Love: The More Excellent Way

Transcript

Well, good morning, Saints. Good morning. It is a joy to worship with you. It’s a joy to hear your voices as we sing. It’s a joy to get to open up the Word of God together. If you have your Bibles, I want to invite you to open them to 1 Corinthians chapter 12. We’ll be looking at the whole of chapter 13, but we’ll start at the end of chapter 12. And if you don’t have a Bible with you, there should be a Bible in the seat in front of you, kind of in the little bottom section by the floor. This morning’s sermon is titled, Love, the More Excellent Way. And if you’ve opened your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 12, I’d like to invite you to stand for the reading of the Word of God. 1 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 31, looking at the second half of that verse and on.

And I will show you a still more excellent way. 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’m 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. This, saints, is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God indeed. Please be seated. Last week, Greg preached a wonderful sermon about our unity, our interconnectedness, and our need of each other. If you weren’t here last week, if you haven’t yet heard Greg’s sermon from 1 Corinthians chapter 12, I really want to encourage you to listen to that sermon.

Love’s Impossible Standard

It was a beautiful, beautiful reminder. We are one body made up of many members. If we are to grow, if we are to be healthy, we need to do so alongside one another. We don’t grow as individual members of a body. We don’t grow disconnected from the body. We only grow connected and as part of this whole thing. Our lives, then, are inextricably woven into the lives of our brothers and sisters. So as we consider what it means to love, and as we consider what it means to actually show love to one another, we need to be mindful of what Paul wrote in another letter to another church. In Galatians chapter 6 verse 10, Paul writes, Let us do good to everyone, and especially those who are in the household of faith. So, as we talked about last week, we’re not only connected in our faith, but as we’ll see this week, our love grows and our love matures.

And our love really becomes what it ought to be, what God calls it to be, here. This then brings us to our text, what is commonly known as the love chapter. There are theologians who call this a love hymn. There are theologians who think that this was, it’s such a unique text, it’s such a unique chapter, such a unique portion of the Pauline corpus, that really it almost reads kind of on its own, but we don’t read scripture on its own. We don’t disconnect it from its broader part. We read it as part of this broader letter to this church. And it’s fascinating that in the context of writing to this church, it’s really wrestling with a lot of error, and a lot of sin, and a lot of issues. Paul then calls these Christians to consider what it means to be united, to consider what it means to do ministry together,

to consider what it means to do life together, and to use their gifting to bless one another, and then in the middle of it, he has this hymn of love. So 1 Corinthians 13 is very often read where? At weddings, yeah. So with that in mind, is there anybody here that maybe wants to get married? Maybe you’ve been waiting, you’ve been looking for a good time. We got a few pastors here, we can do this thing. Yeah, this is often read at weddings, and this is this beautiful text about love. And man, I love, I really love it. I’m all about the sappy rom-coms. I love the love songs. I don’t know why I listen to so many of them. I’ve been happily married for 12 years, and I still like the sappy love songs about love and loss.

I love that stuff. I love beautiful love stories, how people meet and grow in love for one another. And when I saw this text that I’d be preaching, when we were deciding who’s preaching what text, and this was assigned to me, I got very, very excited. And then I got to thinking. As I started to prepare, and as I started to read this text, and as I started to think about this Sunday, I got to thinking how much of my understanding of love, how much of my understanding of what it means to love people, is influenced by all of these things that I often associate with romantic love. And so really, the way that I would flesh out love and feelings and all these things is really just influenced by what I see in movies, what I hear in music, what I read in books,

the stories that I hear from people. Surely on an intellectual level, and certainly on a theological level, I understand that these things aren’t what define love. So how then are we to understand love? How then are we to be guided in a correct understanding, in a correct comprehension of what it means not only to be a people known by our love, but to love one another truly? Now I want to say up front, it’s certainly not wrong to feel love. I don’t want to beat love up and be like, no, no, no, you just have to do it. Just grit your teeth and bear it. Just love. And you’re not going to feel like it, but you’re going to.. No, that’s weird. And we should feel love for the people that we say we love, right? We should feel a warmth and an openness and a drawing to these people.

