1 Corinthians 10

Chapter 10. Love, the Crowning Grace of the Church and the ChristianBut eagerly desire the greater gifts.And now I will show you the most excellent way. (1 Corinthians 12:31)And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13)The apostle, having spoken of the various other gifts of the Holy Spirit, next turns to the highest of all gifts, the crowning grace of love. The gifts of power are the jewels upon the robes of the Bride. Love is the robe itself, the very texture and tissue of the spiritual life. Those are things which we may have, but this is something which we must be. For love is not an accompaniment, an adornment, or even an attribute of character, it is character itself. As God is love so love is the substance of the believer’s life. This sublime chapter is a portrait of the divine love and a delineation of the features of the Christ life. We owe it, as we owe many other precious things, to the very faults which it was intended to correct. The chief fault of the Corinthian Christians was the lack of love and the spirit of disunion, division and strife. Just as Christ’s most gracious words were often called forth by the very aggravations of human unworthiness and sin, so this most perfect picture of the ideal life has for its frame and its background a state of things as unlike the ideal here presented as it is possible to conceive, a situation which had its prototype in the Corinthian church, and its parallel, in too many instances, in the Church today. It is delineation marked by the most acute analysis and the most skilled art. It is at once a portrait, a poem and a panegyric of love. It is always difficult to analyze a living organism without destroying life in the process of dissection. It is like pulling a flower to pieces, or dissecting a face to find its charm, and losing your flower and the general impression of your portrait in the analysis. And yet it is well for the purposes of practical application, and as a touchstone by which to search our own hearts, to follow the keen analysis of this picture into all the depths and ramifications of our own soul until we stand convicted and exposed in the light of divine love and the humiliating view of our own likeness.

Section I: The Negative Qualities of Love

Section I—The Negative Qualities of LoveIt is very impressive to notice how much of character consists in what we are not and do not say or do. The Ten Commandments consist chiefly of “Thou shalt not.” The first requirement that the Lord Jesus Christ laid down in connection with discipleship was self-denial. Now, to deny self is not to torment, lacerate and inflict penance on yourself. It simply means to say “No” to yourself, to suppress yourself, to refuse to obey yourself, your own will, impulse and preference. It is just a great not laid across human nature’s path. Now, love consists largely in nots. If you do nothing more than simply keep still, hold back and suppress yourself you will have lived the larger half of the life of love. You may think this very tedious, trifling and unnecessary trouble, but you will find that it is the little foxes that destroy the vines, and the little negligences of Christian watchfulness which perforate the organism of a holy life, and let your love and joy leak out as from broken vessels. Does Not Envy

