GOD’S GREATEST GIFT IS LOVE
1 Corinthians 13 February 2, 2003
1 CORINTHIANS 13
131If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resound-ing gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If 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. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8Love 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. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When 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. 12Now 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.
13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
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Dearest Fellow-Redeemed and Saints in the Lord:
That word ‘love’ has been an inspiration for many songs, poems and even life-changing events. People sometimes get married in the name and for the sake of love. At times the world has taken away that precious meaning of what love really is. They’ve rele-gated it to beer commercials, to all sorts of things and the true meaning of love is some-times lost. Its purpose is lost. This morning Paul reminds the believers in Corinth and he reminds us that God’s greatest gift to us is love. The only way you and I can understand and know what love is is to know God because God is love. 1 John tells us: "And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us "(1 JOHN 4:16,17). That is what we want to do this morning--make God’s love more complete among us as we look at chapter 13 in 1 Corinthians, also known as the ‘love chapter’. We soon come to realize that
GOD’S GREATEST GIFT IS LOVE
I. Everything fails
II. God’s love never fails
I. Everything fails
We have to remind ourselves what was written in chapters 11and 12. The Apostle Paul had told the early believers that they were different—different parts in the body of Christ, but they were one body. They were united by faith. Now in Chapter 13 he reminds them that they should not concentrate on their gifts so much as to underestimate God’s love. That had become a problem; they thought their gifts were more important than any-thing else. At the very end of Chapter 12 he says, ‘Eagerly desire the greater gifts and now I will show you the most excellent way.’ That is going to be love, God’s love that never fails.
Paul gives them an example so that they can easily understand in the importance of God’s love in comparison to God’s gifts. 131If I speak in the tongues of men and of an-gels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. Paul is just an empty noise if he is without love. The gift of tongues is not that important. 2If 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. If I have a mountain-moving faith but am without love, I amount to nothing. I am a zero! 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Thus Paul contin-ues, to do all the right things for all the wrong reasons is not good. Without love, all good intended actions amount to nothing. Without love, a person’s life means nothing. Without love, a person cannot do the things that a Christian ought to do.
Paul goes on to remind these believers at Corinth, who had put so much emphasis on their gifts, that those things are all going to fail. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. He says the gift of tongues will stop, knowledge will pass away; it will all be gone. But love never fails.
Paul speaks to these Christians who are new in the Christian faith. He tries to get them to focus on that which is important—God’s love. He tells them to grow up and not just in years, but in knowledge and wisdom and in their Christian faith. He gives them an example: 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When Paul was younger, he used to do all sorts of unbelieving things. He could talk and reason. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. The Lord caused him to grow up in his faith—to see that the only thing that was important in his life was the love of God. When everything else fails, love never fails.
It sounds simple to us that God’s greatest gift is love. When we think about that, the Lord would always have us concentrate on those things that are divine (which are con-nected with God). Yet, how hard that is to do in our earthly living. You and I know how easy it is to become attached to the things of this world—to those things that aren’t divine. Sometimes we may even forget that God’s greatest gift is love. We might think that God’s greatest gift is a family or a nice house, good clothes or good food. That is simply a part of our sinful nature. No wonder then, that the Lord Jesus when he was on earth, had to warn his disciples, as He also warns us today: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal"(MATTHEW 6:19). Jesus reminded the disciple as he reminds us that everything else that we see in this world fails. It is corrupted by moths or rust or simply falls apart. If that weren’t bad enough, Jesus tells us that even thieves and robbers break in and steal those things that we might try to store up and hoard for ourselves (reminding us that everything around us fails).
Not just tangible objects, but things that cannot be seen, men’s thoughts and opin-ions come and go. Men live and die on this earth and when they’re gone, who remembers them? Their friends and relatives remember for a short time, but they are soon forgotten. Everything earthly fails. We return to the dust. "Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” (JAMES 4:14) Even the plans of men fail. We make all sorts of plans in our life. We propose but God disposes. So, what are we to do? We look around us and we see everything else fail, everything else not lasting. We rely on the love that God has shown us.
We, like these believers, grew up in our Christian faith—year after year, day after day. What a privilege for you and I to come listen to what God has to say to us in His spo-ken word. What a privilege for you and I to live in a country where we can pick up a Bible at a very minimal cost, and read it day after day; where we can meet whenever we want, any day of the week and study God’s word. When we do that, we grow bit by bit in our Christian faith. As we hear, read and study, we increase our knowledge of God’s love for us. "But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to dis-tinguish good from evil.” (HEBREWS 5:14) In a world that has a hard time of distinguish-ing what is good and what is evil, rejoice in the fact that God in His love has given you the ability to know what is right and what is wrong by being trained by God’s word.
