Intro
Today we’re talking about love. The love chapter. The wedding chapter. One of the most famous chapters in the Bible! I have a world religions textbook on my shelf that has selections from 10 Bible passages it thinks are the most representative of Christian faith, and you can bet your bottom baby teeth (is that a saying?) that 1 Corinthians 13 is on the list. It’s a chapter my parents made me memorize as an 11 year old. The reason? A local summer Bible camp had a deal where if a kid could recite a certain chapter of the Bible in front of the camp director, they got to go to camp for free. And if you know anything about Mennonites, which my parents are, it’s that you go for the deal every time, no questions asked. I read somewhere recently that for Mennonites, the most sacred words outside the Bible are “it’s for sale.” I had no idea what most of 1 Corinthians 13 meant, but hey, my parents didn’t have to pay for camp!
I called this the wedding chapter because if statistics were kept on things like this, I’m certain 1 Corinthians 13 would be the top Christian wedding scripture. But what almost never gets acknowledged at weddings or any other time 1 Corinthians 13 is referenced is that the context is all about spiritual gifts. But you know that because of the series we’re in. To recap the situation in Corinth: these followers of Jesus had received the Holy Spirit and had been empowered by the gifts Jesus gives through the Spirit. However, some of the Corinthians had latched on to certain of these gifts, especially the gift of speaking in tongues. They had exalted this gift to a superior status, the idea being that speaking in tongues was the mark of spirituality. A spiritual gift had become an avenue for pride, for status-seeking, for selfish indulgence, instead of for the good of others. And that’s what Paul emphasizes in 1 Corinthians 12. He shows that the gifts are all about Jesus. He paints a picture of the church as the body of Christ, and that the wide variety of gifts are given in order to build up and strengthen the whole body. Gifts are fundamentally about God and about serving others, not about serving yourself. That’s chapter 12.
At the end of chapter 12, Paul writes, “eagerly desire the greater gifts”. He follows that up by saying, “I will show you the most excellent way.” And from there he launches into this exalted, poetic praise of love. Which gifts are greater is to be measured by love. The desire for those greater gifts is to be motivated by love. The exercise of those gifts is to be done with love. That’s the idea. The gifts have everything to do with love. Paul’s already been alluding to that without saying the L word, but now he makes it clear. So with that in mind, let’s dive in.
1. Gifts without love (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If 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 do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
In some ways, this is yet another gift list, in addition to the two different lists Paul gives in chapter 12. Paul mentions a bunch of the Spirit-empowerments and seems to raise them to their most exalted, extreme form. He talks about speaking in tongues of men or of angels. What we see in Acts 2 is the first of those. The disciples of Jesus are speaking to the crowds in a wide variety of languages that they would not otherwise know. The gift that the Corinthians are really pumped about, though, is different. It’s speaking unintelligible words. Paul writes to the Romans about the Spirit praying through us with groans that words can’t express (Romans 8:26). Some scholars think that may be the same thing he talks about here. The tongues of angels is heavenly speech that humans can’t naturally understand, but is empowered by the presence of the Spirit within a believer. Incredible.
Then Paul talks about prophecy. This gift is about receiving a revelation from God regarding a particular situation or concern. It can be related to the past, present or the future- what has happened, what is happening or what is going to happen. Paul refers to the most extreme version of this possible, fathoming all mysteries and knowledge. Can you imagine having the gift of prophecy to such an extent that God makes pretty much everything possible known to you? You can tell people what they had for breakfast yesterday. You can predict accurately who will win the Stanley Cup. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it’s not going to be the Oilers. You can explain the mystery of why country music is so awful. Not to mention things that actually matter. Imagine all knowledge and mysteries revealed to you.
He talks about faith that can move mountains. This is a reference to something Jesus says in the Gospels how if anyone has faith the size of a mustard seed, they can tell a mountain to be picked up and thrown into the sea (Matthew 17:20). Imagine having that kind of faith? And not just having that faith, but seeing it happen? Having your faith be instrumental in miracles like that?
