1 Cor Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It

Transcription

1 1 Cor. 13 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. 1

2 Everlasting Love For the last three weeks we have been exploring the theme of love. Somehow I neglected to mention that I was preaching a sermon series. I think I was so preoccupied with the English camp that I forgot to mention it. This is the first topical sermon series that I ve done. Previously I have preached a sermon series on a particular chapter, which I did with Matthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount. I have also preached through an entire book of the Bible now twice first Jonah and then more recently Ruth. But this is the first sermon series I ve preached that focuses not on a chapter or a book but on a topic. So why preach a sermon series on love? First of all, there is no more important or essential idea to the Christian faith than love. Without it, nothing we believe and nothing we do would matter. Secondly, like a compass always points north, giving us our bearings so that we know where we are and where we are going, love orients us toward God. When we love, we are aligned with God. We know that we are on the right path, walking with and toward God. And thirdly, from a practical perspective, preaching a sermon series on love has allowed me a chance to preach on some of my favorite Bible passages [SLIDE]. We began the series three weeks ago with a reading from 1 John chapter 4, which contains the famous declaration that God is love. The point of the sermon was that love is not an abstract idea but a real person Jesus Christ God in the flesh. Then two weeks ago we read about the strange love of God in Luke chapter 6. Jesus command to love our enemies seems to us a strange love because it runs counter to our nature to either ignore or hate our enemies. Last week we were reminded through the prophet Isaiah that God s love never forgets us. A mother could sooner forget her nursing child than God could forget us. 2

3 Now this week we turn to the most famous love passage in the Bible 1 Corinthians 13. Biblical scholars call this chapter a hymn to love, for many scholars believe that the words of chapter 13 were sung as a hymn by the early church. I don t know what the melody to that hymn would have been, but the words are certainly beautiful. Paul is generally regarded for his profound theological mind and his exacting skill in argument. But he is also gifted writer capable of stirring our emotions with poetic flourishes. The thirteenth chapter of the first letter to the Corinthians finds him at his best, both intellectually and aesthetically. In this chapter Paul is telling the Corinthians that they have become too focused on spiritual gifts and have lost sight of the source of those gifts and the purpose for which the gifts were given, i.e., to be used in love. To return to the compass analogy, they have lost their bearings. They don t know that they are heading in the wrong direction. In fact, chapter 13 occurs in the middle of a longer section on spiritual gifts [SLIDE]. In chapters 12 and 14, Paul s concern is the Corinthians misuse of spiritual gifts. In chapter 12 Paul writes that God has given different gifts to the Corinthians gifts of wisdom, knowledge, faith, miracles, prophecy, healing, tongues, and interpreting tongues. Although the gifts are different, they are all given by God and each one is given for the same purpose to build up the church. As the human body is composed of distinct parts eyes, ears, nose, hands, feet, and so on so the body of Christ, the church, has many members that all work together for the benefit of the entire body. In chapter 14, Paul focuses in particular on the gift of speaking in tongues. He does so because he has heard disturbing reports that some in the church have elevated this gift above all others and have used it to distinguish themselves as somehow superior to those who do not speak in tongues. Paul reminds them that speaking in tongues is of limited value without the ability to interpret. It s a gift that serves the 3

4 one who speaks but not the one who hears. He even goes on to say that he would rather speak five words with his mind than ten thousand in a tongue. So given Paul s concern with spiritual gifts in chapters 12 and 14, why does he transition to writing this hymn to love in chapter 13? What is the connection between spiritual gifts and love? The short answer is as I ve already mentioned the Corinthians need to be reminded of why they have received their gifts that they are given in love and are meant to be used with love and for love. But the longer answer the one that we will now explore is that love is the eternal principle that holds all things together. This is going to get a little mystical. Love is not all there is, but love is all that lasts. Love is God s first and final word to us. Love is the means through which God reveals himself to human beings, first to Israel in the covenant, and then to all humanity through Jesus Christ. As we heard last week, God chooses to reveal himself to Israel for no other reason than love. Then in Jesus Christ, God extends that revelation, and that love, to all the world. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God reveals that love is the very character of God. Everything that is good is good because of love [SLIDE]. That is what Paul is telling the Corinthians. Take spiritual gifts, for example. Spiritual gifts are not good in and of themselves. They have no intrinsic value. They are good only in so far as they are expressions of love. If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal (1 Cor. 13:1). Without love, all our words, no matter how poetic or angelic, are just noise [SLIDE]. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing (1 Cor. 13:2). In other words, no matter how well we know the Bible, no matter how sound our doctrine, no matter even how strong our faith may be, if love is not the foundation of these things then we are nothing. Without love, we may as 4

