Sermon Discussion Questions:
1. Read 1 Cor 13:1-13 together. What stands out to you most?
2. As you read through 1 Cor 13:4-7, what aspect of love seems to be most absent in your own life? If your family and friends were to use this list to describe you, which quality would they say is lacking?
3. How would you respond to the idea that "love is love"?
4. What is the "realistic optimism" that 1 Cor 13:7 points to?
5. Which aspect of love in 1 Cor 13:4-7 are you most surprised by when considering Jesus' love towards you?
In 407 AD, a British teenager, Maeywen Succat was kidnapped, stolen from his home in the night by a band of Irish pirates, and sold into slavery. As Roman power began to wane and the empire crumble, the brutal people of Ireland became increasingly bold in their pillaging. Succat, who had come from a family of wealth and influence, suddenly was a slave to the barbarians of Ireland, charged with keeping watch over flocks of sheep. Succat’s father had been a deacon and grandfather a priest in the church back in West Britain, but it wasn’t until he stood alone, in the vast green plains of Ireland that his faith began to bloom. As he prayed one night, an angel appeared to him in a dream, and told him of a ship that was sailing for the Continent and, miraculously, he was able to flee and sail to safety. But, to everyone’s shock, twenty-five years later, he asked the church if he could be sent back to the land of his enslavement, to Ireland, as a missionary to bring the gospel to what was then considered “the ends of the earth,” Ireland. Succat was ordained as a bishop and given the name, Patricius, or, as we know him today, St. Patrick. Patrick returned to Ireland, to the land of his enslavement, and successfully brought Christianity to the nation. So successful was he that within one hundred years of Patrick’s arrival, Ireland began sending missionaries to Europe. His influence was so consequential to the history of the church that we know have a holiday to celebrate his memory.
Of the many incredible details surrounding Patrick’s missionary expedition in Ireland—some hard to believe (like expelling snakes from the island), some unassailable historical fact—the most surprising is that Patrick returned to Ireland at all. Jesus taught, “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” (Matt 5:43-44). The story of St. Patrick is not a story about clovers or green beer, but a story of love of enemies.
We take it for granted, today, that love is the highest of all virtues, and that love towards enemies is that virtue in its finest garb. This idea is captured in popular stories, when the hero defeats the villain, but refuses to destroy them, or fails to cheat in a fight or use an underhanded trick to win. The idea that even our enemies can be redeemed, that love is the truest reality, are quintessential ideas that resonate in our culture, but they are exclusively Christian ideas. They are not brute facts of science and do not make much sense in many ways. Hating an enemy makes sense, but feeding him and caring for him does not. When Jesus exhorts us to love our enemies, he explains why: “…so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven,” (Matt 5:45). We love our enemies because God loves His enemies. Our culture’s ideals have theological roots. Which means that if we desire to see this virtue strengthened in our own lives and in our wider culture, we must go to the source.
And today, we will be examining one of the most famous meditations on love, not only in the Bible, but in all of Western history, 1 Corinthians 13.
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 Cor 13:1-13
Out of the whole book of 1 Corinthians, Paul devotes a large margin (ch. 12-14) to discussing spiritual gifts specifically—more than any other book in the New Testament by far. If you are measuring by word count, Paul devotes more than a quarter of the entire book to it! Paul began this discussion by telling the Corinthians that he did not want them to be ignorant “concerning spiritual gifts,” (1 Cor 12:1), but this isn’t because they are unfamiliar with the idea of spiritual gifts, but because there is an unhealthy excess and disorderly practice of spiritual gifts in the church. Like the Lord’s Supper, the Corinthians have taken something that was intended for the unity and well-being of the church, and have practiced it in such a way that actually promotes division and boasting.
In chapter twelve, Paul explained that while there are varieties of gifts, they all come from the same Holy Spirit—we are like different members of the body of Christ, all different, yet all equally part of the same body. Then in chapter fourteen, we get to the crux of the issue that is going on in Corinth—there is a kind of disorder taking place in the worship gatherings where multiple individuals are speaking at the same time, all clamoring to be heard, all striving to use their gift, all insisting on their own way. There is confusion, not peace, and thus the church is not edified, not growing in their knowledge of the Lord. And when we read this in connection with chapter twelve, we see that there is likely some kind of factions being created in the church around more prominent, sensational gifts like prophecy and tongues, resulting in those lacking these charismatic experiences to feel as if they are not needed in the church (cf. 1 Cor 12:14-26).