These are gifts Paul has already referred to. Then there’s one or two more. Imagine giving all you possess to the poor. Paul writes in Romans 12:8 about the gift of giving. We are all called to give, but it seems that the Spirit especially empowers some people to give sacrificially and generously beyond comparison. That’s what’s pictured here. Then Paul imagines giving over your body to hardship, the implication that this might even result in death. This is the extreme, triple black belt version of the gift of giving. You’re not just giving your money, you’re giving your own body. You’re giving your life. Imagine being able to give, joyfully and cheerfully, like that.
Every one of these gifts Paul alludes to are spectacular and supernatural in their own right. These are the kinds of things people make sci-fi movies about. They are endowments of God’s power working in and through humanity (even if the way Paul describes some of them here are extreme or idealized). What Paul refers to are astounding, incredible, phenomenal abilities. But then he writes something even more astounding than these gifts. He writes that if you have any of these gifts, but you don’t have love, you have nothing. You are nothing. You are no better than a clanging cymbal. Think about that. You know all mysteries, speak in the tongues of angels, give all you have to the poor, and apparently it’s worthless if it’s not driven by love.
Think about what is most significant to you about being a Christian. Think about the strongest evidence for your spiritual passion. Insert that it into these verses. If I pray for two hours a day but have not love, it’s nothing. If I read every book Tim Keller has ever written, but have not love, I’m nothing. If I have perfect attendance at church and serve in every possible capacity, but have not love, it gains nothing. If I volunteer every week in the Downtown Eastside but do not have love, it profits me nothing. When it comes to gifts, love is the crucial ingredient, the indispensable element in the process, without which gifts just don’t work.
The summer after I graduated from college, a couple of friends and I lived in a trailer home on campus. And I know as soon as I say that, you probably have all kinds of stereotypes about what trailer life is like pop up in your head. I want to tell you that in this instance, they’re probably basically all correct. The point here is that three 20 year olds were clueless about independent life. For example, we had a washer and dryer in our bathroom. For a few months, we used that dryer and were baffled at how badly it was working. We would load the clothes in, turn it on, and yet the whole bathroom would get foggy and steamy. The dryer itself felt like it was on fire. And then after all that, even after running the thing a couple of times in a row, the clothes weren’t even dry! They’d be this hot, steaming pile of wet garments. We were sure something was deeply wrong with it. Obviously we knew how to turn the dryer on, what setting to put it on, how to load it, the whole deal. And then, after a couple of months of this, somebody asked if we were cleaning the filter every time we used it…the filter? We didn’t even know there was a filter! You wouldn’t believe the lint ball that was sitting in the tray! I now realize it was a miracle that we didn’t burn the whole trailer down! (The trailer was condemned a year or two later, but still!) When it came to operating the dryer, we knew some stuff, but we were missing one crucial, indispensable piece. And without that element, the dryer wasn’t just useless, it was dangerous. One ingredient, one piece of information, one step in the process, can be so crucial that if you miss it, the whole thing falls apart. That’s the way it is with spiritual gifts and love.
Don’t misunderstand me. The gifts of the Spirit are a blessing. They are God’s grace to us as a good Father. These gifts enable us to make Him known in the world. Paul tells us to eagerly desire these gifts! And yet gifts are not sufficient in and of themselves. They are not enough on their own. They do not accomplish anything on their own. Gifts without love are effectively useless in terms of eternal value. In fact, like my trailer home dryer, they can be actually be destructive. Imagine a pastor with a supernatural gift to preach and to lead but who doesn’t love his people or the God he preaches about. What is the effect of those gifts when it comes out that the pastor has been abusing his people and that his relationship with God is non-existent? So much damage is done because so many were amazed by the gift. Imagine somebody who can speak in tongues but doesn’t love the people around her, so she practices her gift boastfully, pridefully, with a desire to “show off”. The result is that others are turned off from the Gospel and from the Spirit. You can see how disastrous gifts are when not accompanied by love.
