4. An Irresistible Community: 1 Corinthians
March 28, 2010
Loving
If one word was all that was allowed to describe the person of God and the essence of who He is, if we had only one word we could use to show His character that word would have to be love. God is love. This is without a doubt the most defining characteristic of His nature. God without love is like an Oreo cookie without the crème center, God without love is not God. God is love because God loves, and not just the people who are easy to love. God loves the unlovable. God loves those who don’t deserve love. He loves the imperfect. He loves the broken. He loves the hurting. He loves the lost. God loves: without distinction, without calculation, without procrastination, without condition. God loves.
God loves the church. So much so that in Scripture Jesus refers to the church as His bride. In essence the love between a husband and wife is a physical representation, a shadow of the love that God has for His church. I heard a sermon a few months ago where Matt Proctor described the church as the theatre where God chooses to manifest His glory. God loves the church so much that it is the central place where He reveals His awesome power. The church is the most beautiful creation in the eyes of God. He loves her so much that He sent His Son to give His life for her. If God loves the church that much, shouldn’t we do the same? If we are truly going to call ourselves His children shouldn’t we love the church enough not just to attend but to get connected to and to invest.
The first mark of a living church is love. What this means is that love is one of the primary characteristics that makes a church irresistible. John Piper says: “Genuine love is so contrary to human nature that its presence bears witness to an extraordinary power.” When we love each other with the love of God our lives become a testimony to the power and the person of God and when others see it, many of them will be drawn to it. The central desire of every person is to love and to be loved and yet outside of a relationship with God we don’t really understand how to satisfy that desire. So when the world sees a community of love many of them will be drawn in. Love is what makes a church irresistible for the true and unconditional love that we have cannot be found anywhere else. If you would open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 13:1. Chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians is possibly one of the most powerful, meaningful, and insightful passages in all of the New Testament. This chapter has been called the ‘greatest, strongest, deepest thing Paul ever wrote.’ But not only this, it is perhaps the deepest passage on love in the entire Bible. Now Paul has just been writing about the different Spiritual gifts explaining them and noting a bit about how they are used and then he moves to love indicating that this is more important than any Spiritual gift.
1Co 13:1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 1Co 13:2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 1Co 13:3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. 1Co 13:4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 1Co 13:5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 1Co 13:6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 1Co 13:7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 1Co 13:8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 1Co 13:9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 1Co 13:10 but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 1Co 13:11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 1Co 13:12 Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 1Co 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Paul devotes almost three chapters to the subject of spiritual gifts because this was a problem the Corinthians were struggling with. The Corinthians had put too much emphasis and focus on certain gifts. Gifts had been a bit too central to their faith. What Paul says here is that even if you have the greatest gifts and you know everything, you have insight into hidden truths, and can move mountains, even if you can speak in foreign tongues, heal the sick, cast out demons, and raise the dead: if you do these things but do not have love they are meaningless. Paul says to desire the greater gifts and here he notes the greatest gift is love. It is not as flashy but the love of God is powerful in fact it is supernatural. To love someone who doesn’t deserve it. To forgive the wrong things that were done to you years ago without demanding reparation be made, to love unlovable people is a supernatural gift that comes only from a relationship with God. You see not matter how significant what you do is, if you do without love it means nothing. This is to say if you leave your life behind to go into missions and bring an entire country to Christ but you do not love it means nothing. Without love service means nothing. Without love faith means nothing. Gifts, or perhaps even life itself becomes meaningless without love. Love is the very essence of life the very purpose of our creation. Fish were made to swim, birds were made to fly, lions were made to be awesome, man was made to love.
Like the church in Corinth sometimes we get distracted when it comes to spiritual gifts. I have met people who don’t even understand how to live like Jesus. They don’t have a healthy relationship with Him. They are spiritually immature and don’t really have any interest in developing their faith through studying God’s Word. What they are interested in are gifts. They have even laid a proper foundation down for their life and they are trying to figure out the nature and expression of spiritual gifts. This is like taking a math class on the dynamics of quantum systems before you take algebra. When you don’t build on the basics then you will have difficulty accurately understanding the complexities. There is a place for understanding gifts and even studying them but that place comes after we have a firm grasp on how to love like Jesus, how to live like Jesus, and how to look like Jesus. You see until we really know how to let Jesus guide our lives and follow His example of love focusing on gifts is inappropriate.