And in the way that we minister to them and we care for them, if we are to love them, we should feel that love. And so it’s not wrong to feel that love. It’s not wrong to see the application of love to romantic love or the love of a husband to his wife or vice versa. And it’s an absolutely wonderful text to read at weddings. Don’t get me wrong. But friends, what I want us to understand is that 1 Corinthians 13 is so much more than just a wedding text. What I’ve come to see in this text as I’ve studied it, as I’ve prepared for this sermon, is just how incredibly discouraging this portion of Scripture is. I’ve been hurting saints. I’ve been going through this text, and I’m hurting. It’s hard. I mean, look at this chapter. Patient. No. Kind. Not envious. Not boastful.

Not arrogant. That’s just one verse out of 13. That’s one verse. And the more that I contemplated these verses, the more that I contemplated the truths found therein, the more that I saw that this description of love, it really doesn’t describe me. And I felt like a hypocrite. And I started to bristle at the thought of preaching this text. And I started to get very uncomfortable because this isn’t me. And it’s so incredible how the Lord uses this process of being in the Word and preparing to preach because I’m like, a couple days ago, I’m driving, and I spent the morning kind of reading through the text and doing some prep and reading a couple of commentaries, and I’m driving, and somebody cut me off. And I got very angry. And I started to think, unsanctified thoughts about this person.

Love is kind, right? Love is patient to the person that may need to be somewhere faster than I do. And as I see this person weaving in and out of traffic, I’m remembering the wrong done against me. And I’m trying to think of not only how bad this person is and how wrong they are, and how much I wish for the wrath of God to rain down upon them this very moment. But there’s this thought in the back of my mind, how do I get them back? Resentful, impatient, unkind, remembering wrongs done. And that’s just one example. I was going to share some others, but my wife encouraged me not to. This text is heavy. What are we to do with this impossible standard of love? In and of ourselves, we can do nothing. We aren’t capable of loving in this way. We aren’t capable of being these people.

We can’t do this. Not in any prolonged sustainable sense, at least. We can do it for little sprits of time here and there, but not in any sustainable way. But remember, Paul is writing this letter to a church. The idea being that these people are people who’ve placed their trust in Jesus. These are people who are born again. And so, friend, before you can even start to think about what living a life characterized by this kind of love might look like, you have to actually experience this love in Jesus Christ, the Son of God who loved sinners and who gave himself for them. The forgiveness of sins and salvation are freely available to those who repent of their sins and who place their trust in him and who accept his free gift of love and salvation and eternal life. This is where we begin the conversation about love with Jesus.

And spoiler alert, it’s where we’re going to end as well. So as we segue out of chapter 12 and into chapter 13, out of the conversation about gifts and about ministry, Paul says this really interesting thing. It’s where we started reading our text. And I will show you a still more excellent way. Think about that. Consider what he just talked about in chapter 12, a more excellent way. What can be more excellent than the higher gifts that he’s been talking about? What can be more excellent than prophecy, healing, miracles, foreign languages? What can be more excellent than the obvious physical shows of God’s power, God’s movement, a display of the supernatural? What could possibly be better than that? Aren’t these gifts the ultimate picture of holiness and a fulfilled life? Aren’t these things the ultimate picture of what spirituality and Christianity look like? Aren’t these the ultimate ways that the Spirit acts and moves through us?