2. Gifts with love (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)
But what is love (cue some ’90s techno music here)? The word gets thrown around fairly easily and thoughtlessly in our world, and it gets asked to carry a lot of weight. You love your wife and you love burritos. Same word, hopefully a different meaning! You’ve probably heard the phrase “love is love”. If you haven’t, you’ll probably see it all over the place in Greater Vancouver during the month of June! But it’s not exactly a helpful phrase. What is love? It’s love, obviously!
Unlike in English, the Greek language of Paul’s day had a few different words that would be translated “love”. For example, “storge” was a word for natural affection. It was a family kind of love, for example between mothers and children.
“Philia” was a word for the love between friends. You see it in the name of the city Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. It’s where we get the term “philanthropy” from, which literally means “love towards humanity”. You see the word occasionally in the New Testament. For example, in John 21, in the conversation between Jesus and Peter, Peter repeatedly affirms that he loves Jesus- the word he uses here is the verb form of “philia”.
“Eros” was perhaps the most used and most popular word in Greek culture for love. Named after a Greek god, eros love is about intoxication. Eros is the irresistible pull of one person to another. It’s often sensual, which is why this word is the root of the English word “erotic”. Almost always, eros is about being captivated and obsessed. It’s about impulse and satisfaction of hunger. You know about eros love. You may have experienced it, you’ve certainly seen it in a movie, you see its promise all over the internet. You could say that eros is the god of Tinder. Eros may not be an actual supernatural entity out there somewhere, but when our culture talks about love, it’s often eros that people are thinking about.
However, when the writers of the New Testament wanted to speak about the love of God and the love we are to have toward each other, they did not use eros, or storge, and only infrequently did they use philia. They almost always used the word agape. Agape was not a common Greek word for love. In fact, in its noun form, it seems to have never been used in literature before the New Testament. Not once. As a rare occurrence in verb form, it meant something like to greet, to honor, or to prefer. It’s the kind of love that chooses. To the Greeks, it had none of the power or magic of eros and none of the warmth of philia. But this uncommon word was what the early Christians believed best represented Christ-like love. Why? Perhaps because as a rare word, the Spirit could fill it with the counter-cultural content required. But perhaps the early Christians saw something in the meaning of the word itself. Listen to how Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians 13.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
As you can see from this text, agape is very different from eros, along with any other kind of love. Here are a few thoughts about that.
First, something that gets missed in the English translation is that every single description of love in these four verses is a verb in the original Greek. The literal Greek translation would be that love patiences- it exercises patience. Love kindnesses- it exercises kindness. It doesn’t puff up or inflate- that’s the more literal rendering of not being proud. None of these are adjectives, they are all verbs. Which means that love, the agape love the Bible overwhelmingly speaks about, is not primarily a feeling. Agape is an action. Biblical agape love is not first and foremost something you feel, it is something you do. And this really is countercultural, isn’t it? Love in our culture is overwhelmingly associated with emotion, which is fleeting and often out of our control. That’s what eros is. It is an overwhelming impulsion that just carries you along. You hear people use language about falling in love and falling out of love. I don’t deny that’s a real experience, I’ve felt it too! But when it comes to agape love, that kind of language is nonsense, because agape love is a choice and an action.
Second, note how other-oriented this description of love is. Eros love, even when it is directed towards another person, is self-centered. It’s about that satisfaction of some desire or thirst within you. It’s all about you. After a romantic breakup a few years ago, Katy Perry admonished people to love themselves first before anyone else. A few years ago, Kim Kardashian was quoted saying, “I think you have different soul-mates throughout your life, that your soul needs different things at different times.” Pop culture love, filtered down to the everyman, is about you and what you need. That’s eros love. But agape love is entirely other-oriented. 1 Corinthians 13 says agape love is all about what you do towards another person: you protect, you don’t envy, you don’t keep record of wrongs. In fact, according to this passage, agape love by very definition is not self-seeking. Agape love first and foremost seeks to benefit others.
