Introduction
Love. The Beatles sang the song, All You Need is Love. Perhaps in light of 1 Corinthians 13 they were not too far from the truth. This morning we looked at what it means for God to be love and then what that means for us. We looked at the background to 1 Corinthians 13, to see where Paul was coming from. Tonight we are looking at what 1 Corinthians 13 says love is all about. But to start with we are going to remind ourselves of what we learned this morning by reflecting on the first few verses which emphasise the importance of love.
The Importance of Love
In the church at Corinth there was lot of people mixed up about the really important things in life. They were experiencing the power of God in many ways. Some were speaking in tongues, some were interpreting, others had the gifts of prophecy and in general the Holy Spirit was really moving in the church. The problem was that people started to see various gifts as signs that they were more Spiritual, than everyone else. So the ones who spoke in tongues thought that they were more spiritual than the ones who didn’t. Paul writes and tells them how wrong this, since God gives different gifts as he sees fit. To one he might give the gift of prophecy (which doesn’t mean foretelling the future but rather telling the church what they want to here), to another he might give the gift of hospitality. Neither is any better than any other. The gifts are not marks of Spirituality. The sign of spirituality is love.
Of course sometimes we go to far the other way and say that spiritual gifts don’t matter, as long as you have love you don’t need the gifts. This is also wrong. But we’re not really looking at the gifts tonight. We’ll do that another time. What we are looking at is that whatever gifts you have, whatever you do, it needs to be energised and motivated by love.
Paul says here, that even if God gives you the gift of tongues, if you don’t have love your nothing. If you are a great theologian who understands the trinity perfectly, or you can expound the Scriptures to give them exactly the right meaning, or if God gives you messages for the church and other people, if you don’t have love you are nothing. He even says that if you have great faith to move a mountain and it actually moves, but don’t have love you are nothing. Even if you are a great charity worker who sells all he has to give to the poor, if you don’t have love you are nothing. Paul’s list is not exhaustive, we could easily add, if you keep to every single one of the Church of the Nazarene’s special rules, if you don’t have love you are nothing. Even if you cross all the ts and dot all the is of the Christian faith, if you don’t have love, you are nothing. Love is important, it is the key to being a Christian.
It’s quite interesting to note a couple of Paul’s examples. In the protestant tradition its usually faith that gets top billing. Martin Luther’s famous declaration, faith alone. Yet, Paul says love is more important, that faith without love, is nothing. Or what about giving to the poor. It’s easy to see how preaching or speaking in tongues or something like that can be done without love, but giving to the poor. Surely that is the essence of love. Yet, Paul speaks of doing it without love. We can give out of duty, because it is expected of us, to look good in front of everyone else (that was Ananias and Saphira which we looked at last week) but Paul tells us it has to come from love.
John Wesley describes holiness as perfect love. Not rule keeping, not a list of dos and don’ts, but perfect love. It was about everything you do being motivated by love. Love is the heart of Christianity. It’s more important to love than to be correct, that’s one I needed to learn in the past. It all comes down to love.
What is love.
But what is love. What does Paul mean by love. Well he goes on to tell us. He lists things and says love is or love is not. What are we to make of these qualities? What are we to do with them? Tom Wright suggests one outline for following through on these qualities that I think is very helpful. He suggests 3 steps to look at. 1. In what ways did Jesus show these qualities? 2. In what ways do we show or not show these qualities? 3 In what situations should we be on the look out for, to act like this? This evening we are going to look at 1 and then make possible suggestions for 2 and 3. But the real work on 2 and 3, you need to do for yourself. Only you can look at your own life and evaluate it. You need to work out for yourself where you need to grow. Developing this lifestyle can take a lifetime, with many missteps along the way. But as long as we recognise them as mistakes and repent, rather than clinging to them then we are making progress. It is also what God wants and expects us to do.
Before we start on the list though, its important to remember one thing we mentioned this morning that is not specifically mentioned here, but rather assumed. The love Paul is talking about is not an emotion. It is a not a feeling. It is a conscious decision of the will to put others needs before our own. In some cases this may be accompanied by a feeling or an emotion, but that is not what Paul is talking about. Paul is talking about the action, the decision of the will.
Love is patient
Love is patient. Firstly Jesus. The number one thought on this one that sprang to my mind was Jesus with the disciples. They followed Jesus around for 3 years. They heard all of his teaching, they saw all of his miracles, they even had Jesus private teaching and explanations that were for them alone. And they still didn’t get it. It was the chief priests that saw that Jesus talked about resurrection and posted a guard on the tomb, while the disciples forgot everything and thought that his death was the end. One minute Peter can call Jesus, the Messiah and the next he proves that he really doesn’t get what that means. Even after the resurrection and Jesus appears to his disciples, we saw on Wednesday that Matthew 28 says some still doubted. And yet through all this unbelief, this stubbornness, this just not getting it, Jesus is patient. He doesn’t give up. He doesn’t stop trying to teach them. He does say, you’re never going to get his. No matter how clearly I explain this you’re never going to understand who I really am. Look just forget it, I’ll start again with a brighter bunch. No love is patient. We notice also in his dealing with sinners and with religious leaders, he was patient.
