The Greatness Of Love

Transcript

Good morning, family. Well, this morning we continue in our series entitled Portland Pastors We Pray For. And for those of you who don’t know, Brian Winchester, he is a pastor at Saving Grace Church in Milwaukee, Oregon, which is just, you know, a little outside of Portland, but we still consider it Portland. Saving Grace is a church, it’s a sister church, actually, of Trinity Church. In fact, just a little under five years ago, Brian was sent from this church with about 30 or so people to revitalize that church in Milwaukee, Oregon. Brian is a wonderful pastor who cares deeply for his congregation, a man that I very much look up to and am very proud of. And so it is a pleasure and a delight for us to invite him to be our guest preacher this morning. Brian, why don’t you come up and I’ll pray for you.

Father, we do thank you for Brian and for his ministry in Portland. We pray, O Lord and God, that you would continue to increase his ministry fruitfulness through his ministry at Saving Grace Church. May you continue to use that church to be a lighthouse in our very dark city. Father, we pray this morning that you would empower Brian, through your Holy Spirit, to preach to us in a way that challenges us and makes us more into the image of Jesus. And Father, as we hear him open up your word, may we joyfully submit under the authority of your word. May we hear your very words to us this morning through his preaching. We pray these things in Christ’s name. Amen. My experience being here this morning is just one of recognizing a very gracious congregation. So everything, the way in which the word has been ministered, the way in which the songs have been sung,

it has all been received as a grace from God. So I thank you for that. If you brought a Bible with you, would you please turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 13. One of the things Thomas asked me in considering to come and preach is just, well, what has God been teaching you? And I was compelled to revisit this passage. Many challenges that we face in our churches are often misdiagnosed. We look to the issues of our day as scapegoats to explain away the hostility that we see and feel among believers. And in all the difficulties that the last two years have presented, the thing that has grieved me the most is seeing brothers and sisters treat one another in unloving manners that are not befitting of Christians. And so if we want to get at the root, what’s really tearing us up? The answer so often is a lack of Christian love.

The Root Problem

And thankfully, in God’s word, we were given 1 Corinthians 13 to paint for us a portrait of what love is, what it is like, so that we would esteem it correctly. So I’ll begin just by reading the passage, 1 Corinthians 13. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful.

It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three. But the greatest of these is love. God’s word. Amen. Well, the Corinthian church is notorious for their many divisions.

In chapter 12, we learn that they were arguing about spiritual gifts. And in summary, Paul tells them, there is a variety of spiritual gifts, just like there are many parts in a body. All believers do not have the same spiritual gifts, but all spiritual gifts are empowered by the same Holy Spirit. And the Spirit gives these gifts, not so that we could esteem ourselves more highly than we ought to, but rather these gifts are given for the common good, for the purpose of building up the body of Christ in love. So strange how a gift from God intended for the building up could be at the center of divisions among God’s people. And so Paul tells the Corinthians, your problem is not a lack of giftedness. While the church was eager to excel in their gifts, what they really lacked was love. What they needed to grow in was love.

And so Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13 to convince them of the greatness of love so that they might pursue it. And we see the greatness of love by the way in which it’s framed by the verses that surround chapter 13. Chapter 12 ends in verse 31, saying, But earnestly desire the higher gifts, and I will show you a still more excellent way. And that more excellent way, that greatest way, is the way of love. And then after teaching them about the way of love in 1 Corinthians 13, then he begins chapter 14 saying, Pursue love. In verse 1 there of chapter 14, pursue love. Yes, desire the gifts that most edify the church, but more so than pursuing the gifts, pursue love. And that’s the main point we’ll consider from this text. Dear Saints of Trinity Church, pursue love, for it is the greatest Christian virtue.

