A More Excellent Way
1 Corinthians 13
Cascades Fellowship CRC, JX MI
March 8, 2009
Series: The Church in Crisis
I remember a sermon – years ago, in fact I think I may have preached it during my time here as an intern – where my opening illustration was the difference between the way my father chopped wood and the way I chopped it. You may remember the scene – me as a skinny 18 year-old trying to impress my forty-five year-old dad by going as fast and hard as I was able. I would swing with my whole body, big looping strokes as fast as I could until I was forced to pause, huffing and puffing. I would swing five or six or seven real hard times and then rest for a minute or so before going on.
But my dad, my old, out-of-shape dad who I was certain I could work circles around – he established a rhythm, taking his time. He used measured, slow, controlled swings – steady as a drum beat. While I was huffing and puffing, he was steadily thudding away, breaking log after log and stacking it neatly into the woodshed. By the time mom called us for lunch, dad had outpaced me, stacking twice as much wood.
You know, what I learned that day was a more excellent way. Not just a more excellent way of chopping wood, but a more excellent way of approaching life. If we were to break-down the reasons for why my dad’s approach is so much more excellent than my approach probably last on the list of reasons would be that dad’s way was so much more productive. Although in a world where utility or usefulness is considered the greatest virtue – let’s face it, we like things that work well and honor those who are high capacity type-people – in that kind of world, you might think productivity would be at the top of the list, but that really isn’t what makes dad’s way more excellent. It has to do with what is in view, what motive drives the work.
You see, I was interested in impressing – I wanted props for how strong I was, how powerful my swings were, how fast I was. I wanted someone to notice that I was a fine physical specimen who split the daylights out of the wood. I was interested in showing my dad that I was better than he was at splitting wood, that I was the future and he was the past.
Now all this is really hilarious if you know that I was 5’10” and weighed a whopping 120-125 at the time. I may have been 130, but that was about it. I was not a fine physical specimen – I was skinny little punk who obviously thought way too much of himself and way too little of my dad. I was focused on what the work could do for me, where as dad saw his work as service. The family needed wood for the stove – dad chopped wood. His satisfaction came from seeing his family warm – that’s what motivated him.
Dad’s desire to provide fueled his effort and informed his approach to the wood pile. He knew it didn’t matter how fast you swung the axe – what mattered is how well you placed the stroke. If you wanted to have the wood split and put away before winter came, slow and steady won the race.
So what is it that allows a person to take such a big picture view – to essentially take themselves out of the equation and do whatever needs doing without regard to personal recognition or gain?
You know, in some ways, it sounds like we are defining heroism – that trait of selfless disregard to ensure the completion of the mission or the safety of others. We think of firemen, soldiers, police officers and the like when we think of heroes. In the world of fantasy, heroes have special powers – we refer to them as super-heroes. So was my dad a hero? Well, to me he was and is, although he didn’t have any special powers and there was no real danger except when I was swinging the axe. Was that his motivation, though – a heroic character?
Maybe – or at least in some sense – but I think the real motivation was even more basic than that. What allowed my dad to take such a big picture view was love.
In our study of 1 Corinthians, we have come to chapter 13 – what many have termed “the love chapter.” It is a bridge for the discussion on gifts Paul began in Chapter 12 that he will continue in Chapter 14. Many commentators have remarked that if Chapter 13 were removed, Paul’s argument would still make logical sense because chapter 13 reads almost like an interlude.
If you remember, Paul started out chapter 12, “Now concerning spiritual gifts….” And proceeded to talk about gifts in a general sense – laying a foundation of where these gifts originated and what context they are to be used in. Paul said that the gifts of the Spirit were from God, that he provided them as there was need and to the people it pleased him empower through them. He talked at length that the gifts were not to be a cause of division, but were meant to be instruments for building up the Body and unifying it.
And if you were to read ahead in Chapter 14, you’d find that Paul then begins teaching specifically on the use of the gifts within the life of the church; how the gift of tongues should be used or the place of prophecy, just to name a few. Paul does not give an exhaustive list, but he does provide enough examples to get his point across.
And right in the middle of all this talk about the Body and “you can’t see with ear or smell with the eye” and “this is how the gifts are to be used” – right in the middle of all this is an incredible chapter on the nature of love. Paul’s prose here reaches epic proportions – his rhetoric is powerful and moving; so much so that vv.4-8 find their way into a significant number of wedding ceremonies, whether the couple believes in Jesus Christ or not.
But why is it here? Why does Paul place this “love chapter” between his general discussion of the gifts and his specific discussion of the gifts? Well, to use Paul’s words, he wants to show the Corinthians a more excellent way.
Now what do you think he means by that? Well, let’s remember who Paul is dealing with – the Corinthians. We found out early on that they were trying to merge their pagan beliefs with this new Christian stuff that Paul was preaching and as a result were getting several things wrong. They were allowing all sorts of divisions in the Body – dividing up according to who was their favorite teacher, who had money and who didn’t, who practiced a very strict discipline over their sexuality and who was more licentious – everywhere you looked the Corinthians were dividing. It’s a wonder they could get two or three together for the Lord to be in their midst!
