Value of Love in Corinthian Context

Introduction

Our theme for this series this week is taken from the book of 1 Corinthians, chapter 13. And so we will begin there this morning with that passage if you would like to be turning with us. And I’d like to make a few preliminary observations before we actually begin our lesson. First is this, I very much want to encourage everyone in the audience to get a Bible, to turn to these passages with me, so that you will be impressed with what God says. Our aim throughout this series, as should always be the case, is to give God the glory, to focus our attention upon what He says, not upon the speaker, upon the manner of delivery, but upon what God says. That’s what we would urge you to do throughout this series.

Another observation I would like to make is that this is a series. My intent throughout is to focus on 1 Corinthians 13, but it’s clear we will not be able to discuss everything in any one night or one service. And so I hope that you can be here as many times as possible to put all of this together into a grand, glorious picture of what God has told us. And thirdly, I’d like to make this observation at the beginning. It is a great privilege to be invited to be with you to speak on such a subject as this. I want you to know from the beginning that I certainly understand we will not begin to touch the hem of the garment of this subject in the time allotted for us.

It’s a privilege to be with Bob and Arlene, to get to associate with them in this wonderful way during this week. We don’t get to do that enough. And with all of you other good brothers and sisters in Christ. And we’re certainly looking forward to a wonderful time together. But the most wonderful thing about it, I hope to all of you, it certainly is to me, is the opportunity to open God’s word together and to try to plumb its depths and to reach a deeper understanding of what God wants us to know. So we’re thrilled that you’re here. If you’re visiting with us this morning, we’re so glad you’re interested in spiritual things that brought you here today. And we hope that we can all leave here with a greater determination than ever to be what God wants us to be.

It’s 13 verses. My experience is when I read that many verses to an audience, after about the third verse, I’ve lost the audience. I think part of the reason for that is that we are so used to being entertained in rapid fire measure. I was watching one of these new commercials the other day, and it just absolutely amazed me at the way it reaches out and just grabs you with rapid fire action. That’s just the way it is.

And so I would like to challenge you during this whole series and throughout your lifetime as a Christian not to lose your power of concentration upon something that is written. Because God gave us a book, and he expects us to know his book. And the only way we can possibly know it is to concentrate deeply upon its principles, and that means to focus our minds and have the ability to keep our minds on something. So I would like to ask you to do a little test on yourself this morning as we read these 13 verses of 1 Corinthians 13. Will you see if you can stay with it the whole time, keep your mind on what we’re doing, and not let it wander? That’s a challenge.

I’m confessing that for myself as well as for you. But this is God speaking to us. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become a sounding brass or a clanging symbol. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself, is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail. Whether there are tongues, they will cease. Whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as also I am known. And now abide faith, hope, love, these three. But the greatest of these is love. And so you see that the title for our series comes from the last verse of this marvelous chapter.

1. Let All Be Done in Love

And at the very end of this book of First Corinthians, in the very last chapter, after the apostle has dealt with many, many things, he concludes this letter by saying to those disciples, let all be done in love. Now it’s a great encouragement to me that God chose through his Holy Spirit to reveal this chapter we have just read, and that great expression at the end of this book, let all be done in love in the book of 1 Corinthians. And the reason I say that is because I don’t know of a book in the New Testament that is more full of difficulties, trials, problems, and gross things that brethren were doing. That church contained a variety of people, people from different ethnic backgrounds, slaves and free men, former idolaters and adulterers, homosexuals, thieves, drunkards, extortioners.

Even the city itself had a reputation, the city of Corinth. In the plays that were put on by the Greeks. If they wanted to portray someone who was the most debauched character in the whole play, he would be the Corinthian. That was their reputation. The city was known for its entertainment, its vice, its corruption, its immorality. Is it any wonder then that this letter of 1 Corinthians, starting with chapter one, in every single chapter that is presented, with the possible exception of chapter 13, the apostle is dealing with problems that arose in that church. I’ve jotted a list here of things that are dealt with in 1 Corinthians. Divisions among them. Carnal minds. They were like babies, he said. Lawsuits brought brother against brother before the worldly judges of that day.