Love Is Essential

Pursue love, for it is the greatest Christian virtue. And we’ll walk through 1 Corinthians 13 as follows, with three points. One, Christian love is essential, in verses 1 to 3. Point two, Christian love exemplified, verses 4 through 7. And then Christian love is eternal, point three, in verses 8 through 13. The greatness of love, it’s not something that’s hotly debated. As members of a gospel preaching church, the context of our relationship with one another is a shared experience of receiving God’s love in Jesus Christ. And Jesus taught his followers about the greatness of love, in all kinds of relationships, like how are we to relate with God? Well, the greatest commandment, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. Or what about how we relate with our neighbors? Well, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Or what about how we relate with the church? Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. Or what about how we relate with our enemies? Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you. In a community where Jesus is proclaimed as preeminent, love must be prevalent, a defining characteristic of God’s people. This is the Lord’s teaching. And there’s nothing controversial about promoting love, but if you press in, not all people agree on what love is. Some definitions of love are shallow, and some are outright sinful. The people of the world might like to think of themselves as loving, but their love is misdirected. We’re told in the Gospel of John that though Jesus came as the light of the world, the people of this world love the darkness rather than the light, because their works are evil.

So there are things that we can love that we ought not to love. This is why 1 John exhorts us as believers, do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, and the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. And so as the church, we need reminders of what love is according to the Bible, because we can get confused and mixed up. And so praise God for giving us 1 Corinthians 13. We can come to this passage saying, teach us Lord for we are your servants. And so our first point coming from the first paragraph,

Christian love is essential. And in these first three verses, Paul speaks in such a way to exaggerate. He says, pretend I have the greatest gifts you could imagine. Without love, I’m nothing. Verse 1, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. To speak in tongues is to speak in a language, and this becomes a spiritual gift when one speaks in a tongue they have never studied or learned. And Paul adds tongues of angels saying, even if my dialect was angelic, without love, I am nothing more than an unpleasant sound ringing in the ear. No supernatural speaking gifts can compensate for a lack of love. Verse 2, and if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

To have these prophetic powers is to know and declare the mind, will, or knowledge of God. Paul says earlier in this letter that the apostles are stewards of the mysteries of God, meaning God revealed to them previously unknown things, things that the prophets of old longed to see. And their responsibility, the apostles, was to make these mysteries known to others. And that’s why we have our New Testament now in our Bible. But Paul says to have that stewardship without love would make him nothing. Even a person with great understanding, who has insight into divine truth, and the ability to explain it to others, without love, that person is nothing. My thinking about preaching has changed a lot over the years. Coming from a musical background, it was easy to see the correlation between the performance of a musical song and performance in the pulpit. I’ve just become convinced the elders of local churches are not men who perform in pulpits.

Yes, they must be able to teach God’s Word, but they must also be men of godly character, models of Christian love who live among the people that they serve. And no amount of giftedness can make up for a lack of love. The mention of faith to remove mountains reminds us of Jesus’ teaching. If I have faith like a grain of mustard seed, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it will move. And one might argue, how could someone have faith yet be nothing? But this might highlight the difference between saving faith and the gift of faith, or the ability to accomplish great feats. I mean, Jesus also taught that some will say, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?

Did we not move mountains in your name? Yet Jesus replies, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. Those who enter the kingdom of heaven will not be those who perform mighty works, but those who do the will of God. Even the greatest spiritual gifts we can imagine, we are seeing from this passage, they are worthless without love. Then we come to verse three. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Here we see extreme examples of generosity and self-sacrifice. Someone could give away everything that they own. They could offer themselves as a martyr and yet gain nothing before God for their efforts. And it has us asking, why would someone do these things if they were not motivated by love? But friends, there are a lot of reasons. People will do extreme things to prove a point or to try and play the role of a savior

or because of their pride for self-glory. In Paul’s words saying, I am nothing, I gain nothing, what he’s getting at is that these things would be of no benefit to my soul without love. Every spiritual gift and act of service is worthless without love. And the point is not to belittle the gifts or acts of service, but rather to show the context in which they can thrive. Friends, sometimes we can find ourselves either boasting in the gifts we have or despairing of the gifts we don’t have. But whatever gift you have, the church needs your love more than it needs your gifts. I want you to be convinced of that. The church needs your love more than it needs your gifts. And if you love the church, whatever gifts you have, they will find a way to give expression for the benefit of the people that you love.