Nestled between these two chapters, is perhaps the most famous chapter in all of Paul’s writings, used in many wedding homilies and Facebook anniversary posts, 1 Corinthians 13. The chapter is often considered apart from its context, but seeing it in light of the chapters that bookend it provides us with a greater clarity of the problem and meaning of the passage. The Necessity, Description, and Permanence of Love.
The Necessity of Love
“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,” (1 Cor 13:1-3).
Here, Paul gives us some of his most exalted, poetic language in all of his writings. It certainly shows us that whatever Paul meant by not using “eloquent language” earlier (1 Cor 1:17; 2:1-4) it didn’t exclude the beautiful language we see used here.
Here, Paul summarizes both gifts and good works that are to characterize God’s people, but in their most exalted form. If I speak in the tongues of men and angels…If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries…if I have all faith so as to remove mountains…If I give away all I have. Surely, whoever exhibited any one of these would be a remarkable Christian, no? Yet, the point repeated over and over again is…?
Spiritual experiences, prophetic knowledge, miracles, generosity, even martyrdom, if they lack love, mean nothing. The heavenly language you are speaking, is nothing but meaningless noise; your impressive knowledge—to the degree that you understand everything—counts for zilch. Miraculous deeds, generosity to the point of utter destitution, and martyrdom…all of it is pointless if it is void of love. The Corinthians prized themselves on their impressive displays of spiritual power, they were “eager for manifestations of the Spirit” (1 Cor 14:12), yet, like an airpline that boasts of their stewardesses but forgets to hire pilots, the super-spiritual Corinthians missed the most essential thing: love.
Love for who? Love for God? Love for other Christians? Love for enemies? In the Bible, you cannot separate love of God and love of neighbor. All Christians have different gifts given by the Spirit, but the fruit of the Spirit, the qualities that mark all filled with the Spirit, is universal; and the first fruit of the Spirit is love (Gal 5:22). If you are under the influence of the Holy Spirit, you have had the love of God poured into your hearts (Rom 5:5), so that you love God and your brother (1 John 4:7-21). Towards the end of this letter, Paul will simply tell the Corinthians that everything they do should be done in love (1 Cor 16:14). So, the “love” Paul is speaking of here is a love towards God and people.
I think these opening verses may help us grow in our gift of discernment. The examples Paul gives helpfully illustrate different impulses Christians and various traditions and wings of Christianity can have. There are “Spiritual” churches that long to encounter the Holy Spirit. These churches want to avoid the dry, arid rationalism and man-centered approach to ministry that define many churches. They want fresh experiences of the Spirit, they want to see the Bible come to life and applied here and today. And there are “Biblical” churches that put a larger emphasis on correct doctrine and knowledge. They see other churches who water their preaching down to draw large crowds and rightly are committed to the entirety of God’s Word. They may be a little heady at times, but they sincerely desire to submit to God as He is revealed in Scripture, and love God with their mind. And then there are “missional” churches that are frustrated that so many Christians seem to neglect Jesus’ basic command to care for the poor and needy, to love your neighbors. They are frustrated that so many Christians seem to care more about their own spiritual experiences or growing in knowledge, and yet when interacting with the least of these, or the unreached peoples of the world, their spirituality and knowledge compel little from them.
All of these, spiritual, Biblical, and missional, are all good impulses that flow from the Bible. And, in many ways, the healthiest churches should involve all three. And yet, all three are relativized by Paul’s words here. How do we know a church or a movement or anything is from the Lord? We may be tempted to say: Well, look at how spiritual they are…look at how solid their doctrine is…look at their outreach! Yet, without love these churches are pointless. It doesn’t matter what spiritual experiences are taking place, what doctrine is being taught, or how missional they are. And if our church was to fall into one of those categories, it would likely be the “Biblical” church, so how do we know that we aren’t a loveless, meaningless church?
The Description of Love
“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,’ (1 Cor 13:4-7).
Here we move beyond the superficialities of the Christian life and get into the beating heart of what the Spirit creates. Francis Schaeffer warns us, “The central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism…these are dangerous but not the primary threat. The real problem is this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually corporately, tending to do the Lord’s work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them,” (Francis A. Schaeffer, No Little People).