Love’s Value

Isn’t this what a Spirit-filled person looks like? What is more excellent than that? Love. Forgiveness. Kindness. Charity. Love. We’re going to break up our chapter into three parts as we study love. Verses 1 through 3 are going to show us love’s value. Verses 4 through 7 are going to show us love’s beauty. And then finally, verses 8 through 13 will show us love’s preeminence. Let’s take a look at love’s value. And every time we come to a new point, we’re going to reread that section. So it’s at the forefront of our minds as we’re going through and studying. So let’s reread verses 1 through 3. 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. Paul begins this chapter by speaking hyperbolically. This just means in an exaggerated way. He’s exaggerating to kind of the ultimate degree. In each verse, he goes to the extreme of what might be done in the name of ministry. In each of these verses, he’s showing the extreme of what not only ministry looks like, but what we attribute spiritual value to. And each time what he’s telling the Corinthians is if that thing lacks love, it’s useless. The tongues of men and angels. And not loving the people around you, it’s just noise. It’s nothing. All prophetic power. The word all means all. That’s the hyperbole. All prophetic power, all knowledge, all understanding rolled up into one person. This is the pinnacle of human understanding and human knowledge.

And all he’s missing is love? He knows everything. Absolutely nothing is what Paul says this person accumulates to. Complete and total sacrifice. Giving yourself up. Done without love. Total waste. These gifts that would be considered huge deals. And as you know from our study of 1 Corinthians, these were a huge deal to the Corinthian church. These things that would be considered huge deals are here called nothing if done without love. And what’s the significance of this? Are these things really potentially meaningless if they lack love? In our culture and unfortunately often in the broader Christian church, we’re willing to overlook a multitude of sins if the person sinning is just very talented. If the person in question is really good at what they do, and they’re exceptional at preaching, at music, at whatever, we’re willing to overlook a lot of sins. And we often do as we hear in these stories of churches that implode, these celebrity pastors that care more about their image and their online presence or whatever than they do about actually loving the people that God is calling them to shepherd.

We hear this thing and we’re like, how did that happen? That’s crazy. How did this person get away with it for so long? And often, what does it boil down to? Well, my goodness, was he talented? Man, could he preach? Man, could he sing? Whatever. You know, pick the gift that stands out most vividly to you. We’re often willing to overlook a lot if there’s enough talent to make up for what’s lacking. Paul basically says it doesn’t matter how gifted you are. It doesn’t matter how much people like you. It doesn’t matter how well you preach. It doesn’t matter how great your books are. It doesn’t matter how many spiritual insights you have. It doesn’t matter your exegetical prowess. It doesn’t matter how big your church is. If you lack love, what you’re doing is useless. That should send a chill down every single one of our spines as we contemplate what it means to do ministry.

Conversely, though, what we can say, if the person who does big, grandiose things but does so without love, if Paul says that’s nothing, that’s just noise, what we can say conversely is that something seemingly small, done in service to others, done in love, done for their good, is profoundly meaningful and profoundly impactful. When we read this section, Christians should get a little bit uncomfortable. We should question our motives. We should question why we do what we do. We should question what we’re all doing here. Why we’re involved in ministry. And our minds should also go to the end of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says arguably one of the scariest things recorded in all of Scripture. Matthew chapter 7, verses 21 through 23. Jesus, at the end of his sermon, spanning three chapters of the Gospel of Matthew, says the following, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven,

but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name, and I will declare them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. Friends, this is serious stuff. This is repeated throughout Scripture. We see that God is after the heart. We see that God is after what’s going on behind the action. We see that God is after what motivates us. We see that God is after how much we love people. People that are difficult to love specifically. It’s easy to love people who are easy to love. That’s a no-brainer. But if our hearts are not inclined to love people, to care for people, to want for their best,

to sacrifice our own comfort and our own good for the good of others, if our ministry is not fueled by a love and a desire to see people become more like Jesus, but it’s fueled by just doing the thing that I do, and that maybe people tell me I’m really good at. Paul says you need to watch yourself. Jesus says you need to watch yourself because we will feel this temptation to justify ourselves. And we will feel this temptation to point to our deeds and say, look at what I’ve done. Look at how much I’ve accomplished. And Jesus’ response to a lot of people, this is terrifying, will be, depart from me. I never knew you, and you never knew me. You did all of that for you. What Paul is showing us is that gifts aren’t the same as grace. There are many people we would consider to be gifted and talented, but they lack grace.

