Valentine’s Day is coming and tonight we look at the most romantic chapter in the New Testament – 1 Corinthians 13! Just kidding! Although it’s often read at weddings, this passage is about life in the church and how to get along in spite of our amazing God-given spiritual gifts. This teaching about love applies to every human relationship – our marriages, our families, our friends, and our churches.
How do I know? It’s an inclusio – a Scripture sandwich – chapters 12 and 14 are about spiritual gifts, which means the chapter in the middle of the sandwich is related to the pieces of bread, which are about the spiritual gifts. Furthermore, the opening verses explicitly mention several of the spiritual gifts listed in chapter 12: speaking in tongues, prophesy, knowledge, and faith.
Bottom line: Love is hard, love is intentional, love is an action, love is a choice, love is our calling as Christians (it isn’t optional), and love is eternal.
Following Christ in 21st Century Corinth – Week 18
presented 6 February 2019
1 Corinthians 12: 31b – 13: 13
AUDIO
Lecture Handout
Lesson Notes
Love! (1 Corinthians 12: 31b-13:7)
- Verse 31 – We are to desire the best, most useful gifts of the Spirit for building up the church
- But there is a more excellent way -> the way of love
- Point being, seek the gifts, but use them in love!
- Verse 1 – Speaking in tongues – whether human foreign languages or glossalalia (what we often associate with speaking in tongues today)
- No matter how amazing, if you don’t have love, it’s terrible – a painful, resonating echo of the real
- Our words, no matter how inspired, if delivered by an unloving person in an unloving spirit will inevitably cause damage
- I’ve known too many Christians who left a trail of destruction in their wake
- Delivering truth with no grace, mercy, love, or kindness
- Doing so is a failure to apply the gospel love God shows us to others
- Verse 2 – Likewise prophesy, deep understanding, encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible, and extraordinary faith, without love, are worthless – these were all gifts mentioned in chapter 12
- John 13: 34-35 – Christ’s commandment to the church is meant to be our witness to the watching world
- Because we in the evangelical church have too often erred just as Paul warned against, we struggle today to have an authentic voice and compelling witness to a hurting and lost world
- We’re too busy being right about every point of doctrine and theology and shooting at each other over tertiary issues, that the world sees us and says “no way, no how, we aren’t interested”
- John 13: 34-35 – Christ’s commandment to the church is meant to be our witness to the watching world
- Verse 3 – We can make the greatest sacrifices, but without love, they are without fruit
- We give up our lives and fortunes for nothing if our testimony is of harshness
- Verses 4-7 – the characteristics of love (not necessarily every characteristic, but key ones)
- Note that if the people we’re supposed to love were just more perfect people, we wouldn’t need all these characteristics!
- But they aren’t, so we do!
- There is nothing in those verses indicating the receiving party deserves these things. That’s the point.
- The point is that our love must have these qualities because the people we love – spouse, children, family, friends, members of our Bible studies, and church members are hard to love, but God already modeled this kind of love through Christ
- We’re all unlovable at times, but Christ ordered us to love people anyway
- We’re all unlovable at times, but Christ loved us so much He died for us anyway. He bore our sin and God’s wrath for us
- Therefore we can fulfill Christ’s command
- But only through the work of the Holy Spirit – love is part of the Fruit of the Spirit
- Our ability to love our unlovable loved ones on a daily basis depends entirely on our walk with Christ
- Let’s consider love:
- Love is patient – God is patient, it’s one of His essential attributes and we’re called to love in the same way. That’s why the qualities Paul highlights in these verses map so closely to the fruit of the Spirit
- Paul understands that those in the church with us will frustrate us and will fail to change on demand or on our timetable
- Love has standards, this doesn’t deny that, but it needs to be patient with people as God works within them
- Love is kind – Ephesians 2 speaks of God’s kindness. Love with a harsh or hard edge isn’t love
- Love doesn’t envy or boast
- We need to mature in our love to where we aren’t dwelling on what we don’t have or trumpeting what we do have
- Love chooses to be happy for others, even if they have much more than we do
- Love isn’t arrogant or rude -> in a church or marriage, it isn’t ever acceptable to obsess about how much more knowledgeable or spiritual or mature you are than the other person.
