What is Love? (1 Cor 13)

Introduction

If you have your Bible, please turn it to 1 Corinthians 13.

As you know, we’re taking a brief break from our Genesis series in an effort to reflect a bit on the birth of Jesus Christ and really to prepare our hearts for what we actually celebrate during Christmas.

And, as many of you already know, we’ve done this in a number of different ways over the past few years. The first year that we were together as a church, we did the traditional Advent themes in the traditional way—so we talked about love, joy, peace, and hope with one theme for each week as we got closer to the day of Christmas—and that was ok, but if you remember, the next year, I made the decision to not do the same thing because in my thinking, one day focused on love wasn’t enough and one day focused on joy wasn’t enough and one day focused on peace wasn’t enough and one day focused on hope wasn’t enough.

So, instead, we’ve been working through one of the themes each year in a more comprehensive way; and we’ve already worked through joy, peace, and hope, which leaves the theme of love for us to deal with over the next three weeks. So, starting this week, each sermon until Christmas will answer a different question:

What is Love? (1 Cor 13)

How does God love us? (Rom 8)

Who do we love? (Luke 10:25-37)

Now, you’ll notice that none of those passages are necessarily Christmas passages—and that’s intentional. Though we will tie each sermon to Christmas to some extent—true love in the biblical sense extends beyond just the birth of Jesus Christ.

So today, we’re answering the question What is Love?

And just from the onset, I have to start with a statement—love is one of the most misunderstood, misused, appropriated words in existence and thus, we really need to define what we mean by love.

When we’re talking about love and the Bible, what do we actually mean? In the Greek New Testament, there are four words that when we translate it into English all are translated with the word love and each word has a unique meaning that is important for us to realize:

στοργή (storgē) — this type of love is often the first that we experience. στοργή is what we typically experience when we’re in a healthy family—family members στοργή one another. It’s familial love that results in a bit of vulnerability within the family unit. The Bible uses this word three times—in Romans 1:31, we’re told that sinful humanity has “no understanding, no fidelity, no familial love, and no mercy.” We see it in 2 Timothy 3:3 in which Paul tells us that one of the signs of the coming end is that people will lack familial love for others within their own family. And in Romans 12:10, Paul combines φιλία and στοργή to talk about cherishing one another in the family of God—to be devoted to your brothers and sisters in the local church.

φιλία (philia) — you might be familiar with this type of love because it is the root for the city on the eastern part of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia is the city of brotherly love and that brotherly love aspect is what this means. It’s the kinsmenship that you experience with other people—how you might call someone your brother even if you aren’t actually related. Consider the friendship between David and Jonathan and consider how the church ought to relate to one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.

ἔρως (erōs) — is the type of love that’s really only meant to be shared by a married couple. When ερως is out of control, it turns into issues like sexual immorality, adultery, and fornication.

άγάπη (agápē) — is the goal in all things. αγαπη is the love that God has for His people and it is the type of love that He commands we have for one another and for Himself. When Jesus tells us that the two greatest commandments are to love God and to love one another, He’s referring to αγαπη. And what we learn is that often when the Bible is telling us to love each other, it’s this sort of love that it’s referring to, which means, it is vitally important for us to actually understand what it means. And since its clear that Jesus demands that we αγαπη one another, it’s also clear that αγαπη isn’t a feeling, it’s a choice—we choose to αγαπη God and one another regardless of how we might feel towards each other.

So, what exactly is love? In particular, what exactly is the love that the Bible commands us to have for God and for each other?

What is αγαπη?

We’re going to answer that in two ways—first, with 1 Corinthians 13 and second, with a very simple definition that’s easy for you to remember.

Let’s read 1 Corinthians 13 together:

1 Corinthians 13 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. 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.

As we answer the question what is love? We’re going to look primarily at 1 Corinthians 13, which we’ll divide into two sections: (1) the need for love and (2) what love is like. Remember, that this text is particularly talking about αγαπη, which is the type of love that the Bible says God has for us, it’s the type that we’re supposed to have for one another, and ultimately αγαπη is what we’re to have towards God. The goal for today is for you to walk out with a fuller understanding of αγαπη and a better desire to show αγαπη and to experience αγαπη. Ultimately, I want you to know what it is to actually love and then go love God and one another.