They’re not known for their love. Accomplishments are not love, dear friends. Paul is pretty clear in the opening verses that a Christian’s identity isn’t linked to their ministry. If my identity is primarily linked to the things that I do on Sunday morning, I’m in trouble. Christian’s identity is not linked to their ministry, but it’s linked to how they love. Even if everything looks good on the ministry front, it could be all bad if love is absent. Love trumps eloquence. Love trumps impressive speech. Love trumps intellect and knowledge. Love trumps sacrifice and big shows of faith. Friends, in the context of my ministry, if I don’t have love, I gain nothing. There’s nothing to be gained. There’s no value added. There’s no ministry done if it’s not done in love. Love will guard us from selfishness. Love will guard us from shallow and ineffective ministry. Love will help Trinity Church be a place where selfishness can’t thrive.

And so before defining what love is, Paul first establishes its importance, its value, its worth. It’s worth more than everything. We do. We could do everything here, and this could be the greatest church in the history of the earth. But if it lacks love, it’s a tragic place. As we consider what it means to use our gifting, and as we consider ministry and accomplishments or things that we generally look to in order to determine whether someone’s mature or righteous or whatever else, consider the fact that in God’s economy, love greatly outweighs all of those accomplishments. Not because those things are unimportant. Not because those things don’t produce something good. But because without love, those things are about the person doing them, not about God. Not about the people for whom they’re being done. Love, on the other hand, will always be about the source of love.

Love’s Beauty

It will always point back to the source of love. Friends, how beautiful that source is. It’s Jesus. This brings us to our second point. Love’s beauty. Let’s reread verses 4-7.

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.

— 1 Corinthians 13

(ESV)

These four verses are incredibly, overwhelmingly beautiful. Just look at them. Who wouldn’t want to be this kind of person? Who wouldn’t want to live in a world full of these kinds of people? Imagine that. But as I mentioned in my introduction, these verses are also incredibly discouraging. The moment we see how wonderful this description is of love, we’ll also see that if we’re honest with ourselves,

how drastically short we fall of this standard. So I want to just briefly walk through what Paul is saying here. You can do a much broader study, and I encourage you to do so, of what each of these things mean, how each of these things flesh out. But I just want to briefly walk through each of these descriptions of love that Paul gives us, just for us to understand what he’s talking about. Love is patient and kind. The word in our translation as patient, translated as patient, is another translation seen as long-suffering. It’s a really good word. It’s a really, really good word. Long-suffering. How much are we willing to put up with? How much are we willing to suffer in order to love others well? Love suffers long. It doesn’t have a short fuse. It isn’t quick to complain. It doesn’t move on from the responsibility to love once I’m annoyed enough.

Love suffers long. It’s patient. Love is also kind. Kind love doesn’t say, I told you so. Why would you do that? How many times have we talked about that? Kind love is generous. Kind love is the kind of love that refuses to say, I told you so. Consider the prophecy about Jesus found in Isaiah chapter 42, verse 3. A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench. He doesn’t snuff us out. He doesn’t finish us off when we’re breaking. He cares and he nurtures that wick back to health. He fans that flame. Love does not envy. Love does not boast. See, love will rejoice in the successes of others. It doesn’t envy those successes. It celebrates the success of other people. It celebrates as they’re doing well. Even if they’ve received something that we didn’t. Even if they’ve received something that we wanted.