But they also had the wrong idea about what it meant to be a follower of Jesus Christ – what it meant to be spiritual. They were all into knowledge – they enjoyed nuance and fresh takes on the Gospel message, even if clashed with what they had learned before. They were constantly on the lookout for what they thought of as wisdom – knowledge that was obscure or took quite a bit to understand, what they considered a higher knowledge. In today’s terms, it would be like us dividing our Sunday school classes on the basis of whether a person knew what theological meaning was attached to the words mortification and regeneration. Or maybe more to the point, if we divvied up according to whether a person could recite Lord’s Day 26 from memory or if they even knew what the reference to Lord’s Day 26 meant.
Now, is there anything wrong with knowing what Lord’s Day 26 is? Absolutely not – in fact, I would suggest that having a general knowledge of the Heidelberg Catechism is up-building for our faith and leads to a greater life of faithfulness. But if we use knowledge of the Heidelberg Catechism as a litmus test to spirituality or more importantly to a person’s salvation in Jesus Christ we essentially fall into the same error that the Corinthians were in – using some other criteria than faith in Christ alone. Some Corinthians were using their greater knowledge as a means of discrimination, of separating themselves from the rest of the “rabble;” for them it was a mark of superior spirituality – of superior status really. To them, the higher knowledge meant they were closer to God.
So how could a person demonstrate that they had this higher knowledge? Apparently, within the Corinthian church, it was through the manifestation of the gifts of the Spirit – especially the gift of tongues.
Ah, so now we see why Paul is addressing the gifts – why he begins in Chapter 12 by teaching that all the gifts come from God as he sees fit to give them. They aren’t earned or even a mark of deeper spirituality – they have a different purpose; to glorify God and build up the faith and unity of the church. But if the Corinthians were using them as spiritual status symbols, would that edify others or deepen the unity of the church? No – not hardly.
You see, the Corinthians were spiritual people – Paul tells us so in 1 Corinthians 1:4-7
I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way—in all your speaking and in all your knowledge—because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed.
They had all the gifts, they were good with points of doctrine and arguing theology – they seemed to be on-the-ball Christians able to defend their faith with clarity and wit. But they suffered from the same malady that John’s Revelation says struck the Ephesian church – they had forsaken their First Love. In fact, they had apparently forsaken love altogether.
This is why Paul starts out the way he does in Chapter 13. ‘If I speak of tongues and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol.”
When Abby was a toddler, one her favorite activities was to drag out the pans and the pan lids and just beat the daylights out of the them with a wooden spoon. It was fun for her, but torture for me – just random, loud, persistent noise. It wasn’t like when Mike does the cymbal on Good Friday – that’s controlled and carefully manufactured for a particular effect. No, Abby was just making noise, lot’s of it and this is what Paul says speaking in tongues is like if it you lack love while you do it.
So what Paul is telling the Corinthians is – it really doesn’t matter how well you speak in tongues, or how often you prophesy; it doesn’t even matter if you have this powerful faith that can make miraculous things happen or if you let yourself be misused for the sake of a cause. Even if you give up everything you have – if you do it for any other reason that love, it is worthless.
Think about that for a moment – that is a powerful statement. Think about all the charitable donations that are given in the United States each year – billions of dollars. But some of this money is given to provide a tax break or to ease the conscience of the wealthy when wealth seems so scarce for others. Others do it to “pay-it-forward,” a karma-type thing. Life’s been good to me, so I will be good to someone else, keep the good karma flowing.
All of this – according to what Paul says here – is worthless. It accomplishes no real or lasting good – certainly no eternal good. Why? Because it lacks Love.
Paul, then gives a description of love, so that we can measure our own motives against it. Love is patient, love is kind…. Now I could spend an entire sermon just going through the attributes of love that Paul gives here – two sermons really. But I instead this morning, I want to take a big picture look at love – what it means to love.
If you look at the attributes of love that Paul lists in that famous passage of vv. 4-8, you will notice that there is something peculiar about it – about the attributes really. Every attribute that Paul lists here is focused outward – love always has an object outside itself. This means, by definition, that any act of selfishness or self-love is really the opposite of love – a form of hatred. I remember when I realized this it made me really pause and evaluate what I meant when told someone I loved them.
In the movie Fireproof the main character – Caleb – takes a love dare to save his marriage. The love dare asks a person to serve his or her spouse in small, but significant ways without looking for acknowledgment or reward – it’s all done for the sake of love. If the spouse reciprocates – cool, but if not, you serve anyway; you love anyway. The end result is not so much that the dare changes your partner – rather that it changes you; it changes the way you understand and show love. Instead of loving in hopes of being loved, the love dare shows you how to give love that goes beyond simply looking for nothing in return – it shows you how to give yourself sacrificially; to love regardless of the cost.
In the absence of this kind of love, Paul says, the gifts are worthless. Why? Because by themselves, these gifts will pass away – they will become yesterday’s news. Can you imagine, gifts of power given by God? They will become old hat, says Paul, but love never fails. When everything else passes away, love remains.
This attitude, Paul says, is a sign of maturity – of growing up in Christ. If you are caught up in the power or the drama of the gifts of the Spirit, if you are caught up in the excitement so that the gifts become a means of self-edification, you are a child and missing out on where the real action is - on the more excellent way.
Beloved of God, this kind of love does not come easily to us because it requires us to give up our rights – to surrender our lives so that others might live. It calls us to give ourselves away without looking for anything in return. It requires risk, and a willingness to pay the cost when things go sour. It calls us to take a big picture view when using our gifts – how can I serve the person next to me, the family in the next pew, community I live in with the gifts that I have? It requires us to press our lives into the shape of the cross, even if it means we get nothing in return. That is the more excellent way.