Prayer for Illumination

The Need for Love (1-3)

1 Corinthians 13 starts with a firm statement that fits within the context of dealing with spiritual gifts.

In the city of Corinth, one of the biggest issues within the local church was the desire to be someone special—and so, you would see people within the church base their identity on who they follow (as in, who their spiritual mentor was) and on what they could do.

In the case of 1 Corinthians 13, he had just spent a significant amount of time dealing with the concept of spiritual gifts—that everyone within the local body of Christ is gifted by the Holy Spirit to serve the local church.

However, he makes it abundantly clear that these gifts, though they differ between the people, don’t make someone better than someone else—rather, all the gifts are equally needed within the body of Christ.

What he’s about to say in 1 Corinthians 13 is that regardless of what your spiritual gifts are, if you don’t use those gifts within the context of true, genuine love—the αγαπη that we’re told to exhibit towards one another, it’s really moot. It doesn’t really matter.

To do this, Paul utilizes a series of hypothetical statements based on spiritual gifts.

So, think this through with me concerning the hypothetical statements that he uses:

Speaking in tongues was a spiritual gift utilized to prove the initial coming of the Holy Spirit and the subsequent indwelling of the Holy Spirit to the Samaritans and then the Gentiles.

There are plenty of people who would then claim to speak in tongues in various different ways and then act as if they were more spiritual because they could speak in tongues (which happens even to this day, by the way).

Paul makes the statement, that even if I speak in angelic tongues, it really doesn’t matter if I don’t actually love others.

Note by the way, that people utilize this verse to claim that you can speak angelic tongues—that’s not what Paul says.

Paul says, that even if you could speak angelic tongues, if you don’t love others, you’re just a noisy gong or clanging cymbal.

Giving words of prophecy was a spiritual gift utilized to not just foretell the future, but to speak the Words of God—many of the Puritans talked about prophecy really being the gift of preaching, but in this instance, it deals more with foretelling the future.

Paul says, that even if I could tell the future, understand all the mysteries of the universe, and had all knowledge, but didn’t have love, I’d be nothing.

The Bible speaks of faith itself being a spiritual gift.

Paul states even if you had enough faith to move mountains, but you don’t love others, you have nothing.

Even to the extent that if you give away everything, you die for others, but you don’t actually love others, you don’t actually love God, you gain nothing.

All of this is a rather serious statement concerning αγαπη isn’t it? And it really is a rather serious point just dealing with life in general.

And it speaks to the importance of genuine αγαπη with one another and towards God, Himself.

If you don’t genuinely love, you have nothing. If you don’t genuinely love, it doesn’t matter what you can do, it doesn’t matter how much you give, it doesn’t matter how many good things you think you do.

It’s moot.

Thus, it’s clear in this text that αγαπη is fundamental—we need to exhibit true genuine love for other people—the same love that God has for us, we ought to have for Him and for others. Now, here’s the question or maybe the concern—what exactly does this love look like? What does it look like to αγαπη others and that’s what Paul seeks to answer in vv. 4-13.

What Love is Like (4-13)

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.

To answer the question of what αγαπη looks like, Paul describes love by giving attributes—in particular, he lists seven positive attributes and eight negative attributes—meaning, he tells us that love acts a certain and love doesn’t act another way.

The positive attributes given include the ideas of being patient, kind, rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

And already, if you’re being honest with yourself, you ought to feel at least a tinge of conviction because if you’re like me (and I’m willing to bet you are), you’ve recognized times in which despite claiming to αγαπη someone, you haven’t acted in this way:

All of us recognize times in our own lives in which we claim to love a person, but we’re also not very patient with them. Or we claim to αγαπη someone, but we don’t rejoice when good things happen to them (that’s usually a symptom of jealousy or envy by the way).

We all recognize that there are times in our lives when we claim to love one another, but we don’t believe good things about them or hopes all things for them—what that often looks like is when someone claims that they’ve done something and your first response is, “yeah right.”

Though we claim to love others, how frequently do we act unloving in the ways that we deal with them.

We can all look at these positive attributes and realize that we often fall short not only in our personal lives, but also in our relationship with Jesus Christ.

For instance, many of us aren’t patiently trusting in the Lord.

Many of us aren’t believing all the things that Jesus has promised.

Many of us aren’t exhibiting these positive attributes of love towards the Lord, but we still claim that we love Him.

For instance, most modern translations use the term patient, but the KJV uses the word longsuffering and I think it paints a picture of what it means to be patient.