Even if they received something that we feel we deserve. Love will celebrate. Love will rejoice. Love will be happy for that person. Love is humble. It doesn’t exalt itself. It doesn’t prop itself up to be seen, to be celebrated, to be recognized. Love does not boast. Love is not arrogant. Love isn’t rude. This flow of not boasting, not being arrogant, not being rude, these markers of love, this is quite contrary to what we often see in the broader culture, right? Who gets recognized in the culture nowadays? Who becomes the influencers nowadays? It seems that those who talk the loudest, it seems that those who promote themselves most, who celebrate their own wins most regularly, who call out any and everything in others that they see as falling short and not being good enough, those are the people who’ve made it. This is what we’re seeing in our world.

Scripture gives us a different picture of what it means to, quote unquote, make it. Love is not boastful. Love is not arrogant. Love doesn’t put people down. Moreover, love does not insist on its own way. Love makes room for others. Love lets things go. Love doesn’t demand respect. Love doesn’t demand attention. Our lives were designed to be outward focused. Our lives were not designed for us to constantly be looking in, constant self-analysis, constant obsession of what’s going on with me and my world and my surroundings. This isn’t how we were designed to live. Don’t just live in such a way that you’re constantly looking in, that you’re constantly thinking of yourself, your own happiness. Look to others. Love doesn’t insist on its own way. Love is sensitive to the desires and the needs of others above one’s own needs and desires. This doesn’t mean that we just become a doormat.

This doesn’t mean that you just kind of like let people walk all over you and you’re just like, oh, whatever, you know, it doesn’t matter. No. What this means is that the way that we are focused is, are people being blessed by my presence? Am I showing love to the least of these? Am I intentional about encouraging others? Am I intentional about being a blessing to others? Am I intentional about the way that I use my gifts? That’s the kind of love that doesn’t focus on itself. That’s the kind of love that doesn’t insist its own way. Love is not irritable. Love is not resentful. Love doesn’t lose its temper quickly. Love doesn’t hold on to hurts. Other translations say that love doesn’t keep a record of wrongs. That’s beautiful. Love doesn’t keep a record of wrongs. Are we the kind of person who is quick to give the benefit of the doubt?

To others, not to yourself. I’m very quick to give myself the benefit of the doubt. Like, oh, that’s so Andre, you know. But are we the kind of people who are quick to give others the benefit of the doubt? If somebody does something against me, am I quick to be like, that’s probably not what they meant. Surely they weren’t trying to hurt me. Are we wired that way? Love believes the best about people. Love lets things go. Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. True love rejoices in true and good and beautiful things, not those things that are displeasing or dishonoring to God. Moreover, love will cling to the truth and it will speak the truth, even when it’s hard and when it’s painful to do so. When we love a person, we desire the best for them, and sometimes this will mean that best thing coming by way of a loss or by sacrifice.

And love speaks the truth in love, kindly, carefully, but speaks the truth nevertheless and does not rejoice at wrongdoing, does not rejoice over evil. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Brothers and sisters, love is what makes it possible for you and I to persevere, to press on when things get tough, to love when I don’t feel like it, or when I don’t receive love. Remember, Jesus calls us to love our enemies, not just those who love us. He says, yeah, of course you’re going to love the people that love you. That’s easy. You’re supposed to love your enemies, so when I don’t feel like loving, that’s when I’m supposed to. Notice the word that’s repeated four times in this verse. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love doesn’t see the glass as half empty or half full.

Love sees the glass as overflowing. Always believes the best, hopes the best, endures, presses on, bears. Love believes the best and looks out for the good and the true and the beautiful things and points them out to others. The thing is we talk about how love looks and how we’re supposed to love. We’re well acquainted with what this might look like in practice, right? We all desire to be loved. We’re wired in this way. We all long to be cared for. We all want to be known, to be accepted, to know that we have someone looking out for us. Well, what’s the golden rule of Christianity, saints? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. There’s a lot of talk in our world about what we deserve, what we should expect, demand, dare I say, of the people around us. There’s a lot of talk about how we are supposed to live to gain the most out of life,

to gain the most out of relationships, to get rid of the toxicity, to get rid of the people that maybe don’t quite fit into that picture. But the Bible gives us another picture altogether. It tells us to walk through life in a different way. The Bible calls us to walk through life the way of Jesus, the one who gave himself for his enemies, like me, who’s never demanded or expected anything in return, who loved and who served completely and who made himself a servant to all. This, beloved, is the Christian life. When we consider what the work of the Spirit might look like, it’s right here. We think that the work of the Spirit is going to be a lot of different things, and it is, as it’s fleshed out in each of us, uniquely gifted for the work of ministry. But at the heart of it all, it’s right here.

