(Read First Corinthians 13)
When Jesus was asked to name the greatest commandment of God’s law, He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength… and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Love, as the songwriter says, “is a many-splendored thing.” A Roman bishop named Valentinus was proclaimed as a saint by the early Catholic church, and he became the patron saint of lovers, as we know from celebrating Valentine’s day each year in February. The greeting card makers and the candy companies do a very lucrative business filling the yearly needs of lovers and would-be lovers who wish to express their tender feelings at this time of year.
But we find in the Bible a definition of love that takes us beyond the realm of feelings of physical attraction and romantic chemistry. There is a love described there that is modeled after the holy character of God Himself. It is a supernatural love, a love for the unlovely and the undeserving. A deep desire to offer one’s self and substance for the betterment of another.
The Apostle Paul wrote several lengthy letters to a very troubled church in first century Corinth. This congregation was experiencing problems galore! The people were divided into camps based on the personalities of their favorite preachers. They were acting proud and boastful about their spiritual gifts–God-given abilities that equipped them to serve one another! They were causing strife and discord over how to do corporate worship and celebrate the Lord’s Supper. There was even a sexual scandal going on that Paul needed to correct!
He spends several chapters of his epistle speaking to the needs of this troubled church and instructing them on how their worship and ministries should function. He compares the church of Christ to a living body with many different parts that work together, suffer together, rejoice together. Every member should be doing its part joyfully and helpfully.
But you know what? A church is made up of people. Yes, they are Christians, but they are still fallible. They are saved sinners, but they are still SINNERS. No one can ever be perfect before he or she passes through those pearly gates of our heavenly home! We all have rough edges, annoying little habits, manners of speech and action that are hard to live with. Part of the trouble in Corinth was that the believers were seeking the showier, greater gifts of the Spirit. They wanted to be up front, noticed, appreciated.
Well, Paul began to write in Chapter Thirteen of his letter, what he described as “a more excellent way.” And here is where he began to describe the supreme gift of the Spirit that is to permeate and characterize all the other gifts: DIVINE LOVE. This is God’s own Valentine to His church, and the gift that won’t give you cavities like candy! Or sound corny like a greeting card. Divine love gets us out of ourselves and shines the light on people around us. For that is the pattern our hearts become aware of as we learn about our loving Father, His Son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit who lives within us.
As we make our way through this magnificent description of love, we find that it not only reflects the loving character of our God, but it tells us how love relates to the commandments that God gave us to protect and cherish the very values that make life worth living.
Paul begins by describing a brilliant speaker: “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels…” Without the power of love, all the words of human orators, or even angelic messengers, become nothing but noise…empty…meaningless. “A sounding gong or a clanging cymbal” may sound impressive or gain your attention. But they contain no meaning in themselves.
The first speaker, of course, was God Himself. He spoke into the empty void and said, “Let there be light!” He used His voice to call creation into existence. Have you ever wondered why? Why did God create a universe in the first place? He had no needs that were not fulfilled. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit had made up the Trinity for all eternity past—a Trinity filled with love and blissful fellowship. They had decided to create the heavens and the earth out of the sheer overflow of their DIVINE LOVE! God’s very words are words motivated by His love.
Do we speak with love? Do we choose loving words to express our thoughts and ideas and plans? When we speak, we are launching our hearts and minds out into the world for others to hear. Jesus taught “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” What worlds are we creating for others to hear when we talk? Are they worlds of praise and wonder, or worlds of complaint and misery? Or simply empty noise?
Paul goes on to write about knowledge. The early church was built on the knowledge of Jesus Christ and what He came to earth to accomplish for us: our salvation. It was also built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets who received messages direct from God! Many in the church of Corinth wanted those kinds of grand revelations. They wanted impressive knowledge that would make them stand out from the crowd.
But elsewhere, Paul warns that knowledge can puff us up with pride. It is love that edifies, that builds up other people, perhaps by sharing one’s knowledge in a gentle, loving way. We might have heads that are filled with great facts and doctrine about God and His Word. But the reason God reveals truth to our ears and our minds and hearts is so that we will believe and treasure His truth, and teach it lovingly to others so that THEY might benefit. Not so that WE might be applauded by men.
And what about FAITH? Having a strong faith is surely a high priority to the Lord, right? Paul next makes the point that even a strong faith in the power of God comes to NOTHING if it isn’t reflecting God’s LOVE along with it. The Apostle Peter boasted about his great faith in the Savior. He claimed he’d follow Jesus faithfully even if all the other disciples turned aside. But Peter’s faith failed him the night Christ was betrayed and arrested. When people identified him as one of Jesus’ disciples, Peter became frightened and denied that he’d ever MET the Man!
