Let Love be your Rule

Why True Love is Important

““Love is a many-splendored thing.” . . . “Love is all you need.” . . . “Love conquers all.” . . . “Love lifts us up where we belong.” . . . “Love is in the air.” . . . “Love changes everything.” . . . “What the world needs now is love, sweet love.” . . . “Love is all around.”

This mosaic of love-song clichés reminds us that our world is filled with the language of “love.”

The word gets thrown around constantly and carelessly. “Love” is used to describe our feelings for everything from God to chocolate, from cars to pets, from football to family.

Sadly, the kind of love implied by the world’s popular poems and platitudes bears little resemblance to the meaning of love described throughout the Bible, and particularly epitomized and memorialized in 1 Corinthians 13.” (Insights on 1 & 2 Corinthians (Swindoll's Living Insights New Testament Commentary).

And it is this type of love that we should exhibit toward each other in the church. This type of love is love that is a decision, not a feeling.

You decided to love your wife when you said your vows regardless what happens.

You decide to love your kids regardless because they are yours.

We need to have a love for one another that resembles our love of our families because we are a family.

We are a body.

We are one together and since we are, even if we are mad at one in the body, we must allow love to be our rule.

But we must love God above all things to ever attain this type of love for one another.

If we try to love others as ourselves before we love God with our everything, we will fail because we are not loving from the outflow of God. We are trying to love from our own hearts and not His. And we know that our hearts are evil and wicked without the Lord (Gen. 6:5; Jer. 17:9).

We need to learn and exhibit True Biblical God-rendered love for each other.

“Unlike the short-lived erotic type love, most pop songs and culture speaks of or the two-way brotherly love of camaraderie and social bond tpe of love, agapē true biblical love implies permanence, unconditional charity, a decision more than a feeling, a commitment more than a relationship. Agapē means loving not for one’s own benefit, but for the benefit of others” (Swindoll, 190).

Paul talks about this in 1 Cor. 13:1-3

1 Corinthians 13:1–3 ESV

1 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.

Paul makes mention of three things that will be pointless if we do not love one another.

These are...

1. Talented and gifted talk without love is nothing but noise, 2. Extreme wisdom (truth) and knowledge without love is empty and void, 3. Religious zeal is of no gain without love.

Paul speaks of these three aspects in those first three verses.

He says if he can speak with tongues of angels but has not love, he is nothing more than a clanging cymbal or a clanging gong.

Simply put, he is just a loud noise with no affect but irritation.

What this tells us is that if we have eloquent speech, a gift to gab, or an ability to speak of great things but we do not do this with the intents of building up others because we love them, we are nothing more than a useless noise.

One reason why this is is because people will discover three things about us if we are not genuine when we talk with them.

They will

1. see we are not genuine, 2. they will see we are phonies, and 3. they will tire of us.

Remember in James 2:15-16 where James said, “15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?”

This sounds pious and good but it lacks love because it does nothing but talks.

For us to be a people, Christians, who are living a committed Christian life, we must show love to people rather than just speak it.

What this means for all of us is we need to be present with people who are suffering.

We need to be present with people who have failed and repented and want to make amends.

We can speak all day long about how they failed and how bad that was and sound right and pious, but love says we say “I forgive you and this is behind us let us look forward to Christ and what He has.”

Love forgets wrongs and bears all things as the passage goes on to tell us.

When we love people, especially fellow believers, we work together to get past hurts and wrongs committed rather than just throwing them out because they messed up.

This aspect is for the watching world too.

They are watching us and looking at our “Pious and Eloquent lofty” Christian speech and wait to see if it is just noise or truth.

If we show them it is just noise, we have failed even more than the brother or sister who has failed and fallen into a sin and needs forgiveness and restoration.

That is love in action.

That is love working through the power of the Spirit of Christ in us.

That is love not being a noise but truth.

Which leads to why having extreme wisdom and truth is not enough either.

