Scripture: 1Corinthians 13:1-3

If I speak in the tongues a of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, b but have not love, I gain nothing. [1]

LOVE: A PARAPHRASE OF 1 CORINTHIANS 13

If I talk a lot about God and the Bible and the Church, but I fail to ask about your needs and then help you, I'm simply making a lot of empty religious noise.

If I graduate from theological seminary and know all the answers to questions you'll never even think of asking, and if I have all the degrees to prove it and if I say I believe in God with all my heart, and soul and strength, and claim to have incredible answers to my prayers to show it, but I fail to take the time to find out where you're at and what makes you laugh and why you cry, I'm nothing.

If I sell an extra car and some of my books to raise money for some poor starving kids somewhere, and if I give my life for God's service and burn out after pouring everything I have into the work, but do it all without ever once thinking about the people, the real hurting people-the moms and dads and sons and daughters and orphans and widows and the lonely and hurting-if I pour my life into the Kingdom but forget to make it relevant to those here on earth, my energy is wasted, and so is my life.

Here is what love is like--genuine love. God's kind of love. It's patient. It can wait. It helps others, even if they never find out who did it. Love doesn't look for greener pastures or dream of how things could be better if I just got rid of all my current commitments. Love doesn't boast. It doesn't try to build itself up to be something it isn't. Love doesn't act in a loose, immoral way. It doesn't seek to take, but it willingly gives. Love doesn't lose its cool. It doesn't turn on and off. Love doesn't think about how bad the other person is, and certainly doesn't think of how it could get back at someone. Love is grieved deeply (as God is) over the evil in this world, but it rejoices over truth.

Love comes and sits with you when you're feeling down and finds out what is wrong. It empathizes with you and believes in you. Love knows you'll come through just as God planned, and love sticks right beside you all the way. Love doesn't give up, or quit, or diminish or go home. Love keeps on keeping on, even when everything goes wrong and the feelings leave and the other person doesn't seem as special anymore. Love succeeds 100 percent of the time. That, my friend, is what real love is!

--David Sanford

How easily impressed are you?  I have to confess that there is something about “slick” that makes me suspicious.  Whenever I think that I am being “played to”, I shrink back.  I can understand a person’s skepticism when they come to church and consider what it is that we do here.  There are so many experiences that shape what we expect and look for when we walk through these doors.

Why I don't attend Church

by Stephen Schwambach

The Evansville Press 11/2/96

In my last column I asked those of you who are unchurched if you would be willing to tell me why you don't go to church.

You were willing.

You wrote me long letters, emailed me, faxed me and left detailed messages on my voice mail. Some of you even asked for appointments to speak to me personally.  Here's just a sampling of the earful you gave me:

"I'm disillusioned by Christians who are abusive to others."

"I am very much unchurched and your article intrigued me. I was always extremely disappointed whenever I would try to go. Sometimes I would leave before the service was over."

"I hate it when one church promotes its religion over all the others."

"[Church people are] hypocritical, smug, inflexible, self-interested, unloving, insensitive, insecure, ego-fragile, and dishonest with themselves  about it all. [They are] narrow-minded; uninformed; insular;  petty; and fad-consumer-minded more often than not. The more fundamentalist the church, the more these qualities evidence."

"I have never been to a church where anyone took a sincere interest in me.  The social niceties and patronizing are not appreciated without sincerity. In that case I would as soon not be bothered."

"I am really glad to see that someone has taken an interest in the feelings of  us so-called, 'non-churched' people. My mother-in-law is the person that is in church every time the door is open. She is on every committee and sits in on every meeting. But she is also the person that judges people by what they have on and gripes about being on every committee and meeting.  It is  easier to stay away from church than to sit among hypocrites like her."

"When church members fuss and have arguments and split - I don't like the  turmoil. I get more blessings at home watching TV ministry and reading my Bible and praying."

"Once we attended [names church] on a Sunday morning. We sat in an empty area and a couple came in and talked so we could hear them. The man remarked about someone sitting in his seat. I was uncomfortable and I  could not enjoy the service. We haven't been back. I have a real good seat in  my living room and don't bother anyone there."

You told me much, much more, but that's all I have room to share, in this column. Thank you for being so open and so honest...even when it hurt.

What can I say? How about: I'm sorry. In many, many cases, we've let you down. But more than that, we've let Jesus down. He deserves better representation than we've given you.

How about it, church-attenders...area pastors? Should we get defensive...or should we clean house? I don't know about you, but I'm going to go get my mop and bucket.

