Sermon Tone Analysis

TEXT:  1 Corinthians 13

TOPIC:  The Greatest Christian Virtue

Pastor Bobby Earls, First Baptist Church, Center Point, Alabama

Sunday Morning, February 12, 2006

 

/1//Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.

2And 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, but have not love, I am nothing.

3And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

4Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8Love never fails.

But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away.

9For we know in part and we prophesy in part.

10But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.

11When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face.

Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

13And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love./

First Corinthians 13 is called the /love/ chapter of the Bible.

Many men have attempted to give an exposition of it.

Personally, I have preached on it only once or twice in my ministry.

It is one of those Bible passages that pass beyond my comprehension and capability.

In 1884 Henry Drummond wrote a very brilliant essay entitled, /The Greatest Thing in the World/.

It is to that great thing of which Dr. Drummond wrote, the greatest subject, what I am calling today, the greatest Christian virtue to which we turn our attention this morning.

It is the subject of love.

And who can understand it?

Who can explain it?

Yet it is appropriate that we make a feeble attempt on this month of love, this weekend of love.

The word /charity,/ which is used throughout this chapter, should be translated into our simple word “/love/.”

The Vulgate, which is the Latin translation of the Bible and Wycliffe’s English translation, used the word /charity,/ and this word was carried over into the King James Version.

The Greek word is /agape//,/ which is properly translated /love/.

You will not find a definition of love in this chapter.

Sometimes definitions are destructive.

To try to define love would actually be a very serious violation of this chapter.

When you try to define a rose, you can read the description of a rose that botany provides, but that definition doesn’t picture a rose like I know a rose to be.

Or have you ever had anyone describe a sunset for you?

I remember one beautiful evening while Penny and I were staying in a lovely hotel with a rather remarkable view that looked out across the Tampa Bay there in Tampa, Florida, and watching the sun melt in the rich darkness and velvet waters of Tampa Bay.

It was such a marvelous display of God’s creation.

I wish I could properly describe it for you, but I cannot.

This 13th chapter of Corinthians gives to us another indescribable /display, a display/ of God’s great love.

There are three words in the Greek language of which the NT was first written, that are often translated into our English word “love.”

There is the word /eros/.

That is the word for passion, the word used for lust.

It is used of Aphrodite and Eros, or Venus and Cupid as we more commonly know them.

This word does not occur in the New Testament at all.

Then there is the word /phileo//,/ which means “affection.”

We find its root in our words /Philadelphia/ and /philanthropist/.

It means love for one’s fellow man, or brotherly love, a noble kind of love.

The third word is /agapao/ and is the highest word for love in the New Testament and is always used to refer to God’s “divine love.”

It is more than love in the emotion sense; it is love in the will.

It is love that chooses its object.

It is selfless love, sacrificial love that thinks only of another.

It is a definition of God, for God is love.

It is this kind of love that is described for us here in this chapter.

It is the love of God.

The kind of love that each of us a Christians are compelled to emulate.

It is the Greatest Christian virtue.

The outline of today’s message follows thusly, first, the preeminence of love—its value, in the first three verses.

*I.

**THE PREEMINENCE OF LOVE-ITS VALUE, 1 Corinthians 13:1-3*

/…but have not love, I have become sounding brass or clanging cymbal, /v.1

I am sure the tongues of angels means eloquence.

I have never heard an angel speak, but I sure when they speak it is with perfect eloquence.

This verse tells us that the most marvelous eloquence without love is nothing in the world but a noisy clang.

Someone has said: “Language without love is noise without melody.”

Another says it like this: “Chatter without charity is sound without soul.”

You can sing like a seraph, but without love it is nothing but the hiss of hell.

Love gives meaning and depth and reality, and it makes eloquence meaningful.

Oh the preeminence of love, its value is beyond compare.

/ /

/ /

/…but have not love, I am nothing, /v.

2

 

Knowledge alone is not sufficient.

Love must be added to that knowledge.

Understanding alone is not enough.

Love must be added to that understanding.

Faith alone is not enough.

You must have faith added to your faith.

I feel this is the sad plight of Bible-believing churches in our day.

There is a knowledge of the Bible and an understanding of the truths of the Bible, and even faith in the Bible, but a lack of love.

/…but have not love, it profits me nothing, /v. 3

* *

Look at it this way: Write down a string of zeros—eloquence alone is zero, prophecy alone is zero, knowledge alone is zero, faith alone is zero, sacrifice alone is zero, martyrdom alone is zero.

Six zeros still add up to nothing.

But you put the numeral 1 to the left of that string of zeros, and every zero amounts to something.

And, friend, love is the thing that needs to be added to every gift of the Spirit.

Without love your gift is worthless.

* *

*II.

**THE PREROGATIVE OF LOVE-ITS VIRTUE, 1 Corinthians 13:4-7*

/…love suffers long—is patient and kind; /

/ /

“Love suffers long,” means it is patient and kind.

Love is impossible without kindness.

Love without kindness is like springtime without flowers, like a day without sunshine.

That’s why the Apostle Paul admonished, “be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Eph.

4:32).

This is the positive side.

Now notice the negative side.

* *

/“Love does not envy.”/

This means that love is content with what is.

We all know that life is filled with inequality.

Some men are rich, and I hear Christians say, “Why did God bless that man with so much wealth and not give me some?” Love recognizes that there are inequalities, and love is satisfied with its lot.

Remember that the very first murder, when Cain slew Abel, was prompted by envy.

Bacon said that envy “is a vile affection and its most depraved of any thing.”

/…love does not parade itself.

/The KJV says, /“vaunteth not itself”/

/ /

There is something terribly ugly about pride and arrogance.