After explaining what love does not do (13:4b–6), Paul listed four positive attributes of love. First of all, love always protects. The word in Greek, stego, means “cover” or “hide by covering.” This does not refer to hiding hurtful sin but to protecting someone from embarrassment, gossip, or any other such harm. When believers love one another, they refuse harmful gossip and protect one another from those who would try to inflict harm.^[1]

Love can endure anything.  It is just possible that this may mean “love can cover anything,” in the sense that it will never drag into the light of day the faults and mistakes of others.  It would far rather set about quietly mending things than publicly displaying and rebuking them.  More likely it means that love can bear any insult, any injury, any disappointment.  It describes the kind of love that was in the heart of Jesus himself, “Thy foes might hate, despise, revile, Thy friends unfaithful prove; Unwearied in forgiveness still, Thy heart could only love.”

The four qualities mentioned in verse 7 are hyperbole, exaggerations to make a point. Paul has made it clear that love rejects jealousy, bragging, arrogance, unseemliness, selfishness, anger, resentment, and unrighteousness. It does not bear, believe, hope, or endure lies, false teaching, or anything else that is not of God. By all things Paul is speaking of all things acceptable in God’s righteousness and will, of everything within the Lord’s divine tolerance. The four qualities listed here are closely related and are given in ascending order.

Stegō (to bear) basically means to cover or to support and therefore to protect. Love bears all things by protecting others from exposure, ridicule, or harm. Genuine love does not gossip or listen to gossip. Even when a sin is certain, love tries to correct it with the least possible hurt and harm to the guilty person. Love never protects sin but is anxious to protect the sinner.

Fallen human nature has the opposite inclination. There is perverse pleasure in exposing someone’s faults and failures. As already mentioned, that is what makes gossip appealing. The Corinthians cared little for the feelings or welfare of fellow believers. It was every person for himself. Like the Pharisees, they paid little attention to others, except when those others were failing or sinning. Man’s depravity causes him to rejoice in the depravity of others. It is that depraved pleasure that sells magazines and newspapers that cater to exposés, “true confessions,” and the like. It is the same sort of pleasure that makes children tattle on brothers and sisters. Whether to feel self-righteous by exposing another’s sin or to enjoy that sin vicariously, we all are tempted to take a certain kind of pleasure in the sins of others. Love has no part in that. It does not expose or exploit, gloat or condemn. It bears; it does not bare.

“Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all transgressions” (Prov. 10:12). We can measure our love for a person by how quick we are to cover his faults. When one of our children does something wrong we are inclined to put the best face on it. “He didn’t understand what he was doing,” we explain, or “She didn’t really mean what she said.” With a person we do not like, however, our reaction is likely to be the opposite: “That is typical of John,” or, “What would you expect from someone like her?”

Love does not justify sin or compromise with falsehood. Love warns, corrects, exhorts, rebukes, and disciplines. But love does not expose or broadcast failures and wrongs. It covers and protects. Henry Ward Beecher said, “God pardons like a mother who kisses the offense into everlasting forgetfulness.”

The mercy seat, where the blood of atonement was sprinkled (Lev. 16:14), was a covering, not only for the ark itself but for the sins of the people. The mercy seat was a place of covering. That covering prefigured the perfect and final covering of sin accomplished by Jesus on the cross in His great propitiatory sacrifice (Rom. 3:25–26; Heb. 2:17; 1 John 2:2). In the cross God threw the great mantle of His love over sin, forever covering it for those who trust in His Son. By nature, love is redemptive. It wants to buy back, not condemn, to save, not judge.

Love feels the pain of those it loves and helps carry the burden of the hurt. True love is even willing to take the consequences of the sin of those it loves. Isaiah wrote of Jesus Christ, “Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; … He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him” (Isa. 53:4–5). As Peter knew firsthand from Jesus’ great patience and kindness, “love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Pet. 4:8).