No wonder then, that Paul says God’s greatest gift is love. When we look at every-thing around us that fails, he tells us
II. Love never fails
Paul started, in a sense, with a negative. The negative was showing these people that their gifts weren’t going to last forever. Then he comes to the positive—the positive of God’s love. 8Love never fails. Then he makes quite a list. As we listen to this list again, we understand and see that it is the opposite, isn’t it? It’s the opposite of what you and I have grown up with in this world. It’s just the opposite of what you and I are used to in this world. It was the same for these early believers. 4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. These believers needed to hear that for they were quite boastful in the gifts that God had given them. They were always seeking their own glory. (He said love is not self-seeking). He goes on: 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Again, just the opposite of mankind’s sinful nature. Mankind al-ways likes to think the worst first. Love rejoices in the truth.
This positive love is not on just a part-time basis or whenever God feels he ought to apply love to the world. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perse-veres. Paul says that in relationship to everything else falling, knowing now that everything fails, love is just the opposite—it hopes all the time, it perseveres all the time, protects all the time—always--God’s love.
Paul realized that these believers, and he, too, had a hard time understanding God’s perfect will. He describes that in verse 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. On this side of heaven, we can’t understand God’s perfect love for us. We know that God’s will is perfect, and that the Lord does all things well, but on this side of heaven, our sinful nature clings to us. As the King James Version puts it, ‘we see through a glass darkly.’ Today’s translation is better here where it says a ‘poor reflection in a mir-ror.’ A mirror during the New Testament times was not a glass but a polished metal. In Corinth they were known for their mirrors, so Paul uses these words.
Now Paul sums up by saying: 13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. Why would Paul say the greatest of these is love? To understand that, we have to understand, what is love? What is this love that is greater than faith? What is this love that is greater than hope for us? It is a love, a peace that surpasses all understanding. At the very beginning, we heard God is love. That’s the only way that you and I can understand love, is to understand God. God shows us his love doesn’t he? A beautiful verse from Titus used last Wednesday in the study of the Third Article: "But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy"(TITUS 3:4,5a). This verse describes Jesus, our Savior, as the love of God. That is love. Jesus, our Savior, is love. Out of love, God saved us, out of His grace and mercy.
Because of that, you and I have lives that are changed. You and I are able live lives in this world that don’t fret at every disaster. You and I have lives that are filled with joy and contentment. You and I have lives that are reflective of God’s love because we live our life not wondering what is good and right. We live our life knowing what is good and right and trying to live that way—all because of God’s love, a love that never fails. Paul describes our changed lives and living in EPHESIANS 5:1,2 for us: “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children (and we are God’s loved children) and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." We see God’s love for us in sacrificing His Son. Then we see reasons for living our lives of love, because His love never fails. We begin to see too how love becomes the greatest of all these gifts. Without the Savior, where would you and I be? We would be lost. We would be condemned to eternal death.
Paul goes on to say that this love never fails. What a dream you and I have, that we would have equipment that never fails, a car that works forever, children and family that would love us with a love that’s never tarnished. Instead, in the midst of that fact that eve-rything fails; God’s love never fails. In Chapter 8 of Romans, he writes about that. ROMANS 8:39 "(For I am convinced)...neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” God loves us with an everlasting love. With that love, He surrounds us so that the things of this world that fail cannot separate us from His love. He shows us that precious fact once again this morning in the gift of His body and blood to assure us of the forgiveness of our sin…His greatest gift of love for each one of us.
We come back to the question of why Paul says the greatest of these is love. When you look at Scripture, it’s hard to pick the greatest among peace, faith, hope and love. At times they are hard to separate and distinguish. We realize that in love…God is love. We see that in love…love is the fulfillment of the law. We also realize that love covers a multi-tude of sins. Love goes hand in hand with faith and hope. Without love, you and I would have nothing at all. You and I would not even have the Savior who is the epitome of love.
We’re told in Galatians: "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love" (GALATIANS 5:6). All the things we do in this life have no value. Love is the greatest gift of God because love means we have faith. If we have faith, we have hope. As Paul says in Chapter 13 of Corinthians, love is God’s greatest gift to us. It reminds us that indeed, everything else does fail in this world (and sometimes rather abruptly) but God’s love never fails. Amen.
Pastor Timm O. Meyer
