reading first from Philippians and then first Corinthians 13. And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, if I deliver up my body to be burned and have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind. 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. The Word of the Lord. I really wish that we had before us some way to kind of look at the great text of this particular chapter, the love chapter, chapter 13 of first Corinthians. Because it is great literature. It is an effect kind of poetry. Paul who wrote this letter to a church that wasn't well known for its love, really a quite immature church in a lot of ways. The apostle is exhorting them and us to a more excellent way, the way of love. The Old Testament had declared God's love for his people and had required the people's love for God and for each other. And Jesus had taught a lot about love but more importantly he had lived the life of expressive love. And he, of course, exhibited that love which says himself, he said, no greater love has any one than this that a man would lay down his life for his friends. So the apostle is exhorting us to the highest ethical standard known to humanity. Or it is derived from the ethical character of God himself. To love is to be God-like, to be godly. And in this particular little section of the Greek New Testament, it's interesting. We noted a few weeks back that heights that Paul goes to when he talks about speaking with the tongues of men and angels, boys and gong and a clanging symbol and powers and understanding mysteries and having knowledge and faith or to move mountains. And we could see kind of the elevated language that he's using. But it's interesting if you look at the passage as it continues in verse 4, he uses two very positives. Love is patient and kind. And then there are several negatives. The negative particle, uke or u, is placed in front of a single word in most cases. And sometimes there's a word joining it. But it's very terse and very pointed in the language. Speaking of love, love does not envy, does not boast, not arrogant, not rude, does not insist on its own way. It's not irritable or resentful, does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but then he goes into some positives. And these four positives that are set forth all have the word ponta or the word all. In other words, here that you can hear it, it rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. I think sometimes it's helpful for us to just kind of get the context of the force of this literature. There's a line of interpretation that says that so much of the New Testament, in fact some argue that every single pericopay and paragraph in the New Testament is designed for liturgical worship. That is, it can be read and should be read publicly in the assembly. And it therefore has a literary cadence and a quality and an eloquence to it. That is to be heard by the people. Can you hear the force of these people sitting in the congregation where their pastor following the exhortations of Paul to Timothy? Do not forget the public reading. Can you hear him saying, not boastful, not rude, not arrogant, not, can you get that? You know, just the impact of hearing that. Well, the way it is with the particular verse we have today is kind of like that, except that this one has more than one word to it. As the, just four words in the Greek text, it's the negative particle, u. But then there is a word that is a very interesting word and we need to look at it for just a minute. It is low jives, so my or logo, or logos. It's one of the logos word group. And then the word conone from conos, which means evil. In other words, it says in effect, not something evil. Well, unfortunately, and I'm the last person in the world qualified to quibble with the translation. But the word resentful, which is our title today, just doesn't get it. Even in the ESVs interlinear, it has a footnote with a better reading. Now, I know the ESV, our translation follows the RSV pretty faithfully in most places. And the RSV is probably the most excellent translation in 20th century English that you'll find anywhere in terms of all the things you're looking for in a good translation. And the RSV says, love is not resentful. And that tells a portion of it. But there's so much more. It's a word that means it comes from the logos word group and the logos word group is the word word. But it also means reason, our intelligence. And what this particular word means in this particular form, and it's used over and over and over in scripture. It means to calculate or to deliberate, to reason, to reckon, to account, to charge, to devise, to conclude, or to impute. In fact, it's the word that's used for imputation, which means something is accounted or reckoned to be something else or for something else. It's used in the reckoning of faith, Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for faith. That's the word that's used. A little jislemye. The reckoning of sin. The imputing of sin. That's the word that's used. That's translated into Septuagint. This word means to account. It means to reckon, to deliberate, to calculate, to contemplate, and to think about it, to have something rising from