Love the church and whatever gifts you have, they will rise up for the benefit of the body. But having a specific gift is not essential. Having love is what is essential. In fact, we hear these sobering words from 1 John 4 20-21. If anyone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. These are sobering words, but they’re given to help us to esteem love rightly, to pursue love, for it is the greatest Christian virtue. And if we are nothing without love, we’re left asking, well then, what is love like? What does it look like in practice? And verses 4-7 really help us to get a sense of that.

Love Exemplified

Often these words are recited at weddings. And certainly the Bible does teach that husbands should love their wives as Christ loves the church. But the love of Christ is not just a model for the way husbands love their wives, it’s also the model for the way in which believers love one another. And so Christian love is exemplified here for us in verses 4-7. And we see that love gives expression in our actions and attitudes towards others. And we get this list of things that love is, mainly that it is patient and kind, and then a list of a lot of things that love is not. And this is not an exhaustive list, but it helps fill in the picture. So starting with these two positive qualities in verse 4, love is patient and kind. It really struck me the more I just thought about it,

that of all the virtues that could come alongside love, patience and kindness are the two that Paul chooses. A lot of the divisions that we can experience among ourselves and believers, when they’re not divisions over false doctrine, but getting into the other realms of just our preferences, our opinions, our perspectives, we can find ourselves not patient with those who think differently than us, and therefore we are not kind towards them. Not patient with those who don’t know the things that we know, and therefore we are not kind towards them. But here we see these fruits of the Spirit lined up, that love is patient and kind. And it has me asking, like, patient in what way? And in particular, this is a patience that is forebearing, forebearing with others. The same kind of patience God has towards us. Our God who does not wish that we would perish, but rather that we would reach repentance.

And this kind of kindness, it’s not just a passive niceness, like a Walmart greeter kind of niceness. This is to be warm-hearted and gentle, sympathetic and merciful. Actively seeking the well-being of someone else, and not as an act of reciprocation, like, well, if you do it for me, then I’ll do it for you. Because again, God didn’t love us in that kind of manner. He loved us while we were still erring, while we were still sinners. He was patient with us, He was gentle as He led us in the truth. We see the patience and kindness of God, that He is patient with sinners and kind towards them. So much so that it can be said of God that He is rich in kindness and patience and forbearance. This begins to press in on us on things like matters of conscience, how we treat the weaker brother.

Paul says earlier in this letter that knowledge has a way of puffing up as to where love seeks to build up. That even a word of rebuke, it can either be spoken from a prideful posture, or from a posture that loves the one being rebuked and corrects them because it is seeking their good. We get this list now then of things that love does not do. And this list is things that destroy fellowship. Like Paul warns in Galatians, if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. And if you can hear my voice, I want you to receive these words not as a message for someone else, but pray that you would increase and abound in love, recognizing that to whatever degree we’ve grown in love, we are not done growing in it. We’re told that love does not envy.

So it’s not jealous of others. It’s not jealous of someone else’s gift or position or status. Do we desire having what someone else has because we want to build others up, or do we desire what they have because we want to be known for building others up? Love does not boast. We sang in the song, How Deep the Father’s Love, I will not boast in anything, no gifts, nor power, nor wisdom, but I will boast in Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection. This sentiment lines up very well with the passage. This idea of boasting or being arrogant, looking down on our fellow believers. We heard even in the call to worship of the fact that we are fellow heirs with Christ. So we should not regard one another according to the flesh, according to worldly status, according to what we think we can get from one another.

We regard one another according to what we’ve received from God and who we have been made in him because we have been made new. And so if we boast in anything, we boast in the cross of Christ. Verse five, it continues the thought, it’s not arrogant or rude. And that word is funny. That’s like the opposite of the Walmart greeter. We can think of it that way, but this is to treat people improperly, to speak of them without dignity. I mean, there are contexts where it becomes socially acceptable to treat others or speak of them in dishonorable ways, to speak down towards them. You’ll see whole entire threads in social media where one line of thinking will look at another line of thinking and just kind of laugh with one another about how idiotic other people are. But of course, we’re not idiotic ourselves, right?

