"The Fuel of Spiritual Gifts"

1 Corinthians 13:1–13 ESV

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 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. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 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. 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. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13

INTRODUCTION:

Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels, said, “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”

This sermon series we’ve been going through for the last several months has been called “We are the Body.” The body of Jesus. These last couple of weeks, especially, we have talked about how we, as believers, all compose the Body of Christ and how our spiritual gifts all work together to make up the Body.

If spiritual gifts are the eyes, the ears, mouth, etc. of the Body, then LOVE is the heart of the Body/the circulatory system.

The misuse of — RECAP the problems in Corinth.

Without LOVE, spiritual gifts are WORTHLESS.

Just like lungs without oxygen is useless/the Body without a heartbeat and blood is useless, so are spiritual gifts without love.

Paul is saying, here, that it does not matter what your spiritual gift may be, how “important” you may think you are to the body, without love as the driving force and the fuel of your gifts and your life, you are nothing and your gift is nothing.

Why? Why is love the difference? What is so important about love that, without it, spiritual gifts are worthless?

You know, one of the sad realities of our world is that we have reduced the power and the scope of what love is. For many, love is an emotion…a feeling. For some, it’s a “force.”

The Greek word for “love” in the New Testament is the word “agape.” This word, in Greek culture, was not commonly used. It was incorporated into the New Testament specifically because the writers of the NT knew that the normal words (“eros” and “phileo”) for love were nowhere near sufficient to describe God’s love as seen in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

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.

The very nature of the GIVER is LOVE!

1 John 4:7–9 ESV

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

1 John 1:7–9 ESV

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

1 John 4:10–12 ESV

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. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

1 John 4:7–12 ESV

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 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. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

1 John 4:16–17 ESV

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.

1 John 4:

1 John

So…why are spiritual gifts bankrupt without love?

1 John 4:

BECAUSE OF:

Love’s CHARACTER

Paul is taking a shot at the Corinthians, here. They weren’t very patient. They weren’t very kind. They were envious and they were boastful. They were arrogant and rude. They insisted on their own way and they were irritable and resentful. Remember how they felt about themselves and about each other.

The Corinthians were abusing their spiritual gift of tongues, there was division in the church, they were envious of each others gifts, there was selfishness - lawsuits against one another and their selfishness at the Lord’s Table, they were being impatient with one another in corporate worship gatherings, they were bragging about how they had “arrived” and others had not and were even turning a blind eye to the sexual sin of the man who had his stepmother as a lover!

That’s not what agape love looks like! It gives!

Characteristics of “LOVE” in our culture - easy to fall in and out of. Based on emotion, attraction, etc. We “love” so long as we can receive somehting out of it. We love as long as we’re loved back.

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

The verbs Paul uses are all in the present continuous tense, denoting actions and attitudes which have become habitual, ingrained gradually by constant repetition. They sound ordinary, obvious, almost banal; but they are probably the most difficult habits to cultivate. It is not coincidental that these four verses perfectly describe the character of Jesus himself, and of nobody else. This becomes clear when we substitute ‘Jesus’ for ‘love’ in this passage, and then by contrast insert our own name instead.

Love’s CONSTANCY

You know, it’s one thing to SAY you love someone…it’s something altogether different to SHOW it.

LITTLE BOY & BLOOD TRANSFUSION FOR SISTER :: Love always pays a price. Love always costs something. Love is expensive. When you love, benefits accrue to another's account. Love is for you, not for me. Love gives; it doesn't grab.

Love’s COMPLETION

The Greek word for “love” in the New Testament is the word “agape.” This word, in Greek culture, was not commonly used. It was incorporated into the New Testament specifically because the writers of the NT knew that the normal words (“eros” and “phileo”) for love were nowhere near sufficient to describe God’s love as seen in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

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.

We understand the Bible to teach

1 John 4:8 ESV

Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

God is love…the origin, the source of unconditional, undeserved, unrelenting love. This is why Paul can say, in vs. 8, “love never ends.” “Agape” never ends. Human love ends. It’s conditional. Agape doesn’t. It is love upon love upon love…Why? Because it comes from an unconditional Giver.

“ends” - “piptei — literally means “falls” or “collapses.”

Love personified. Love coming from the Father through the Son that WE get to share in! The love that we are invited to abide in and that will abide in us!

John 15:9 ESV

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.

Love never ends…but spiritual gifts do. Agape is eternal but spiritual gifts are temporal. Why? Paul says that we are living in the “incomplete...” the “partial.” Look at vs. 10 - “when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.” Why do we need spiritual gifts? Why has God given them? Remember - it is Jesus’s ministry to His church. We still live in a world broken by sin where we haven’t yet fully experienced the Kingdom of God that has come.

Paul is looking forward...

WIZARD OF OZ - BLACK & WHITE - COLOR

“We know in part…we prophesy in part.” Then the perfect comes - “teleos” - the end//completion//the fullness. What is he talking about? He’s talking about the return of Jesus. He’s saying that we, as the church, are living in the “already but not yet.” The kingdom has come - but only partially. We are awaiting the day when Jesus returns and ushers in His kingdom fully once and for all. We are looking ahead to the day when Christ returns and takes His kingdom.

One day, love will complete the partiality of spiritual gifts...

As a child…now a man - conformed one day, fully, into the image of Jesus.

Mirror dimly - we only get glimpses now…Spiritual gifts give us glimpses...we will one day see LOVE face to face…Moses spoke to him mouth to mouth/face to face.

Know in part…then I shall know fully - on the shores of heaven…all of the pain that we don’t understand, all of the things we don’t “know” will one day make sense.

N.T. Wright — “the church must be working in the present on the things that will last into God’s future. Faith, hope and love will do this; prophecy, tongues, and knowledge, so highly prized in Corinth, will not. They are merely signposts to the future; when you arrive, you no longer need signposts. Love, however, is not just a signpost. It is a foretaste of the ultimate reality. Love is not merely the Christian duty. It is the Christian destiny.”

1. When i was a child, I spok

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