What about Love?
What about Love? by Rev. L. John Gable
June 6, 2021
As we make our way through our year-long study of 50 Great Passages we come this morning to First Corinthians 13, the so called “Love chapter”, another of the perhaps most familiar and most frequently read and quoted passages in all of Scripture. It is beloved by many for the beauty of its poetry and sentiment. Give me a quick show of hands, how many of you used this in your wedding or have heard it read in a wedding you’ve attended? Understandably so, it is beautiful, but not to rain on anyone’s parade, much less their wedding day, when rightly read in its proper context this passage challenges nearly every means and measure we use to determine something’s or someone’s worth and value, every attempt we make at establishing our own self-worth or self-importance or position ourselves to be honored or remembered. This is one of those turn the world upside down and inside out passages such as when we hear Jesus say, “the first shall be last and the last shall be first”, or “In order to live we must die to ourselves.” What the Apostle Paul is saying here is if we try to establish our own sense of self-worth and value by anything we may do, even great accomplishments and remarkably spiritual practices, if they are void of love they are meaningless. Despite our best efforts, try as we may, without love, they amount to nothing. So, how can he say such a thing? What’s his point?
This passage comes immediately following his teaching on the spiritual gifts and their importance and value in the spiritual life, both for individuals and for the body collective, but then he cites three of those gifts: the ability to speak in tongues (spiritually impressive, in some traditions the mark of what it means to be a “real Christian”), prophecy (the ability to hear a word from God and then speak it to the congregation), to understand all mysteries and knowledge, and to have faith sufficient to move mountains (pretty heady stuff); and to practice such self-denial so as to give away all your possessions, including your body so you may boast (the kind of radical gestures that get written about in Christian magazines and spoken of in sermons); he says, if you have any of these, as wonderful and impressive as they may be, or any other manifestation of spiritual powers or insight into the things of God, but you do not have love, if love is not your primary motive and motivation for doing them, then they mean nothing, nada, zilch. They are but a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. Even our best, most admirable and admired efforts, offer nothing to be gained where love is absent.
Admittedly Paul doesn’t strike us as being the kind of touchy-feely guy who would write odes to love, but he seems to be tearing down the very spiritual practices he was previously trying to build up. Aren’t these all good things, beneficial things? Yes they are, but they aren’t beneficial if we think we can use them to earn our way in to heaven, or if we use them to boast of our spiritual accomplishments or maturity, or if they serve to tear the body apart rather than build it up and unite it. Paul is trying to reform the Corinthians understanding of what it means to be spiritually mature and he is looking at that congregation and all the great things they were doing, all the ways they were growing spiritually, all the ways they were manifesting the presence and power of the Holy Spirit: speaking in tongues, prophecying, giving generously – impressive all – but then he is calling them out on the pride and boasting and division it was causing among them, so he begs the question and offers this corrective: what about love?
What of us? What of us individually and collectively? If Paul were to visit us here at Tab today what might he say to us? I believe he would commend us for much of what we are doing and have been doing for a very long time, in here and out there, (worship services and classes, soup kitchens and food programs, pantries, tutoring, outreach, recreation, and health ministries and the list goes on and on), but I also believe he would challenge us to check our motives as to why we do what we do; to consider whether we find ourselves puffed up with pride or boasting over our accomplishments; if we, in any way, rank order ourselves as to our own importance within this body based on how much we know, how much we give, how long we’ve been a member, how often we have attended, what degrees we have earned or positions we have held. But aren’t these all good things? Yes they are, but again, they are empty if they aren’t built on love.
I warned you that this was going to be an unsettling message because Paul intended it to be so. He intended to ruffle the feathers of the Corinthian Church, and we might say the Church of today, if we think who we are and what we do, good and beneficial as it may be, is sufficient in and of itself if it is not motivated by love. As we discussed this passage on Wednesday morning at the Pastors’ Bible study at about this point one of the participants said, “I feel convicted!” And perhaps we well should, each of us.