This is what we should be working at. This is what shows a Spirit-filled person. If we start analyzing the health or effectiveness of the Christian life with anything other than love, we start at the wrong place. Another beautiful thing about love, it never ends. This brings us to our last point, love’s preeminence. Read verses 8 through 13 with me. 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.

Love’s Preeminence

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. As our chapter draws to a close, we’re shown the beautiful reality that while everything, including the grace, gifts, and our ministries will pass away, love is eternal. And love is complete. The very things that the Corinthian church clung to, tongues, prophecies, knowledge, will pass away. But love won’t. When Paul notes the arrival of the perfect, different scholars would interpret this slightly differently. Some would say that the perfect is the completion of the canon of Scripture. Others would say it speaks to the maturity of the Christian church or the maturity of Christian believers. But what I believe he’s referring to, and what a lot of scholars would write that he’s referring to, is that this is referring to the end of the present age.

It seems that what Paul is saying here when he speaks of the perfect is when Jesus returns, and there’s a new heaven and a new earth, and sin and death are no more, we won’t need these gifts no more. But love? Love will continue on into eternity. Paul here contrasts the eternal nature of love and the temporal nature of the grace gifts. Paul Gardner, teaching on this passage, says that love is eternal because it is the in-breaking of God’s kingdom into our world. That’s such a beautiful picture. The eternal love of God, the eternal reality of God as love, the embodiment, the definition, the fullness of love breaking into a temporal reality. The eternal breaking into the present. Love will never be gone. But considering the fact that time hasn’t yet come, what we’re seeing here in these verses, and what Paul is prodding the Corinthian Christians to,

and what the Holy Spirit, I believe, is prodding us to, is this call to Christian maturity. What we know and what we see is incomplete and imperfect, this side of heaven. But consider the broader context of these verses. Remember, we don’t read, portions of scripture in a vacuum. We don’t separate them out from the rest of the chapter and the book that they’re written in. But we read this as part of a larger section speaking about gifts and ministry and our need of one another and our need of doing life together and serving each other and knowing each other and blessing and loving and caring for one another. Walking through life together. We mature and we grow up and we become more like Jesus when we love. When we serve one another. And this is the eternal aspect of love as it continues to prod us along

and love will be fully realized when we see the source of that love face to face. And we need to continue this side of heaven to grow in that love. Consider what Paul wrote in Ephesians 4, verses 11-16, He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers various kinds of ministries, various kinds of giftings to equip the saints for the work of ministry for the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood. To the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ so that we may no longer be children. Again, kind of referencing that arc of maturity. Tossed to and fro carried by every wind of doctrine by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes rather, speaking the truth in love

we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped when each part is working properly makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in what? Love. What is the mark of Christian maturity? What is this imperfect picture that we see now that will become fully realized? Love. In love, God came after His enemies. In love, He sent His Spirit as a gift to maintain and hold and guide and keep us. In love, He surrounded us with brothers and sisters with different kinds of gifts so that they could serve us and so that we could serve them so that we grow up into Christ. So that as the world looks at us and they see our love and they see our unity

and they see us different as we are seemingly not fitting together just a bunch of misfits from all different walks of life born in different countries speaking different languages but loving one another. People will look at us and they’ll say what is up with those people at Trinity Church? Love. So now faith, hope, and love abide these three but the greatest of these is love. Why is love the greatest of these? This is the fruit of the Spirit that most clearly reveals the very character of God. In their commentary on 1 Corinthians Danny Akin and James Merritt say the following about this ending. Faith becomes sight in heaven. Hope is completely fulfilled in heaven but love, again, never ends. Love never ceases. Moreover, it is because of the magnificent love of God that our faith will be rewarded by sight and our hope will be rewarded by total fulfillment.

