The limitless love of Christ

by George Bailey.

‘It [love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.’ 1 Corinthians 13:7 (NRSV)

This verse has been in my reflections recently – the lectionary reading for 2^nd February, so also in our weekly Bible study, and featured at several weddings and funerals this month. The key questions I have are whether love has any limits, and how do we read this responsibly in the midst of unbearable suffering?

The first issue is to consider how it is best to translate this verse into English. The NRSV translation above is close to the Greek text and follows the King James Version – ‘all things’ (panta) is repeated four times. Anthony Thistleton raises concerns with this, which I have found to resonate with people’s reactions: how can love have no limits? how can that work in reality? As Thistleton puts it, bearing and believing all things, ‘appears to support Marx’s notion of Christianity as the opium of the people, or Nietzsche’s concept of Christianity as “servile mediocrity,” […]’ or to form a basis for Freud to see Christian faith as ‘a projection derived from inner conflicts resolved by wishful thinking which “believes all things” in order to “endure all things.”’[1] Thistleton proposes an alternative translation to guard against these possible misunderstandings:

‘It never tires of support, never loses faith, never exhausts hope, never gives up.’[2]

This moves away from the Greek, changing the ‘all things’ to a double negative, and altering the way the verbs work, especially requiring an interpretation to render ‘bears’ and ‘endures’. The NIV offers a compromise between these two options:

‘It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.’

This also requires an interpretation to render ‘bears all things,’ but does not need to use double negatives, and avoids the problems with ‘all things’ – so making it easier to maintain that there are some things which love should not endure or believe, but it can though continue always to protect people and retain trust.[3]

All these translation considerations assume that the love here concerns the relationship between Christians and other people (i.e. from individuals to global issues). This is a common way to interpret verses 4-6, which describe the activity of love. Paul is implicitly listing negative ways that the Corinthian church people were behaving towards each other, and offering the opposite as a vision for community life. Given his arguments elsewhere, he is probably also implicitly offering his own behaviour towards them as a model of love in action. Both these perspectives feature in the way I sometimes use these verses in weddings and funerals, to encourage and celebrate the cultivation of a loving character.

However, there is a third way to interpret verse 4-7 – as a description of the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. It makes sense to read these verses, replacing the word ‘love’ with ‘Jesus.’ This helps with the pastoral problem of positing such an idealised vision of Christian lifestyle, one which no human can fully exemplify… except that is for Jesus. Karl Barth proposes this; though he does follow the simpler reading for verses 4-6 as encouraging a Christian character, he especially focuses his interpretation of verse 7 in a more Christological way:

‘At this point we catch an unmistakable glimpse of the pattern of Christian existence. And this pattern, the royal man Jesus, is not only the pattern but also the living Head of His community and all its members, in whose life and therefore in whose victory they may participate as such, not just passively but actively, as active subjects. When they love, they become and are this. When they love, they withstand the whole world of hostile forces and defeat it. If in all activities wrought by the Spirit Christians are in undecided conflict with this world, when they love this world is already under and behind them.’[4]

Some situations are extremely challenging to human endurance, and threaten the possibility of maintaining human hope and faith. It is here, Barth seems to be saying, that the persistence of love is not a burden to carried by humans on their own, but it is an activity of Christ, and by the work of the Holy Sprit the community of Christ participates in Christ as love.

David Prior is inspired by Barth’s comments to subtitle his interpretation of verse 7 as ‘Love and apparent darkness in God.’[5] I think this is helpful and is pushing further towards the acknowledgement that there are situations which cause us to question whether God cares, or even if God is really there – we cry out to God in the darkness, ‘Why?!’ Human pain can find a voice in these verses, which should not ever be used to diminish the experience of those who struggle to endure suffering. Perhaps verse 7 is most appropriately interpreted first from a Christological perspective – it is precisely because there are things which we cannot bear and endure, and situations in which our faith and hope are lost, that we need the love of Christ, which is victorious even in death. Jesus Christ ‘bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,’ and this is where we place our faith and hope in unbearable situations.

Paul ends the passage ‘faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love’ (v13) – in the resurrection life, our faith is different to how we experience it now, for we will be face to face with God; hope is different, for time is no more within God’s eternity; but love is the relationship between us and God, in Christ, by the work of the Holy Spirit. What we glimpse of that suffering love of Christ, with us and for us, when we face suffering now, will remain and be completely realised in our eternal relationship with God.

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[1] Anthony C. Thistleton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text. The New International Greek Testament Commentary. Eerdmans’s; Paternoster Press, 2000. p1056-7.

[2] ibid., p1026.

[3] Other commentators are divided on this translation issue: e.g. Gordon Fee uses the NIV option (The First Epistle to the Corinthians, Revised Edition. Eerdmans’s, 2014. p522); both David Garland (1 Corinthians: Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Baker Academic, 2003. p486) and Paul Gardner use the NRSV option, but Gardner in particular, also acknowledges that Thistleton’s concerns need to be considered whenever that version is interpreted (1 Corinthians: Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Harper Collins, 2018. p574).

[4] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics. Volume 4, part 2, The Doctrine of Reconciliation. (eds. G W Bromiley, Thomas F Torrance). T & T Clark, 1958. p835

[5] David Prior, The Message of 1 Corinthians: Life in the local church. IVP, 1993. p232.