The Excellence of Love
Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 15:06
0 ratings
· 14 viewsFiles
Notes
Transcript
In 2024, the absence of love in America can be seen in several key areas:
1. Political Polarization: The deepening divisions between political ideologies have led to hostility, with people increasingly viewing those with opposing views as enemies rather than fellow citizens. This absence of empathy and constructive dialogue highlights a lack of love and understanding in the public and political sphere.
2. Social Inequality: The ongoing racial, economic, and gender inequalities reveal a failure to act out of love and compassion for the marginalized. Issues like systemic racism, poverty, and unequal access to healthcare and education demonstrate how love is absent when society ignores or undermines the dignity of others.
3. Online Culture: Social media and digital interactions often fuel hate speech, cyberbullying, and cancel culture. The lack of kindness and love in these spaces, where people are quick to judge and attack, reflects a broader societal trend of alienation and division.
These areas reveal how the absence of love contributes to fractured relationships, injustices, and a lack of unity in the nation.
12 and because lawlessness will increase so much, the love of many will grow cold. 13 But the person who endures to the end will be saved.
Even the church will be caught up where love is something of the past
4 But I have this against you: You have departed from your first love!
Whatever a person maybe like, we must still love them because we love God.
John Calvin (French Reformer)
Definition of Love
A caring commitment, in which affection and delight are shown to others, which is grounded in the nature of God himself. In his words and actions, and supremely in the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, God demonstrates the nature of love and defines the direction in which human love in all its forms should develop
Read 1 Cor 13.1-13;
1 Cor 13- emphasizes the importance of love, stating that without it, even great abilities and sacrifices are meaningless. Love is described as patient, kind, and devoid of arrogance or resentment. It endures and never ends, while other gifts like prophecy and knowledge will fade.
Bible Passage: 1 Corinthians 13:1–13
Application:
Christians need to examine their lives for signs of love, reminding them that maturity means prioritizing relationships and agape love over mere knowledge or skills.
It challenges listeners to embody love in their actions, particularly in communities and relationships where conflict or division may exist.
1. Prioritize Profound Love
1. Prioritize Profound Love
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 is presenting his life in an autobiographical rhetoric in presenting the heights of the speaking gifts …
According to the NASB, there are 7 i’s in the passage…(read them each)
Mk 8:36
For what benefit is it for a person to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his life?
Heb 4:2
For we had good news proclaimed to us just as they did.
But the message they heard did them no good, since they did not join in with those who heard it in faith.
Heb 13:9
Do not be carried away by all sorts of strange teachings.
For it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not ritual meals, which have never benefited those who participated in them.
What is meant by ‘I am benefited nothing’?
There is a different result for each of these attainments:
I produce nothing of value (13:1),
I am of no value (13:2),
and I gain nothing of value (13:3).
This changes from ‘I am nothing’ (13:2) to ‘I am benefited nothing’ because the focus changes from the worth of the person to the worth of the acts . Everyone who serves the Lord will receive a reward only if he has love .
At God’s judgment he will receive no credit .
Its like working a job without benefits and you get sick. The hospital will reject you because you have no insurance. Everything you contributed to that job will feel worthless….You go searching for treasure at the end of the rainbow only to find a bag of rocks…
1. Pizza without dough –
2. Cake without flour –
3. Sandwich without bread 4. Pasta without noodles –
5. Omelette without eggs –
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,23 gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
When you have no love, you have no joy, no peace, no patience, no kindness , no goodness , no faithfulness or gentleness or self control.
What does that say about you and I?
We have to make love a priority and learn to live people with difficult people…Stop operating in pride and arrogance and seeking power and money and chasing lies and be biblical not political, not polite when it comes to your faith…
2. Portrait of Genuine Love
4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
The root of pride is saying that we can do without God.
James Montgomery Boice
Pride, according to Augustine, is “an appetite for a perverse kind of elevation,” a “perverted imitation of God.”
Uche Anizor, How to Read Theology: Engaging Doctrine Critically and Charitably (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018), 7.
QUESTION—What is implied in this personification of ‘love’?
It is implied that a person who loves behaves in these ways [TG, TH]. It describes a character which is ruled by love
Hate is impatient, not kind, envious, brags, puffed up, rude, self serving, easily angered, resentful, glad about injustice, rejoices in lies,
1. does not brag is not puffed up- ‘to behave as a braggart (windbag)-- someone who is full of empty, inflated talk.
2. rude-Ἀσχημονέω means to act in defiance of social and moral standards, with shame as a result [LN, NTC]. It means to fail to show respect, honor, or consideration for others [Lns]. It means to act with poor manners [ICC, MNTC]
3.- take into account wrong suffered- Love absorbs evil and disposes of it by forgiving it [AB]. One who loves does not keep remembering the evil someone has done to him
Sometimes we just need to suck it up…The love of God shown to us should allow us the capacity to forgive others when they have wronged us…
Love absorbes evil
21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
3. Persevere with Eternal Love
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.
The phrase οὐδἐποτε πίπτει ‘never fails’ is translated ‘will last forever’ [NLT], ‘is eternal’
The verb forms you are asking about, particularly in “they will cease” (prophecies), “they will be stilled” (tongues), and “it will pass away” (knowledge), are examples of future passive indicative forms in Greek.
Future Passive Indicative:
• Future: It refers to an action that will happen in the future.
• Passive: The subject is being acted upon, rather than performing the action.
• Indicative: This is the mood used to state facts or realities.
In 1 Corinthians 13:8, the verbs used are in the future passive indicative, indicating that these things (prophecies, tongues, and knowledge) will be acted upon in the future. For example, prophecies will cease (something will cause them to stop), tongues will be stilled (they will be made to stop), and knowledge will pass away (it will come to an end due to an external factor).
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
31 and in the wilderness, where you have seen how the Lord your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.’
10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.