Let’s Talk About Love: What IS Love? Page 3 – Definitions
Here are some definitions of words that I will be using in the next several posts:
*Endure: last, persist, to suffer firmly or patiently, bear, continue, abide.
*Patient: bearing without complaint, showing self-control, calm, steadfast, persevering under undeserved affliction.
*Persistence: perseverance as in well-doing, continuance as in fruit-bearing, in running the appointed race.
*Kind: sympathetic, forbearing, pleasant nature, gracious, serviceable, good, pleasant.
*Envious: a feeling of antagonism (open opposition or resistance, hostility) towards someone because of some good which he is enjoying but which one does not have oneself. A coveting for oneself of the good which someone else is enjoying.
*Boast or Boastful: a claim about oneself or something connected with oneself. To brag, make an exaggerated claim. To talk about with too much pride and pleasure; praise too highly. Always ready to brag, bluster (to talk with theatrical anger, usually to assert one’s own importance, to force by overbearing talk), brag, crow (to boast over, to praise one’s own success and mock the loser), exult (to rejoice in the defeat of a rival), flaunt (to display proudly, to display oneself), flourish, glory, vaunt.
*Puffed up: swollen, puffy, blown up, inflated, puffed up with pride, showing oneself above others. Love is not “puffed up,” is not “inflated” with a sense of its own importance, for it knows it has nothing but what it has received, and that it deserves nothing more than what it has. Every man whose heart is full of the love of God is full of humility; for there is no man so humble as he whose heart is cleansed from all sin. True humility arises from a sense of the fullness of God in the soul.
*Vainglorious: excessive show of vanity (thinking too highly of one’s appearance), extreme conceit, delusive, empty, frivolous, fruitless, hollow, idle, pointless, unprofitable, opposite of valuable, genuine, humble, meek, modest.
*Conceited: excessive satisfaction with one’s character or achievements, having too high an opinion of oneself.
*Unbecoming: not becoming unseemly, not decent, improper, inappropriate, indecent, unbefitting.
*Eagerly: strong desire, ambitious, fervent, intense.
*Pursue: to follow in order to capture, overtake, to harass persistently, to continue with.
*Seek: try to find, to try.
*Acquire: to gain for oneself, to come to have.
*Aim: to direct, to direct efforts, to try.
*Account: to consider, believe to be.
*Attention: the giving of one’s mind to something, mental concentration, notice, nursing, care, looking after.
*Hinder: slow down, to hold up.
*Forgiveness: act of pardon, to cancel.
*Pardon: release from penalty, no longer being punished, to exercise.
OK, now that we got the vocabulary lesson taken care of, we will look more closely at the characteristics used to describe love by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.