“Absolute Zero”
I Corinthians 13:1-3; 13
November 17, 2002
Love of Another Kind – I Corinthians 13
Priority One for the believer is given by Jesus in what we call “The Great Commandment”; He tells us that the most important thing we can do is to love God with all of our heart, our soul, our mind, and our strength. And then He tells us that the second priority comes right in line behind that: “love your neighbor as you love yourself.” For the next few months, I want to talk about what love really looks and acts like. Stand with me as we read!
Love, according to the old song, “is a many splendoured thing.” It may be that, but it’s also a many-definitioned thing. Love is a funny word; we use it in so many different ways: I love my wife; I love these cheesy hot dogs; I love the Steelers; I love my car; I love my country; I love my dog; I love the Beach Boys. Further, there are any number of truncated definitions of love floating around out there; allow me to suggest some:
Love equals romance. Consequently, we learn that Jennifer Lopez (JLo) is once again “in love”, this time with another actor whom she’ll marry for a few months or a couple of years, undoubtedly until the romance fades. But the tabloids and the news outlets will treat this as though it’s noteworthy. And Americans by the hundreds of thousands will for some reason that escapes me be interested in this tripe. Love equals romance, to many; most of our popular songs which use the word “love” have nothing to do with love at all, but rather with romance, at best, or illicit sex, at worst.
Love is a feeling. “I-I-I, I’m hooked on a feelin’, high on believin’ that you’re in love with me.” So sang B.J. Thomas, long before most of you were born. His words sum up the idea that love is an emotion which gives us the oosie-goosies, or the warm fuzzies. Ooh, I remember the first time I got the warm fuzzies. It was 10th grade, I think, and it was Cindy Caldwell, and the first time I held her hand, I was smitten. Not that you 10th graders ought to be holding hands, mind you! And I was hooked on a feeling, baby! But that’s all it was—and when we had some little silly tiff, it was time to move on to greener pasture. Sadly, some folks think love equals the oosie-goosies.
Love means never having to say you’re sorry. Well, this one is a little dated; I never saw the 1970 classic “Love Story”, starring Ali McGraw and Ryan O’Neal—the film that probably defined the term “chick flick”, from what I’m told, but that was the signature line. “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
Love means never being critical or negative about another person. This is such a popular sentiment today. Love, so it goes, never takes hard stands; love equals so much “mush”. But love devoid of truth is not love at all; one of the most unloving things I can do is to allow error to be passed off as truth without lifting a finger to stop it. If a brother is overcome by some fault, the most loving thing I can do, according to Galatians 6:1, is to restore that person in a spirit of meekness, and to bear that person’s burdens. These things fulfill the law of Christ, Scripture tells us. And sometimes, that will mean rebuke. Loving rebuke and speaking the truth are at times the most loving things I can do for another person. Love is not mush!
Love, if we look at Galatians 5, is the very first fruit produced in one’s life by the indwelling Spirit of God. And as Paul tells us today, if we don’t have that fruit in our lives, developed by the Holy Spirit as we cooperate with his work of change, then everything else is for naught. Everything else is for naught!
Paul is writing about the subject of spiritual gifts in the section which encompasses I Corinthians 12-14. The Corinthians were a group of believers which struggled mightily with selfishness (not unlike many other churches!), and this selfishness manifested itself in a number of ways. One way was that there was a desire to exercise “showy” gifts, those which were “more supernatural” in nature; for instance, the gift of tongues. Paul writes this chapter to encourage the Corinthians to understand that love is more important than any of the particular gifts. The Corinthians were not lacking in spiritual gifts, but they were lacking in true spiritual fruit, because their lives were devoid of love. The gifts of the Spirit can only operate in a spiritual life, and a spiritual life is one which evidences the fruit brought forth by the Spirit, as we see in Galatians 5:22,23.
Paul tells the Corinthians, as he begins his digression between chapters 12 and 14, that there is “a more excellent way”. Some commentators suggest that Paul is talking about a more excellent “gift”, that love is a spiritual gift that exceeds all others. I think they are wrong. Instead, I think he is speaking of the fact that love provides the essential context for the exercise of all spiritual gifts; it is the soil in which Christian faith must sprout and grow. Just as a seed will not grow without soil, so the fruit of the Spirit will not grow except in a context of love. When you exercise any spiritual gift given to you by God, you must do so, I think he is saying, in an attitude, a spirit, and with a motive of love.
