Day 23 - Diagnosis: Love

Scripture Passage: 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Focal Verses: Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. ~ 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (CSB)

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One of the most important steps in any investigation into someone’s death is digging into a decedent’s history (social, mental, medical, etc).

This history includes long term, chronic issues, as well as more immediate acute symptoms, complaints, activities, etc. Why so invasive? Because a person’s symptomology goes a very long way in helping a medical examiner diagnose why someone is dead.

A dead person’s skin is seen to have a dark yellow tinge to it. “Is he a drinker?” I’ll ask and am usually told he’s been an alcoholic for the last twenty years. Jaundice is the symptom. Drinking is the cause for the symptom. A medical examiner finds a fatty, diseased liver, which is what killed him.

A woman is found dead in her bed. No signs of injuries. No signs of drugs or paraphernalia on scene. She’s relatively young with no significant medical history. “Has she been complaining of anything lately?” “Why, yes…she was hospitalized for the last three weeks with pneumonia and laid up in bed here at home for the past week. She’s been complaining of severe leg pain in her right leg.” Autopsy reveals she’s thrown a blood clot after being immobilized for so long. The pain in her leg was the clot moving through her arteries.

These symptoms help guide the medical examiner’s eyes and mind when she’s doing her examination. It ultimately helps her make sense of her findings and directs her final opinion on cause and manner of death.

In today’s passage (one of the most famous passages in the Bible thanks to wedding ceremonies everywhere!), Paul is giving the Corinthians the symptomology of love itself. Remember, in the first three verses of this chapter, Paul explains that it doesn’t matter what spiritual gifts you might be blessed with, if you’re not using them with love, they’re useless. Here, Paul wants the Church at Corinth to know precisely what the symptoms of God’s love looks like and wants us to emulate it.

Love is…

• Patient

• Kind

• Generous

• Humble

• Forgiving

You can read each of them in the passage, but those six sort of encompasses it all. God’s love is all these things. Human love often isn’t, but Paul would encourage each of us to mould our love to look more and more like God’s (remember that 1 Corinthians’s major theme is us dying to ourselves and living in Christ…in putting others before ourselves).

Today, I want you to dissect your own love and how it manifests in people around you. Not just with your bride on your wedding day or your long-suffering spouse and children, but with the stranger on the street. With the rude driver that cuts you off in traffic. With the president of your HOA who is always send you notes that you can’t have an American flag displayed on your porch. On that homeless person panhandling at the end of your street.

Reflect on the outer expression of your love you’re putting out into the world. Give it a mental autopsy. What would the diagnosis be? Are you showing symptoms of God’s love in your life? If not, consider ways to change that. Go to God in prayer to help you. I’ll start…

Father God, help our love to mirror yours. Help us to discard our flawed human love and exude with your divine love in our every day lives. Help us to ensure that, when examined by those around us, there is no doubt as to our symptoms.