On the flip side, when we look at the negative attributes—what Paul says love isn’t, we’ll again, feel a certain level of conviction. Just think through them—love doesn’t not envy, it doesn’t boast, it isn’t arrogant, it isn’t rude. Love doesn’t insist on its own way, it isn’t irritable, it isn’t resentful, and it doesn’t rejoice at wrongdoing.

How often do we say that we love someone, but then we’re jealous over what they have or even what they don’t have? How often do we say that we love someone, but we boast or we act arrogantly? How often do we say that we love someone, but we’re rude and selfishly insistent on our way? How often do we claim to love, but we’re irritable in how we treat others? How often do we claim that we love someone, but we carry resentment over something that happened yesterday, a year ago, or even decades ago? How often do we claim to love someone, but when they do something wrong and get caught, we celebrate?

Are we really exhibiting true love if that’s how we act and respond towards the person or people that we claim to love?

We can look at these negative attributes and realize that we often fall short not only in our personal lives, but also in our relationship with Jesus Christ.

For instance, though we claim to love Jesus Christ, we do tend to boast in ourselves even in our relationship with Christ. We know that Jesus has set us free from sin through our salvation and that now we get to live a new life exemplified in Christ’s righteousness. How often do we act as if it’s our own righteousness?

It tends to look something like this, “look Lord at all the good that I’ve done in your name?” Or “God, look at how I’ve abstained from sin or done nice things, aren’t I so great?”

Or, we claim to love Jesus, but then instead of allowing Jesus to work in and through us—to mold us and to shape us, we insist on everything happening the way that we want it to happen?

Or we’re even resentful that God chose to do things in a different way in our life rather than the way that we would’ve preferred.

Are we really exhibiting true love if that’s how we act and respond towards Jesus, whom we claim to love?

And really, all these attributes mesh together if you think about it.

Take, for instance, patience itself:

To truly be patient, it means to be willing to suffer alongside someone even if it appears that a better option is available.

To truly be patient, it means to be willing to endure with someone even during life’s greatest trials.

Really, what we’re told then is that if you’re unwilling to suffer alongside someone even when a better option seems to appear or if you’re unwilling to endure with someone during life’s greatest trials, you don’t really love that person as God has called us to love one another. See how multiple attributes mesh together in that idea?

Or, take for instance, the idea of envy within the concept of love.

To truly love someone, it means to not envy them or to envy what they have and it makes a lot of sense if you think about it.

If you claim to love someone, but in the back of your mind, you’re thinking about how much you’d really want to have their car or their home or even their spouse or their life, are you actually being kind towards them? Are you actually hoping good things for them?

Or are you hoping negative things towards them because you want their home or their car or their life or even their spouse? Are you rejoicing in wrongdoing towards them when they suffer setbacks in life because you want the things they have?

Really, what we’re told in 1 Corinthians 13 is that it’s rather difficult for us to actually love someone if we constantly want the things they have or the life that we have.

Envy acts as a plague—it infects our mind and our heart in a way that makes it difficult to genuinely αγαπη.

And then consider this in light of the love you claim to have for Jesus.

If you claim to love Jesus, but you’re living your life in envy, you’re boastful in your own accomplishments, you celebrate when others struggle, and so on, do you actually love Jesus?

Because Jesus says that if you love Him, you’ll keep His commands and one of His commands is that you ought to love your neighbor as yourself.

If you don’t exhibit love in the fashion that 1 Corinthians 13 states you ought to, you aren’t really exhibiting αγαπη, which means you aren’t really exhibiting love towards Jesus.

Regardless of what you claim, if you aren’t living as He has commanded, then He says that you don’t actually love Him.

And that’s a pretty big issue because according to Paul, true αγαπη reigns supreme over every other gift there is.

We then see Paul make a statement in vv. 9-13 through the use of two illustrations that really tie all this together—he uses the illustration of being a child and maturing into manhood and then of looking in a mirror compared to what it will be like to see Jesus face to face.

Now, to clarify, I don’t believe these are illustrations concerning love. In fact, I think if you try to apply these illustrations to the concept of αγαπη, you might completely misunderstand what he’s saying.

I actually think these are illustrations concerning the behavior of the Christians in Corinth.

Remember the context of 1 Corinthians in which he’s dealing with Christians who are essentially trying to one-up each other.

You have in 1 Corinthians 1-2 this idea of following human teachers as providing identity—“I’m better than you because I follow Paul or I follow Apollos.”

