Love’s Attributes (4) Love is Not Boastful
Love’s Attributes (4)
(#158 from Suffer Well Devotional Series©)
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“Love is not boastful!” (1 Corinthians 13:4)
Love is not boastful, and therefore, Yahweh is not boastful!
Shaul urged Timothy to; “Teach no other doctrine,” (1Timothy 1:3) so, as with jealously, we find the need to define terms in order to hold to pure doctrine. “I am Yahweh and there is no other” (Exodus 20:3) should make His doctrine on boasting quite clear. When it comes to boasting, it is Yahweh who expects all the glory! Shaul says, “Of such a One I will boast; yet of myself I will not boast, except in my infirmities.” (2. Corinthians 12:5) And he also admits, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells.” (Romans 7:18) And so, in this boasting on Him alone, we could only see beauty if He who claims all the glory saves us from our own depravity. If He was to boast, yet leave us in our fallen state, could this be described as perfect love? Of course not, and so we see that Yahweh alone is due His boasting.
As for us, the redeemed, love speaks to our carnal ways of boasting. And though all such boasting is horrid, there are the worse kinds of boasting. False humility (Colossians 2:18-23) and self-righteousness (Romans 10:3) are the worst of the ego’s ways of boasting. Pride and spirituality have no place in the same conscience chosen for salvation; for it is the contrite and humble mind that would never boast of its own importance.
If you are to be saved (a redeemed conscience, fully given over to Yahweh’s commands) by Him, then how could you ever have anything to do with such a grand design? It was by the death of One (Hebrews 2:14, Romans 5:15) that many men would be saved, and it is that death alone that opens His mind within man’s conscience. What credit can you take for this, other than the murder of the One who died for you? I will not boast!
I give you a new commandment: that you should love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you too should love one another. By this shall all [men] know that you are My disciples, if you love one another [if you keep on showing love among yourselves]. (John 13:34-35)