During Oliver Cromwell’s reign as lord protector of England a young soldier was sentenced to die. The girl to whom he was engaged pleaded with Cromwell to spare the life of her beloved, but to no avail. The young man was to be executed when the curfew bell sounded, but when the sexton repeatedly pulled the rope the bell made no sound. The girl had climbed into the belfry and wrapped herself around the clapper so that it could not strike the bell. Her body was smashed and bruised, but she did not let go until the clapper stopped swinging. She managed to climb down, bruised and bleeding, to meet those awaiting the execution. When she explained what she had done, Cromwell commuted the sentence. A poet beautifully recorded the story as follows:

At his feet she told her story, showed her hands all bruised and torn, And her sweet young face still haggard with the anguish it had worn, Touched his heart with sudden pity, lit his eyes with misty light. “Go, your lover lives,” said Cromwell; “Curfew will not ring tonight.”^[2]

In this one verse, Paul speaks of four different qualities of love, all linked to each other by the word rendered “all things.” This rendering, “all things,” seems to fall short of communicating what Paul is saying. Love does not, for example, believe everything.¹⁸⁸

It is not “love” for a mother to believe her child when he denies getting into her freshly made pie, when the meringue has formed a mustache around his mouth.

• Love bears all things: the word bears (stegei) means both to cover all things and to bear up under all things.
• Love does both: it stands up under the weight and onslaught of all things and it covers up the faults of others.
• It has no pleasure in exposing the wrong and weaknesses of others.
• Love bears up under any neglect, abuse, ridicule—anything that is thrown against it.
• When it learns something unpleasant about another it does not run and scatter it all over the neighborhood. It does not take delight in some of the misdeeds of others.
• Not that it will not do something about it, but it does not spread it about for others to hear.

Paul has just written that love “does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth” (verse 6). How can he now inform us that “love” accepts everything as truth, believing whatever one is told?

For these reasons, some translations have chosen to render Paul’s words differently:

7 “There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance” (The New English Bible).

7 “Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything” (Phillips).

Love is always characterized by certain qualities, without exception. Throughout history, man has sought to excuse disobedience or sin by convincing himself that his situation is an exception.

Jesus was asked if a man could divorce his wife for any reason at all (Matthew 19:3). His response was a refusal to dwell on the exceptions and to focus on the rule.

The love of Jesus always protects; it bears all things. He did and still does endure, support, forbear, and cover all things. His death on the cross covered our sins, and now he provides the power necessary to help us grow in our love for him and for each other.

He continues to provide forgiveness for our failures. This covering includes discipline when necessary (Hebrews 12:5-13).

This is why Paul has already excluded any “loopholes” in the Bible, by insisting that whenever we succumb to temptation, it is not because we had to (“There was nothing else I could do … after all, I’m only human …”), but because we failed to act upon God’s divinely provided “way of escape”:

13 No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, that you may be able to endure it (1 Corinthians 10:13).

And so Paul informs his readers that there are four things love never ceases to possess and to practice, four things which can always be expected from genuine love.

(1) Love always bears up under adversity (“bears all things”).

Love “patiently accepts all things” (NCV)
Love “always supports” (TNT)
Love “never gives up” (GNB)

… here the apostle seems to be saying something about the endurance of love, its ability to go on no matter what the opposition.¹⁸⁹

Edwards points out that the Greek term employed by Paul has two senses:

The term used here by Paul “… means originally ‘cover over,’” … then, “contain as a vessel.” From this latter meaning two metaphorical uses of the word are derived, either of which may be here adopted: (1) that love hides or is silent about the faults of others; (2) that love bears without resentment injuries inflicted by others.¹⁹⁰

I do not believe we are forced to one choice or the other. It is completely within the realm of possibility that Paul meant us to understand this word in terms of its broader range of meaning. If this is so, we can see two major dimensions to love’s consistent capacity to “hold up” rather than “fold up.”

First, love bears up silently; that is, love covers sin with a cloak of silence. Sin is shameful, and love does not wish the sinner to be shamed more than necessary.

“Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all transgressions” (Prov. 10:12). We can measure our love for a person by how quick we are to cover his faults. When one of our children does something wrong we are inclined to put the best face on it. “He didn’t understand what he was doing,” we explain, or “She didn’t really mean what she said.” With a person we do not like, however, our reaction is likely to be the opposite: “That is typical of John,” or, “What would you expect from someone like her?”

Love does not justify sin or compromise with falsehood. Love warns, corrects, exhorts, rebukes, and disciplines. But love does not expose or broadcast failures and wrongs. It covers and protects. Henry Ward Beecher said, “God pardons like a mother who kisses the offense into everlasting forgetfulness.”

Noah’s son, Ham, broadcast his father’s shame to his brothers when Noah was drunk and naked in his tent. His brothers “covered” Noah’s nakedness in a way that prevented them from viewing his shame (Genesis 9:20-23).