Love does not insist on its own way. It’s not self-seeking or self-pleasing. And we get this paradigm that we see in the ministry of Paul. It’s a mindset that he carried out his ministry with, not just seeking our own good, but also the good of our neighbor. I’ve thought about these words a lot when Paul says earlier in the letter, give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God. Just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many that they may be saved. And then he adds this, be imitators of me as I am of Christ, who did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. It also reminds us of Paul’s instructions in Philippians when he says, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility,

count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. You see the kind of community that is intended to be created as we keep the gospel at the forefront. And we consider the Lord Jesus who came and humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross. We’re also told that love is not irritable. A few years back, I came across a quote from Tim Keller, where he says being easily offended is not a fruit of the spirit. It’s kind of one of those stingy one-liners, but you can find it that we can sometimes be easy to offend and hard to edify. And there’s something just backwards about that, that we would be easy to offend and hard to edify. And so in my own heart, I’ve been trying to cultivate this one.

I want to be easy to edify. I want to see God’s work in people’s lives. And rather than critiquing it and judging it as my first instinct, I want to see what is God doing in this person? How is God working through this person? How is God glorified in their life? So that I can see a brother putting some hot mud on some drywall and I can rejoice in his service rather than saying, yeah, but I wonder if he understands the passage that I just learned. Not this competitive spirit, but rather a spirit that wants God to receive all the glory that is due him for all the ways that his goodness is displayed in the lives of his people. We also read that love is not resentful. Other translations say it does not keep a record of wrongs. I think the point there is that love is ready to forgive.

And so in that idea of being easy to offend, love is actually ready to overlook offenses and to forgive offenses. Verse six, love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. And of course this means love does not celebrate wrong or evil, but on the other side, we see also that love is patient with sinners. So while we do not celebrate, endorse, or excuse sin, we also don’t take joy in pointing out the sins of others, especially as a means to maybe try and justify ourselves like the Pharisee with the tax collector. God, I thank you that I’m not like this tax collector. We’re on some unstable ground when we’re thinking like that, because we have no ground to stand on except the rock, which is Christ. We also see that love rejoices with the truth. There sometimes is a lot of debate about what is fact,

and we can get really caught up in who’s got the right facts, who’s got the right data. But when the Bible speaks of truth, it is going to be conformity to reality as defined by God. In fact, the gospel sometimes, one of the ways it’s referred to is as the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. And so again, when we think about the difference between just things that are true and what the truth is according to God, we’re letting the word of God set the priority for us in terms of how important we esteem things to be. And he ends then in this section on verse seven, love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And it’s an encouraging enough succession of phrases, but it’s one that I find myself looking at and sometimes wondering, okay, Paul, what are you getting at with this?

In the sense of bearing all things, it reminds me of in first Peter when it says love covers a multitude of sins. There’s also a proverb that says, whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends. So there’s a bearing with one another and a forgiving one another that is characteristic of love. When it says believes all things, certainly that doesn’t mean that love believes lies or even that love thinks the best about people, even when the evidence suggests otherwise. But the point here, it’s not that love is gullible. We are to be wise and discerning, but love believes always, which starts with our faith in God, that he is working out his plans even in the midst of a broken world. And so we can keep loving because we trust God will work it out. As Proverbs three verses five through six says,

trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding in all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths. And then continuing love hopes all things. And this is to say that we hope in God, that our hope doesn’t depend on the world or the people of the world. And so we keep loving even when people fail us, because we believe that God will not fail us. Much of our cynicism and the cynicism we see in our world, it comes from our lack of hope. Hope is not naive optimism, but it’s this well-informed expectation that our future belongs to God and that the future that he has promised is good. And that future is not threatened by the sins of men. And love endures all things. You get the sense that love is not wishy-washy, but it’s gritty and steadfast love endures through pain and suffering