the innards of our reflective and our intellectual capabilities. And the injunction is that is not to be given to evil. That reckoning, that calculating, that reasoning, that deliberation is not to be given over to evil. What is the behavior that is contemplated here? What is the Apostle Paul trying to urge us not to do? What I think he's trying to urge us not to do is helpful when we see that next word, the word for evil. You look down and you didn't find it in your text, did you? Because it's not there. That's why I keep every once in a while and give a little small commercial for the authorized version. You remember the old King James, love, thinketh, no evil. That's a translation. Thinketh, no evil. In other words, evil. And that word evil is used 371 times in the Septuagint and the Old Testament alone. And it means that which is morally evil and ethically, ethically evil. It means that which is contrary to God. It is the very essence of Satan himself for when Jesus gave us the model prayer. He said, deliver us from the evil one. Just like love is the extension of the personality of God and part of the warp and woof of his essential being. God is love. So evil is part of the essence of Satan, the devourer, the liar, the thief, and the robber. He is the one that takes away and that destroys and that tears down and that ruins. In fact, that word evil often will mean a ruin or a disaster. Great evil has come upon me, said Job, that which is at loss, weak, bad, wicked, unserviceable, ruinous, disastrous, destructive. That's evil. That's evil. That's what love doesn't do. Love does not think about contemplate, reckon, and impute evil. Now it certainly covers the translation that we have before us. It would mean that love is not resentful. One of the great attributes of love is that it does not count up wrongdoing. By the way, that's the translation given in the footnote to the ESV's interlinear translation. In their study notes, they got it right. Love does not count up wrongdoing. Let me just sum it up this way. People may mistreat you. People may mistreat us. But if we're loving the way the Lord calls upon us to love, we just don't reckon it, impute it, account it to their account. We just don't make a list of all the things that they've said are done to us, that's bad. We don't take the evil, thought, the evil word, the evil deed, and think in terms of resentment, or retaliation, or evening the score, or destroying the relationship. I said when we started this series and I know that I'm not up to it. I have never, Mark and I talked about this two or three times already over the last couple of weeks, that this is the most convicting, the most humbling, peace of Bible study that we've ever done in a long time. How far short do we fall of the biblical standard of love? Love just doesn't think evil, it doesn't count it up, it doesn't reckon it, it doesn't hold grudges, it's not resentful. Love is not looking at those things that are done to us, that are evil, and adversarial, and holding it against the other person. My goodness, my life story is a story of grudges. One of the things that hurts is having a memory that can remember, not all the wonderful compliments in the encouraging words that people have said, just that one or two little barbed comment that just eats away at the soul. And you're never able really to look at the person again exactly the same in interpersonal relationships. That resentment that's held because of that word, love lets it go. Let me give you one example of where this took place. You and I have offended God Almighty by breaking His law, transgressing His commandments, falling short of His glory, stepping out of bounds of every boundary He gave us, rebelling against His kingdom and His sovereignty, time and again, ignoring Him, living a life of practical atheism, failing to acknowledge Him in all that we do, not giving Him the glory. We have offended and brought all kinds of discredit to our God. And yet He loves us, and in His love He lets all of that go. He doesn't hold any grudges, He doesn't hold any resentment toward us, He is not looking to get even with us. In fact, as our assurance of pardon said this morning, O Lord, if you would impute, there's that word, iniquity, who would stand? If the Lord would count up and reckon all of our evil and then hold it against us, how would we ever stand? Let me tell you what the Father did. He gave His Son, laid upon Him the iniquity of us all. Jesus took those evils, those sins, the rebellion, in His own body He bore them to the tree. Jesus not only bore our sins, as Peter tells us in his book, but He became sin for us. That's what love is. It's a heavenly Father that will not impute iniquity to us, but will impute it to His Son, who will bear it, who will pay for it, who will suffer for it. Love thinks no evil, He is not resentful, doesn't hold a grudge, won't ever impute or account or reckon sins against us. Is it that marvelous? All Paul's askin' us to do is as best we can and with God's help and buy His Spirit toward our sanctification as we bear the fruit of the Spirit, the first of which is love, that we let it go. We don't count up wrongdoing against us. We don't hold a resentment.