And so Paul begins by taking on, head on, the particular gift by which the Corinthians were being led astray, the gift of tongues. Notice with me
Five equations of love:
I. Conspicuous spirituality minus love = absolute zero.
On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit had come upon the apostles so that they were given the gift of being able to speak in languages that they had never learned so that people from various cultures and languages could understand them. Paul says, “even if I speak with the tongues of men and of angels”. In saying this, he is saying that, even if he is able to communicate in a heavenly language, uttering sounds that sound as if they are the very language of angels, if he doesn’t have love, he is nothing. Believe what you will about so-called charismatic gifts (and in this room we’d have a divergence of opinion), the truth is that life in the Spirit is characterized first and foremost by love, not by charismatic manifestations. Paul is saying to the Corinthians that this gift of tongues with which so many of them were enthralled is of no value without its being exercised in a context of genuine love.
Paul likens the sound of these celestial tongues to noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. Cymbals were associated with pagan cults in that day; when people would go to pagan temples to pray, they would bang on the cymbals or gong to awaken the “gods”. To speak in tongues, Paul suggests, without love is to sound the same—and have the same value—as the empty noise of pagan worship. Gongs and cymbals can be spoken of as being fine instruments to play in the context of an orchestra, but by themselves, they communicate nothing but loud noises. They are meant to be, not lead instruments, but complimentary ones. “Lead with love”, Paul is saying, because the tongues—or whatever conspicuous spiritual activity you might carry out—is of no value by itself. Whereas the Corinthians believed that having the ability to speak in unknown tongues had automatically ushered them into a higher plane of spiritual existence, Paul says that such conspicuous spirituality minus love equals absolute zero.
Take your choice of conspicuous spirituality. Going to church? Taking communion? Talking about your faith with others? Doing good deeds? Marching for life? Feeding the poor or visiting those in prison? Singing praise choruses and hymns? Teaching children or youth? Going to CELL Group every week? Take your pick. All of them put together and done faithfully equal absolute zero without love for God and others!
II. Limitless knowledge minus love = absolute zero.
Paul mentions having the “gift of prophecy”. Those with this gift spoke the mysteries of God. The gift of prophecy involved a revelation from God given to build up the church. To prophesy meant to tell forth the Word of God. And if a prophet had the ability to know everything, every mystery of God, every part of the knowledge of God held in the mind of God—and yet did not have love, he’d be nothing. It would be worth absolute zero.
Lately, I’ve been having some recurring conversations with one of my children, who’ll remain nameless to protect the guilty (caution: it may not be the one you’re thinking of, okay?). I will find that this particular child has neglected to do something that this child knew it ought to do. And I will tell the child again to do whatever it is I have asked, to which the child will respond, “I know, Dad!” And then I will tell this child, “I don’t care what you know; I care what you do!”
Knowledge is extremely important—although education is overrated today. The stock answer for the problems of society today is more education—sorry, wrong answer. Education of the head won’t of itself change the heart; trying solve society’s woes through education aims 18 inches too high. Knowledge is important—the record of the evangelical church regarding loving God with our minds is somewhere just above dismal—but nonetheless, without love, it really doesn’t matter if you know all there is to know! Your knowledge is spiritually worthless. Knowledge, we are told in I Cor. 8:1, “puffs up” or “makes arrogant”, while love edifies. We can’t please God without applying our minds to learning His truth—knowledge—but at the same time, we can know without obeying, and knowledge of God’s truth unapplied is without value! So, if limitless knowledge equals absolute zero without love, how much less than zero does our far inferior knowledge count for without love!
III. Extreme faith minus love = absolute zero.
Gotta be honest with you: Pennsylvania has some nice, rolling hills, but it’s still too flat for me. Every time I go home, to the mountains of Virginia, I’m reminded again of how much I love those mountains. Now, Paul talks about mountain-moving faith. That would be way cool. If I could, by the power of faith, run down south, grab me a mountain or three, and drag it back up here, I would. We lived in Colorado Springs for awhile. If I could get a nice faith grip on Pike’s Peak, I’d just move it right on over here. Park it around, say, Slippery Rock, just far enough away that it wouldn’t be right on top of it, but close enough that we could enjoy its beauty every day. Gotta admit: mountain-moving faith might be a cool thing, unless, that is, too many people had it; then, you’d see mountains sliding all around like marbles or something, and that might not be such a good thing.
The “faith” that Paul refers to here is not saving faith, but rather the faith to trust God for great things. All Christians have faith; you can’t please God without it, the Bible says. Some Christians have greater faith than others do. Some of you stepped out in great faith last week and made a Faith Promise Missions Commitment that was off-the-charts in the “trusting God” department; others didn’t. Some believers walk by faith in other ways; others fail to take God at His Word, and miss His best for their lives instead of really living by faith. The faith Paul is talking about is faith for living, and he uses the most incredible example in Scripture. Jesus, in Matthew 17, employs a bit of hyperbole and speaks of the power of faith, even such as to move mountains. Paul effectively says, “what if I had that kind of faith to make that a reality?” Imagine that!