After Christ rose from the dead, He restored Peter to his prominence as a leader, an apostle. And what did He ask this man whose faith had failed him? “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?” Jesus asked this three times, one time for each of Peter’s three denials. When Simon Peter assured his Master that, yes, of course he loved Him, Jesus told him, “Then, you must feed My sheep—look after the needs of others.” This is how divine love is worked out and demonstrated.
Many Christians are willing to sacrifice everything for God’s kingdom—just as long as they are given the proper amount of credit in return! Self-sacrifice can be motivated by the selfish desire for personal recognition. The self-righteous Pharisees proved this. Their outward acts of holiness were well-known, even legendary. But inside their hearts, Jesus told them, there was no true love motivating their sacrifices. They only did them “to be seen by men.”
Paul gives a list of qualities that describe true love’s character. We can compare these qualities to the Ten Commandments and see how they connect with each other. “Love suffers long and is kind.” Patient, kind-hearted people tend to honor the Lord, as well as other people, rather than being eager to receive honor in return. Honoring our parents is one of the commandments, and as our parents age, honoring them takes more and more kindness and patience!
“Love does not envy, doesn’t parade itself, isn’t puffed up.” Envying what others have in the way of possessions, abilities, lifestyles and so on, leads us to the sin of coveting, which violates the tenth commandment. The Corinthians were seeking to out-shine one another with the showiness of their spiritual gifts. Paul is making the point here that this kind of competition is hardly focusing on meeting the needs of others. Rather it is an exercise in feeding our own ego.
“Love doesn’t behave rudely, doesn’t seek its own, is not provoked.” Behaviors like rudeness, greed and anger can quickly ignite into acts of theft and even murder. God’s commands against these things are His way of protecting the values of life and property that we mostly take for granted. Having a heart of love for God and for others means that we are devoted to protecting those values and promoting both the quality and quantity of what others possess. Doing others the good that we want them to do to us!
“Love thinks no evil, doesn’t rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth.” What kind of thoughts make our hearts rejoice, make them sing for joy and overflow with gladness? There are some folks, perhaps you and I sometimes, who get a secret thrill out of wickedness. Whether we read about personal scandals of the rich and famous, or see sinful behavior acted out in a play or a movie, there is something attractive to our darker side. We take a kind of delight in evil. We look at the sins of other people and enjoy the fact that they are worse than ourselves.
Savoring the taste of evil in our minds can be the poison that pushes love out of our hearts. It can turn normal romantic attraction into lust that can lead to impure thoughts and adultery. Satan has a way of twisting good truth into half-truths, and then even more into outright lies. He might tell us, “God is so gracious and forgiving; He won’t mind so much if you flirt with this or that little sin. You can always confess it later and all will be well.” Of course, he will never admit the pain and remorse and loss of joy that comes with that sin. That hook is always well hidden in the tempting bait he holds out to trap us.
Delighting in the truth. Do we know the truth of God? God’s truth is the real thing. Truth is the reality as God has created it, as well as the way He sees it. The world is full of lies and half-truths that camouflage the truth of God. It is in the Holy Scriptures that we find truth in all its delightful fullness. Truth about God’s good creation and man’s tragic fall into sin. Truth of God’s promises to send a Redeemer, and Jesus of Nazareth, who fulfilled those promises. Truth about what love really looks like—from God’s perspective.
Love delights in the truth. It lives in the truth. It TELLS the truth. It shares the truth with others because we’re so delighted with it. We can’t keep it to ourselves. Paul finishes his list of qualities by using the word ALL four times. Love bears ALL, believes ALL, hopes ALL, endures ALL. In other words, when we encounter another person, love is prepared to accept them at face value and assume the BEST about them. And if that person fails us, love is willing to put up with their faults. Love is a faithful friend who is not easily put off by shortcomings. Rather, love keeps on believing the best and coming back for more. Love is TOUGH and very hard to overcome.
And isn’t that the way God’s love is toward you and me? Look at the patient way He dealt with His people Israel, giving them His laws, making them a privileged nation, pursuing them and disciplining them when they disobeyed Him. Promising a Savior again and again, and finally coming through on that promise by sending His only Son. And what amazing love it was that He included the Gentiles in His plan of Redemption!
Paul’s paean of praise for the gift of divine love is a tall order for those of us who know Jesus as our Lord and Savior. His love is a supernatural love that is only possible in hearts where God’s Holy Spirit is truly at home. From all eternity past, Father, Son and Holy Ghost have loved one another. And that love ended up creating US. Let us imitate that love by showing it to one another, and by sending its bright beams outward into a sinful, sad, needy world.
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