Paul continues to tell us that having all these prophetic powers and knowledge is not enough either because all of that may look great and sound great but without love it is empty and void.

It is because People will

1. see us as a know-it-all, 2. will dread us because we use wisdom to insult over building up, and 3. will see all we do is for attention for us over God.

In 1 John 3:18 we read, “18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”

We need to have love in truth and deed, not just truth.

When we love people in truth we tell them that something is wrong, but we do not leave it at that.

No, we come alongside them and work to restore them from that wrongness.

We seek to help them find their way back to the correct path from their misdeed.

We do not just tell the truth and leave it there, but we show them the truth by how we live.

If someone is caught in sexual sin and we know it is wrong we tell them and then demonstrate how one lives in a proper relationship.

But sins are not the only thing we can be “wise” about and fail to love.

We can be this way with people and financial decisions.

We need to help people with this rather than telling them what they did wrong.

We do not just come into a situation and say, “You did this, and this, and this wrong and this is why this happened.”

No, we come in and say I see that you have failed in this and I may know why, but right now we need to help get you back on your feet and then we can discuss what happened.

We show love to people when they fail or fall, rather than holding it over them.

The same goes for great faith.

You know you can use your great faith in life to mock people?

You can like this,

“Where is your faith? Why just the other day I was in a situation where I nearly died and I was just fine because I was relying on my faith to get me through.”

This is so wrong and I have heard it from many people who were no doubt doing it thinking it was helping, but it does not.

This lacks love because you are not that person and they are not you.

We all handle things differently.

When people come at me angry, I feel bad for them because I want to help them get over being angry. I did not used to be this way. I used to blow back at them immediately.

Now, because God has worked on me and helped me discover a deeper love for people, I hurt and feel pain for angry people.

So, if someone is going through a tough time and struggling with it, that does not mean their faith is weak, it just means they need someone to come alongside them in love and lift them up by their strong faith.

We do this by just dropping by and visiting with them about other things.

We may even talk with them about times past where something was tough but how they pulled through.

We show love over everything because people are worth it. We want them to grow in Christ and become stronger not push them away and isolate them.

People are hurting and struggling every day out there and in here.

We should be the place where people know they can come for a strengthening because of who we worship.

If we are in Christ we have the most powerful power in the whole of creation inside us.

We need to use that knowledge and insight to strengthen other people’s faith because if you have supernatural like faith, it isn’t because of you but Christ.

He has changed you and grown you and because of Him we can help others see that it is Christ in them that will grow them and build their faith too.

So, let us always love people not only in truth but also in deed because if we do not then our knowledge and faith is empty and void because it lacks love.

Remember, Knowledge without love has no value. Power without love has no value. Faith without love has no value.

But there are other things that make people leave and that is false religious zeal.

When we are like this people

1. will see our faith is phony, 2. will see our giving as fake, and 2. that our sacrifices are for us alone.

So we have looked at eloquent talking, and extreme wisdom and knowledge, now it is the act of false religious zeal..

People can give under false pretenses and people can sacrifice under false pretenses.

An example of this was with the Spartans of Greece.

They would leave for battle and knew that if they died in battle they would receive great glory.

They would fight viciously and many would die but that was for their glory, not the nations or anyone elses, but theirs alone.

This type of sacrifice benefits no one because it was not for any reason but a selfish one.

R.C. Sproul once said, “God requires mercy and love “from the heart,” not sacrifice, not the exercising of gifts. We must remember that Satan is a master at mimicking the gifts of the Spirit, but he cannot mimic the heart. He can set up a puppet teacher who is endowed with great knowledge, but he cannot give that person love for God and love for other Christians. This is solely a Christian grace and can only come by the Spirit of Christ.”

If we sacrifice for any reason other than love then we have put up a front.

If we do any of these things Paul mentions we have put up a front.

Just like how many people will give great donations and request their name to be on whatever the money goes to.

They do this for their glory and the watching world of non-Christians see this.