Actually, when you think about it, even though our culture prides itself on love and uses the word constantly, this whole passage is profoundly contrary to the love our culture trumpets. Think about the worldview commonly known as “woke”. What kind of fruit does the woke worldview, widely promoted in various ways by academia, media, and government, produce? Well, it absolutely keeps a record of wrongs. It cancels and doxes people, which I’m fairly sure doesn’t fit under the category of “honouring” others. I don’t know anyone who would say wokeness produces patience. Or that it trusts. It finds fault and imputes the worst possible motives everywhere. It sure doesn’t strike me as something that produces hope, and I can see lots of examples of self-seeking behavior. The woke worldview, as far as I can tell, produces plenty of rage, violence, division, and judgment, the very things it’s supposed to fix. Wokeness just doesn’t fit well with the love described in 1 Corinthians 13.
But here’s the biggest thing I want you to notice. I’ve been critiquing our culture, but what happens when you or I plug our own names into this chapter? How does it come off? Craig is patient, Craig is kind. Craig is not self-seeking, Craig is not easily angered, Craig keeps no record of wrongs. I mean, I hope those things are true to some extent, but I know there are way too many times it’s not true. I’m guessing you feel the same. Most of us fit this description as well as my son wearing my Milt Stegall Winnipeg Blue Bombers football jersey.
But what happens when you plug the name of Jesus in the place of “love”? Jesus is patient, Jesus is kind. Jesus does not envy, Jesus does not boast, Jesus is not proud. Jesus does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Jesus always protects. It fits like a glove. That’s because the real test of biblical love is conformity with the character of Jesus. The Bible says that God is love (1 John 4:8). He is the definition of love. His character gives shape to what we mean by this word. Look at the Gospel: there is no better example of agape love than Jesus giving his life for sinners like you and me, who had nothing lovable about us. The Bible says we were dead in our transgressions (Ephesians 2:1). Nothing attractive, nothing appealing. Dead in a ditch. And Jesus, out of his great agape love, chose to reach down and pull us up, to make us alive. That is agape love. A choice, an act, a rugged determined commitment to benefit others who don’t deserve it.
So when it comes to how we exercise the gifts Jesus has given us, this is the most important factor. The most important thing is not what gifts we have, but that whatever gifts we have, we exercise them in agape love. The most important thing is that we exercise them in a way that conforms to the character of Jesus. Gifts with agape, Christ-conforming love. If you want to be a blessing in the world and to bear good fruit, that is the recipe you need to aim for.
3. Love without gifts (1 Corinthians 13:8-13)
We’ve talked about gifts without love. We’ve talked about gifts and love together. Now let’s talk about love without gifts. Because that, actually, is our eternal destiny.
8 Love 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. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When 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 the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a 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. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:8-13
When I was an 11 year old memorizing this to save my parents money, this is the part that made absolutely zero sense to me. What did any of this have to do with love? Things passing away, looking in mirrors, thinking like children? It made no sense to me because, like most people who know 1 Corinthians 13, I didn’t realize what the context was. The context is gifts. Most of the references in this section have to do with gifts. And here’s Paul’s big, overriding point: gifts will pass away. I’ve made the case that gifts will not cease in this world. I am fully convinced of that. But they will cease in eternity. That is almost certainly what Paul means when he talks about completeness in verse 11. He’s talking about the perfection that comes after the final judgment. He is talking about when God makes all things new, when evil is abolished forever, and when we see “face to face”. That’s how Revelation 22 describes eternity: God’s servants will serve him and “they will see his face…they will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light.” (Revelation 22:4-5) Then, and only then, gifts will fade away.
Paul says prophecies will cease. Why? Because when we are with God and all evil has been done away with, people won’t need special revelation from God to speak to others, either about the present or the future. Jeremiah 31 might allude to this when it says, “no longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,’ declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 31:34) Tongues will cease. Why? Because there won’t be any need of unintelligible languages to commune with God when we see Him face to face. Words of knowledge, which is what Paul is likely referring to in verse 8, will not be needed because everything will already be out in the open.
