Love Described
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· 10 viewsA gospel-community enjoys a spiritual love that approaches others in reference to Jesus Christ.
Notes
Transcript
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.
A high-performance ministry detached from Jesus creates a carnal community.
A high-performance ministry detached from Jesus creates a carnal community.
What’s the remedy to that?
“Christian community is not an ideal we have to realize, but rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.” —Life Together
What does that look like?
Let me tell a story to illustrate.
Bill has been a part of a church his whole life.
For a long time he went along with the motions until after he came back from a mission trip.
He came home from his trip on fire for the Lord.
He listened to Podcasts about true community.
Bill began to think to himself,
“I need to help reform this church!”
He never said it out loud, but he carried that vision like a measuring rod.
At small group, he noticed when conversations were too “surface level.”
In worship, he felt uneasy if people didn’t seem visibly moved.
And slowly, without anyone noticing, the vision began to turn into pressure.
He started asking questions that sounded spiritual but carried weight beneath them:
“Why don’t we spend more time together outside of Sunday?”
“Shouldn’t we be more honest about our struggles here?”
“Is this really the kind of fellowship Scripture calls us to?”
At first, people appreciated his passion.
But over time, something shifted.
Conversations felt evaluated.
Leaders felt subtly judged.
Members began to feel like they were failing an invisible standard.
What Bill didn’t see was that his “ideal community” had become a silent law.
People started responding in one of two ways.
1. Some tried harder.
They opened up more, shared more, stayed later.
But instead of joy, it produced exhaustion—like they were always slightly behind an expectation they couldn’t quite name.
2. Others withdrew.
They could never do what Bill expected.
“Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial. God hates this wishful dreaming because it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. Those who dream of this idealized community demand that it be fulfilled by God, by others, and by themselves. They enter the community of Christians with their demands, set up their own law, and judge one another and even God accordingly.”
A gospel-community enjoys a spiritual love that approaches others in reference to Jesus Christ.
A gospel-community enjoys a spiritual love that approaches others in reference to Jesus Christ.
Natural Love
Natural Love
God’s Love
God’s Love
Spiritual Love
Spiritual Love
It means we never approach another person as they are.
We always approach another believer with reference to our Lord and Master.
The natural person sees:
"Here's a difficult person."
The spiritual person sees:
"Here's a difficult person purchased by Christ."
Great problems have been created by approaching other believers as though its just us and them.
“[Christian love] knows that the most direct way to others is always through prayer to Christ and that love of the other is completely tied to the truth found in Christ.” —Life Together
The Bible tells us…
You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price…
We can heartily agree with this for ourselves.
“We belong to Jesus!”
But for some reason we begin to think that others belong to us.
“Now they belong to us!”
After discussing what gifts can be done without love, he will turn in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 to present what love is.
The Characteristics of Love
The Characteristics of Love
There is one subject and fifteen verbs (try to make an English sentence that way).
Two affirming qualities in a chiastic structure (A B B A)
Eight negative affirmations.
Four all encompassing statements.
It is fitting that the Holy Spirit knows that there are two character qualities that will need effort to be practiced, and eight that should be avoided.
This section stands as a rebuke to the Corinthian believers because of how unloving they have been toward one another.
4 Love is patient and kind;
There is a chiastic structure here that our English version do not and cannot capture.
“Love is patient, kindness is love.” (Daniel’s Translation)
This is important because the chiasm helps the reader remember the truth.
What does patience look like when Jesus stands between me and this person?
Spiritual Love for the Weak
Spiritual Love for the Weak
Patience is that of being “long-minded” toward another person.
The Greek translation of the OT (Septuagint or LXX) which would have been the preferred translation of the OT for the Corinthian believers.
When Moses asked to see God’s glory in Exodus 33…
“Please show me your glory.”
God’s response…
19 And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.
Then in Exodus 34, God passed before Moses and declared His Name there.
“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness…
Patience and kindness are two positive qualities that reflect the heart of our Savior toward you.
Patience and Kindness toward the Weak.
Think for a moment, how many times you fail in a given day, week, month, or even a year.
And the fact that our Lord Jesus is patient toward you ought to govern our patience toward people who fail us.
We often only learn how impatient and unkind we are only when confronted with another person’s failings.
“God saves the least of these, sometimes He saves the weirdest of the least of these.” —Dave McGrew
People are strange.
They have idiosyncrasies.
They have quirks.
They have warts of many kinds.
And with all of the strangeness of people, we need patience and kindness toward them.
We must always ask the question,
“What is Jesus’ dispossession toward this person?”
Application for leaders
I can tell when I am not sharing Jesus’ dispossession toward a person through one factor: complaining.
“We do not complain about what God does not give us; rather we are thankful for what God does give us daily.”
He goes on…
“A pastor should never complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men.”
Application for Families.
We see our impatience with others in the failings of another.
Typically those closest to us.
Whether the little humans we’re called to love, or our spouses.
Spiritual Love for the Excellent
Spiritual Love for the Excellent
Their excellence
Their excellence
love does not envy
“To covet good gifts is right, to envy gifted persons is wrong; for envy and jealousy lead to division and strife (3:1)”
For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?
Envy is often masked and phrases that sound like,
“Must be nice!”
Jealousy looks at a person’s family, wealth, or job.
And desires it for themselves.
Especially younger people, who are earlier in their journey of life, they are prone to this form of jealousy.
They often look at the goods of another, and do not recognize the gifts of God or his providence in providing richly the blessings of another.
Think what an jealous person has stopped doing:
They have stopped paying attention to the kindness of God toward them.
Humanity is so twisted that love is needed not only for others excellence but even for our own.
Your own excellence
Your own excellence
When something bad happens to us, we envy another.