Peter reminds us that Jesus suffered silently, not responding verbally to the abuses hurled upon Him, and that this pattern of silent suffering is to be followed by all the saints (1 Peter 2:18–3:15; 4:8).

Matthew’s Gospel sheds further light on this matter of our silence when Jesus teaches His disciples about church discipline (Matthew 18:15-20). We are to go privately to a brother who has sinned against us, and if he repents as a result of our rebuke, the matter is settled, never to be made public.

If, however, this wayward brother resists and refuses to repent, then the matter once dealt with in the strictest privacy must now be dealt with in a way that becomes more and more public. After all efforts to turn the wayward brother from sin have been rejected, the whole church must be notified of his sin, and he must be publicly ex-communicated.

Love always seeks to keep the sin of a wayward brother as private as possible, but this does not mean we cannot and should not be confronted publicly, if all private efforts have failed.

The mercy seat, where the blood of atonement was sprinkled (Lev. 16:14), was a covering, not only for the ark itself but for the sins of the people. The mercy seat was a place of covering. That covering prefigured the perfect and final covering of sin accomplished by Jesus on the cross in His great propitiatory sacrifice (Rom. 3:25-26; Heb. 2:17; 1 John 2:2). In the cross God threw the great mantle of His love over sin, forever covering it for those who trust in His Son. By nature, love is redemptive. It wants to buy back, not condemn, to save, not judge.

Love feels the pain of those it loves and helps carry the burden of the hurt. True love is even willing to take the consequences of the sin of those it loves. Isaiah wrote of Jesus Christ, “Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried;… He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was rushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him” (Isa. 53:4-5). As  Peter knew firsthand from Jesus’ great patience and kindness, “love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Pet. 4:8).

During Oliver Cromwell’s reign as lord protector of England a young soldier was sentenced to die. The girl to whom he was engaged pleaded with Cromwell to spare the life of her beloved, but to no avail. The young man was to be executed when the curfew bell sounded, but when the sexton repeatedly pulled the rope the bell made no sound. The girl had climbed into the belfry and wrapped herself around the clapper so that it could not strike the bell. Her body was smashed and bruised, but she did not let go until the clapper stopped swinging. She managed to climb down, bruised and bleeding, to meet those awaiting the execution. When she explained what she had done, Cromwell commuted the sentence. A poet beautifully recorded the story as follows:

At his feet she told her story; showed her hands all bruised and torn, And her sweet young face still haggard with the anguish it had worn, Touched his heart with sudden pity, lit his eyes with misty light.

“Go, your lover lives,” said Cromwell; “Curfew will not ring tonight.”

Love … bears all things…

How long must I put up with you?  Jesus’ actions answered his own question.… Until the rooster sings and the sweat stings and the mallet rings and a hillside of demons smirk at a dying God. How long? Long enough for every sin to so soak my sinless soul that heaven will turn in horror  until my swollen lips pronounce the final transaction: “It is finished.” How long? Until it kills me.

Paul was never more the wordsmith than when he crafted this sentence. Listen to its rhythm as originally written: panta stegei, panta pisteuei, panta elpigei, panta upomenei. (Now when people ask you what you are doing, you can say, “I’m reading some Greek.” Say it humbly, however, for love does not boast.) Did you notice the fourfold appearance of panta ?

Expansions of panta appear in your English dictionary. Pantheism is the belief that God is in all things. A pantry is a cupboard where one can, hopefully, store all things. A panacea is a cure for all things. And a panoply is an array of all things. Panta means “all things.”

Such love isn’t easy. Not for you. Not for me. Not even for Jesus. Want proof? Listen to his frustration: “You people have no faith. How long must I stay with you? How long must I put up with you?” ( Mark 9:19 ).

To know Jesus asked such a question reassures us. But to hear how he answered it will change us. How long must I put up with you?

“Long enough to be called crazy by my brothers and a liar by my neighbors. Long enough to be run out of my town and my Temple. Long enough to be laughed at, cursed, slapped, hit, blindfolded, and mocked. Long enough to feel warm spit and sharp whips and see my own blood puddle at my feet.” ^[3]

^[1] Bruce B. Barton and Grant R. Osborne, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Life Application Bible Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1999), 190–191.

^[2] John F. MacArthur Jr., 1 Corinthians, MacArthur New Testament Commentary (Chicago: Moody Press, 1984), 352–353.

[3]Lucado, M. 2002. A love worth giving : Living in the overflow of God’s love. W Pub. Group: Nashville, Tenn.