Categotry Archives: “Love Is…”

The last day in February=the final post in the “Love Is…” series from 1 Cor. 13. Links to the previous posts below.

This phrase, “love never fails”, is one of the most well known in 1 Cor. 13, and so often quoted that the meaning can easily be lost in its catch-phrase status.

Taken simply for how it reads, it sounds like love is invincible, that love always wins, always triumphs, and always meets its objectives. “Love conquers all”. But what does that look like?

(Continuing the “Love Is…” series–previous links are below.)

This phrase in 1 Cor. 13:5 reads “[love] thinketh no evil” in the KJV, but other translations read things like “keeps no record of wrongs”, “does not take into account a wrong suffered”, and a few other variations.

Looking at the Strong’s definition for “thinketh” or “take into account”, it reads, “to take an inventory”. So I think probably the closest translation to the original meaning of the Greek phrase comes from the Young’s literal translation: “[love] doth not impute evil.” This reminds me of other passages of Scripture that tell us that God does not “impute” our sins against us. In other words, He does not store them up as some sort of grudge.

Here, I continue my musings and meditations on 1 Cor. 13:4…

Sometimes I envy the Greeks. (Oops, love isn’t supposed to be envious–see farther down 1 Cor. 13. Sorry, Greek people.)

Anyway, the Greek language (in which the New Testament was written) carries so much more meaning than ours does. One Greek word sometimes can take a paragraph of English to try and describe its meaning–and even then doesn’t always do it justice. So when we translate from Greek to English, some of the deeper nuances can be lost. Add to that the fact that we English-speakers are actually losing some of the deeper sense of meaning from our own language, and even more gets lost in translation.