1 Corinthians 13:7
1 Corinthians 13:77It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
JW commentary on is conventional and unobjectionable in the abstract — love endures. The verse rarely surfaces in Watchtower literature as a point of contention, and a Witness at the door will endorse the principle without hesitation. Where the tension appears is at the level of application: the Watchtower's disfellowshipping and family-shunning policy — affirmed on the May 2016 JW Broadcasting programme by a Governing Body member — asks a mother to refuse a phone call from a disfellowshipped daughter. That instruction stands in direct tension with "love endures all things, hopes all things."
is a pastoral counter-text to family shunning, especially in the form affirmed in the Morris 2016 broadcast scenario. Paul's description of agape — "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" — is the disposition of the waiting father in Luke 15, not the disposition of the unanswered phone. At the door, keep the tone warm: "When a disfellowshipped son or daughter calls home, which verb is love doing — bearing, hoping, enduring? Or the opposite? Paul's love in 13:7 is the same love Jesus describes in Luke 15 — and the Governing Body's broadcast asked a mother to do something Paul does not describe in this verse." The policy hurts real families; let the verse do its own work.