Christmas With Love

INTRODUCTION

What gifts are you all getting on Wednesday?

What if everyone was to get the same gift? The exact same. If it’s a shirt, same size. If it’s pants, same inseam and length.

Paul speaks of gifts, spiritual gifts, everyone has one, but they don’t all have the same gift. 1 cor. 12:27-31 - do all have this gift? Noo…. diversity among the church is a strength, but here is the gift I want you all to have.

I want God’s children, his church to all possess this one gift. The gift of love. This gift also eliminates division and competition and unites us in the pursuit and use of God’s love.

It is the higher more excellent way of life. It is the one gift that if you remove it from the equation you are left with nothing.

Last week, Christmas Without Love.

Take love out of Christmas, and it’s nonsensical. It doesn’t happen and it doesn’t exist. Take love out of the world and you also lose hope and faith.

Oh sure you can speak eloquently, know everything, give everythign away, and even sacrifice your life, but if it’s not done with love, than what is it really? what gain is there? Nothing.

The author of the epistle of John puts this same thought this way.

The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Volume 30: 1, 2 Corinthians Chapter Thirteen: The Greatest Gift of All

The author of 1 John stated plainly that the one sure way of knowing whether a person was really a Christian was that person’s love for others. “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love” (1 John 4:7–8

first 3 verses describe the aboslutely necessity of Love.

CHRISTIAN LOVE DEFINED

The Greek language has many different words for love, while in English we have just one. Consequently, before we look at the chapter in detail, we need to be sure we look at the word Paul used and the meaning he attached to it. Eros was the word the Greeks used for love when it defined intense physical desire. If you were to make a survey of the way the word “love” is used in the lyrics of popular songs or in the dialogue of soap operas, in most cases it would be what the Greeks meant by eros. But neither the verb nor noun form of eros is found in the New Testament. A Greek word for a more reciprocal kind of love appears in the Bible a number of times; that word is philos. (For an example of the ways in which it is used one has only to read such passages as Matt. 10:37 or John 11:36.) While eros was a kind of selfish passion and philos described a more brotherly love, neither was used consistently by the New Testament writers when discussing love. The word that Paul used was agapē, a word used quite sparingly by the secular Greek writers, but used widely by Paul and the other writers of the New Testament books. - Kenneth L. Chafin and Lloyd J. Ogilvie,

Love spoken about throughout the majority of the New Testament to describe Christlike love and Christian love among the church that is sourced from God is AGAPE.

It specifically speaks of a kind of love that is different from all other loves. A sacrifical type of love. A love that looks out for the interests of others first and foremost. A love that finds its origins in Jesus Christ giving of himself for sinful mankind to be redeemed and set free. It’s a love that is typified by the story of Christmas.

It’s a love that is more akin to the nature of GOD.

BODY - CHRISTIAN LOVE DESCRIBED

Hard to define but easier to describe through actions, as love is more readily seen and received that it is described.

One way to begin to describe love is … to Substitute Jesus or Jordan for love. . You see quickly which one stacks up and matches.

Describe

CONCLUSION

——-

The Message of 1 Corinthians Chapter 13. If I Have Not Love … (13:1–13)

It is well known that the Greek word for love in the New Testament, agapē, was not previously in common use. It was taken into the Greek of the New Testament specifically because the love of God, seen in Jesus of Nazareth, required a new word. God’s love completely transcends all human ideas or expressions of love. ‘It is a love for the utterly unworthy, a love which proceeds from a God who is love. It is a love lavished on others without a thought of whether they are worthy to receive it or not. It proceeds rather from the nature of the lover, than from any merit in the beloved’. This is the love which, according to Jesus, has to characterize and control the Christian community, if it is in any sense to be recognized as Christian and if he is to be recognized as God’s Son and the world’s Saviour

The Message of 1 Corinthians (Chapter 13. If I Have Not Love … (13:1–13))

For these basic reasons Paul spells out why Christian community life without love is nothing, worse than nothing (1–3). He then describes what love is, what love is not and what love does (4–7). Finally, he paints vividly the lasting and eternal quality of love (8–13), outliving both knowledge and spiritual gifts—the two great priorities for the Christians at Corinth.

Love is… action verbs. Love is something someone does and a way he behaves or does not do.

The Message of 1 Corinthians 2. The Nature of Love (13:4–7)

This becomes clear when we substitute ‘Jesus’ for ‘love’ in this passage, and then by contrast insert our own name instead.

Did Aaron seppala share this thought a few weeks ago in a prayer and share? Substitute your own name for love in this chapter or substitute the name of Jesus.

The Message of 1 Corinthians 2. The Nature of Love (13:4–7)

‘Love has a big heart and practises sheer goodness’ renders the Greek accurately. Such love, which is therefore patient and kind, can face up to the darkness within and around us, in three directions.

1-3 — Five “if’s

4-7 - Five Negatives,

One in front of each verb, emphasizing that an essential part of true Christlike love is to recognize such alien realties

——