What is Love (Don't Hurt Me)
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1 Corinthians 13:1-8
1 Corinthians 13:1-8
-Happy Valentines Day Church
-Thank Sonya Helms, Dave Ashford, Matt Price, Sandra Price
-Ignite Kidz is back
-Sunday School is back
If I were to ask you, “What is love?” what would your answer be? Would you answer with stories of tough love fraught with discipline, or would it be more graceful like that of a mothers love. If asked, some of us would describe it as feeling sunken into the depths of our hearts long ago. Love is a subject that every language has multiple words for. But how would you define love?
What has the world taught us about love? When you turn on Netflix, does the world do a decent job at educating you on love, or rather a thorough job at entertaining you with a cheap imitation? I googled “best TV shows about love” and was taken aback by the perversion. Dating and hook-up shows that pawn lust masqueraded as love - and call it reality. Do you wonder why our divorce rate is so high? We have been fed a lie.
We live in a world that hypocritically proclaims that you should “love yourself!” What do I mean by hypocritically? Well you should love yourself… unless you are a 16 year old girl who thinks she should actually be a boy. Don’t love yourself - change yourself. No - mutilate yourself. Bring your body under the surgeons blade and scare yourself. Friend, we are being fed a lie!
Love has been twisted into an emotional decision, based on the ebs and flows in our lives. But I’m here to tell you this morning that love is not based on emotion or experience. It is not a fairytale feeling that Disney has sold you on.
Love is not something bought or bargained for. Love isn’t divine luck or appointed grace. Let’s examine the Word of God and discover how He defines “love.” The narrative of scripture tells us two truths. Love is received. Love is given.
Take your copy of God’s Word this morning, and turn with me to 1 Corinthians 13:
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
Paul, writing a letter to the church that was in Corinth, begins this passage with some hypothetical possibilities. The tongues of men and of angels refers to more than just eloquence of speech. Tongues of men is a reference to the culmination of human languages, and the tongues of angels probably is a reference to speaking in tongues. Nevertheless, Paul speaking by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, explains that we can have master all of speech in heaven and earth, we can mystify and manipulate the masses with our mannerisms - but if spoken without charity, love, - it is as a sounding brass (gong) or tinkling cymbals. Paul is making two statements:
First, Sunday School lessons, sermons, devotionals, counseling sessions, etc. done without love are done in vain. Just like a toddler placed in front of a drum set and given a set of drumsticks, when we open our mouth without love it is just noise in the wind.
Second, “Gongs” and “cymbals” were used pervasively in that day along with pagan and idol worship. We can be very busy serving The Lord - but service without love produces pharisaical idolatry.
The best speech of earth or heaven, without love, is only noise. Paul continues in verse 2:
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
Paul moves from speech to knowledge. We can have all the knowledge in the world, but without love, it is nothing. We can spend our whole life searching for answers to mysteries and conundrums, but without love, it will amount to nothing. You can even be so strong in your faith that they manifest before your eyes in the form of miracles - but to do anything without love - adds up to nothing. Paul is stressing that we can be talented and gifted as Christians. We can have the gift of tongues and of prophecy. We can have have impressive speech and all knowledge. We can maintain the highest and most important of gifts, and in full amount, but to lack love, they are not that important - they are nothing. Keep reading with me in verse 3:
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
The author continues climatically and goes so far to say that we can be sacrificial in our deeds and give away all that we have to the poor. Sacrificing not just possessions, but ultimately life and limb - but it will profit you nothing without love. Love is the one thing needful. Nothing can make up for it’s lack.
Friend, we have established that we need love. More than wise words or miraculous miracles. But we still have not answered the question, “What is love?”
Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
As you have seen a man of science take a beam of light and pass it through a crystal prism, as you have seen it come out on the other side of the prism broken up into its component colors—red, blue, yellow, violet, orange, and all the colors of the rainbow—so Paul passes this thing, love, through the magnificent prism of his inspired intellect, and it come out on the other side broken up into its elements.
While love may be difficult to define; it is not difficult to discern. Paul attempts no definition, analysis, or description; he pictures love in action. He shows what it does and feels, and what it refrains from doing. He records the ways in which it manifests itself.
Charity suffereth long and is kind. That is to say, love is patient in the midst of suffering, and is kind to those who treat her ill. Long-suffering is loves passive response - kindness is its active initiative.
Love reacts with goodness towards those who ill-treat it; it gives itself in kindness in the service of others.
Paul followed the two positive expressions of love with seven verbs that indicate how it does not behave. The first five of these typified the Corinthians:
They were envious or "jealous",
Love is not displeased at the success of others.
“vaunteth not” or boastful,
proud or "puffed up",
Love is concerned to give itself, not to assert itself.
rude or acting "unseemly" and
self-seeking or seeking their "own" interest. Their behavior was not loving.
"Love" does not deal with other people in a way that injures their dignity. It does not insist on having its own way ("seeketh not her own"), nor does it put its own interests before the needs of others. It is not irritable or touchy ("not provoked"), but it absorbs offenses, insults, and inconveniences for the sake of others' welfare. It does not keep a record of offenses received ("thinketh no evil") to pay them back.
