What is Love? (Baby Don't Hurt Me)

Hi to Matthew Schenck

I heard that my little buddy Matthew watches me preach on Sunday morning and can’t figure out why I don’t talk to him from the screen. So here goes: Hi Matthew! I’m glad you’re watching the service today. I hope you’re having fun playing with your cars and spending time with Kapri. I can’t wait to see you at church when we get back.

And HI to all our kids watching. I miss you. I can’t wait to get back and watch you grow up week after week.

Introduction:

Countless preachers over the years have lamented our misuse and abuse of the word, “love.” It’s true that we use it in ways that it probably was never meant to be used. Further, when we say something like, “I love pizza” or “I love my job,” we probably don’t truly mean that statement in the same way the Bible talks about love. But what about your spouse, your kids, your extended family, or friends? What about your fellow church members? Do you love them in the way the Bible talks about love? One of the main questions that I want us to ponder today is this: “if it’s not Biblical love, is it really love?”

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

Today we come to I Corinthians 13, which is commonly referred to as the love chapter. This is likely one of the most popular and well known passages in the entire Bible.

We should not look at this passage divorced from it’s direct context. If we do it becomes a sort of hymn to love or some kind of sentimental sermon about Christian living. We need to remember that Paul is dealing with issues they Corinthians were having related to the abuse of tongues, division of the church, envy over other people’s gifts, lawsuits against other believers, and other issues. Paul had been writing most recently about the gifts of the Spirit and ended with an incredible statement in verse 31 of chapter 12.

1 Corinthians 12:31 ESV

But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.

The church in Corinth lacked love for one another. They had gifts and they were proud of them, especially the more miraculous ones like tongues They were busy with their gifts. Sometimes it’s easier to be busy and loving. It’s easier to be busy living out your giftedness than to take time to extend love.

1 Corinthians 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.

I. Without love, your gifts don’t matter. (v. 1-3)

Love’s Importance.

The source of love.

These giftings are not the most advantageous things a Christian could or should seek.

Even these extraordinary spiritual powers are counted as nothing if they are not empowered by and carried out in love.

These first three verses amp up the anticipation of the readers for the question of what this kind of love looks like in everyday life. First, Paul is going to develop the idea further.

II. The nature of love described. (v. 4-7)

Love’s Impeccability

NOT JUST A FEELING

“love is first of all an action, an unconditional commitment, a promise that is never broken.”

“While love is not just a feeling, it is not less than or other than a feeling.”

It motivates a behavior. There is an action/verb component to it. The behavior it motivates is described in verses 4-7.

Love entails being “for someone” just as God is for us and loves us and knows us fully.

(Witherington) Love is other-directed behavior - not self-directed action

- Love’s passive and active responses toward others.

- Love is patient - Here the meaning is “to bear up under provocation without complaint, be patient, forbearing.” Patient in suffering. Patience is a divine attribute. It is characteristic of God in being patient with sinners and delaying judgement.

Was just struck in reading a commentary by this and how timely for a pandemic and quarantine!!!  Will we be patient and suffer well for the glory of God or will we revolt and call names and operate like the world?  We are called to love.

- Love is kind - active counterpart to patience

“Kindness can break cycles of passion, resentment, anger, violence and vengeful retaliation. The practice of showing kindness even to the wicked and the ungrateful should not be thought to be limited to interpersonal relations. Groups and national entities, through their leaders, can also act in kindness to break destructive, fruitless cycles of violence.”- Thomas R. Schreiner

Paul moves from two statements on the attributes of love into eight negative behaviors that do not reflect love or how loves not manifest itself. When we read these we get a kind of machine gun effect because they come rapidly one after another.

- Love does not envy or boast. Envy and jealousy were tearing at the Corinthian church. They were envious of certain spiritual gifts but we have reason to believe it would have gone further into other areas of the church. This envy comes from the non-Christian Corinthian culture that sought after status. It’s not compatible with love. Too often we let it enter the church body unobstructed.

Love would teach us to ask how we can best serve those who Christ died for and not what are my own wants first?

Boasting - exaggerating, offensive, unsettledness, or flattery. This is being showy, fronting like you have it together, and living a fake, ingenuine life before your brothers and sisters.