Here’s another way of saying it. We’ve done a few 24-7 prayer weeks as a church and my go-to midnight walk is to take Keith Road all the way to Lonsdale. There’s one stretch where the street lights are broken or non-existent and there’s only the eerie flashing green traffic light. It’s straight out of a nightmare. Besides that though, the street is really well lit and I can feel confident strolling along at 2am. Those street lights serve a crucial purpose in the night. But when it’s daytime, they’re useless. Why do you need some weak-sauce artificial light when the sun is blazing in all its glory? This is obviously a hypothetical situation in North Vancouver where there’s no evidence of a thing called the sun existing, but I’ve heard stories!
The gifts of the Spirit are the streetlights. In the darkness of this world, they help shine light, they help give people direction, they strengthen and encourage people as they walk through the night. They are not perfect- Paul says we prophesy in part, we know in part, we see like in the reflection of a mirror. By the way, as a side note, Corinth was famous in the ancient world for the production of the finest bronze mirrors in the Roman empire. Mirrors weren’t like they are today, where you actually can see very clearly. You were looking in a piece of burnished bronze. That’s a very imperfect image. That’s what the gifts are like. But daytime is coming. The night will be abolished. Remember Revelation 22, there will be no more night, there will be no need of the sun, never mind lamps, because of the presence of God. And during the day, you don’t need streetlights.
In the first part of the chapter, Paul shows how as great a blessing as gifts are, they are nothing without love. They are not sufficient in and of themselves. In this last part Paul shows how as great a blessing as gifts are, they are in the end temporary. One implication of this is that boasting about them is just silly. They’re not even your doing in the first place, but they’re also in one sense fleeting. It’s a bit like Notorious B.I.G. rapping in the mid-90s about how big of a deal he was because he had a 50 inch screen and a money green leather sofa. 30 years later, I don’t know very many people who don’t have a 50 inch screen. Also, they don’t weigh a trillion pounds like Biggies’ ‘90s version would have. That screen was great and special in the ‘90s, but from the perspective of the future it sounds ridiculous to boast about. The gifts of the Spirit are great and necessary and should be desired now, but to become prideful and self-centred about them is ridiculous from the perspective of the future.
But love? Love endures forever. Love never fails, Paul writes. And he finishes with this: “now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Faith, hope and love were a well-used triad used other times by Paul in his letters and in early Christian preaching. They encapsulate Christian faith. But Paul says there is one among these three that stands out. Love is the greatest. It turns out, faith and hope are streetlights too. Hebrews 11:1 says faith is certainty about what is unseen. That means that when everything is seen and fulfilled, faith is no longer necessary. Hope is trust in a not-yet realized future. Which means that when the future is realized, hope is no longer necessary. But love carries on. Love will only increase in eternity. It will be the way that we live and relate to one another in ways that we now can only glimpse. And so if you are to cultivate one thing, if you are to focus on one quality, on one practice, let it be agape love. Because it stands alone as the currency that we’ll be using to an even greater extent than we are right now.
Conclusion
The application here is fairly simple. Love. Cultivate love. Practice the gifts given to you by the Spirit in love. But I want to leave you with a calling to worship. I believe that in the end, that’s what we need in order to love others in a 1 Corinthians 13 way. We need to again look to the one who is love.
In John 15:13, Jesus gives us the greatest example of what agape love looks like: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”. If agape love means making a decision to benefit others, even if you get nothing out of it, then to lay your life down for someone is the ultimate act of love. But these weren’t just words from Jesus. They didn’t just express a nice thought. They would be lived out by Jesus, and more.
In Romans 5:7-8, Paul writes, “very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
You are loved. You are deeply loved by Jesus. And this isn’t just an emotion that might change from day to day. He acted. He made a choice to lift you up when you were at your lowest point, when there was nothing lovable about you, by giving up his own life. Let His love shape your view of love. Let His love shape your practice of love. Let His love be everything to you.