5 well not read the Bible, not be concerned with what we believe, or not believe at all [SLIDE]. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing (1 Cor. 13:3). Translation: even acts of charity that, on their surface, appear to be in line with the principles of the kingdom of God, are worthless if they are not done in love. Even if we suffer persecution because of our faith, if that faith is not steeped in love then we gain absolutely nothing for our suffering, for we are false witnesses. We testify to something that we don t understand. It s only the first three verses, but Paul is not mincing words. He is speaking the plain truth, and he is doing so in love. He knows that we have a tendency to get lost and to lose sight of the love that is both the path that we walk and the destination that we journey toward. Paul is reorienting us back in the direction of God s love and back on to the path that leads there. I mention God s love, but Paul never uses that phrase. In fact, Paul does not use the word God or Jesus even once in this entire chapter. It s not that Paul thinks they are unimportant. Quite the opposite. They are so essential that he assumes them. By now Paul has already told the Corinthians that God s love validates, and that the lack of God s love invalidates, all that they do. So, although the words God and Jesus do not appear, God s love, as expressed through Jesus Christ, saturates every word. To make that association clearer, let s try a little experiment. We already read in 1 John three weeks ago that God is love. We learned as well that the fullest expression of God s love is the person of Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ God says to us, Let me show you what love looks like. Here he is. Take a good look at him. Do what he does. So let s reread verses 4-7 substituting the word Jesus wherever we see the word love [SLIDE]: 5

6 4 Jesus is patient; Jesus is kind; Jesus is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. He does not insist on his own way; he is not irritable or resentful; 6 he does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 He bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Reading Jesus wherever we see love actually brings us closer to what Paul is telling us. Despite the fact that this passage is often read at weddings, and was in fact read at my own wedding, Paul is not writing about romantic love. He is not describing romantic love but agape that love that has no basis in romantic feeling or family connection or friendship but that exists solely for the sake of the other. And Jesus is the embodiment of agape. He is patient with us and kind toward us. He is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Although his disciples called him Lord, he was not self-serving. Although he was misunderstood, mocked, and persecuted, he was not irritable or resentful. He rejoices in the truth that is himself for he is God s love revealed to the world. He bears all things even the weight of the world s sin upon his shoulders. He believes all things, including that each one of us is worth dying for. He hopes all things, trusting in God s glorious plan of redemption for sinners. And he endures all things, even the undeserved pain and suffering and humiliation that was the cross. Jesus bears and believes and hopes and endures because that is what love does, and he is love. To say that Jesus is love means not only that Jesus revealed God s love with his every breath, his every word, and his every action while he was on earth; it also means that in his risen form he lives and reigns eternally with an everlasting love. Love never ends, Paul writes (1 Cor. 13:8). We are now speaking of eternity. The human mind struggles to comprehend eternity. That s because we live within time. We have clocks to tell us what time it is and calendars to tell us what day it is. Our minds are not equipped to conceive of time without end. So sometimes we use the word eternity to mean a really long time, for example: The English camp lasted ten days but it felt like an eternity. I m just using that as an example. In fact, the camp went by too quickly, as things always do when you enjoy them. Actually, one 6

7 young girl so enjoyed the camp that she asked me if next year s camp could be twenty days. Now that would truly be an eternity. Eternity doesn t mean a really long time it means forever. Paul is telling us that love is forever. Everything else will come to an end [SLIDE]. Even spiritual gifts, like prophecy, speaking in tongues, and knowledge, will have their end, for they are partial. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end (1 Cor. 13:10). Spiritual gifts are partial because they are for this side of the veil that now separates us from eternity. In death, when we cross that veil, when completeness comes, they will no longer be needed. Spiritual gifts point us to God, but when we are in the presence of God, they are no longer needed. Then our knowledge of God will be direct. Our knowledge now is incomplete. From here to eternity is a distance that is measured not in kilometers but in knowledge. Paul likens it to the growth in knowledge that occurs between childhood and adulthood [SLIDE]. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways (1 Cor. 13:11). Or it is like looking at a hazy mirror. Ancient mirrors were made of polished bronze, not glass, so the images they cast were distorted and dim; they didn t offer a true reflection of their subject. But in eternity we will see God clearly, face to face. We will know, even as we have been known and loved by God from the beginning. All this talk of eternity, but what does it mean for us here and now? It means that in Jesus Christ we have been given a glimpse of eternity not just the future, but eternity. It s like being told the ending of the book when we re still on the first page. And the good news is that the story has a happy ending. We know that in the end love wins. Love endures. Love is everlasting. That knowledge should affect all that we do now. Everything we do should be saturated with God s love, for when we love we are participating in eternity, in God s eternal plan. When we speak and act in love our words and actions echo for all eternity. 7