- Love is not arrogant or rude. The word used here is sometimes translated proud. It’s the same word Paul used back in 8:1 where it was translated “puffs up.” According to scholars, Paul is the only NT author who uses this word and six of the seven times he uses it are in this letter. This was a key problem with the Corinthians that Paul addresses.

How much of our behavior is attention seeking?

Rude - dishonoring others. Is your behavior dishonoring to your brothers and sisters? Is it shameful or unpresentable?

- Love does not insist on it’s own way. Not self seeking or self serving. Does not seek its own blank… Others oriented. Pursuing the welfare of others over your self.

Best example of this is Jesus.

Isaiah 53:4–11 ESV

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.

- Love is not irritable or resentful. Not easily provoked to anger by the people around you.

- Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing.

In verse 6 Paul pivots back to some positive characteristics of love.

- Love rejoices at the truth.

- Love bears all things.

- Love believes all things.

- Love hopes all things.

- Love endures all things.

III. Gifts are temporary but love is eternal. (v. 8-13)

Love’s Indestructibility.

Love never ends.

The gifts pass away. Paul refers to three gifts that won’t be necessary in the age to come.

Verse ten, in speaking of completeness, is referring to the fullness of God’s salvation that will come at Jesus Christ’s return.

When you grow up you behave differently. Three will be gifts that are appropriate now that will no longer be needed or happening when Christ returns. Primarily they are about speaking the truth about Jesus so that others can know Him. In eternity all of those of us who are His children will know Him already.

Mirrors could have been round polished bronze discs. The image would be far murkier than we have today. However, Paul may be referring to a miror as a tool for self-reflection akin to what we read in James 1. Seeing God clearly will result in us understanding mysteries that we do not currently understand in this age.

So we can kind of see some end times or eschatological language at work here.

Speaking of eternality:

Faith - in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ in which God has inaugurated the end times events leading to the new age and enables the present life and future lives of those that are faithful.

Hope - enables believers to endure sufferings and other current issues

Love - the love the church has for one another that holds the faith community together as we anticipate the coming eternity with God.

“Love is the greatest because while faith is preached and hope pertains to the future life, love reigns. As 1 John 3:16 says: ‘By this we know his love, that he laid down his life for us.’ Love is therefore the greatest of the three, because by it the human race has been renewed.” - Ambrosiaster

Garland points out that “it is God’s love revealed in Christ that creates the possibility of faith and hope” and that “as an essential reflection of God’s character, love can never end and is elevated to the highest good.”

Conclusion and Application:

1 John 4:16 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.

God is love.

Love is the greatest because it leads others to Jesus.

1 John 4:10 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.

Love is commanded but it is also the work of the Holy Spirit. It must be expressed for it to be the real thing.

Galatians 5:22 ESV

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

Gifts will pass when Jesus returns. Faith will eventually give way to sight. Hope will become our reality. The love of God will remain eternally.

Quote by Wright - Paul stresses that love is about “those who worship God in Christ Jesus” functioning “as a family in which every member is accepted as an equal member, no matter what their social, cultural, or moral background,” and “the existence and flourishing of such a community is the thing that is going to reveal to the pagan world that the gospel of Jesus Christ is what it claims to be.”

And so the question remains: Do you love? Does your life reflect what love really is according to God’s Word. This is not an easy question. You must search your life and be honest with yourself. There’s not win in refusing to acknowledge where you’re wrong. I have a theory that a lot of us live pretty unloving lives at least part of the time and we won’t take the time to peel back the layers of the onion of our lives and see what is in there.

Christian love is cross shaped. It is linked forever with the life, death, teaching, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. In Him we see love personified. Without knowing the creator we can not exhibit true Godly, Spirit enabled and empowered love for one another. Do you know Jesus?

Jonathan Edwards wrote, “All the fruit of the Spirit, upon which we are to lay weight as evidential of grace, is summed up in charity or Christian love, because this is the sum of all grace”

The spiritual gifts are important. If you’re a believer on Jesus Christ then you have one. But they only bear fruit when love drives them forward.