through loneliness and loss. And in all this, we see that love is a deliberate choice. The call to love one another is not the call to just conjure up feelings of love, but rather to act in a loving manner. And the experience of being loved by God transforms us and teaches us how to love because the greatness of love is seen most fully in Jesus. We’re told in scripture that God so loved the world that he gave up his only son. And God shows his love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us and that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ. If that’s the kind of love we’ve received now, we are called to go out and reflect it in our lives. We actually heard this verse in our pardon. I didn’t know it was going to be in the pardon,

but I put it in my manuscript as well. So you get to hear it twice this morning. First John four verses seven through 12. But when we think about how essential love is, and when we think about love exemplified, love is chiefly exemplified in the saving work of Jesus Christ. And so those who have benefited from the love of God in Jesus Christ, those who have benefited from his saving work, there is a duty placed upon us as recipients of his love to now walk in that

love. And so first John four verses seven through 12 says this beloved those loved by God, let us love one another for love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love in this.

The love of God was made manifest among us. What is the greatest portrait of love? How has it seen most clearly that God sent his only son into the world that we might live through him in? This is love. Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. And this idea of him being the propitiation for our sins means that in our sin, we were under the righteous judgment of God. And under that righteous judgment, we were condemned in our sin. And so when Jesus died on the cross, he offered himself as a substitution. He stood in our place and that propitiation is he appeased God’s wrath. He satisfied justice so that when God looks at us who are now in Christ, he no longer sees us in our sin. Instead,

he sees us in his son beloved. If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. And so we see that the way that love is best exemplified is in the manner in which Jesus saves sinners like us. And he does this through his righteous life, through his substitutionary death and his victorious resurrection in such a way that we could say a cross-shaped love should characterize Christians. When we think of love, our minds should go to the cross and then that should be the lens through which we are viewing others through.

A verse that we do well to meditate on that also conveys, this is John 13 verses 34 to 35, where Jesus tells his disciples a new commandment. The new commandment I give to you that you love one another just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another by this. All people will know that you are my disciples. If you have love for one another. And so if you’re here and you, you have not trusted in Jesus and you want to know what God’s love is like, God’s love is made known to you this morning in the message of the gospel, in the message of Jesus coming and laying down his life on the cross to pay for our sins so that in him we might receive forgiveness. And if you’ve not received that love, it will be impossible for you to reflect that love.

If the greatest love is known in Jesus, in order to reflect that kind of love, we need to know Jesus ourselves. And so if you’ve not trusted in Jesus, I would to declare to you this morning, there is no higher love to be known than the love of God in Christ. Trust in him and be saved for us as a church. As those who have received God’s love, we now apply ourselves to reflecting God’s love with this knowledge that this idea of consumer Christianity, it’s a sham. This idea of just looking for a church to suit my needs and to suit my preferences. That is the entirely wrong mindset for me to walk into the assembly with. When you become a member of a local church, you are committing to love that body and to use all your resources and your gifts to help build it up in love.

And the love that we have for one another and the way that we serve one another in the body of Christ becomes a witness to the watching world because our love is sourced in a love that the world cannot know without knowing Jesus. And so we can reflect a greater kind of love than the world could hope to reflect because we’ve received that greater love and we are empowered by the Holy spirit to walk in it. And so while there’s no substitute for preaching the gospel

Love Is Eternal

We help the lost see the beauty of it by reflecting the love we’ve received. Our passage ends in verses eight through 13 where we see that Christian love is eternal. Beginning in verse eight, it says, love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away. And what he’s getting at is that these spiritual gifts, they are temporary. They are useful for this age, but love is eternal. It will belong to this age and the age to come. And Paul’s point isn’t to say that the gifts are bad. We should desire them. We should use them. But gifts have limits. I find this really humbling. Even when I’m preaching a sermon, I can preach as clear and as truthful as possible. Yet people will still misunderstand what I say. And part of that is because I don’t have perfect understanding of what I

preach, nor does the audience have perfect understanding of what they hear the gifts. They are part of me. And so I’m going to preach a sermon. The audience have perfect understanding of what they hear. The gifts, they are partial here. That’s not to say that they’re not sufficient. God is using them and he continues building us up bit by bit so that we’re never going to be able to just hear one sermon and arrive at a complete knowledge of the glory of God. Our eyes are being opened. As the blinders are being lifted bit by bit. But right now we’re in this state where verse nine, we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. And we could ask, well, when is the perfect going to come? What is Paul getting at?