When something good happens to us we boast and brag about it.
or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude.
We are so sinful that Paul needs to clarify the need to love even when we do well.
The sinful human heart is bent toward even our own excellencies being turned into an opportunity to sin.
What does kindness look like when Jesus stands between me and this person?
Spiritual love is for others.
Spiritual love is for others.
We could also say NOT self-seeking.
We often conceptualize “selfishness” too simplistically.
The Christian does seek glory:
God’s greater glory.
The Christian does seek a benefit and a reward:
the reward comes from Jesus’ hand.
But what happens when self-seeking becomes disconnected from Jesus Christ?
1 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary (Schreiner) b. Description of Love (13:4–7)
‘Love does not elbow its way into conversations, worship services, or public institutions in a disruptive, discourteous, attention-seeking way.’
This is what it means for a Christian to insist upon their own way.
It does not insist on its own way;
Self seeking Christians desire their way or the highway.
They are self-absorbed, narcissistic, and only concerned about their desires.
“Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial.” —Life Together
Meaning when they think of the church of Jesus Christ, it’s essentially a church that is made up of people that look identical to them.
I have written something to the church, but Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge our authority.
This is a kind of Christian that when they look at others, instead of dreaming of them being conformed to Jesus Christ, they are conformed to the man in the mirror.
What happens when this person encounters another person who’s also seeking their own way?
it is not irritable or resentful;
Irritability from others seeking their own way.
Irritability from others seeking their own way.
You have two individuals blazing their own paths.
And what are they?
Annoyed. Annoyed because others are not following “their” path.
Resentment because their desires are refused.
Resentment because their desires are refused.
The word that the ESV translates as “resentful” means to “count up wrongdoing.”
A resentful person keeps track of the wrong done to them.
They remember but for all the wrong reasons.
“Those who dream of this idealized community demand that it be fulfilled by God, by others, and by themselves. They enter the community of Christians with their demands, set up their own law, and judge one another and even God accordingly. They stand adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of the community.
They act as if they have to create the Christian community, as if their visionary ideal binds the people together. Whatever does not go their way, they call a failure. When their idealized image is shattered, they see the community breaking into pieces.
So they first become accusers of other Christians in the community, then accusers of God, and finally the desperate accusers of themselves.” —Life Together
What does truth look like when Jesus stands between me and this person?
Spiritual love is truth seeking.
Spiritual love is truth seeking.
The two sides of this demands a person to mourn at falsehood and to rejoice at the truth.
it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
Notice a striking feature of verse six…
We may expect Paul to say,
“love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with good!”
As we often think of evil being compared with good, but this is not what he does here.
Love does not rejoice with evil, but rejoices with the truth.
Application to our modern day
In a day that loves social justice and “human flourishing” but detached from the truth.
“[love] will encounter the other with the clear word of God and be prepared to leave the other alone with this word for a long time. It will be willing to release others again so that Christ may deal with them. It will respect the boundary of the other, which is placed between us by Christ, and it will find full community with the other in the Christ who alone binds us together.”—Life Together
Are you willing to allow the Bible ONLY stand between us?
1 Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.
2 Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
“Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe rebuke that calls a brother back from the path of sin…It is a ministry of mercy, an ultimate offer of genuine fellowship, when we allow nothing but God’s Word to stand between us.”
Spiritual love is strong
Spiritual love is strong
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
I can imagine a Christian reading this verse for the first time and thinking,
“I need to just put up with everything!”
“I must accept any ridiculous story!”
This verse is not the proof verse for naiveté.
If someone tells you a story and you clearly know it’s a bunch of hogwash, true spiritual love doesn’t just accept anything blindly.
1 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary (Schreiner) b. Description of Love (13:4–7)
“love does not give way to cynicism and despair,
Strong to bear burdens.
Strong to bear burdens.
Burden are heavy and as Christians we are commanded to bear each others.
Strong to believe against all odds.
Strong to believe against all odds.
Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.
Strong to hope in the face of hopelessness.
Strong to hope in the face of hopelessness.
1 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary (Schreiner) b. Description of Love (13:4–7)
Love believes and hopes for the best, since it looks to God who can forgive sins and grant a new beginning to those dead in trespasses and sins (cf.
Strong to endure all things.
Strong to endure all things.
Paul is not saying that every Christian is now bound by every immature and unbelieving whim.
Instead, spiritual love lives in accord with the promises of God.
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.
Love never ends.
The Greek term here for “ends” is the word for something falling.
It conveys the idea of failure.
I want to come back to Bill for a moment…
Bill thought the church NEEDED his visioneering.
Bill believed that the church NEEDED his dream.
Spiritual love stops demanding others to meet our ideals.
Spiritual love looks at the weak and remembers Jesus’ patience.
Spiritual love looks at the gifted and rejoices Jesus’ grace.
Spiritual love looks at sinners and speaks Jesus’ truth.
A gospel-community enjoys a spiritual love that approaches others in reference to Jesus Christ.
A gospel-community enjoys a spiritual love that approaches others in reference to Jesus Christ.
“Now we learn that in the most intimate relationships of life, in our kinship with father and mother, bothers and sisters, in married love, and in our duty to the community, direct relationships are impossible. Since the coming of Christ, his followers have no more immediate realities of their own, not in their family relationships nor in the ties with their nation nor in the relationships formed in the process of living. Between father and son, husband and wife, the individual and the nation, stands Christ the Mediator, whether they are able to recognize him or not. We cannot establish direct contact outside ourselves except through him, through his word, and through our following of him. To think otherwise is to deceive ourselves.”
Gospel Community
Gospel Community
Think what this means for our marriages…
Our families…
Our communities…
