Endurance Test

In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul has been treating “love” like a beautiful diamond, with many different facets to be examined and explored. He has been slowly turning it round in the light, noticing things that most of us don’t and pointing out things we might usually ignore. As Paul says love “endures all things”, this might sound similar to the ideas of patience and bearing all things he’s already mentioned, but it is different. The word for endurance here is the Greek verb “to remain”, with an added prefix implying being “below” something: to “endure all things” is to stand up underneath them.

Sinclair uses the image of a weightlifting competitor to help us understand endurance. Imagine someone managing to lift and hold over 250 kilos above their head, arms shaking, body trembling under the weight—you’d have to be pretty cynical to say that all that person did was to remain standing! The tremendous pressure they’re under means that their ability to remain standing is rare and impressive, and this is what Paul is saying love does.

Having a right perspective of God and his love for us will keep us standing no matter what pressures we face. Sinclair writes that, at the cross, Jesus “came under the crushing weight of God’s wrath against us, and it left him without any sense of his love … But [Jesus’] love endured all things. Rather than call on twelve legions of angels to deliver him, his arms remained outstretched like the cosmic weightlifter he was, bearing the sins of the world.”

Jesus always knew God’s plan for salvation: he knew that being born of Mary would lead to the agony of the cross. But because “Love … endures all things”, he did it anyway, willing to suffer that agony in order to bring us back to God our Father. No matter what pressure we are feeling or how circumstances are bearing down on us, we can be sure that we can endure all things, because Jesus endured all things for us: his love will keep us standing.

Today, consider how Christ was able to endure the cross, and how that enables your love to endure the circumstances you face. Pray for a love that “endures all things”.

Love Came Down at Christmas by Sinclair B. Ferguson (published by The Good Book Company) available to buy at Eden Christian Bookstore or Amazon.