Love @ Work Always Protects

There’s nothing better than a juicy piece of gossip at the water cooler is there? Except, of course, when it’s about you. Then harmless gossip suddenly looks like hateful slander.

The NIV translation of the first part of 1 Corinthians 13:7 says that love “always protects”. The King James and many derivative translations have “bears all things”. Apparently the original Greek word stegei actually means “covers” – it is derived from a root word meaning “roof”. There are a few ways in which love covers all things. God has shown us what this looks like with His own example toward us.

1. Love holds secret those things that would have a negative impact on others, unless it is essential for some reason to share them with someone else. Love does not gossip. Period! God’s example: He covers all of our faults, failings and sins because of His grace. In other words He forgives us so thoroughly that He acts as though we had not sinned (even though the consequences of our sins will generally still get played out).
2. Even deeper, there is an allusion to the Hebrew concept of covering as a form of redemption. Love will carry the burden (hence “bears all things”) and will protect others from the implications of their actions (“always protects”). This appears in the idea of the kinsman-redeemer (Leviticus 25:25) which is better known in the story of Ruth (4:1), who provides a cover for Ruth by purchasing her from poverty and loneliness to be his wife (and a direct ancestor of the Messiah Jesus!). God’s example: He provides a Redeemer – one who will take the most serious consequence of our sin, which is eternal separation from God, and buy us out of it.
3. The word is also used with the sense or bearing with, or forbearing (e.g. 1 Thessalonians 3:1,5). God’s example: it is obvious that God is constantly bearing with us – our rebellions, our tantrums, our stubborn pride. We’d need to be pretty self-delusional to deny this!

When we see wrong in another at work, whether directed at us or not, we have a responsibility as bearers of God’s image, and as those redeemed by Jesus, to behave in the same counter-intuitive ways:

1. We will not gossip about other employees, whether we’re sure of the facts or not. We will in fact restrict our communications to those that are strictly essential to the good of the employee and the company. This isn’t always an easy judgment, but it is much narrower than most people’s practice would imply.
2. We will forgive and in that sense cover over wrongs done to us, on the grounds that we have been forgiven far, far more by the gracious God who made us. (See e.g. the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18:23-35).
3. We will bear with the ongoing faults of others, just as we need God (and actually other people) to bear with ours. Oh boy this is hard isn’t it? How hard must it be for God to love us though – surely in response it makes sense for us to seek through the Holy Spirit in us to move in the direction of doing the same?