We are enticed by the possibility of having access to supernatural power and so we develop an unhealthy focus on the gifts of the spirit. That is not to say we should be ignorant or reject the gifts, they are called gifts for a reason but we must recognize that the gifts have a place. If gifts take precedent over love then they have become inappropriate. When I first started here we had a couple come in one Sunday for service. I had never seen them before so I went over and introduced myself and we started talking. He asked me what the churches stance on speaking in tongues was. I said: well I know for a fact we have some people who are for it and others who are against it. We do not publicly practice it in our church services. He got very upset and said he was going to finish his coffee and leave because he couldn’t stand going to a church that denied the Holy Spirit. Reactions like this are not uncommon when it comes to Spiritual gifts because we focus too much on them. So sometimes we act in unloving ways when we don’t see eye to eye on gifts and thus we show our ignorance of what the Spirit is trying to teach us in 1 Corinthians. Which is love is far more important than any other gift.
While we talk a lot about love it is important for us to know what love is and what love looks like so we can honestly evaluate if we really love or if this is an area we need to work on. That is exactly what Paul is doing he is showing us what it means to love. Paul shows us two things so that we can understand love. First he shows us what love is. Then he continues with what love does.
Let’s begin with what love is. These are basically the defining characteristics of love. What love is relates more to the internal reality than the outward display because certain aspects of love are easy to fake. You can act patient and kind while be impatient and cruel. So these characters of love describe the true heart of a loving person and are not always clearly visible or accurately interpreted by outsiders. So the way Paul sets this up is to describe both what love is and what love does in positive and negative ways.
So love is patient and kind, these are the positive characteristics. If you treat someone with impatience you are not loving them. If that is the standard with which you treat them then you do not love them. So when you act without patience or kindness you are acting without love. Then we see what love is not proud, rude, self seeking, or easily angered, these are the negative characteristics. So if you are not doing the positive things or you are doing the negative things then either in that moment you are not acting in love or you are not loving. Pride, rudeness, selfishness, and a short temper are all indications of a person who does not love. Basically love is patient, kind, humble, selfless, self controlled, and considerate. If that is not the true nature of your heart then you need to work on how you love because your love is not fully mature.
Then we move to what love does. These are its visible external qualities. What love does is directly affected by what love is. If you truly love then the naturally the expectation would be these characteristics of what love does would be apparent in your life. How can you know what you have is really love: these are the sort of things that you should see. Basically if you get what love is right then what love does becomes the fruit of your life. Again Paul will state these in both positive and negative ways. Love protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres, and rejoices in truth. These describe the behavior of someone who loves. One of these really gets me: love always perseveres. We read this with romantic lenses on and it sounds wonderful. This is really a hard thing to hear though because what Paul is saying is if your relationship doesn’t get through. If you do not continue to love as in to act with all the previously listed characteristics towards someone even through trials and hardships then you have not loved them. Love finishes the race. If what you have doesn’t finish then it is not love. Not only is this the case in our relationship with others this is the case in our relationship with God. If we do not stay true to Him even under trials and persecution then we do not really love Him because love always perseveres so no perseverance means no love. Love only fails when we fail to love. Love does not envy, boast, keep record of wrongs, or delight in evil. So when we see ourselves doing the things that love does we can know that we are loving. When we see ourselves doing the things that love does not do then we know we are not loving and need to change the way we live so that we may live the life of love.
So where are you? Where are you with these characteristics? I want you to read over this passage this week and to really ask yourself which of these characteristics do you do pretty well and which of them need improvement. You see we all may claim to love but none of us loves us well as we should. Let this be our training manual to loving like Jesus and let us not stop until we have perfected our love. Can you imagine what it would be like to have a church full of people who loved perfectly like this all the time? Can you imagine what a joy it would be to be a part of that? Can you imagine the effect we would have on the world?
What love does is a result of what love is. So when we personally develop the internal qualities of love, then the external qualities will naturally be revealed in our lives. Love is an undeniably attractive force. When the church becomes a community of love we become irresistible to the world for everyone craves love and we have an endless supply of it. There are a lot of things a church can be but a church that is love is irresistible. There are a lot of things a church can do but a church that does love is irresistible. When we love we live like Jesus. When we love we look like Jesus. When we love our lives become a testimony to the glory of God and the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. We can show the world just how powerful God’s love for them is if we can learn to love like Jesus. When we love unconditionally and unequivocally we show the world Jesus.