And yet that extreme faith, minus love, equals absolute zero. Conspicuous spirituality, limitless knowledge, extreme faith; all of these put together without love for one another gives us a grand total of absolute zero! Think you’re pleasing God by your spiritual exercises, theological education, or tremendous faith? If you have these in spades—but they are not exercised in the context of love for God and love for others, you’re kidding yourself. God is not pleased by all of the stuff you think pleases Him if there is a lack of love in your heart! Period! And it doesn’t get any easier, folks!
IV. Unbounded generosity minus love = absolute zero.
“Suppose I give all my possessions to feed the poor”, Paul says. That’s emptying the bank account, cashing in the stocks and bonds, and getting all of the money out of the IRA’s. That’s selling the house and the cars and the boat. That’s getting rid of all the jewelry, and the clothing, and the appliances, and the electronic gadgetry. That’s having a massive yard sale and putting everything you own, except maybe the clothes on your back, in it, and then selling what’s left in a lump to a flea market dealer. And then, that’s taking every penny of the proceeds down to the Salvation Army and saying, “let’s feed every poor person in Mercer County with this.” Even in this jaded world, if word got out, it would make local and, I daresay, national headlines. This is not a guy giving a tithe or even putting a Building Campaign pledge on top of it; it’s not adding a Faith Promise commitment and a Deacon’s Fund offering to that. It’s everything, every last red cent. And Paul says to us, if it is done without love in your heart, it is a worthless sacrifice.
People give for all kinds of reasons. They give out of guilt. We try to make it clear here that guilt ought not to be what motivates you to pitch into the offering plate here, but it’s probably happened, and it certainly does every Sunday in churches around the world. People give because they see sad-eyed, starving kids and feel guilty for having food to eat and a warm house. People give to impress other people. People give because they think that God is waiting in Heaven to zap ‘em if they don’t. Some men give to their wives to try to win back their favor when they’re in the doghouse; some parents give elaborate Christmas gifts to their children in order to try to make their kids love them. Some people give so that they can sleep in the Lincoln bedroom. In our world of twisted, pseudo-Christian theology, there are people who give because some liar with a bouffant hairdo on so-called Christian TV has told them that God will bless them financially if they send him a check, so they give with a motive of getting.
True agape love is always self-sacrificing, but self-sacrifice doesn’t always come from true love. And Paul says that the mere act of giving, even generosity that knows no bounds, while it might help those who receive, is worthless to the giver if the motive behind it is not love.
V. The ultimate sacrifice minus love = absolute zero.
Paul says, “even if I give my body to the flames”. It isn’t totally clear to what Paul refers here, but whatever it is, whether it is, as it would seem to me, voluntary martyrdom, or something else, it is clear that he has in mind here some ultimate sacrifice. Without love in one’s heart, even this level of devotion is without any value whatsoever! God is not going to be impressed or pleased with a martyr even if the motive behind martyrdom is not love!
Here is the point, as if you don’t have it yet: everything possible that is good all added together subtract love equals absolute zero. And here is where the rubber meets the road, folks: some of you walked in here today and you said, not out loud, but in the back of your mind you said something self-congratulatory, feeling happy that you’d made it out to church. Or you’ve taken pride in your level of Bible knowledge or in the Faith Promise commitment you made last week. Or you’re glad you’re here so that you can have a worship experience again, or you consider yourself to be a person of great faith. Here’s the stark truth: without love, you are nothing, according to Paul; without love, your religious stuff profits you nothing; without love, you’re a fake and a phony and not the person you think you are in your mind.
The only way you get this love in your heart is by opening your life to God, to the working of His Holy Spirit in your life. It happens when you relinquish the reins and say “yes” to God. And some of you aren’t doing that. Quit fooling yourself. We’re coming to communion today. Don’t take it if there is an attitude that is less than loving toward another, if you’re harboring bitterness or unforgiveness in your heart, if you’re engaging in character assassination. Don’t take communion; instead, fall down on your knees before a holy God and repent.
And so we begin this series, one which applies to every person in this place. It applies to husbands who need to know how to love their wives. It applies to parents who need to know how to love their children. It applies to children who need to know how to love their parents and grandparents. It applies to neighbors who need to know how to love each other. It applies to students who need to know how to love their roommates. It applies to employees who need to know how to love their bosses, and vice versa. It applies to engaged couples who need to know how to love each other. It applies to church members who need to know how to get along as well, and how to love people in their town and around the world. And the indispensable beginning point is this: no matter what ever else you might get right or have going for you, if you do not act toward others with God’s kind of love, everything else amounts to absolute zero.
