The Greatest Spiritual Gift

Baby Love

Sometimes Google does stuff like this to me. Little buzz on my phone and “This day 13 years ago.” That will mess me up… all day.

I can’t handle the out-pour of emotion, the swell of love I have for my babies. It literally leaks out of me. I’m… leaking!

I remember nights spent sleepless, holding them, rocking them, and they’re crying or freaking out… but I don’t care. Or rather, I do, it feels like torture… but I will bear it and endure it because I just love them so stinkin’ much.

But they didn’t love me back the way I loved them. Not back then. They weren’t thinking of my sleep. Or hygiene as fluids shoot out all over the place. Change the diaper, oh look, fountains! :D.

They were entirely obsessed with their own needs, hunger and thirst and sleep and comfort and play with me when I want, and limits are lame, until I get hurt and then why did you let me do that!

They didn’t love me in return like I loved them.

and you know what else? They still don’t! We have a household of wonderful children. But they are 16, 13, 11, 10, and 8. And sometimes… they act like it. Each age has it’s expected mix of rude and selfish and just mean… angry, grumpy, surly, nasty, impatient. Hurtful to one another and hurtful to me and to KK.

The Greatest Spiritual Gift

All of these different varied spiritual gifts. With more to come, we haven’t dived into Prophecy or Tongues yet… because Paul doesn’t yet. He wants to make sure we understand the greatest one first and foremost.

The greatest spiritual gift… the first and foremost. Just as it is the greatest spiritual fruit. Those aren’t mutually exclusive metaphors, they are glimpses into what and how and who the Holy Spirit is...

The greatest spiritual gift is love. It is the space in which all other gifts are practiced.

and yet… it is unattainable. We are like infants, we can’t even comprehend love like this.

First, hear past all the familiar words. Hear the beautiful picture of love… and how do we measure up to this kind of love??? To help us hear it anew, I’ll read from the Message:

1 Corinthians 13 The Message

1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 2 If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. 3 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love. 4 Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, 5 Doesn’t force itself on others, Isn’t always “me first,” Doesn’t fly off the handle, Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, 6 Doesn’t revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, 7 Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end. 8 Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. 9 We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. 10 But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled. 11 When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good. 12 We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! 13 But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

That is absolutely beautiful. We long for it.

Is anyone out there hearing those words and thinking “Oh, that sounds like me!?” “That’s the way I love people!”

This is such a beautiful picture of love, you have atheists reciting this at their weddings, husband and wife aspire to love like this… and yet this isn’t Paul calling even husbands and wives to love like this. He is calling you and I to love each other like this. He wants me to love you like this.

I like you, I’m getting to know you, but we aren’t there yet!

Why would Paul put something so unattainable before us!? And how did Paul even know this kind of love to describe something like this? Where had he seen it?

Where did Paul learn love like this?

He came to know and to believe the love that God had for him.

John, who also came to know and believe the love God had for him… so much that what does he constantly call himself? “The disciple Jesus loved.” He claims that title instead of his own name, in place of his name. “JESUS loves me!!!”

John writes:

1 John 4:16–19 ESV

16 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. 17 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. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us.

How do we get to this kind of love? We’ll talk about applying this to one another in a couple weeks. We will. But this is an absolute prerequisite.

We have to come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.

Because this kind of love, agape love, 1 Corinthians 13 kind of love, it isn’t something that God does. It is something that God is.

This love is perfected within us...

And we love because He first loved us.

So you and I need to hear. Again and again. Over and over and over again. In new ways and in old ways, with new words and the same treasured words...

“Yes!!!! Jesus loves you!” Yes, God loves you. He knows you, he sees you, he LOVES you!

So we are going to walk, devotionally, through the heart of 1 Corinthians 13. This isn’t about a wedding. This isn’t about the bride and groom. And for today, this isn’t even about your brother or sister in Christ.

This is about God, your Creator, your Savior, your Redeemer, with us here Holy Spirit… this is about God, Yahweh, and you.

1 Corinthians 13:4–8 (ESV)

4 Love is patient

Thank God, He is patient with you. How many times have you messed up? How many times have you forgotten Him? How many times have you walked away?

How long have you been away from Him?