You have in 1 Corinthians 11-12 this idea that the spiritual gifts that you have make you better than other people in the church—”I’m better than you because I can speak in other tongues or I’m better than you because I can preach.”

And really, the one-ups-manship is really just a symptom of the social status climbing element of the Corinthian culture.

What Paul is saying through these illustrations is two-fold:

First, by acting this way, they’re acting like children—they need to grow up.

Second, by acting this way, they’re making it clear that they don’t see things with the eternal perspective that they ought to—they’re more focused on who they are today than what will be seen in the next life.

They aren’t acting like adults that have an eternal perspective—they’re acting like children who can’t see further than the tip of their nose and in doing so, they aren’t exhibiting the love that they are supposed to exhibit towards each other.

With that in mind, let’s take the remaining few minutes to discuss how we can apply this. Now, I do believe that I’ve integrated a lot of application into the exegesis of the text, but let me just reiterate a few points for you:

Application

True αγαπη—the love that Jesus demands we have towards Him and one another—is a choice.

The love that Jesus wants us to exhibit is something that we choose to have towards one another, which means our first application is to actually choose to love God and to love one another.

We can tell if we’re choosing to love God and one another by whether or not we act and react in the ways that describe love in 1 Corinthians 13.

Or, in other words, do you want to know if you’re actually being loving towards someone? Ask yourself—are you patient with them? Are you kind towards them? Do you rejoice with them? Or are you irritable with them? Are you rude towards them? Are you insistent on your own wants rather than caring for their wants?

Do you want to know if you actually love Jesus? Ask yourself—are you obeying His command to love others? Because if you aren’t loving others, you aren’t obeying Him since He told us to love one another.

If as you reflect, you realize that you’re really not acting in a loving way towards others—if you realize that you’re not showing your love for Christ through obedience, I have two ideas for you:

The first is this, none of us love perfectly—it’s ok to admit it.

The second is this, when we realize that we aren’t exhibiting love perfectly—we need to repent. We need to choose to reject the unloving behavior and choose to love as seen in 1 Corinthians 13.

We choose to be patient and kind. We choose to not envy or boast. We choose to not be arrogant or rude. We choose to not insist on our own way. We choose not to be irritable and resentful. We choose to not rejoice at wrongdoing. We choose to rejoice with the truth. We choose to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things.

If we didn’t choose these things, if these attributes of love were just the result of emotions or feelings, if they were simply the results of chemicals within our brain—how could Jesus tell us to αγαπη one another and then Paul show us under inspiration of the Holy Spirit that this is what αγαπη looks like?

Friends αγαπη is a choice that you make—you need to choose to love God and to love one another.

Of course, because we’re human and we live in a sin-cursed world, we will struggle to do this effectively, perfectly, every time; and so, it does help us to remind ourselves of how that love is really exhibited.

We do that through passages like 1 Corinthians 13.

Through reminding ourselves of what the Bible says love actually is—we remind ourselves of how we can better exhibit that love towards other people and to God.

You can do that simply by opening your Bible up to 1 Corinthians 13, but you can also do that by memorizing it and keeping it deep within your heart that through the Holy Spirit, God would remind you of what it means to love as you live your life.

We also do this through the remembering and celebrating of Jesus’ birth. This is what I mean:

The ultimate showing of God’s love for His people is seen in Jesus’ life—in particular, His death, burial, and resurrection, but also in His birth itself.

Since Genesis 3, God’s people have known that God was sending a Messiah to redeem mankind. From Genesis 3 until the birth of Jesus in the Gospels, there are approximately 4,000 years of waiting and waiting and waiting.

For 4,000 years, God’s people were waiting for the coming Messiah and 2,000 years ago, in a small town named Bethlehem, a child was born of a virgin, laid in a manger as a fulfillment of God’s promise to His people.

God chose to love His people—and it is through Jesus that we see, we experience, and we know αγαπη.

It is by reflecting on His love for us that we’re then compelled to love Him and to love one another.

Or, in other words—if you find yourself in a situation where you don’t think you love God or you don’t think you love other people—it’s because you haven’t reflected on the Gospel enough and you aren’t seeing the world and those around you the way God sees the world and those around you.

Friends αγαπη is a choice that you make because God loves you, so shall you love others—reflect on His love and use His love for you to go and love other people and to ultimately love Him.

Pastoral Prayer