–Save This Page as a PDF–  
 

Love Does Not Brag
13: 4d

A natural companion to the lack of envy (to see link click Cx – Love Does Not Envy), is the lack of boasting. Love does not brag (Greek: perpereuetai, meaning to brag and is used nowhere else in the B’rit Chadshah). Behind boastful bragging there lies conceit, an overestimation of one’s own importance, abilities or achievements. It is used to describe a pompous windbag and may allude to the rhetorically sophisticated speech (1:17 and 2:1) that so characterized the bragging of the Corinthians.406

When the loving person feels good about himself, he has no need to brag about anything in his life. Love does not parade its accomplishments. Bragging is the other side of jealousy. Jealousy is wanting what someone else has; bragging is trying to make others jealous of what we have. Jealousy puts others down; bragging builds us up. It is ironic that, as much as most of us dislike bragging in others, we are so inclined to brag ourselves.

The Corinthian believers were spiritual show-offs, constantly vying for public attention. They clamored for the most prestigious offices and the most glamorous gifts. They all wanted to talk at once, especially in ecstatic speech (see Ce – The Pagan Background of Counterfeit Spiritual Gifts). Most of their speaking in tongues was counterfeit, but their bragging about it was genuine. They cared nothing for harmony, order, fellowship, edification, or anything worthwhile. They cared only for flaunting themselves. What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation (14:26). Each did their own thing as prominently as possible, in total disregard for what the others in public worship were doing.

Charles Trumbull, the editor of The Sunday School Times, a respected Christian journal with a weekly circulation of more than 100,000 worldwide in the early 1900s, once vowed, “God, if You will give me the strength, every time I have the opportunity to introduce the topic of conversation it will always be Jesus Christ.” He had only one subject that was truly worth talking about. If Christ is first in our thoughts, we cannot possibly brag.

C. S. Lewis, author of The Screwtape Letters and The Chronicles of Narnia, called bragging “the utmost evil.” It is the epitome of pride, which is the root sin of all sins. Bragging puts ourselves first. Everyone else, including God, must therefore be of less importance. It is impossible to build ourselves up without putting others down.

Yeshua was, and is, God incarnate. Yet He never exalted Himself in any way. Though He was in the form of God, He did not regard equality with God something to be possessed by force. On the contrary, He emptied himself, in that He took the form of a slave by becoming like human beings are. And when He appeared as a human being, He humbled himself still more by becoming obedient even to death – death on a stake as a criminal (Philippians 2:6-8)! Yeshua, who had everything to boast of, never boasted. In total contrast, we, who have nothing to boast about, are prone to boast. Only the love that comes from Yeshua Messiah can save us from flaunting our knowledge, our degrees, our status, our gifts, our wealth, our bodies, our good looks, or our accomplishments, real or imagined.407