So Paul, in an attempt to hold a mirror up to the Corinthian’s faces, and ours as well, describes what he means by love. The Greek word he uses is agape and it typically refers to an unconditional love or God’s love. Interestingly, he cites two examples of what love is: patient and kind, that’s a good start, but then he lists eight examples of what it is not: “love is not envious, boastful, arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the right.” His listing invites us to ask these of ourselves, individually and collectively, now do we feel convicted? If this is the standard of the Christian life, then these are the character traits we should be living in to, growing up toward, becoming more adept at, and showing more evidence of. Can we say that of ourselves? Am I more patient and kind, less envious or boastful as I mature in my relationship with Christ? Is there evidence that we are growing more Christ-like in all that we do? I would hope so, but unfortunately too often I see just the opposite happening, not necessarily here at Tab, but in the Church more broadly and in our nation more specifically. We have become increasingly more isolated, more polarized and divided over issues great and small, than we have been united. I have watched, as Paul must have seen in the Corinthian church, as people state their positions, circle their wagons, and surround themselves only with those who think and act and believe and look as they do, and too often, in a desire to be right, have lost their ability or willingness to be loving. We have a problem if ever we allow the passion of our convictions to cause us to abandon our commitment to practice the fruits of the Spirit.
So, what is the antidote to this division and divisiveness, this posturing and positioning we are all experiencing? How are we to ensure that our good efforts are, in fact, beneficial to God’s good purposes and not our own alone? Paul answers in a single word, love, and he rather bluntly says, without it our best efforts and our most firmly held convictions as to the rightness of our positions are worth nothing.
As Paul writes these words is he commending us, challenging us, condemning us? Yes, I believe all of these, because he knows there is another way, a better way for us, a more God-like way for us, to live. So he ends this section of his teaching by saying, “This is what love does: it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends!” There is no limit to love’s faith, love’s hope, love’s endurance. So, and you’ve heard me say this many times before, when in doubt, we are to do the loving thing in the loving way!
And why is love the ultimate standard? Why not tongues or prophecy, or self-denial? Why not follow the one who is smartest, richest, most powerful, most persuasive, the one with the most degrees, the most talent, the most where with all? Why not go for all we can get, accumulate all we can get our hands on, build it bigger, better, faster and then put our names on it? Why not? Because all of that is temporary if it is not done out of love, even the good stuff we do. “As for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge it will come to an end.” Even those who think they know it all, particularly those who think they know it all about God, don’t. Anything about which we think we can know everything is too small to be god. Paul is not saying any of the good things we do are wrong or hostile to the purposes of God, nor am I, but we need to be aware that they are temporary, like all things of this world; they will not last. Our names will one day be forgotten. The buildings we build and put our names on will one day crumble. Our understanding of the ways of the world, much less of the ways of God, is not necessarily false, but it is incomplete and indistinct and it always will be this side of the Kingdom of God, “for now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face; now we know only in part, then we will know fully, even as we have been fully known.” Of course we should never stop doing the good things we are called to do, acts of kindness, mercy and justice, but we should do them with a keen sense of humility, and even good humor, knowing full well that these too are incomplete and always will be until the Kingdom comes in its fullness. We blow out the candle when the sun rises. We put away our childish things when we come to maturity. The partial, good and beneficial as it may be, is only necessary until the fullness comes.
If we get the sense that Paul is kind of putting us in our place with this teaching, I think he is, but it is in our proper place, for our own good. So, is there any Good News here? Absolutely! He ends this section of his teaching by saying, “Now faith, hope, love abide; these three; and the greatest of these is love.” Why is that so? Because in the fullness of time, when the Kingdom comes, when we stand face to face with God in His presence, faith will no longer be necessary because our faith will become sight, and hope will no longer be necessary because all that we will have hoped for in this world will be fulfilled in the next, which leaves only love. And why love? Why is it the greatest? Because love is of God, God is love, and He is our all in all, both now and for eternity.
What about love? It’s all about love.
Rev L. John Gable
Tabernacle Presbyterian Church
Indianapolis, IN.