Relationships that have meaning

Lifestyle of Love

Introduction: Everybody needs to be loved but remember that everyone is required to give love.

Chapter 13, Paul described the lifestyle of love Christ can produce and his followers. First Corinthians 13 has been called the love chapter because of its powerful description of love. However, in reading this passage, keep in mind that it is easy to talk about love, it’s much harder to do the tough work of living it. Love as God intended it is more than just passion, romantic feelings, or sentimental expressions. It involves commitment, sacrifice, and service, the kind of things that benefit both the giver and the receiver.

Paul mentions two movements that the church in Corinth can choose which has been a modern understanding to have a choice. A movement towards hate’ or a movement towards love. We cannot control what others do, but we can take responsibility for how we respond when hurt. This is much easier said than done. ‘Hurt’ can range from a bruised ego to damage done by systematic sexual or physical abuse.

But it does capture a critical truth about love—it is a choice worked out within all the messy realities of human life.

God knows us and understands how our sins and other circumstances have screwed us up. Because of those circumstances we now have two types of love. The ‘movement towards hate’ chooses to dwell negatively on the past and results in a life dominated by past injustice. We end up imprisoned and isolated, consumed by bitterness and a desire for revenge. In contrast, a ‘movement towards love’ acknowledges the full depth of the injustice done, but then acts to ‘let it go’, refusing to let the past dictate the future. This is essentially what forgiveness is: an act of the will that releases the forgiver from the negative control of what the other has done. It may or may not result in reconciliation; that depends on the other person and therefore cannot be guaranteed. Forgiveness sets us free from the past, and enables us to look beyond our own histories of injustice to the needs and struggles of others. This is how we build meaningful relationships.

The two greatest commandments,first is to love the Lord your God with all your heart soul body and mind. 2nd is to love your neighbor as yourself. What is the common theme in both of these statements? To Love, God’s love can be challengeing, but lets look at something. If God made us in His own image, and then God is describe in the new testament as Love, then what should we poessess in ourselves? Love We have Love inside of us. Love is hard when you never been shown the correct way.

That’s why God says love me first because I can fill all the gaps, reconcile the past and create a lifestyle for loving and admonishing. The corinthians cannot do the ministry of reconcilitaion that God had set aside if we have not been reconciled ourselves.

This model and concept of understanding that we have a choice between love and hate correlates with Paul’s positive and negative descriptions of love in verses 4–7. Fifteen examples are given, seven positives and eight negatives . Two paths are being contrasted—the ‘way of love’ versus its antithesis that leads to resentment, bitterness, division and self-justification. Given the mess the corinth church is in, it is hard not to see the negative verbs as describing the Corinthians’ self-destructive behaviour. It is they who are impatient and unkind, envying each other, boasting in themselves and proud of their own achievements. They are divided, insisting on their own way and even rejoicing in evil (5:1). But rather than condemn them, Paul offers an alternative vision of God’s purpose for his people—to live a lifestyle of love. How awesome it could be to lavished and be treated with a love that’s to resolve all that is in me.

An important point of correlation is how love is an action. In all fifteen examples love is described by a verb, not an adjective. Each is in the present continuous tense giving a sense of ‘actions and attitudes which have become habitual, ingrained gradually by constant repetition’. This is why this section is titled ‘Love in action’. Here in verses 4-7 speaks about the tings that we do repeately can be good or bad

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity,

but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1 Co 13:4–7.

We will look first at the positives of what love looks like in practice and then the negatives.

Remember we are going to love the action of loving or hating Love. God showed us His hate love when he destroyed sodom and gomorrah.

Conditonal Love is where assumptions manifest themselves. I didnt get enough likes on that post becuase people are haters, Why didn’t they call me back or text me. All that work and he didnt even mentioned my name I’m done because people dont appreciate me.

c. The way of ‘unlove’: seven negatives

Sandwiched between the two sets of positives, are eight negative descriptions of what love does not do. It often is easier to define something by what it is not and that is what Paul does here. We know ‘unlove’ when we see it. Sadly much of Paul’s list describes the Corinthians all too well. Just as it should have been a ‘reality check’ for them, so we should read this list self-critically today. How do these verbs describe my life and my church? What can I do if some of these ‘hit too close to home’?

Arrogance has nothing to learn from others: ‘I’ have all the answers. It pictures people so wrapped up in themselves that they have no capacity to listen to, learn from or bless others.

Unconditional Love is where healing and strong relational bonds are created and maintained.

While not explicit, these descriptions of ‘love in action’ describe God’s own actions and attitudes. In Exodus 34:6 it is the Lord who is a ‘compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin’. In Hosea God is the lover who patiently and generously woos back his unfaithful bride. In Romans God’s love is demonstrated by Christ’s dying for us (5:6–8), an act of kindness intended to lead to repentance and restoration (Rom. 2:4; 11:22). In Ephesians it is out of his great love that God shows mercy and grace, giving believers a eschatological hope based on his ‘kindness’ (chrēstotēs) to us in Christ Jesus (2:4–7). The calling for the Corinthians is to show the sort of patient and kind love to each other as God has shown to them. The calling for us today is no different.

But more than this, love has no desire to use ‘truth’ as a tool of self-interest. If postmodernism has taught us anything, it is a healthy scepticism around how ‘truth-claims’ can mask power interests of the self and of organizations. But love has no such hidden agenda: it is genuinely disinterested in the self and disengaged from a quest for power. This sets love free to seek truth honestly without concern for its impact on ourselves. Practically this means that ‘love does not use manipulative devices and subtexts to protect itself from truth or the truth. It is honest and open, not defensive, for it has placed the good of the other above the good of the self.’