1. “Love… does not envy” (1 Corinthians 13:4). She has no jealousy of others; she is not unhappy over their successes or happiness. She is not watching for their defeat or failure, nor criticizing their achievements and victories. She looks on with calm and artless simplicity and frankness when they are successful, appreciated, praised and honored. She is incapable of a mean or unworthy suspicion or treacherous blow at the character or happiness of any human being. It simply is not in her to feel and do such things. First in the brood of hell is the low, groveling serpent of envy, jealousy and suspicion. Does Not Boast
2. The next negative quality is conceit, vanity and braggart vainglory. Love “does not boast” (1 Corinthians 13:4). She is modest. She never boasts. Love never wants people to advertise her, appreciate and praise her. This is the mildest form of the demon of pride. It is more concerned about what people think of us than about what we are, and it is satisfied with a name and a transient fame whether it deserves it or not. Love despises and disdains this spirit of vainglory, and shrinks instinctively from the glory of the public gaze and the arena of the world’s empty fame. Not Puffed Up
3. Deeper and more dangerous is the quality of pride expressed by the next clause, “is not puffed up” (1 Corinthians 13:4). This describes an exaggerated idea of ourselves, an undue estimate of our abilities and worth. It is associated frequently with indifference to public applause or criticism. Satisfied with its own good opinion, it scorns either the blame or the praise of men; but it has an egregious estimate of itself, and it grows into an intolerable egotism. It is interested in everything chiefly as it concerns the mighty “I,” which stands in the center of all its conversation, thought and plans. But love is removed from this false realm of exaggeration and pride. She estimates herself truly as nothing and less than nothing. Love has found out that human nature is a failure. She has sentenced herself to death. And she has buried herself forever out of sight, and taken her life and reputation on borrowed capital through the merits and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ alone. You must reach the place where you have forever renounced your own rights and your own righteousness, and stand henceforth in humility and confidence in the name of Christ and righteousness alone. Is Not Rude
4. The next antagonism of love is rudeness. She “is not rude” (1 Corinthians 13:5). She does not do things that hurt, offend or wound others. Her manners are gentle and considerate. She does not cut people on the street or allow herself to freeze with studied chill the victims of her resentment. A soul baptized with love will always be gentle. The spirit of Jesus makes us gentlemen and ladies, and the grace of God transforms the manners of the barroom into the culture and even courtliness of the society of heaven. Is Not Self-Seeking
5. The spirit of selfishness is the deep root from which all these things come, and against which love is a living protest. She “is not self-seeking” (1 Corinthians 13:5). She has no place for self-seeking. Her one business is to seek the interest of others and the glory of her Master, and let Him care for all that concerns her rights and happiness. Human nature looks first at our end of things and asks, “How does this affect me?” Love inverts this order and thinks first, “How will this please Him? How will this help others?” Is Not Easily Angered
6. Temper, irritation, exasperation and angry passion are utterly excluded from the life of love. She is “not easily angered” (1 Corinthians 13:5). It is scarcely necessary to say that the word “easily” is not in the original. The Holy Spirit gives no place for paroxysms of anger. It is true that a Christian may fall into them, but if he does it is because he has fallen back into the flesh, and is not walking in the Spirit. It is not he that is doing and saying these things, but his old carnal heart and nature, and it is just as real a case of backsliding as if he had fallen into open immorality. No Record of Wrongs
7. Love affects the memory. It has no malignant recollection. It “keeps no record of wrongs” (1 Corinthians 13:5), or rather, “makes no account of evil.” It does not cover over the fault today and carefully put it away in reserve for use tomorrow if something should provoke a reference to it. It ingeniously and cordially drops the past, forgets the fault, and acts as if it had not been. Does Not Delight in Evil
8. Love “does not delight in evil” (1 Corinthians 13:6). This seems to refer to the case of those who have done us wrong, and afterwards meet the retribution that their wrong deserved by coming into wrong themselves. God often punishes people for an injustice by allowing them to fall into sin, and to meet the consequences of that for which they have already blamed someone else with harsh and unjust severity. Now, we are not to take advantage of this and take pleasure in the misfortunes of our enemies, even when God may have brought that upon them as a retribution for their wrongs to others. True, God avenges His people’s wrongs, but we must let Him do this without our interference. Indeed, when we know it we must meet their calamities with the spirit of compassion, and pray for them who have despitefully used us and abused us. There is no time when you are in so much danger as when you find that God has been dealing with someone because of their injustice to you, and you are tempted to say, “They are getting what they deserved because of their treatment of me.” Grace alone will enable you to rise above those things and meet God’s test of your love with the love that would save them from the judgments which they have brought upon themselves.

Section II: The Positive Qualities of Love

Section II—The Positive Qualities of LoveKindness

1. She “is kind” (1 Corinthians 13:4). This is a word that describes the benignity of love in the simplest, sweetest and most human way. The root of the word is “kin,” and it literally denotes the kindness with which we would treat one who is our relative and belongs to our own family. It describes that spirit that instinctively loves to do others good. It is just goodness, beneficence and benevolence. Rejoices with the Truth
2. “Love… rejoices with the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6). This lifts its spirit and sphere above mere personality and partisanship. It isn’t just a preference for one or two individuals because they please us; but it is a high and holy sympathy with the truth, with the cause of Christ, with the things that He loves and approves, and it gives a tone or rightness and loftiness to all our attachments. It keeps love back from entanglements with faults and wrongs. It is a loyalty that is always on God’s side and loves our friends in Him, for Him and as part of His great cause. Trusts
3. It “believeth all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7). That is, when things seem all contrary to love, love still believes in spite of the seeming, and by believing lifts its object up to that for which we believe. Thus God treated His ancient people. He said, “Surely they are my people, sons who will not be false to me” (Isaiah 63:8). They did not deserve His confidence, but He gave them His confidence, and by confidence and grace lifted them up to deserve it and loved them into it. So He takes the sinner who is unworthy of confidence, and, blotting out his sin, He takes him into the place of a child, and treats him as a sinner no longer, but as a child of His love. So He takes the earthborn soul, the fallen child of Adam’s race, and He speaks of him as in the heavenly realms, and counts him as if already glorified and seated with Christ upon the throne. God believes for us and treats us as He believes. So let us believe for others, and love by faith where we cannot love by sight. Always Hopes
4. Love “always hopes” (1 Corinthians 13:7). When faith fails and seems long to wait in vain for the realization, then hope comes to her aid and says, “It is not, but it shall be.” “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9). Some day this soul will be brighter than an angel and whiter than the snow. So love hopes forever and clothes her object with the glory of her expectation. What a blessed uplift this is to our own discouraged hearts! God give us the love that believes all things and hopes all things.

