Understanding “love” is a life-long pursuit that won’t end till we get to Heaven. But it’s a worthy quest with great treasures along the way.
If I speak with eloquence in earth’s many languages, and in the heavenly tongues of angels, but don’t have a profound thoughtfulness and unselfish concern for other believers regardless of their circumstances or station in life growing out of God’s love for me, then I have become only a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal [just an annoying distraction]. And if I were to have the gift of prophecy with a profound understanding of God’s hidden secrets, and if I possessed unending supernatural knowledge, and if I had the greatest gift of faith that could move mountains, but have never learned to reach out to others in love, then I am nothing. And if I were to be so generous as to give away everything I owned to feed the poor, and surrender my body to be burned, without the pure motive of love, I would gain nothing of value.
Perfect Love
The verses above were from 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, but they weren’t from only one translation. As I read over and meditated on the whole chapter in various translations, I found a deeper, fuller, clearer meaning by pulling from each one and rewriting the verses.
Though I won’t go into it here, I have struggled most of my life with the idea of love. I just couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t see it. And because of some *childhood trauma, I wondered if I’d ever be worthy of or capable of love.
*I shared more about that story in the email that went out this month. If you aren’t on the Figs List but would like to get that email, reach out to me here.
Verse 4 in the Passion Translation starts out, “Love is large.”
It is and because of that I don’t think we’ll ever fully comprehend it.
In fact, it’s so large that God spends the whole Bible revealing His love to us.
According to the Blue Letter Bible, the word “love” appears in the NIV translation 574 times in 526 verses. In the NLT, it’s 645 times in 575 verses.
That’s a lot of love.
Understanding “love” is a life-long pursuit that won’t end till we get to Heaven. But it’s a worthy quest with great treasures along the way.
Though the Bible is filled with scripture about “love,” I wanted to do something a bit different with our scripture cultivations this month. Rather than curating a collection of verses from throughout the Bible, I want to encourage you to really till and amend the soil well with the nutrients found in what many call “the love chapter,” 1 Corinthians 13.
May I encourage you to approach these verses with fresh eyes, to dig deep and let them dig deep into you?
Here are some ways you can do that.
- Look at the verses in multiple translations. In the section I shared at the beginning, I pulled from the Amplified Version, NLT, NIV, and TPT.
- Ask Holy Spirit what He wants to reveal to you in those verses.
- Pay attention to the words or the phrases that tug at you.
- Write and maybe even rewrite the verses that Holy Spirit highlights to you.
- Lastly, make it personal. You can do that the way I did with verses 1-3. Or you can exchange your name for the word “love” whenever you see it in the verses like I did below.
ROSE [love] is gentle and consistently kind to all. SHE [love] refuses to be jealous when blessing comes to someone else. ROSE [love] does not brag about her own achievements nor inflate her own importance.
You have lots of options! Start by printing off the Scripture Cultivations Plan for free.
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What are Scripture Cultivations?
If you’re new to the Figs Community, you may be wondering why I call them Scripture Cultivations instead of a Scripture Writing Plan or Scripture Reading Plan. Hop on over to this page to find out more.