Problems in marriages. We think we have problems with marriages. And we do. So did the Corinthians. Uncaring attitudes, false doctrines, abuses of the Lord’s Supper, imagine. That church had somehow even found a way to make the Lord’s supper a vile thing. And they even found it within themselves to abuse the spiritual gifts, those miraculous gifts that God poured out upon the early church. They were able to make sin out of that. And so, in the midst of that mess, God has placed this gem. It’s almost to me, like all of the other mud through which you have to sludge in this book, is the setting which makes this gem stand out in its beauty and its majesty even more than it would in another setting. And so God says, Let all be done in love.

2. A Love That Goes Beyond Emotion

When you hear that in that setting, it almost cries out for some kind of definition. What Lord are you talking about? And yet I haven’t located anywhere in Scripture a formal definition of this love God speaks of in this book. What I find instead is God describing what love does.

Let me try something out on you. One of our problems with language is that words come to mean different things over time, and they’re used different ways.

That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. I hope everyone in this audience could have said that right along with me. But I want to try something out on that passage. You see, the word love used there is the same word used in 1 Corinthians 13 and 1 Corinthians 16, where God said, Let everything be done in love. Wonder how this would work. Sexual love. Is that what God’s talking about? For God so loved the world. No, sir, that would be almost an abomination to talk about that being what God’s discussing in John 3.16. Not that there’s anything in and of itself wrong with sexual love. God designed it and he has a place for it, and it’s a wonderful thing. But that’s not what he’s talking about.

How about emotional tingly love, sentimentality? For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. It doesn’t fit. And that’s not the kind of love God’s talking about. How about the friendly spirit of brotherly tolerance? Ecumenical love that says, Oh, let’s all just love each other and we’ll just each take our own way and we’ll all love each other. For God so loved the world. No, sir, my beloved, that does not fit. And that’s not the kind of love God’s talking about, either in that passage or in this one. Well, what about giving some money to the heart fund? The word we use for that normally now is charity. Can’t you see that that doesn’t reach the level about which God is speaking?

No, the word for love used in 1 Corinthians 16 and here in this beloved chapter is a word that goes beyond emotion. It is supremely an act of the will. It is a conscious decision based on what we understand God wants us to do that leads us to act in the way God acts. It is self-sacrifice in action. There’s no room in this word for vanity. There’s no room for pride for self-glory and self-seeking. There is no room in this word for ourselves to be exalted. Only I want to do what God says and carry out his will in my life. It is the kind of love that God could have for us even while we were his enemies. Romans the fifth chapter tells us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

We didn’t deserve it. There is nothing about us that would lead God because of who we are to do what he did. It is that kind of love, my brothers and sisters, that God chooses to use in this chapter. And it is that kind of love that we wish to examine together in this series. And so to this worldly ungodly band of babies in Christ Jesus, beset with problems right and left. God chose to say to them, let all be done in love. And I say to you, it gives me hope. Because I’ve lived long enough to see what happens in congregations. See the problems that can arise, the difficulties that come, the ugly ways that sometimes brothers and sisters can act. And I say, if God could say to this church, let everything be done in love and have some hope that it might happen, then there’s hope for me.

And there’s hope for the church at Bumby and every other congregation of God’s people. So what we must do is to the best of our abilities come to a deeper understanding of what God’s talking about when he says, Let all be done in love. And I am thrilled to have the opportunity to try to open that up to all of us, maybe better than we’ve ever seen it before.

3. How Important Is This Subject?

This theme we’re talking about. When Jesus was once asked, what is the greatest commandment? Sometimes I wish we could do audience participation. So don’t answer out loud, but pretend you are. What did Jesus say? He said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, strength, and mind, and a second like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. How important is this subject? It’s only the greatest commandment God ever gave to love God with all that’s in us and to love our neighbors as ourselves. That’s the essence. May I ask you to turn to Romans 13 for a moment. As we ask the question, how important is this? Start with me in verse 8. Owe no one anything except to love one another.

For he who loves another has fulfilled the law. Do you see that? For the commandment, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit murder, you shall not steal, you should not bear false witness, you shall not covet. And if there’s any other commandment, all are summed up in this saying, namely, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. How important is this subject? It’s only the summation of everything God commands us to do.