So what about us, are we patient. Love is patient, is not so much talking about being patient with things (although this is good too) but being patient with people. Now some of us are naturally this way and some of us are not. About a lot things I can be extremely patient. If it doesn’t happen today, it’ll happen tomorrow, I can wait. This frustrates some people about me, who think I should have more of a sense of urgency about some things. But sometimes some people can really try your patience. When I used to help with maths tutorials at Uni, it was sometimes very frustrating to explain the same idea over and over again, in many different ways and for people just not to get it. What made it really frustrating is when people refuse to accept the simple stuff, the premises on which everything else is founded. Let x be any number. But its not a number it’s a letter. Yes but it represents any number. No it’s a letter, who can it be a number. And so on. We have similar ideas in theology and church, God is one being but three persons, but how can that be? I can’t accept that, but what about... Love is patient, and this is not limited to church and theology, it includes being patient with the slowest maths student, because of love, because you have made a conscious decision that they are more important than you.
But its not just about patient to understand. It is patient with people who are wrong and are not willing to see the truth. I find it difficult to be patient with people who will not accept the teaching of Scripture, not because they have not understood it but because that’s just not the way they feel. Or that’s just not what God has told them. To me, if it’s in Scripture, that’s it, once I’ve settled what its saying I don’t have the right to argue, I just have to live it. Its frustrating when people understand fine, but just aren’t prepared to live it, or reject it for some other reason. Yet, I am told to be patient.
It’s about being patient with those who don’t meet our ethical standards. It’s about being patient and giving God time to work on them and transform their lives. It’s about being patient with people and earning their respect so that they will listen to what you say, rather than just jumping in early because you think they’ve had enough time, or they should know by now how to act. Yes, one reference I’m making here is to the young people. To love means to put their needs ahead of yours. To be patient, to let God work in his time. But its not the only application. There are some older people who I have a much harder time being patient with than younger people, because I expect more from an older Christian than I do from a young non Christian. But love is patient.
Those are some of the applications from my life, what are yours. That is for you to discover.
Love is Kind
Love is kind. This one seems to be easier to deal with. We know what it means to be kind to each other. As Bill and Ted would put it “Be excellent to each other”. It’s another way of saying do to others as you would have them do to you. Not do to others as you expect them to do to you, but as you would like them to do. Its what some people sum up the message of Christianity to be. They’d be wrong, Jesus did say this but not only this. It means give people the benefit of the doubt, don’t always think the worst of them. It means if you have the power or the ability to help someone do. It means don’t be cruel. It means to do something for someone else not because you must or you are required to, but just because you want to. It means being nice in the way you treat people instead of being nasty. To show compassion. To be kind.
Jesus was kind. He was the one who treated the Samaritan woman as a person and not as an inferior because she was woman and not as unclean or an enemy because she was a Samaritan. He was kind to the sick because he healed them. He was kind to the crowds because he fed them rather than sending them away. Jesus was kind.
So how do we measure up. Are we the kind of people, others describe as kind? Can the way we deal with others be described as kind? There’s really not a lot to say on this one. We know when we are being kind to others, when we treat them kindly. Its more a question of doing.
Love does not envy
Love does not envy. Here we’re back to the 10 commandments, thou shalt not covet. It basically means the same thing. If someone else has something really nice that you don’t have, its only human nature to want it and feel annoyed that they have it and you don’t. But the thing is, Jesus died to empower us to overcome our human nature.
Jesus was the most unenvious person you can imagine. He had nothing, no place to call his home, no place to sleep at night. Yet, he hung about with people who had plenty, rich people. Yet, not once do we find him asking people to give him money to let him continue his ministry like modern American evangelists. We have no trace that he envied those around him. In fact if anything, he felt sorry for them and pitied them. Saying it was hard for rich people to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. But it goes beyond that. If we read one of my favourite passages from Philippians 2. We find that Jesus who was God, who had everything at his finger tips, gladly gave up all his privileges as God and became human and a poor human at that. And ultimately died on the cross, a symbol of shame and failure as well as excruciating pain and suffering. This was not someone who envied. This was someone who had it all yet gave up for love of us. There was no envy in Jesus.
But what about us. I have to say I have fallen prey to this one from time to time. When I was growing up it used to annoy me when other people had top of the range computers and then really only use them for really really basic stuff, while I was stuck with an old model that couldn’t really cope with what I wanted to do. Actually that one still causes me the occasional problem when I let it. Or when other churches get really top of the range audio visual equipment, that I would just love to play with. When we list envy as a negative, it begins to sound hard and difficult. But the point of the passage is positive not negative. We don’t envy because we love. Imagine that instead of it being someone else who gets the really really good thing you want, its your kid. Suddenly your happy, that they have it and it doesn’t really matter than you don’t. Why, because you love the person who has it and your happy for them. When you love someone else you consider their needs to be more important than yours, so someone else getting something should make you happy.
Love does not envy. How does this apply to you? Where are you falling down with this one? Where do you need more work? Where are you actually doing ok?
Conclusion
Love is the key to Christianity. As 1 John 4 says, we love because God first loved us. God is love. And we should love to. What does love mean? Love is patient, Love is Kind, Love does not envy. That’s not all there is to love, we have only begun to look at it. We have not seen how love is to be just and stands up against evil. So this is not the final word on love. But it is a start. I want to remind you of the challenge of Tom Wright. 1 How did Jesus show this aspect of love? 2 How do you show or not show this aspect of love? 3 How can you plan for the future to do better? Is there someone this week you can plan to be patient, kind and or not envious to.
If you just think about it, it actually really really hard and we can’t do it. But Jesus is in the business of changing lives. Jesus life death and resurrection where not just about forgiveness for past sins but about enabling us to live lives of love. All that is needed is a desire to live a life of love and to ask God for his help and he will provide it.
