1 Corinthians 13:8-13. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on February 21, 2021.
Next week, we will pick back up in Mark 15 and walk with Jesus to the cross and the resurrection.
Today, I want to talk about the path ahead of us as believers and followers of Jesus in the United States of America. One of the devil’s tactics in these last days is to tempt believers to quit loving one another. However, the love we are to have for one another is God’s love, and not love as defined by this world. It is the same love that Jesus had for us when he chose to go to a cross for our sake, despite the world having rejected him, and believers who were slow to believe what they did not understand about him.
The disciples could not see how Jesus letting himself be arrested and killed would be the loving thing to do. Peter even rebuked Jesus for even thinking of such a thing. I am sure that Peter felt that he loved Jesus and loved Israel, but the actions of Jesus did not look right, did not look like love to Peter. He didn’t exactly say this, but it is the same idea. “Jesus, that isn’t love.”
In the days and months ahead, we must not be obstinate in fleshly concerns, but neither can we let the world, including worldly Christians, define for us what love is and what it would do. We must learn to make the tough decisions of love as the Holy Spirit leads us in any particular situation.
In this section of 1 Corinthians, Paul is dealing with problems among the Christians in the Greek city of Corinth. Their great desire for spiritual gifts was overwhelming their duty to love one another. They were more concerned with the social prestige of exercising a spiritual gift than the people that God wanted them to bless with that spiritual gift.
This is why chapter 13 functions as a sort of parenthesis within a larger teaching on spiritual gifts. No matter what Christians may think, they need to keep loving one another as a primary focus that is replaced by nothing else.
Our minds have a tendency to focus on the wrong things. The believers in Corinth were focusing on the spiritual gifts that they had, and how “spiritual” that made them. It functioned in their minds more like a badge of honor that was a gift to them, instead of being a gift to their church that would operate through them. The over-emphasis on themselves was perverting the true purpose of the gifts. They were not helping one another. Instead, they were stirring one another up in envy, jealousy, and strife.
Spiritual gifts are not the only thing that can sidetrack believers. There are whole groups within Christianity that do not believe the spiritual gifts are still in operation today. Essentially, “God doesn’t do that anymore,” is their mantra. They are more tempted to focus on the appearance of wisdom and knowledge to the expense of loving their fellow believers. Again, wisdom and knowledge are good things if they are given from God and we are using them to bless others. However, if they come from man’s attempts to look wise before others then we will be led astray. Typically, we will only “bless” those who give lip service to our “human wisdom” and speak invectives against those who do not, even though they are believers.
We should always ask ourselves the question, “Will this make me and others more like Jesus?” Whether I am exercising a spiritual gift in the assembly, or waxing in philosophical wisdom before other believers, I must always begin with the sacrificial love of Jesus. He is the ultimate example to us of what God has called us to do, and what it means for us to love others by God’s definition.
It is easy to say that loving one another is a primary focus, or purpose. However, sometimes love has to make tough calls. It has to run the risk of the other person, or onlookers, accusing us of not loving them. Ultimately, God is our judge. We will have to deal with the judgments of others, but they are not our judge. If we allow the judgment of believers and onlookers to become more important to us than God’s judgment then we are not loving them as Jesus loved us.
Even right actions done for the wrong reasons can fail this question. If my heart is wrong, or selfish, no amount of “loving actions” can make me like Jesus because the heart of Jesus was not wrong and selfish. Our culture is lost when it comes to the proper judgment of actions. We believe that the end justifies the means. As long as someone is fighting for the right cause, their methods are rarely criticized. Yet, at the same time, our culture has become extremely judgmental. “If you do this thing then we know that you are that bad thing.” Even this is hypocritical because of the first maxim. If someone is working for the end that is deemed acceptable then they can do something all day long that others will be hyper-criticized for doing. God help us to flee from such godlessness and receive a love of the Truth that only He can give.
Paul is reminding the Corinthians that a day will come when prophecies, speaking in tongues, and knowledge (i.e., spiritual gifts) will no longer be needed among God’s people. This is described as when the perfect has come. This perfect is describing the place that God is bringing us to. At the resurrection, we will be clothed in glorified bodies that are immortal and untainted by the sin nature. We will be a finished being who looks like Jesus, and we will be united with him never to be separated again. It is in this perfect relationship that we will not need the spiritual gifts of this age anymore.
Keeping that in mind, Paul’s main point is that love, faith, and hope will continue into the perfect age ahead. The Corinthians were focusing on temporary things to the expense of eternal things. That is never good.
This brings us to the relationship between love, faith, and hope. Paul mentions that love is the greatest of these three virtues, but he doesn’t explain why. From a biblical point of view, we know that love is described as an eternal attribute of God. “God is love.” (1 John 4:8,16). In a way, faith is an internal, rational response to God’s love for us. We believe because He loved us and loves us now, and we believe because we love Him. We might call faith an aspect or facet of love itself. When there is a separation of some sort in the relationship, love demonstrates itself in faith; it still trusts.
Hope is similar. It is partly a rational and partly an emotional response to God’s love for us in regards to the future. Because God is love and has promised His love eternally into the future, I need not fear the uncertainties of the future. When we are united with Christ, it is not that faith and hope cease to exist or are no longer needed, it is just that they are less obvious. We will dwell with Him ever able to see Him. Perhaps this is why Paul calls love the greatest of the three. It is simply the foundation of the other two.
We are in that tension between the now and not yet. We have God’s presence now, but not as it will be in eternity. It is God’s love for us that enables us to walk in faith (though we cannot see Him), and to have hope (though we cannot see the end result promised). In a sense, we see Him with the eyes of faith, and our eternal future with the eyes of hope. By the Spirit of God and by the Word of God, the love of God fills our hearts. We need to daily refresh ourselves in the knowledge and experience of God’s love. Even in times of discipline, we must see it as proof of His love for us. The enemy does not want you to live out the love of God, to live this life trusting Him, and to joyfully trust your future to Him. If he can, he will get you to focus on something else by undermining your faith in God’s love.
We have to spiritually mature to the point where we are not driven by our circumstances. If something difficult happens, or persecution comes our way, we cannot fall into pity, thinking God doesn’t love us. We must trust His love for us in the now and we must walk in faith. We must trust Him with our future in such a way that we are filled with the hope and joy that comes when you truly believe that the Creator of all things is working it to your good (Romans 8:28).
With the Apostle John, let us rise up to the challenge of our day. Faith is the victory that overcomes the world, and all of the enemy’s attempts to pull us off course. Let us trust God by loving one another, and having our hearts full of the joy of those who belong to Him!