Love takes no account for evil. It does not harbour a sense of injury. One of the greatest arts a Christian can master is that of forgetfulness: I forget the ways others have wronged me when I remember the ways I have wronged God.
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
It is all too characteristic of human nature to take pleasure in the misfortunes of others. Turn on the news and feast your eyes on the carnage that is humanity. Scroll through facebook and delight for hours reading endless gossip and judge your fellow man. We enjoy disgust so much that we would be furious if we were to be deprived of it.
1 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary 3. In Praise of Love (13:1–13)
But love is not like that. Love takes no joy in evil of any kind. Rather it rejoices with the truth. Love shares truth’s joy; it cannot rejoice when the truth is denied. There is a stern moral undertone throughout the New Testament, and nothing is ever said to obscure this. Love must not be thought of as indifferent to moral considerations. It must see truth victorious if it is to rejoice. Truth is often connected with the heart of Christianity (cf. Jesus’ words, ‘I am … the truth’, John 14:6; and Paul’s words, ‘as truth is in Jesus’, Eph. 4:21). Truth is set over against unrighteousness a number of times (e.g. 2 Thess. 2:10, 12), and we should probably understand this wide usage here. Love rejoices in the truth of God, in the truth of the gospel (cf. John 8:56).
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
Love covers unworthy things, rather than bringing them to the light and magnifying them (cf. 1 Pet. 4:8). It puts up with everything ("bears all things"). It is always eager to believe the best ("believes all things," not suspicious or distrustful) and to "put the most favorable construction on ambiguous actions.
This does not mean ... that a Christian is to allow himself to be fooled by every rogue, or to pretend that he believes that white is black. But in doubtful cases he will prefer being too generous in his conclusions to suspecting another unjustly. Love ever is ready to make excuses for others; it throws a kindly mantle over all their faults. Love is hopeful that those who have failed will not fail again ("hopes all things"), rather than concluding that failure is inevitable (cf. Matt. 18:22). It does not allow itself to become overwhelmed but perseveres steadfastly through difficult trials ("endures all things").
And lastly the Bible says in:
Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
"Prophecies" are messages from God, but when we stand before Him and hear His voice, there will be no more need for prophets to relay His words to us. Likewise, when we stand before God, there will be no need to speak in other languages ("tongues"), since we will all understand God when He speaks. The knowledge that is so important to us now, will be irrelevant then, because when we are in God's presence we will know it perfectly. But Love is permanent. It never fails. Good things will cease but love never will.
What is love? Illustration:
Many years ago, before the sensitive and politically correct society in which we live today, there was a boy who was continually in trouble. He was forever breaking the rules and always getting into trouble at school. His father could not understand why. He provided for him in every way with a good home, he spent time with him fishing and going to his ballgames, and he showered him with his unconditional love, but the father just couldn’t figure out why the boy wouldn’t mind? He had been raised in the church and had even been in Sunday school for five years. His father was consistently reading the Bible to him and his father had never provoked him to anger. His son’s behavior was a mystery to him.
One day when his son was upstairs playing around with his baseball, which he’d been told repeatedly not to do, he ended up breaking one of his bedroom windows. The boy was ten year’s old and certainly knew better because his father had told him time and again to not play ball in the house. The father headed upstairs and took off his belt. The boy knew what was coming so he voluntarily bent over and kneeled next to his bed but the father said, “Son, here, take this belt” which his son did.
Then his father took off his shirt and kneeled down on the bed and said: “Son, I want you to give me seven lashes with this belt across my back.” His son started to cry and said that he couldn’t do it. His father kept insisting until the son finally relented and started hitting his father across the back with the belt but it wasn’t hard enough.
He said, “Harder son, harder!” When the boy finally lashed the belt across his father’s back seven times with greater force the father asked him “Son, do you know why I had you do this?” The son said “No.” The father said, “When Jesus went to the cross for us, He took the worst punishment that has ever been inflicted upon any man. He was pummeled, He was beaten, His beard was plucked out, and He was punished like no one has ever been punished.
Who do you really think did this to Jesus?” The boy, still whimpering, hesitated and finally said he thought it was the Jews or the Romans but the boy’s father said, “No, it was God the Father who punished Jesus for everything that we have ever done wrong and or will ever do wrong in the future (Isaiah 52:14-15; 53:1-12). He took the punishment that He didn’t deserve to save those who didn’t deserve saving. That is how much the Father and Jesus loved us” (John 3:16). It was God’s love most gloriously displayed for us who deserved actually His wrath.
The boy was shaken deeply by this lesson and from that day forward, the boy never seemed to get into the same amount of trouble again…not perfect but changed.
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What has become so evident to me over the years is that love is better understood not when it is taught, but rather when it is caught.
We love him, because he first loved us.
We have the capacity to love others out of Christ’s abundant love for us. Christ loves you. He loves you so much he gave his very life or you. He suffered great pain for you. He was mocked and betrayed all for love. This Valentines Day I would like us to remember our first love, the Lord Jesus Christ. May today serve as an eternal reminder of our calling to love God and to love others. Not with a love that is perverted or worldly. But that of an agape love - one that is unconditional.