Once again, some insight into the first-century world is helpful as we approach what seems to be a very contemporary issue.

Tongues. In the New Testament we first meet tongues in Acts 2, when on the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit welded the disciples into a new body, the church. Not only were there miraculous signs of fire and wind but, filled with the Holy Spirit, the disciples began to “speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them” (Acts 2:4).

“How is it,” the observers asked in amazement, “that each of us hears them in his own native language?” (v. 8)

Later, when we meet tongues in Acts, they again seem to be foreign languages (see 10:44–46; 11:17).

Coming to 1 Corinthians, we learn that the tongues-speaker himself did not understand what he was saying unless a person with the gift of interpretation explained. Here interpretation of tongues is identified as a separate gift—a gift often possessed by a fellow believer in the congregation. Tongues, then, was not used evangelistically in the early church to reach outsiders, but was exercised within the family, and then only when an interpreter was present to make the message intelligible to others (1 Cor. 14:28).

Nothing in this passage ruled out tongues as a valid expression of the Holy Spirit’s ministry through one of God’s children. Instead, Paul was concerned in these chapters with putting this rather spectacular gift in perspective.

Cultural context. Perspective was especially important in a place like Corinth. It was universally accepted in the Hellenistic world that some were especially close to the gods. Usually this closeness was supposed to be manifested by trances, ecstatic speech, and other unusual or bizarre forms of behavior. All this was taken as evidence of special spiritual endowment. A person with epilepsy, for instance, was said to have the “divine disease.” The oracles at religious centers were often given drugs to provoke their utterances. The oracle at Delphi, so prominent in the early days of Greece, breathed volcanic fumes from a cleft in the rock of the temple floor, and her unconscious mutterings were then interpreted by the priests.

It is not surprising, given this cultural perspective, that the Christians in Corinth were attracted to the gift of tongues. Nor is it surprising that they thought of such people as especially spiritual.

But their assumptions led to real problems in the Corinthian church. And Paul launched these chapters by challenging the assumptions carried over from paganism. Paul’s very first words were: “Now about spiritual [gifts], brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant” (12:1).

The word “gifts” really should be placed, as I have, in brackets. It is not necessarily implied by the Greek word pneumatikon. As the alternate reading in the Revised Standard Version suggests, it might as well be rendered “spiritual persons.” This probably better reflects the issue that troubled the Corinthians. It was the issue of spirituality itself, and how spirituality is expressed in Christian experience.

We need to remember that the Corinthians were pagans just a short time ago, “somehow or other … influenced and led astray to dumb idols” (v. 2). It was dangerous for them to carry over into the Christian faith old notions about spirituality! But apparently they had been so influenced by the old assumptions that when someone in an ecstatic trance had pronounced an anathema (“be accursed”) against Jesus Himself, a few of the Corinthians had actually been swayed! They had taken the state of the person making the utterance as evidence of divine inspiration!

Paul said firmly that no one could say, “Jesus be cursed,” by the Spirit of God. Neither would anyone caught up in such an experience (as were the oracles of pagan faiths) ever announce, “Jesus is Lord,” unless indwelt by the Holy Spirit. The state of the speaker was not to be taken as evidence of inspiration or of spirituality!

Paul dealt with this issue because there was then, as now, a great danger that in their ignorance some Christians would be led away from true spirituality by an unwarranted emphasis on this more spectacular manifestation of the Spirit. In his argument Paul did not attack the gift of tongues, or reject it. Rather he gave a lengthy explanation of how the Spirit does work in our lives, and in our churches.

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1.   Spiritual activity is many times chosen over the exercise and demonstration of love.

We will run after the things that catch our attention and forget the substantial truths of scripture.  Really Paul is telling us that love takes a back seat to nothing else in the kingdom.  It doesn’t matter what you can do – if you do not practice love, you are nothing, you gain nothing what you can offer God is of no consequence.  There is no amount of spirituality, or talent or compassion or dedication that can rival the pure and basic demonstration of love in the life of a Christian.

The love chapter comes right between a discourse on the appreciation of differing gifts to try to explain to the Corinthian Christians that one gift was not better or preferable to another and a discussion to give instruction on the importance of understanding in the process of worshipping God and the importance of prophecy or forth-telling over the use of ecstatic language or tongues.

The love chapter is one of the most read portions of scripture.  Often it graces the wedding ceremony.  The words are beautiful and poetic and yet they are so familiar that we often skip over the deep meaning in those few verses.