Love is Patient and Kind
A church under the influence of the Spirit is not marked by the hustle and crush of the world, nor the metallic harshness of the flesh. We are patient with one another, bearing with one another in love (Eph 4:2). Impatience is a desire to be in control, to be like God. Patience is humility, an awareness that we are not the sovereign over time and seasons, God is. We are kind; there is a gentle consideration of others and their own weaknesses. The weakness of our brothers and sisters around us doesn’t generate anger, but compassion and patience. We are not angry that our children are not as competent as adults, we are not angry that our spouse who is gifted differently than we are isn’t like us, we are not angry that someone from a different walk of life has a different perspective than we do. We are patient and kind.
Love does not Envy or Boast, it is not Arrogant or Rude
A Spirit-filled church is a church that is content with what God has given. To each has been given a manifestation of the Spirit…what do you have that you did not receive from God? (1 Cor 12:7; 4:7). We do not burn with envy at what has been withheld, nor do we brag about what we have. Instead, we acknowledge that all has been handed out to us by God Himself. We have no inferiority or superiority complexes here.
In Christ’s church, we are not all the same. There many different members in the body of Christ with different gifts and different roles. Yet those who may appear stronger (according to the estimation of the world) are not arrogant to the weak, but honor them. And those who seem to be weak do not despise the strong, are not rude to them, but bless them. Our differences are designs from God, not flaws from incompetence. The church that boasts of its spiritual experiences or its missionary efforts, but is arrogant and cocky is nothing but a clashing cymbal. The church that defends the faith against heresy and false teaching, but is rude and derisive towards outsiders may be engaging the culture but they are not engaging with the Holy Spirit.
Love does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful
A Christian constrained by love becomes a servant who is honest enough with himself to know that much of his own motives are self-seeking, and so he is willing to concede, willing to let the other person be right, and to lose. But then, when you lose, you don’t store up the grievance in bank account in your soul. Love is not irritable, which comes from a word for sharpening something, as in, metal grating against something else. Love creates a disposition in your heart where things don’t grate on you as easily, but slide off like Teflon. Thus, you aren’t resentful, or as you may be familiar with, “Love keeps no record of wrongs.” There is a way you could try to pursue all of these other attempts at love, being patient, kind, not rude, not arrogant, not insisting on your own way, etc. while keeping a meticulous internal database of how wrong and incompetent all these other people are—and, conversely, how virtuous you are by not being like them and still showing such good Christian decorum. But that is not the work of the Spirit.
Love does not hang on to offense, it does not ruminate on sins. Love forgives others, which means that we do not see people primarily through their sin.
Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth
Maybe you have heard that “Love is Love,” a tautology used to defend non-traditional displays of love. Since we live in a culture that is downstream from Paul and Jesus, who elevate love as the highest virtue, we believe that if someone truly loves someone, we are wrong to stop it. We become the cold, stoics who squash romance in the name of tradition and decorum and honor—like Romeo and Juliet’s parents, forbidding their secret love because their families are mortal enemies. But this narrative has snuck in an assumption about the nature of love: love is a powerful feeling, and you should trust your feelings. But even on its own merits, this definition has problems. Is love only a powerful feeling? If I love my wife when I feel loving, that is nice; but doesn’t it seem even more loving if I love my wife when I don’t feel loving? Does not love reveal itself most clearly in what we choose to do, regardless of the shift and shuffle of how we feel in the moment? If so, then does that not show us that love is more than feelings?
And, are feelings, which can fluctuate depending on how sunny it is outside, how much sleep you get, what you had for breakfast, really trustworthy guides? What happens when your feelings change? Or, more seriously, what happens if your feelings are wrong? The over-protective parent who refuses to discipline their child may feel like they are loving them, when really they are ruining their child. Our culture already affirms that not all romantic feelings are right—for instance, if your love is not consensual, then society essentially says “It doesn’t matter how you feel.” Our idea, therefore, that “Love is love” doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Love must mean more than feelings because our feelings are not reliable guides, our feelings can lie to us and our feelings can change. What do we need?
Truth. Righteousness. We must know that what we love is true and good, and we learn both of those things from the Lord.
Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love that celebrates what God mourns, is not love. Love that comes at the expense of truth, is not love.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things
Love generates Spirit-filled, realistic, optimism. Notice the two outer activities of love appear negative: bears…endures. While the inner two are positive: believes…hopes. If you are bearing things or enduring them, that means that there is some cost you are paying. You bear weights, you endure trials—not very happy. But if you are loving, you bear and you endure; which means that love puts you into a context where weights and trials abound. And that context, for Paul, is other Christians. Paul wrote to the Galatians that they can fulfill the law of Christ by “bearing one another’s burdens,” (Gal 6:2). Earlier in Corinthians, he told them that he is willing to “endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ,” (1 Cor 9:12). Become a part of the church and there will be things you must bear and endure.