He is patient. The father waiting at the gate for His prodigal son to come home. Patiently, day after day…

and love is kind;

The kindness of God towards you. I know it doesn’t always feel like kindness, because life isn’t always easy. Maybe your life isn’t even often easy.

The word there is also “merciful”. The God who gives you another day, another breath, beauty and eyes to see it, music and ears to hear it, love and life and people to share it.

Kindness beyond all deserving.

love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude

What is this? When we know God is a jealous God… and God demands our worship...

But that isn’t arrogance or rudeness, it is not boastfulness. It is inviting us into truth, it is self-revelation. God declaring Himself worthy of worship is like me wearing a name tag… it’s just who He is.

But here is the real mystery, the most tremendous act of humility in all Creation, that which makes it possible for us to learn to truly and freely love Him in return. God gives us free will, and it looks like this:

5 It does not insist on its own way;

Does God insist on His own way?

You might think so. Because He teaches us His way, and declares Himself the Lord… and He promises there will come a day when every knee will bow confess that He is Lord.

But the fact that you can ponder that, think that, question that… isn’t that space God has made for you? Isn’t that absolutely miraculous? God loves you and Created you so that you could learn to love Him in return. To discover Him… to learn His ways, His heart, His person, His love. He pursues you.

Love is not irritable or resentful;

God isn’t irritated by you… or with you. He doesn’t mind the same prayer for the thousandth time… if that’s the prayer of your heart. He hears it. Even your fake prayers, He knows their fake, smoke and noise to fool others or even to fool yourself, but He isn’t fooled and He isn’t irritated. He’ll keep on loving you, patiently waiting for you to bring the real and the raw. He sees you. He knows you.

He isn’t resentful.

That word “resentful” you have heard “keeps record of wrongs.”

Does God know all your sins? Yes. But isn’t this everything that Jesus did, carrying those sins to the cross and to death that they may be wiped away and destroyed forever. What happened to the record of wrongs. Forever gone, destroyed, that’s what the love of God did for you.

6 Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

We hear the “wrath of God” and picture God angry with us, at us, because we are so bad. Maybe even rejoicing a bit when we do wrong because it proves Him right all over again and He gets to bring justice.

You only get “wrath” on behalf of someone you absolutely love. You attack a stranger and I’ll be upset. You hurt my kids and you’ll see my wrath. God’s “wrath” is to defend from wrongdoing. Even our own. Especially our own!

He doesn’t rejoice at wrongdoing, He seeks everywhere to FREE us from it, because that’s how much He loves us… and OOOOH how He rejoices when we bring honesty to him.

In confession.

In repentance.

Because that’s where all the healing starts. Because now He can give us all the best stuff. The forgiveness, the healing, the restoration.

7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love bears all things. “Endures”. And Jesus literally endured it all, bore it all for you. All the death. All of it. All the sin. All of it. All the abuse, all the hurt, all the grief, all the loss, all of it. Bore it for you so you don’t have to hold it anymore. God’s love says to you, lay down all your burdens, I’ve already born them on the cross.

And His love believes all things. That is, he believes in you. That’s why you exist, by the way. That’s why you continue to exist. The belief of God is such that it Creates and Sustains. God believes in you...

And He hopes in you, for you, He hopes all things. Not in a wishful kind of way. He sees the beginning and the end, His hope creates your future. He looks at you and sees and knows you fully as you are… and He sees you fully as you will be. When you are hopeless, God hopes for you, God hopes in you, not guessing but seeing your more preferable future.

And so He endures with you. All things. Not just on the cross, but now with you in the hard. With you in the gross. With you in the hurt.

8 Love never ends.

Love never fails.

Love never dies.

Or as NASB says, love never fails. Or from the Message, love never dies. God’s love for you… it’s never going to end. Nothing, not death, nor life, nor angels or rulers, nor things present or things to come, no powers, no height, no depth or anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

That’s how He loves me!

That’s how He loves you!

There’s nothing you did to earn it. To deserve it. He just loves you… and He always will.

You can forget everything else that we say and hear this. God loves you. God loves you.

Jesus loves you, this I know… for the Bible tells me so.

For I have known His love for me.

For I sometimes get to experience just a glimpse, a touch, a piece of His love for you.

Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God.