Such love exposes our mixed motivations and selfish agendas, of which we may hardly even be aware. For example, in Christian ministry there is huge temptation, and often good reason, to hide the truth rather than rejoice in it.

The next four positives are each accompanied by an all things (panta). In the famous words of the av, love ‘Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things’; and in the nivuk, It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres (7). Together these four verbs picture love as a limitless, creative and transforming force empowering Christians to face whatever obstacles they encounter. The first and fourth (stegō, ‘to endure’; and hypomenō, ‘to persevere’) differ little and likely relate to present circumstances. The second and third (pisteuō, ‘to trust’; and elpizō, ‘to hope’) probably look to the future and reappear in verses 8–13 in tandem with love. Overall, such present—and future-orientated love faces life head-on with strength and hope. Nothing compares to or can overcome it.

We could paraphrase Paul here to say, ‘You are free to act as you wish, but do not use your freedom to disrespect others. Such behaviour is unloving.’ As Westerners living within a culture of unrestrained individual freedom where ‘anything goes’ (within the law) we need to listen carefully to Paul’s words. Love cannot be legislated for, but it can be evaluated. What impact does acting out our ‘rights’ and desires have on others? Does it respect or disrespect those around us? This is displayed on all our platforms whether your social media, job and even sporting events. (Share my story about the keys fans saying derogatory things about my kids)

Paul’s overriding point within his series of eight negatives. Love, by definition, does not pursue its own advantage. Earlier Paul tells the Corinthians that ‘No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.’ The self is not the centre of love’s universe. Love finds its fulfilment in seeking the benefit of others. This is the paradox at the heart of following a crucified Messiah, who gave himself freely for others. It is by losing our lives that we find them. It is in service that we are set free. It is the last who will be first and the first who will be last. It is in dying that we find life.

The latter is well described in Cloud and Townsend’s influential book Boundaries. In it they describe Sherrie, a harried and unhappy people-pleaser. Motivated by fear, unable to say ‘No’ and thinking that Christian discipleship means suppressing her own humanity, she finds herself isolated, confused, guilty and depressed. The rest of the book unpacks how healthy boundaries enable us to love others well, not by controlling or ‘rescuing’ them, but by living in the freedom of knowing what we can and should take responsibility for and where we should not try to do this. It closes by revisiting Sherrie, her life transformed by setting healthy boundaries with her husband, son and work colleagues. Such boundary setting is not ‘self-seeking’ but the opposite: it puts selfish hidden agendas aside and pursues honesty, transparency and accountability in relationships for the good of all involved.

That love is not easily angered (5) is the opposite side of the coin to Love is patient (4). It is not constantly irritable, rushing to judgment. Such actions are another form of selfishness: being unwilling to think the best of another and setting the self up as ‘judge, jury and executioner’.

The seventh example, love keeps no record of wrongs (5), combines memory and mathematics. The image is of ‘leaving the past in the past’, not continually dredging up someone’s previous mistakes in the present. Taking us back to the diagram, rather than be controlled by the past, the way of love lets it go. This is another way of talking about forgiveness. Acknowledgment of past injustices is important, but love does not store up resentments, nurse grievances and dream of revenge. Rather it chooses the path of freedom and opens the door to reconciliation.

This is what Miroslav Volf calls ‘remembering rightly’. He writes:

Being in God frees our lives from the tyranny the unalterable past exercises with the iron fist of time’s irreversibility. God does not take away our past; God gives it back to us—fragments gathered, stories reconfigured, selves truly redeemed, people forever reconciled.

This combination of not counting wrongs and of reconciliation reoccurs in 2 Corinthians 5:19a: ‘God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them’. If this is the way God acts towards us, how much more are the Corinthians, and Christians today, to take the risk of showing such love to those who wrong us?

The final thing that love does not do is delight in evil (6a). This statement sits in contrast to 6b (love rejoices with the truth). Again the immediate context in Corinth is probably in mind. They have been rejoicing in various kinds of wrongdoing. Such an attitude is closely linked to arrogance, where ‘I’ am beyond anyone’s judgment. But in a wider sense love takes no pleasure in injustice, violence, the failures of others or other forms of evil. Today, in a globalized digital world, multiple evils are ours to access at the touch of a few keys. No amount of regulation can stop us exploring dark thrills they may offer if we wish to do so. Paul’s ‘defence’ against evil is love. Throughout church history many Christians have found such a ‘strategy’ naive at best and foolish at worst. They have ‘protected’ the church against evil through fear, threats, punishment and even tyranny. Not only do such responses not work; they betray a lack of faith in the transforming power of love. Authentic Christian love will delight in all that pleases God, turning from evil and rejoicing in truth.

The most descriptive thing about love is found in verse eight love never fails

John 15:10“If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.”‭‭John‬ ‭15‬:‭10‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Roman 8:39“nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

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I Corinthians 13:14“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”1 Corinthians‬ ‭13‬:‭14‬ ‭ESV‬‬

You cannot love a thing without becoming something like it, in proportion to the force of love; and just in proportion as you love Jesus you must get like him.

An Objection And An Answer, Volume 22, Sermon #1280 - Galatians5:6

Charles Spurgeon