The Importance of Love
Love is the essence of Christianity. “Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you” (Psalm 63:3). The cross of Christ has been the defining act of love for nearly two millennia. Jesus said that love for one another is the badge for Christians:
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not 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 have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:1-13)
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35). Paul says it as well: “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more…” (Philippians 1:9). “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love…” (Ephesians 3:17).
Loving other people before yourself is a distinctive trait of Christians. I want you to see this morning that love first shatters us, then it captures us, and lastly, it empowers us.
1. Love Shatters Us
I say “Love Shatters Us,” because love chases down rebels. Let me explain. We have been focusing on the “love” chapter for some four weeks. Those who hear this chapter often describe it as inspirational. For if you understand who it was written to… and why it was written… you’ll understand that this “inspirational” chapter is really a bombshell. As a reminder of the first two messages in this series, we said that the first bombshell in the minefield of 1 Corinthians 13 is found in verses one through three.
The bombshell is this: if you are incredibly gifted with all kinds of abilities but lack love, you are nothing. You are lost; you are not a Christian at all. Judas was a great example of someone who seemingly followed Christ, gifted along with the other Disciples, yet Judas lacked love.You cannot look at your gifts as an infallible sign to test whether you are a Christian. Gifts and abilities are not the sign that indicates whether the transforming work of the Spirit has changed your heart.
What is the infallible sign to signify this change? The proof is love (found in verses one through three). For Love loves people for who they are and not what they can bring. This is a defining aspect to the love of God. God loves you not for what you can bring; you have nothing you can give Him.
“For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
35 “Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?” (Romans 11:34-35)
God’s love for you is not conditioned on what you can bring to Him. Nor does God’s love give up on people: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends” (1 Corinthians 13:7-8).
Everybody in this room wants to be loved not for what you can bring but for who you are. Everybody in this room wants to be loved permanently. You do not want to be a tool. And you want to experience an enduring love. None of us want to experience a temporary love. Again, you want to be loved as you are. And even though this is what we want, we ourselves don’t do this! We’re too weak to do this. We demand and expect love from others, but we ourselves cannot love others to meet our own demands.
In Woody Allen’s 1994 movie, Bullets Over Broadway, we meet the main character who is played by John Cusack. Cusack has a long-term relationship with his girlfriend when an opportunity for an affair presents itself. Struck with a moral dilemma, he asks his good friend, played by Rob Reiner, what he should do. Cusack says to Reiner that he wants the affair but he doesn’t want to feel guilt from the affair. Reiner encourages him to go through with the affair saying guilt is passé. Cusack goes through with the affair and doesn’t tell his girlfriend. A few minutes later in the movie Cusack finds out that his girlfriend is also having an affair on him. He is enraged as he confronts her with the affair all the while leaving out what he is doing. As he flies off the handle in rage, he asks who she is having the affair with. She responds that her secret lover is Rob Reiner, the very man who encouraged Cusack to have his affair.
We demand a love from others and we are too weak to meet our own demands. We demand commitment from others. We demand faithfulness from others. We demand loyalty from others. In essence, we demand love from others. You have to have it but you can’t give it! We cannot give the love we expect from others. And when we first encounter this love in Christ, it leaves us guilty.
It’s the love we have always wanted but we know we are not worthy of. His love shatters us. It’s Christ love for us that convinces us that we are a sinner. Love shows us that we are helpless sinners. Anyone who truly sees the love of Christ cries out “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13).
2. Love Captures Us
Now I want to turn our attention to verses four through seven. And as you ponder these verses, you’ll note that personify love. That is, Paul uses a literary style that speaks as if love is a person and not a thing. This is unique in all of Paul’s writings. Nowhere else does he write of faith as a person; only love. See, love is not something you do but it is Someone you meet. As you read these verses, if you are not careful you’ll slip into thinking that these verses are simply a checklist for love. You’ll sit and listen to these and think to yourself, “Yes, I must be more patient. I must be more kind.”
Yet, love is not a checklist of behavior. This is significant. There is not one command in the entire chapter. If you were commanded to love like a drill sergeant commanding a cadet, you’d fail at love. But if love captures you, you’ll experience it. If love envelops you, you’ll relish it. Before love is a behavior, love is an experience. Before love is a behavior in a Christian, love is an experience for the Christian. What makes a Christian a Christian is that you have met love. And that is what Christmas is all about. Love came in a manager to rescue us from ourselves. Love came to a cross at Easter and first died and then Love arose from the grave. Love walked many miles in between the Christmas and the first Easter. Love healed the blind. Love cleansed lepers. Love taught in parables. Love gave hearing to the deaf (Mark 7:31-37) and feed the multitudes (Mark 6:30-44). And all the while Love pursued rebels. Love chased you down and it captured you.
You see, what you need to know about this chapter is that there was One person who did this. There was One person who portrayed this kind of love – Jesus Christ. He loved you for nothing. You bring Him nothing. Yet, Christ loves you with a loyal, enduring love that you’ve always wanted. Before love is a behavior in a Christian, love is an experience for the Christian. Love is something you met before you do it. Love shatters you and then it captures you.
3. Love Empowers Us
Les Miserable is the story of Jean Valjean, an ex-convict set in the early 1800s. Valjean is criminal because he has had a hard life. Because of his hard life, he justified the fact that he became cruel. He has been in prison for nineteen years for stealing bread for his starving sister and for several escape attempts. Because people had been cruel to him, he was justified in his cruelty to others. In the story, Jean Valjean meet a bishop who gives him a place to stay, keeping him off the streets. Yet, in the middle of the night he steals the bishop’s silver and runs away. He is caught and brought back to the kind bishop who forgives him. The bishop not only gives him the silver he stole but adds two silver candlesticks to his stolen possession. Valjean experiences grace for the first time in his hardened life and he is scared to death. Experiencing grace for the first time, he is exposed to a host of new emotions. He wished for the calm he experienced after years of hardened cruelty. The resistance to love and grace throughout his years of criminal activity gave way to a new frightening humility once he experienced the bishop’s pardoning grace. He was shaken. As the story progresses, a ten year old boy comes along. He is a poor chimney sweep who plays with the few coins he owns by throwing them up in the air and catching them. Only as he throws the coins in the air, he drops one on the ground and it rolls away. As the boy chases it, Jean Valjean places his heavy foot over the coin. It’s all the money he has in the world so asks Jean to remove his foot. The little boy hits at Valjean’s foot so as to move it but to no use. Valjean was the recipient of a lifetime of cruelty where he had always lived hard. He rejected the boy’s pleas consistent with his tough, hardened ways. He keeps his foot there and tells the boy to get lost. But once the boy leaves, Valjean is transfixed by his cruelty in the face of the bishop’s kindness. He stays there for sometime, the reader doesn’t know how long exactly. He struggles with what he has done. Sometime later he picks his foot off the coin, picks the small coin up, and looks for the little boy to give it back. But no use; he couldn’t find him. He burst into tears for the first time in nineteen years. He understood nothing of what was going on inside of him and he reeled like a drunk as fought to keep his heart hard in spite of experiencing grace.
What happens to him? Does he change? The chapter ends simply by telling us that stagecoach driver drove through the streets of Grenoble at 3 am in the morning, saw a man kneeling in prayer on the pavement in the dark.
Love shatters you… Love captures you… And then it empowers you. Love is something you first meet before you can do it.Before love can be a behavior in you it must become a Person in you.
