We have made 1 Corinthians 13 into a wedding reading. Paul wrote it to people in a church fight. Not people in love — people in conflict, jockeying for status, eating communion bread while others went hungry. Every descriptor in verse 4 is a behavior, not a feeling. Patient. Kind. Not envious. Not boastful. Not proud. Five choices. None of them romantic. All of them available to you today, in the next conversation you have, with the next person who tests you. This is what love looks like when Christ is the source of it.
Tag Archives: church conflict
Verse & Vision | June 8, 2026
Jesus gives seven Beatitudes, and this one carries one of the most striking promises: peacemakers will be called children of God. Not peace-havers. Not peacekeepers. Peacemakers – the ones who go toward the broken place and do something about it. The Greek word only appears once in the entire New Testament, and it’s worth unpacking. So is the world it landed in: Pax Romana – the Roman Peace – was enforced by legions. Jesus is describing something the empire had no category for. This post traces what peacemaking actually looks like, why it’s not the same as conflict avoidance, and what it means to bear the family resemblance of God.