t protect the bowels? If the buckle released? If one’s clothes keep falling down and getting in the way? If it didn’t always do all the things a belt is supposed to do? The belt isn’t love, but the same could be said of it. What sort of love is it that deals in deception, doesn’t protect, doesn’t trust, doesn’t hope, or doesn’t persevere? In a sense, the break in Paul’s pattern isn’t that he does two, three, four, one, four. It’s that two, three, and four are each stated in one sentence, while five is broken into two sentences. Where two, three, and four are about power, five (or one and four) is about reality or truth.

        The other noteworthy item in today's passage is the repetition of always. Power may wax and wane. Truth does not. 

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