Peter would say, above all things, have fervent love one for another when he was talking to Christians. Above everything else, because it is the bond of perfection. It’s what ties us together above everything else. Have that. How important is it? Look, when God chose to describe himself in one word, what did he say? We sang it this morning. God is love. And it’s the same word used in passage in 1 Corinthians 13. How important is it? It’s only the most important thing. Is it appropriate, brothers and sisters, to spend two hours this morning, one hour tonight, and one hour each of the next three nights talking about nothing but this subject. I say, when we finish, we will have not begun to give it the proper emphasis.

Because we read in 1 Corinthians 13. Now abides faith, hope, marvelous, wonderful things that help us tie our frame of reference to God Himself. But they pale in comparison to the greatest of these.

And we’re going to spend the rest of our time here. We’ll go a scance a time or two to some other passages to supplement, but we’re going to spend most of our time right here. And what a blessed privilege. This chapter has been called the Hymn of Love. Some have called it the lyrical interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. Others have said it’s the Beatitude set to music. And many other wonderful statements have been made about 1 Corinthians 13. Studying it is almost like taking a flower apart. If you’ve ever examined a flower in some detail, you look at it and you examine it and you think how wonderful that is. And then you pull a petal off and look at it. And you look at the intricacies of that marvelous little one piece.

And you get your microscope out and you examine how it looks down at the lower level of visibility. And you see all of this array of marvelous things that God has made. And it says to you, praise be to God. And so you pull piece after piece apart for this flower and examine all that is there to find out, like a spiritual botanist. And when you get finished, you have a mess lying on the table. But you come to a deeper appreciation of what’s there. And that’s almost like what we’re going to be doing as we try to examine carefully every little part of what God tells us about this greatest subject of all. And I hope I can, as every teacher should, at the end of a series, put it all back together.

I always tell my calculus kids, your final exam will be curious.

4. We Must Keep It in Context

I’m a firm believer in that because what that makes them do, after we’ve gone through every little detail of how to do all this stuff, we stand back at the end and we put it all together and say, My, how all this fits. And that’s what I hope we can do with this series as we examine this flower that God’s given us that displays his majesty and what he would have us to do. We must keep it in context. If we did nothing but study this chapter, it would be such a wonderful thing. But God has placed it in a context. And we can always gain the greatest good from what God tells us by keeping passages in the context God has selected for them. The immediate context of 1 Corinthians 13 is chapters 12, 13, and 14.

I want to show you a brief summary overview of those three chapters to show you the setting of this passage. 1 Corinthians 12 introduces the subject of the spiritual gifts that were given to the early church. Obviously, we don’t have the time to talk about all of that today or in this series. But I’m saying to you, in chapter 12, God speaks of the endowment of these spiritual gifts and the way that he put them together in the church. All of you, I suspect, understand that we no longer have those miraculous spiritual gifts in God’s church today, because in the 13th chapter, verse 8, he says, When that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away. Prophecies will cease, and they have ceased.

We have all the prophecies we need. Tongue speaking has ceased, it had its purpose in the framing of God’s kingdom. We are finished with that. God’s given us what we need. Miraculous knowledge has been done away, but love not. Love never fails.

As I told you earlier in our discussion this morning, this church had managed to mess up even the miraculous gifts. There were people in that church showing off. And here was a man who had the ability to miraculously speak in tongues. So he would rise and in all his majesty show off, and not a person in the audience understood a word he said. But they thought, oh, look at this.

And in this chapter, what Paul said to those people is if you don’t have an interpreter when you’re speaking in tongues, shut your mouth. Because there is no edification taking place. And so he told them how those gifts were to be used properly. And if I may take a short aside here for just a moment, do you think that ever happens in the church today? That people with different gifts, according to what God has given them abilities to do, sometimes show off. And sometimes there’s one brother pitted against another because he doesn’t want him to get ahead of him and the honor that he receives. God help us.

5. Without Love, They Add Up to Zero

And separate from this, they all mean exactly zero. Let’s read the first three verses again. And we should back up and read verse 21, or pardon me, 31 of verse chapter 12 first. Earnestly desire the best gifts, and I yet show you a more excellent way. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not loved, I’ve become a sounding brass or a clanging symbol. God chooses in these three verses in the first section of this chapter to use exaggeration. He uses it to an extreme. Though I speak with tongues of men and of angels, as far as I’m aware, that’s the only time that expression is used of angels’ tongues in the Bible. Now we know angels came to earth and spoke, and every time they spoke, I might remind you they used human language.

