Love’s Attributes (5) Love is not puffed up!
Love’s Attributes (5)
(#159 from Suffer Well Devotional Series©)
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“Love is not puffed up!” (1 Corinthians 13:4)
Love is not puffed up, and therefore, Yahweh is not puffed upped!
Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles! (Proverbs 24:17) This holy instruction summarizes well this fifth attribute of love. As the redeemed of Yahweh, we must always remember from where we came. “Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. (Proverbs 16:18) It is only due to His love being shed abroad into our hearts (minds) and souls, as a gift from the Spirit (Romans 5:5), that we ourselves can stumble and NOT fall (Romans 11:11).
At love’s final attribute, all of the previous attributes are summed up as a whole. The continuing pattern that must be practiced with every thought is that one cannot fail at any of the sixteen attributes of love, and yet claim to love. You have been told to “Take every thought into captivity to the obedience of the Messiah” (2 Corinthians 10:5). And in this, every thought is accountable to love’s true standards. “Self” reliance, self-satisfaction, and self-aggrandizement all scream out, “Look what I did!” and all of these are puffed up failures.
Would it be too profound for you to acknowledge what He has told you throughout His written word; you are your own greatest idol and that the very thing you are being “saved” from is yourself, your pride?
Open your spiritual eyes loved one. See what is really going on.
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)