But we also believe and hope. Love may put us into the place of bearing and enduring, but not at the cost of our jaded cynicism. There is an unhealthy symptom of the flesh that always interprets the actions of others with the most negative of possible takes. They’ll never change. But this is not the heart of love. Love trusts that in each person, there is always the hope that they will be restored. Cynicism is a sneaky form of unbelief that states: “I know everything.”
“[Love] Always [tries] to put the best construction on other people’s actions and work. Let gentleness triumph,” (Spurgeon).
“Let us learn to pass a charitable judgment on the conduct of professing believers. Let us not set them down in a low place, and say they have no grace, because we see in them much weakness and corruption. Let us remember that our Master in heaven bears with their infirmities, and let us try to bear with them too,” – J.C. Ryle, (Expository Thoughts on the Gospels)
The Permanence of Love
In the final section of chapter 13, Paul emphasizes love even more by claiming “Love never ends,” (1 Cor 13:8), and then talking about what will end. The spiritual gifts that the Corinthians are so proud of and are causing divisions in the church, tongues, prophecy, knowledge, these will all cease. But love never will. Love will remain. Why? Because spiritual gifts are spectacles to help us see, but there will be a day when our sight is fully restored, and we will see “face to face.” And what will we see? Or, more accurately, who will we see? The God who is Love (1 John 4:8). Love never ends because God never ends, and love is who God is.
This is why Paul tells us, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love,” (1 Cor 13:13). Love is greater than faith and hope because love is an attribute of God. Faith and hope is not. Faith and hope look forward to something; love is that thing, that person.
“Christ is love covered in flesh,” (Thomas Goodwin).
Jesus is…
Jesus is patient and kind. He is not a boiling kettle of anger spilling over, clenching his fists as he waits for you to get it, to catch up, to improve. His wick is long and his heart is kind. His incalculable strength does not come at the expense of His gentleness; He doesn’t break bruised reeds or quench faintly burning wicks. Jesus is patient with you and His heart is kind.
Jesus does not envy or boast. He has never wrongly desired something that wasn’t His. In His earthly life, despite being born into a poor family and living most of His life in relative obscurity, He never envied someone else, even as He saw His path lead Him to Calvary. In His divinity, possessing the power of the cosmos, ruling over nations and making footstools of His enemies, He never boasts. He is not arrogant or rude, He doesn’t embarrass you, he is gentle and lowly of heart. He is the most approachable person in the universe, there is no one you will ever be able to talk to more easily than Jesus.
Jesus does not insist on His own way. He submits to the Father as He prays in Gethsemane when he asks if there is any other way, yet, not his will be the Father’s be done. He takes the path of weakness, not power; he is like a lamb led to the slaughter by the very ones He has come to save. And yet, wonder of wonders, He keeps no record of wrongs. We are not brought into His family while He simmers in quiet anger over our sin. He bleeds Himself dry for our innumerable offenses, only to take our record of wrong and cast it into the bottomless sea of forgetfulness—He does not treat us according to our sins. He knows our frame, that we are only dust. Yet He has compassion on us like a father for his child, like a mother for her newborn, does he love us.
Jesus does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Jesus swallows our sin and does not hold it over our heads to cajole us into obedience, but He has no intention of leaving us in our sin. He loves us too much to let us continue to wither on the poisonous vine of wretchedness. Our sins do not draw joy from his heart, but sorrow. So He has promised to sanctify us with truth, His word is truth, so he will wash his bride with the water of the word until we stand resplendent, with spot or blemish.
Jesus bears and endures all things, and Jesus believes and hopes all things, but He does so in a way that is utterly different than our own bearing and hoping. Here is the sacrificial lamb, our redeemer, our Savior. He has born our sins, he has endured hell, sin, and death for us. Here is the God-man, the One who not only knows the future but who controls it. He doesn’t “hope” in our future glorification the way we “hope” in a questionable future. His hope is certain, His belief is solid, He will have it. His love, like a river, will bear us along to the very gates of the celestial city. We will feast in the house of Zion, we will live forever in a land that radiates with divine love so brightly that the sun and moon will no longer be necessary. And we will see our God, and we shall know fully.
“God knew what we were before conversion—wicked, guilty, and defiled; yet He loved us. He knows what we will be after conversion—weak, erring, and frail; yet He loves us…” (J.C. Ryle)
And, brother and sister, God knows what we will be at the last day—glorious, clean, made new, because He loves us.