But he’s saying here, even if I could speak with the tongues of angels, whatever that might be, separate from the proper energy, environment, atmosphere, motivation behind that, it’s just like noise. So don’t tell me you can speak in tongues, the apostle would say. Don’t tell me you have the miraculous gift of speaking in a language you never studied. Unless you understand what should be underneath that, guiding it and supporting it and providing it the energy and environment in which it should exist. Ladies and gentlemen, if there’s anything this chapter teaches us, it’s that Christians should not have their lives guided by the gifts of the Spirit.

And the first of those is love, as described in Galatians 5, verse 22. And though I have the gift of prophecy, verse 2 says, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains but have not love, I’m nothing. Brothers and sisters and friends, the prophecy, the understanding of mysteries and knowledge and the faith described in this verse are referring back to chapter 12. Where God said in chapter 12 he gave some folks the miraculous gifts of knowledge and of wisdom. You see, back in chapter 12, verse 8, the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, to another faith by the same spirit, gifts of healings, to another, the working of miracles, to another prophecy. These were miraculous gifts given to those early Christians.

But notice what he said in chapter 13. If I understand all mysteries, will there ever be a human being that understands all mysteries? And though I have all knowledge, will there ever be such a person? Folks, if there were, that person would be God. That’s not going to happen. It’s an exaggerated statement to make the point driven home in our minds.

And if you don’t have the proper motivation, they add up to zero. Exactly nothing. No wonder the apostle Paul would say in Ephesians the fourth chapter, speaking the truth in love. And I’ll tell you, I believe there are two great dangers for teachers and preachers who are trying to teach the truth. One of those dangers is that out of tender what they consider love for the congregation, they water down the truth. And thus help lead people off to hell. And love would never do such a thing. Not the way love is described by God. The other danger, it seems to me, is that preachers and teachers can get so determined to deliver the truth that they forget it’s to be done in love. And the congregation soon begins to think God doesn’t love them either.

And those folks also oftentimes are led off to damnation because they think, where’s the love in this? As folks become harsh and hard and demanding.

Martyrdom adding up to zero. And maybe that’s another one of those exaggerated statements by God, but I know this. He indicates it is possible for us to go to the extreme with benevolence and with giving up of ourselves for the wrong reason. How important is this subject? Knowledge without love is nothing. Miraculous faith without love adds up to zero. Benevolence without love profits nothing. Martyrdom without love adds up to nothing. In summary, a loveless person produces nothing of value. A loveless person is himself of no value. I am nothing, the Lord said. And a loveless person receives nothing of value. It profits me nothing. Love is the medicine for our sick world. If people can learn to give and receive love, they will usually recover from their physical and mental illness.

Conclusion

Life is about, ladies and gentlemen, learning God’s will and letting yourself be filled up with the love God had for you and learning how to play that out in your life. And what is wonderful about that is the outgrowth of all of that is all kinds of other wonderful things that shadow the dimensions of every part of our life. If we can learn the most important thing, everything else falls. That’s the message for this morning. That’s our beginning. And God willing, over these next four lessons, we’re going to look into that 13th chapter, and we’re especially going to spend our time on verses four, five, six, and seven, where God, in 15 verbs, tells us how love acts.

And it’ll change the world.

You want to bring people to Christ? Let them see in us the love of Jesus Christ flowing from us so fully and beautifully that folks will say, these truly must be disciples of Jesus Christ. I thank you for your wonderful attention this morning. I pray we can all be back tonight. And there may be someone in this audience this morning whose life is not right with God. We don’t like to leave an assembly like this without giving you an opportunity to make your life right with God. If you’re here today and you’re not a Christian, the love of God for you means obeying his commandments to become a Christian. Jesus Himself said, He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. Do you believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God?

Then we’d invite you to come and confess that before this audience this morning before we leave. And we will stop our service and we will baptize you in water for the remission of your sins, because that’s what Jesus said to do. And as you rise from that watery grave which reenacts the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, you’ll come forth a new person who says, I’m going to give my life to the Lord, and for the rest of my days, I’m going to do my best to learn how to love the way he loved me. And maybe you’re a Christian who’s fallen away. Won’t you come back while we stand and as we sing?