They see the money aspect of church and think church is nothing more than a money grubbing place.

They only see churches doing things for money and wanting money and they flee.

Remember the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee from Luke 18:9-14?

In this parable the tax collector stands up and prays loudly about how he gives this and that and how he fasts twice a week and is thankful he is not like that sinner over there who is so bad.

While the tax collector prays quietly and begs mercy because he is a sinner.

Well when we make false sacrifices and false givings we are like the Pharisee and that is what the watching world sees.

As believers we must sacrifice only through love and give only through love.

When we do this we will not speak of what we have done, we will just do it.

We will do the things that need to be done and never seek glory.

We will live our life through love and serve through love because we love the Lord and want others to know the Lord.

We will follow the pattern set by the remainder of this chapter which reads

1 Corinthians 13:4–13 ESV

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.

This tells us that

Love is action above words and emotions.

The main thing we see in this last section besides all the ways love is an action above words and emotions is that everything else will end, but love will remain forever into eternity.

So you may have eloquent speech, be extremely intelligent, have lots of money you can give away without end it seems, but one day that will end but your love that you demonstrated throughout your life to others will remain here and love will be with us into all eternity.

One other aspect we see about why love is so critical, is that right now we believers only know in partiality.

We are like little children in a lot of ways because we only know a little.

This is why love is critical because if we come in with high talk and pious actions and false sentiments, people will see this.

Pure love does not treat people indecently, seek to advance their own agendas, and pure loving people do not have a sharp tongue that is ready to lash out at other people at the drop of a hat.

Why this is true is because we don’t know the situation and what is going on so it is best to show love and learn what is happening before making rash judgments.

People will remember how you loved them in their times of failure, struggles, difficulties, loss, heartache, pain, suffering, or illness, over any skill you have or any bragging rights you have.

Showing love and compassion is a sign of spiritual maturity.

It is because of our lack of knowledge in this world. When we show love over hate, and show

Patience

No boasting

no arrogance

no rudeness

not insisting our way

no irritability or resentment

love of truth over wrongdoing

bearing all things (failures and mistakes without condemnation) no gossiping about things

hope and trust to others

We have demonstrated the love of Christ to others as He has shown love to us.

To do this we are to simply, be patient, be kind, and be honest.

It is hard to do this because we are emotional creatures and our emotions can run high if we feel wronged.

When we allow our emotions to rule we taint true love with envy, boastfulness, pride, rudeness, selfishness, anger, grudge keeping, and taking delight in sin.

But we must remember the man who wrote this suffered tremendously at the hands of others and he prayed for them and wanted them to know Christ.

Christ suffered at the hands of others worse than any of us are likely to ever suffer and He said “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

This and in John 13 Jesus washed the feet of the one who betrayed Him. He showed deep love to that man knowing he would betray Him.

That is the love we can display to a dying world when we follow the list Paul has here for us and realize that any specialty we have is for the building up of the church more than our benefit.

We can do this through the power of Christ in us and by His grace flowing out of us.

I think this story will sum this up well.

A woman went into a psychologists office one day for counseling and shouted, “I hate my husband. I don’t just want a divorce, I want to pay him back for all the pain and suffering he’s caused me.”

The doctor tells her he has a perfect plan.

He told her to go home and start pretending that she really loved him. “Build him up! Praise him for every little thing he does. Go out of your way to be considerate and loving. Then, when he is convinced of your undying love for him–drop the bomb! Tell him you want a divorce.”

She went home and put the plan to action. A month later she returned and the doctor asked her if she was ready to divorce her husband.

She said, “Divorce him! Absolutely not! I found out I really love him!”

She made an amazing discovery: Love is not just a feeling. Love is a decision. When you do the actions of love, the feelings of love follow. (Ray Stedman, Letters to a troubled Church, 183).

Faith hope and love remain but the greatest is love.

Love others like Christ loved you when you were His enemy and you will see the power of love in a world of hate and bitterness.