What Paul is advocating is that you make “love” your most passionate pursuit.  According to Jesus love to God and love to man is the greatest commandment.  Whenever you act in an unloving manner, you are useless to God, regardless of anything else.  It doesn’t matter how good your motives may be or how great your cause – the absence of love removes the potential for good.  There is nothing that is an acceptable substitute for love.

2.   We tend to measure spirituality based on what is spectacular.

I don’t know how many times we look for some visible representation that God is at work among us.  If we would concern ourselves more that God is at work through us we would see that He is at work among us.

13:1If I speak in the tongues a of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, b but have not love, I gain nothing. [3]

Paul speaks of the spectacular manifestations that captivate people’s attention and make them believe that God is at work. 

ð     The use of spiritual and earthly language

ð     Prophecy

ð     The ability to discern and understand what is mysterious

ð     Knowledge

ð     Faith to accomplish the supernatural & extraordinary

ð     Making oneself poor in order to have compassion on the poor

ð     Martyrdom

3.   Love is not a prerequisite for the performance of spiritual activity.

In other words, we can do things that look very spiritual without God’s help or blessing.  We have learned in painful ways that it doesn’t take a man of God to build a great church.  Too many stories remind us of our humanity as we have learned of the demise of spiritual leaders in the disgrace of moral failure.  There are all kinds of “spiritual things” that we can do without a vital connection to God.  While preachers have built and pastored churches with their hearts distanced from God, others have:

ð     taught Sunday School classes,

ð     sat on church boards, formed and propagated highly visible faith healing ministries in which people have most likely been healed,

ð     lived holy lives

ð     opposed evil in society

ð     fed the poor

ð     been worship leaders

ð     risen to the top of church and denominational organizations

All of these things that are listed can be done without God and without his blessing.  It’s somewhat frightening really, to think that we can do so much on our own and yet miss the entire point.  There is nothing in the Christian experience that makes sense if it is removed from it’s God-given, God-breathed context of love.

How do I know if I am operating our of love for God and others?

ð     Obedience to God’s will is the irrefutable test of love for Him.  When we obey we love – when we do not we love ourselves.  It is as simple as that.

“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.  2 This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands.  3 This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome,”[4] (1 John 5)

5 And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another.  6 And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love. 7 Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.  8 Watch out that you do not lose what you have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully.  9 Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.  10 If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take him into your house or welcome him.  11 Anyone who welcomes him shares in his wicked work. [5] (2 John)

ð     I believe that service is the greatest demonstration of love for others.  The things that we do that bring us little or no acclaim.  The things that require us to bow our knees and love with no hope of attention or praise or return.

Ruth Harms Calkin does a masterful job on the subject of humility in her poem:

                       I Wonder

   You know, Lord, How I serve You

   with great emotional fervor in the limelight.

   You know how eagerly I speak for You at a Women's Club.

   You know my genuine enthusiasm at a Bible study.

   But how would I react, I wonder,

   if You pointed to a basin of water

   and asked me to wash the calloused feet

   of a bent and wrinkled old woman

   day after day, month after month,

   in a room where nobody saw and nobody knew?

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion,  2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.  3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.  4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: [6] (Philippians 2)

27 “But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.  29 If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic.  30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.  31 Do to others as you would have them do to you. 32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them.  33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ do that.  34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ lend to ‘sinners,’ expecting to be repaid in full.  35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.  36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. [7]

4.   Love is the measure of the worth of our spiritual activity.

It doesn’t matter what we can do in our own resourcefulness, the bottom line is that it is worthless unless it is springs from a love for God and a love for people.  Love is the measurement of the worth of our spiritual activity.  This is the point that Paul beats home in these 3 verses.

ð     It doesn’t matter how gifted you are. 

ð     It doesn’t matter how great your knowledge or how respected your office is. 

ð     It doesn’t matter how much you may be focused on humanitarian concerns – there is a vertical love that desires nothing more than to elevate the human condition or to alleviate suffering but the goal of that kind of love goes no further than that.  This is noble and the devotion that some people have to this cause shames the Christian church by times.  We who have a greater reason to love people, find license in our theology to walk past the needs of people.  I remember a line from an old Steve Camp song that said, “Don’t tell them that Jesus loves them until you’re ready to love them too.”

Christians do have ulterior motives though.  Paul said it this way:

Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience.  12 We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart.  13 If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you.  14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.  15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. (2 Corinthians 5)[8]

I would make that confession today. 