- This is the road to contempt, which is death to a relationship
- Christlike humility recognizes our own weaknesses and failures, rather than stressing about someone else’s
- There’s never an excuse for rudeness toward a brother or sister in Christ even when you disagree vehemently
- We live in a culture that seeks to vilify and destroy those we disagree with – we’re called to be different in the church
- Love doesn’t insist on its own way
- This isn’t about surrendering truth of Scripture or the one true gospel
- It’s about surrendering your preferences for the good of others
- It’s about having the mind of Christ – Philippians 2
- It’s about not making the music or decor of the church the hill you’ll die on; it’s about thinking of others before yourself
- Love isn’t irritable or resentful
- If you’are always irritated at your loved one – spouse or neighbor in church, that isn’t love!
- Stop focusing on what’s wrong with them and get your head on straight
- Resentment comes from keeping track of prior failures and offenses and preparing to throw them in someone’s face, at least in our imaginations
- Love forgives, and forgiveness means not holding on and stewing over it. Christ does not keep track of our failures once we’ve repented of them. Christ never throws our past in our faces after we’ve turned away from it
- We mess up all the time and Christ doesn’t get irritated or resentful toward us
- Christ is our standard, not just being better than other people
- Verse 6 – It doesn’t rejoice at wrongdoing, cutting corners, or doing what it takes to win; it rejoices in truth, honor, and integrity
- In yourself and in all others
- Love earnestly desires, prays for, and works to bring out the very best in others
- Verse 7 – Love bears all things – it is longsuffering
- Christlike love endures repeated failures and disappointments, just as God does
- It’s willing to suffer disappointment and indignity for the good of the other person
- It’s not enabling or co-dependent – let’s be clear on that!
- Love believes all things – it chooses to think the best of others, rather than assume the worst
- How much of the bitterness of conflict arises because we imagine evil motives on the part of the other person without cause?
- We must choose, in love, to think the best -> that it was an honest mistake, an oversight, not malicious intent
- Love hopes all things
- This is the hope of the gospel – that God can fix and redeem the biggest messes and worst situations
- That no matter how far gone a person is or how discouraged we might be about the damage in our relationship or the brokenness of the ones we love, we still hold to the confident hope that God can work healing and reconciliation
- These aren’t rose-colored glasses – love acknowledges that we can’t change people, but God can
- It admits that we were once utterly dead in our sins and at war with God, yet through Christ we have been redeemed, reborn, reconciled, and made alive
- And that we can have this same gospel hope toward others
- Real Christian love applies that same hope – it never stops praying, working, and hoping for the best
- Love endures all things
- Again, this isn’t greenlighting sin on the part of a loved one, but it says that through Christ we have the strength to endure the failings of others, while still holding before them the standard they are held to
- Love is patient – God is patient, it’s one of His essential attributes and we’re called to love in the same way. That’s why the qualities Paul highlights in these verses map so closely to the fruit of the Spirit
The Relationship Between Spiritual Gifts and Love (1 Corinthians 13: 8-13)
- Verses 8-10 – The spiritual gifts are partial and will all become unnecessary when Christ returns, but love will last forever
- Our knowledge will become complete when Christ returns, so we won’t need the particular spiritual gift of knowledge
- We will be in God’s presence and know His will, so we won’t need someone with the spiritual gift of prophesy to share a word from God
- Our spiritual gifts are a temporary provision with a purpose
- They’re given by God to build the church until the bridegroom, Jesus, returns to claim His bride, the church
- Verse 10 – When Christ returns – that’s the coming of the perfect
- Then we will simply love forever as we worship God and Christ eternally
- Verse 11 – the natural progression of life is used as an analogy to compare the present with the future after Christ returns
- As children (the present), we speak, think, and debate in certain ways
- As adults (the future), we’re radically different in these characteristics
- Likewise, how things are now is radically different from how they will be in the new earth
- Verse 12 – Second analogy – the mirror
- Ancient mirrors were very, very dim
- Polished bronze rather than silvered glass like we’re familiar with
- You saw only a vague reflection
- That’s our present understanding of things – of God, of life, of the universe
- Ultimately we will know fully and experience God fully
- So the gifts will pass away
- What will last are faith, hope, and love, not the spiritual gifts
- But love is the greatest, because our faith will be sight, our hope will be right in front of us, but our love -that’s what we’ll do forever
- In the meantime, we’re to practice what we’ll be doing forever
- Ancient mirrors were very, very dim
Next week: 1 Corinthians 14: 1-25