Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things,
endures all things. Love never ends.
1 Corinthians 13:7-8a
Love never ends. It never gives up on a person. It never stops loving.
True love has lasting power. It has the tenacity of a bulldog. It keeps going until the end of time.
Love doesn’t give up when the other person turns from you. It doesn’t quit if the other person is unkind to you or insensitive to you. It doesn’t even cease when the other person betrays you. The friend keeps loving the undependable friend. The mother keeps loving the wayward child. The husband keeps loving the unfaithful wife.
It is striking how much emphasis the Bible’s classic chapter on love, 1 Corinthians 13, places on this characteristic of love. “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends” (7-8a).
The remainder of 1 Corinthians 13 stresses how temporary other things are and then concludes: “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (13:13).
This kind of enduring love is dramatically seen in the love of the prodigal son’s father in Luke 15. The son insults the father and leaves, but the father keeps right on loving the son. Each day he is found gazing down the road, hoping against hope that his son would one day come back. And when that day finally comes, the ever-loving, grace-filled father is found running down the road for his son, showering him with a flurry of kisses, a tender embrace and an unrestrained welcome home. Love never stops.
Jesus’s story of the prodigal son’s father is a picture of God’s heart for us, the heart of God for you. And if we love the way God loves, then our love will not be dependent on the other person loving us back. It will not be contingent on the other person deserving our love. It will go to people who do not deserve to be loved. People like us, who are loved fiercely by God even though we don’t deserve it.
Love never ends.