4912 συνέχω [sunecho /soon·ekh·o/] v. From 4862 and 2192; TDNT 7:877; TDNTA 1117; GK 5309; 12 occurrences; AV translates as “be taken with” three times, “throng” once, “straiten” once, “keep in” once, “hold” once, “stop” once, “press” once, “lie sick of” once, “constrain” once, and “be in a strait” once.  1 to hold together. 1a any whole, lest it fall to pieces or something  fall away from it. 2 to hold together with constraint, to compress. 2a to press together with the hand. 2a to hold one’s ears, to shut the heavens that it may not rain. 2b to press on every side. 2b1 of a besieged city. 2b2 of a strait, that forces a ship into a narrow channel. 2b3 of a cattle squeeze, that pushing in on each side, forcing the beast into a position where it cannot move so the farmer can administer medication. 3 to hold completely. 3a to hold fast. 3a1 of a prisoner. 3b metaph. 3b1 to be held by, closely occupied with any business. 3b2 in teaching the word. 3b3 to constrain, oppress, of ills laying hold of one and distressing him. 3b4 to be held with, afflicted with, suffering from. 3b5 to urge, impel. 3b51 of the soul.

[9]

The love that I feel for others is not resident in my life – it does not originate with me.  It is a driving force and it comes from God.  It gives me no choice but to love as I have been loved for Christ’s sake.  I love first and foremost because I have been loved first and foremost by God.  I forgive because I am forever aware of how much I have been forgiven.  The person who holds grudges or is given to bitterness or who feels that an apology is the precedent for forgiveness, has forgotten how much they have been forgiven or they have never been forgiven.  I choose to listen to people because God has heard my cry.  I refuse to judge because I have not been judged by God or condemned by Him.  I will never take that seat with people who are blindly groping to find the answer.  If Jesus loved people who thought they were doing God a favor by crucifying them then I will never settle for less than that nor will I preach a lower standard and I would tell you today without qualification that you cannot possibly please God without a commitment to  love people as Jesus did.  I’ll beat on this drum and wear out several skins over the space of my lifetime.  It is love that changes people and it needs to be clothed in flesh – that’s why Jesus came to planet earth – to show us how to be love incarnate.  He left this world and commissioned us to walk in love as He did – to take up that same cross and to carry it in the face of opposition, misunderstanding, persecution and death itself. 

The love of Christ seeks to lift people – not merely to cure them and to bring about an ability for them to function in this world but to transform and change them into something that they were not and never could be on their own.  So if I am a Christian and I am a humanitarian, I seek to alleviate suffering in the body so that I earn the right to speak to these people of spiritual wellness.  It is the vertical element in God’s love that causes people to look upward.

This for me is the hill that I will gladly die on.  I have often said that if I could do one thing for my children while they were at home with me, I would teach them that they are loved and cherished by God and that He desires to know their love as well.  Yes I have ulterior motives.  If I have loved you, it is because I want you to know God’s love.  I want you to hunger for it and to experience it fully.  Why?  Because it has made such a difference in my own life

5.   The exercise and demonstration of love will build the church more effectively than anything else.  Conversely the absence of a clear demonstration of love nullifies the effectiveness of anything that we might accomplish

ð     Acts of righteousness

ð     The witness of works

ð     The testimony of internal love

----

 a Or languages

 b Some early manuscripts body that I may boast

[1]The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (electronic ed.) (1 Co 13:1-3). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

[2]Richards, L. O. (1987; Published in electronic form by Logos Research Systems, 1996). The teacher's commentary (electronic ed.) (1 Co 12:1). Wheaton: Victor Books.

 a Or languages

[3]The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (electronic ed.) (1 Co 13:1-3). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

[4]The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (electronic ed.) (1 Jn 5:1-3). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

[5]The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (electronic ed.) (2 Jn 5-11). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

[6]The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (electronic ed.) (Php 2:1-5). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

[7]The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (electronic ed.) (Lk 6:27-36). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

[8]The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (electronic ed.) (2 Co 5:11-15). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

v v: verb

TDNT Theological Dictionary of the New Testament

TDNTA Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume

GK Goodrick-Kohlenberger

AV Authorized Version

[9]Strong, J. (1996). The exhaustive concordance of the Bible : Showing every word of the test of the common English version of the canonical books, and every occurence of each word in regular order. (electronic ed.). Ontario: Woodside Bible Fellowship.