Fifth Sunday of Easter

Selfless Love Marches Victorious over Self-glorification

GOAL: Understand the surprising value of Love as God bestows it, and practice it.

MALADY: We emotionalize love, which makes it subject to our unreliable feelings.

MEANS: The means to the goal is the carefully considered understanding of the fullness of love and how we love because He first loved us.

“O God, you form the minds of your people into a single will. Make us love what you command and desire what you promise, that among the many changes of this world, our hearts my always yearn for the lasting joys of heaven...”

The Words of this “love chapter” are both amazing and surprising, worthy of more than an inscription on a wall plaque or a reading at a wedding. Love is part of God’s nature and the enduring quality that is most to describe His people.

If anything is the defining mark of Christians, it is not the specific gifts that they do or do not possess. Rather, it is the love at work as they put those gifts into practice. Without love, as person can have all the gifts in the world and it would still amount to nothing (1 Cor 13:1-3). Just as Jesus had told his disciples, love is the mark of the Christian more than anything else.

If we, by the Holy Spirit’s guiding, truly let Him speak to us by this text, we will learn the “Surprising Value of Love.”

It Gives Meaning to the Christian Life

Nothing, not even spiritual gifts have any meaning without love.

The ability to speak in tongues is useless and has no value without love.

The gift of prophecy or preaching, and the ability to understand things have no point without love.

No heroic act of service does any good without love (1 Cor 13:7)

Generosity, as commendable as it may seem, accomplishes nothing without love.

Surrounding oneself in martyrdom does not mean anything without love.

It Defines the Christian Faith

Believing in Jesus has no lasting value without love (1 Cor 13:2)

Believing in Jesus is defined in a visible, dramatic way by Christians who love as their Savior loves.

It Completes the Christian Hope

Spiritual maturity increases as genuine love increases and leads to hope for the life to come (1 Cor 13:9-12)

In love we grow in confidence

In love we see more clearly (1 Cor 13:12)

Full understanding based on abiding love is our sure hope that will not disappoint us.

Perhaps it seems surprising that Paul would rank love above the essential qualities of faith and hope. Yet the value of love is always surprising as it lends meaning to the Christian life, faith, and hope. It is “the tie that binds,” the Divine quality that lasts forever.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.