He’s getting that when Christ returns the consummation or the ultimate end that everything is leading to. You won’t need someone to stand and open the word of God to help you to perceive God’s glory because you will behold the Lord face to face. You will perceive his glory with your eyes. And so he gives us these illustrations of contrast so that we could understand the difference between the age we are in and the age to come. Like the difference between being a child and being an adult. Verse 11, he says, when I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. One of my favorite things when I’m watching movies with my kids is when they’re trying to understand the motives behind why people do certain things, but they’re reasoning from a childlike mind, which nothing wrong with having that

childlike mind when you’re a child, but the conclusions they come to can be so fascinating to me. Like, you know, watching somebody who has to work a job in order to pay rent, but the way that they understand that because they’ve never worked a job and they’ve never had to pay rent, they don’t really have categories for it. And so they’ll say, oh, he was probably thinking this. And I’m thinking he probably was not thinking that, right? But it’s, it’s what was going on in their mind. But it’s, it’s not to say here that anything is wrong with being a child. It’s just two different stages, right? Let the children be children. A child cannot fully know or understand what an adult does. And in contrast, as believers, we are like children. We don’t fully understand and perceive the glory of God.

Our understanding is partial now until we mature to manhood, to completeness in Christ Jesus on the day of his coming, which is what Paul then uses to, to draw out this contrast in verse 12. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then when the perfect comes, we’ll see face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. And I love how he ends that, that even though I’ve already been fully known, right? God already knows us fully and loves us fully. God is not growing in love. His love is eternal. And he has loved us with the same kind of love forever. His, his love doesn’t change. His love doesn’t waver. But as for us, we are growing in our knowledge of God and growing in our love for him. We know him partially, but one day we will know him fully and love him fully.

And so then he ends verse 13. So now faith, hope, and love abide these three. But the greatest of these is love. And we could also ask, well, why is love the greatest? Why even compare it with faith and hope? Well, here’s the thing. One day our faith will become sight. One day our hopes will be seen, but the love shared between God and his people will never end. This is why Jesus doesn’t say they will know us by our faith or they will know us by our hope. No, if we have our faith and our hope in God, it will be revealed by our love. And so a little homework for you. If you want to think more about God’s love, go into the gospel of John. Something I love to do is use the ESV Bible app on my phone,

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Brought Into God’s Love

and you can type up a word and it’ll show you all the instances of that word throughout the scriptures. Just look up all the uses of the word love in the gospel of John. That might be an encouragement to you in thinking about God’s love. When we talk about becoming more like Christ, it is about becoming a people of greater love. And the Holy Spirit indwells the people of God, enabling them to live holy lives. This is what is said in the Trinity Church statement of faith. And so coming to a conclusion, thinking about this eternal state of love, I want to bring us to the gospel of John in John 17. And if we’re going to understand that love is the greatest Christian virtue, I want you to see how God has actually brought us in to the loving relationship that was shared between the Father and the Son in eternity past.

Jesus, this is when he’s praying in his high priestly prayer. He says, Father, the glory that you have given me, I have given to them, that they may be one, even as we are one. I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them as you loved me. Jesus is saying that the Father has loved us as the Father has loved the Son. And he says, Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am to see my glory, that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known

that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them. So there is this sharing for us as Christians in God’s love and love will be the defining characteristic of our relationship with God and his people in glory for all of eternity. And with that in mind, we do well now to pursue love and to esteem it as the greatest Christian virtue. And so may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. Would you pray with me? Well, Father, you have pressed upon us this morning to pursue love. Father, that us living as disciples of Jesus who loved us and gave himself for us, that us being his disciples, the world will know it by the love that we have for one another.

One of our greatest witnesses to this world is the way in which we reflect your love, which we are only able to do because we first received it. And so would you stir us up even this morning to love and good works and compel us that you would have us to be used in each other’s lives to continue stirring one another up in that manner and for your glory. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.