The love of God is what brings us in to eternity to see Him, to behold Him, to love Him and to be fully loved and embraced and accepted. We get a glimpse of that. We get a glimpse of that understanding but we’re still looking in this kind of this dim reality because of our flesh because of our past because of the sin around us because of the distractions. But once all of that is removed we’ll see it fully. Love, dear friends, is the highest Biblical priority. Love is the summary of the whole law of God. Jesus said in John 13 a new commandment I give to you that you love one another just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another. Deuteronomy 6 tells us that the law is summarized in two things. Love of God and love of neighbor. To practice love is to live out our design.

To truly be who God created us to be. As we consider what it means to live the lives that God calls us to. As we consider what it means to be godly wives and husbands. Godly moms and dads. Godly employees. Godly friends. Godly church members. Whatever else. Those who don’t have love will be ineffective in whatever they set out to do. Sure, you may advance. Sure, you may succeed to a certain degree. You may bear certain results for a time but your life ultimately can’t be a success. How do I know that? Because God’s word tells us that we were created to be united with our God and to be linked to him and his will. And what we see here is his will for us to be a people known by our love. Moreover, when we look at the perfect person, Jesus. The best possible way to walk through this life.

Jesus, Love Embodied

The best possible way to be a person. What did he look like? He was love embodied. So Christian, how are you doing with this? How are you doing with loving others? Dear brother or sister, how are you doing with being known primarily and predominantly and overwhelmingly for your love? How are you doing with showing Jesus in the way that you interact with the world as a loving person? Earlier this week, an episode of Sinclair Ferguson’s podcast was sent to me by a friend. And in that episode, Sinclair Ferguson recommends trying this exercise to help this passage come alive in kind of a unique way. And I love this. And I did it at home and it was really, really helpful for me. You see, because it’s easy to be discouraged when we read through this chapter. It’s really easy to be overwhelmed by the weight of what’s expected of us.

And trust me, I’ve been wrestling with this text and really feeling pretty uncomfortable about what’s going on in my own heart over the course of this sermon prep. But you see, friends, God isn’t expecting us to do all of these things perfectly using our own strength, using our resolve, our righteousness. No, God sent His Son to die in our place to save us, to be our righteousness, and to show us how to love. So instead of being crushed under the weight of what we can’t do, I want to invite you to look with me to Jesus and remember what He’s already done. So let’s look at 1 Corinthians and read verses 4-7 in a different way. And see the One who Himself is love doing this perfectly, and remember how we came to be His people. Jesus is patient and kind. Jesus does not envy or boast.

Jesus is not arrogant or rude. Jesus does not insist on His own way. Jesus is not irritable or resentful. Jesus does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but He rejoices with the truth. Jesus bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. It’s only because our Savior came to get us and to die in our place that we can have any hope of being these kinds of people. Amen? Pray with me, saints. Father, we come before You acknowledging that this standard for us, humanly, is impossible. And so we beg You to not allow us to try this in and of ourselves and our own strength, but we ask for Your Spirit to fill us, to lead us, to guide us, and to help us point to Jesus in all that we do, in all that we say, in all that we think, in all that we are.

We know that You can do this because You’ve promised that the work You began in us You will see through to completion. So we ask You to work in Trinity Church. Make us a congregation known for love. Make us a congregation that truly loves the people to our right and our left, in front of us and behind us, as well as outside of these walls. Help us to honor You in the way that we go through this life by looking to Him who loved us and gave Himself for us. Jesus, in whose name we pray, amen.