It is a pity that the translators of the Authorised Version adopted Wycliffe's word ‘charity’, rather than following Tyndale and the Geneva Version in using ‘love’. Chapter 13 is a hymn in praise of love, which follows Paul's superb treatment of charismatic gifts in the church. Sadly, chapter 12 has excited far more interest in recent years than chapter 13. Paul's point here is not that love is the alternative to gifts, but that love has the pre-eminence. No matter how outstanding a man may be in his gifts or how costly his service, without love he gains nothing. Love is the one thing needful and nothing can compensate for its absence. This leads Paul to expound love's virtues. How does love behave? No thoughtful Christian will deny our present urgent need to attend to this teaching and bring it into our personal lives and especially into our church life.

You will have noticed that most of the attributes here ascribed to love are negative, though love itself is ‘the most aggressive form of goodness’ (Thomas Charles Edwards on 1 Corinthians). Why this negative approach, not uncommon in Scripture - think of the Ten Commandments? Is it partly because we live in a fallen world and are confronted on every hand by perverse and sinful behaviour? So the Lord teaches us the character of true love by pointing us to its opposite and saying ‘Love is the antithesis of that behaviour’.

First, two positive virtues of love: patience and kindness. Love is not easily put out or put off. To quote Thomas Charles Edwards again: ‘Long-suffering expresses the self-restraint of Christian love; kindness expresses its self-abandonment. The former regards the wrong-doer; the latter, the sufferer.’

Second, there are eight negatives: Love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude; it does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

And then finally, four resounding positives - Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things. Love never ends .. . The repetition of the words ‘all things’ enforces the strength and resilience of love. So here are four tests of love:

1. Love bears all things. It may be the endurance of love that is in view, but more likely it is love's ability to cover the faults of others - see 1 Peter 4: 8: ‘. . .love covers a multitude of sins’. How important this is in the home and in the church. Where love abounds so many offences may be overlooked and forgotten.

2. Love believes all things - not that love is naive or gullible, but love is always poised to think the best and to put the best construction on the words and deeds of others. How sad when the very reverse is found at times in our churches.

3. Love hopes all things. Again, this is not a blind optimism that will not face reality. Rather, love is disposed to hold on to hope even against all the odds. Love is slow to give up on people and refuses to take failure as final.

4. Love endures all things. Hodge in his Commentary says Paul uses a military word which means to sustain the assaults of an enemy. How searching this is for us when differences arise in our churches and feelings run strong and things are said which ought never to be said - and yet love can survive and, more, love can triumph. We must see to it that, in the grace and power of him who loved us and gave himself for us, love does triumph in our homes and our churches.