Section III: The Passive Qualities of Love

Section III—The Passive Qualities of LoveThe sublime picture of this heavenly grace is as the suffering one. She steps upon the stage, “suffering long” (1 Corinthians 13:4) and she passes off of it, “bearing all things, enduring all things” (see 1 Corinthians 13:7). The long suffering has reference to her capacity for continued forbearance. The bearing has reference to the faults of others, and is translated sometimes, “covers all things”; and the enduring has reference to the trials that come to us from the hand of God. Now let us remember that this is not stoical endurance, because we cannot help it, but loving enduring, because we do not look upon the dark side. We see it in the light of love. This is the analysis of love; but how beautiful and divine it seems when we rise from the delineation, and see it full-orbed and shining in the face of Jesus Christ Himself. He is the impersonation of love. It was He who suffered long and was kind, who sought not His own, never was provoked, who made no account of evil, who believed all things, hoped all things, endured all things, and whose love never failed. It is necessary for us to dwell on the preeminence of such a grace above tongues, above prophecy, above knowledge, above faith, above even hope itself. The chief reason of love’s preeminence is that love is the very essence and inherent quality of the heavenly life. It is not said anywhere that God is faith, or power, or wisdom, or even holiness. God has these attributes, but it is said that “God is love” (1 John 4:16). And so Christian character is love. When you abstract love you abstract the very tissue and essence of life itself. Without love, the apostle says, “I am nothing” (see 1 Corinthians 13:2). There isn’t anybody there to wear the quality or use the gift. Love, therefore, is essential because intrinsic, the life of our life, and the substance of our spiritual being, for God is our life and “God is love.” But it is necessary for us to ask, “How can we have this superlative gift?” And the answer is very plain. It is not a growth or development of human nature. It is wholly divine. It must come to us from above, and the only way to have it is by having Him. You cannot live in the 13th chapter of First Corinthians without having the experience of entire sanctification, and entire sanctification simply means the death of self and the union of the soul with God through the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It is not possible for human nature to live this chapter out. It is not possible for a converted Christian to do it unless he has received the very gift of gifts, the Spirit of Jesus to dwell within him. Its first use is to search your heart and utterly discourage you from attempting it in your own strength, and so throw you at His feet that you will accept Him and let Him live His life in you. Let us do this here and now, and expiring at the feet of love take love to be our resurrection life and Christ to relive in us His own life once more. But further, having done this, He will teach you, step by step, day by day, moment by moment, to watch against the things that militate against the life of love. And you will find that you must guard the crossroads, you must watch against the “note,” you must go down into the minutiae of life, and live out with Him in detail all the delineations of this chapter over which we have passed. This is where many fail. They want to have it come like some favoring gale, and bear them without a thought into the heavenly harbor. It is not so. Love must stand upon the bridge, and watch against the shoals and currents, and steer her course with ceaseless, patient toil untiring to the goal. There are two other thoughts suggested in the closing verses of this chapter that are very helpful in the experiences of the life of love. One is the childishness from which our strifes come. He seems to think of them as infantile follies which should be put away with the maturity of spiritual manhood. The other thought is the imperfect knowledge by reason of which most of our misunderstandings come. We see, he says, as in an enigma and through a mirror. Now, the mirror distorts everything you see. When you look at another through a mirror you see him inverted; the right hand is where the left hand should be, and the whole figure is misplaced, and you must correct your impression by your knowledge of this fact. Now, you frequently see people and things as through a mirror, and you will find some day in the clear light of heaven that you saw everything wrong, and that you often formed your prejudices and your likes and your dislikes in blind and stupid ignorance through your distorted vision. True love is blind to the lights of earth and the vision of sense, and sees everything in the light of God; and if we live in the light of His love it will give a heavenly glory to all else around us. I remember a glorious sunset once in which the clouds of the golden west were tinted like the chariots of some sublime procession. As I gazed I saw that everything around me had taken on the heavenly hue, and I looked at the faces of my friends until they glowed in the purple and gold of the heavens above. And if we live in the vision of God and in the love of Jesus, we will cover all around us with His beauty and His glory. And the things that otherwise would be dark and sad and strange will be lighted with the reflection of those skies, where the sun no more goes down and where evil will never come again.