1 Cor No.28 Love is the Greatest (Part)

I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection, then we shall see face to face.

Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. Now these three remain, faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

You have your Bibles open at 1 Corinthians in chapter 13. And the main introduction to this particular chapter which has been called a hymn of praise is really the last sentence of the 12th chapter. And now I will show you the most excellent way.

I want to speak to you on the greatest. It would not be very easy, but if you were to try to forget your knowledge of the context of these 13 glorious verses of Scripture, and you came as a new individual to the second half of the Bible, you had some understanding of the disciples of our Lord and their personalities, I wonder who you might have thought would have been the man to have penned this particular sonnet of love. Might I suggest to you that it would have been the apostle John.

For John is known as the apostle of love and is so bold to say in the gospel that bears his name, he is the disciple whom Jesus loved. And yet I'm thankful to the Lord that though John would have been a worthy author of this particular passage, it was Paul who was used by the Spirit to pen it. Paul the academic, Paul the philosopher, Paul the genius, who shows us that it was not just a mind full of brilliance that he offered to the Lord, but a heart that brimmed over with emotion, to the extent that Paul, by the encouragement of the Holy Ghost, could write this particular chapter.

It's possible that Paul had this hymn on one side for quite a while, and that he incorporated it into the gap between the 12th and 14th chapters of Corinthians as he wrote out that particular letter. I'm not being dogmatic, but it's rather a wonderful thought that Paul, moving into intensity of inspiration, thinking through his knowledge of the love of God, waits an opportunity to use this particular poem, this sonnet of love, in a right and a proper place as he pens a letter. And he could not have been more inspired if it was the case that he wrote this on occasion, apart from the writing of the letter to the Corinthians.

He could not have been more directed by the Holy Spirit to have put it just where it appears, in this place, in the New Testament. Now those of you, and you have every right so to do, of course, because it's a marvelous translation of Scripture, who cling to the beauty of the King James Version of the Bible, have to bear in mind that the word charity in 1611 means a lot differently than what it means today. And if I were to read from the King James Version of the Bible this morning, then it's possible that a stranger to the word of God would get a complete wrong comprehension of what Paul is referring to.

When he speaks about charity, he's not talking about help the aged, nor is he talking about Oxfam. Paul is here speaking of that most precious characteristic of Almighty God, which needed in the Greek language another word being coined to get across all that the early church understood by the love of the Lord. And so the word charity has changed in its meaning down the centuries.

One of 300 words, incidentally, from the King James Version of the Bible that have changed their meaning somewhat drastically over the centuries for language is a living thing since the King James Version was granted to us. Well, with this in mind, that Paul is not speaking about benevolent activity, but the heart of God, a heart of love, we look at these verses. But stay your mind on the Lord for a moment.

You remember that tremendous statement in John's Gospel chapter 3 and verse 16, where we read the evangelist speaking for the Lord. For a God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. I'm quoting the AV, but there the word love is used properly and it's the translation of the word love in 1 Corinthians 13.

And that love, this special love to which I said the Greeks really had no means of communicating it apart from the writing up of another term, tells us of the character of God. Listen to a definition of this love. It indicates a love which deliberately by an act of will chooses its object and through thick and thin, regardless of attractiveness, goes on loving eternally.

That's what charity or love means in 1 Corinthians 13. I'll give you the definition again. It indicates a love which deliberately by an act of will chooses its object and through thick and thin, regardless of attractiveness, goes on loving eternally.

That's how God loves you. And that's something of the love that Paul tells us we are to make our aim so that we might in some measure at any rate in our lifestyle, in our relationships, reflect that very agape love of God to others with whom we have to deal. I'm going to break these verses up and some way I feel almost like some art critic trying to break up a constable or a music critic trying to break up one of Beethoven's symphonies and I trust that in the clumsiness of my own analysis in no way do we lose the beauty of what is contained within these verses.

It seems to me that when we look it through, in the first three verses reference is made to the preeminence of love, the preeminence of love. In the next four verses there is a description of the performance of love and in the final five verses there is reference made to the permanence of love. First of all to the preeminence of love, how it rates.

Then if you're pleased to the performance of love, how it shows. And then to the permanence of love, how it wears. Well, with those three little hooks to help us in working out Paul's teaching here, let's move into the verses and stay with your Bible open, concentrating on what Paul by the Spirit has to say as I take you right through the contents of this lovely passage of Scripture.

The preeminence of love, how it rates. Well, it rates so highly that Paul at the beginning of the chapter says that we are to make love, we are to realize that love is the most excellent way and right at the end of the chapter and into the 14th verse, those chapter divisions being inserted after the translation of Scripture, he says make love your aim, follow the way of love. Now in these opening three verses there's a hypothetical picture.

You say, what does hypothetical mean? Well, it's speculative. Here is Paul envisaging a situation, so four times he uses the word if, or if you're following the AV, five times the word though. He speaks in terms of something that could conceivably be.

What picture has Paul in mind as he emphasizes the preeminence of love? Well, he's talking about a remarkably gifted individual, a man who has many gifts of the Spirit, so to speak, under his belt. He's a man who can communicate in tongues. He's a man who's so abundantly gifted he's got prophecy.

He's got discernment. He's got faith. He's got philanthropy.

And if a willingness to be a martyr is a gift, then says the apostle in the third verse, he's got that also. Here is a most ungifted individual. And if he came along into the tabernacle, I would resign immediately and say to the elders, there's the man for your pastor.

Let me be away. But if it turned up to the apostle Paul and any church that he'd run, Paul wouldn't even have given him a Sunday school class, let alone the office of a minister, the declarer of God's truth from Scripture. Why is that? Do you remember the parable? No, not the parable.

The incident in the life of Jesus when a rich young ruler comes to Jesus and the Savior says after this man had said that he kept the law of God and so on and so forth, one thing thou lackest. And if Jesus, our blessed Lord, was to see a man as ungifted as this hypothetical individual, he'd say with the apostle Paul, he's not qualified. One thing he lacks, he's got all the others, more than most people ever will have in the area of gifts, but one thing he lacks and the lack makes everything else, if not a counterfeit, certainly unacceptable.

He lacks love. You can have, says the apostle, loveless tongues, loveless prophecy, loveless discernment, loveless faith, loveless philanthropy, even loveless martyrdom, and if you offer that on the altar of sacrifice, it is obnoxious in the sight of God, as were the animal sacrifices that the Hebrews brought to the Lord in Old Testament days, which He rejected, because there was no sincerity and there was no love. You cannot overemphasize the biblical challenge to love, as is underlined in scripture.

Everything else collapses, unless it's built on the firm foundation of agape love. You can be orthodox in your theology, you can come to the tabernacle or a similar church, and you can have come for years. You like a tidy way of worship.

You've got a doctrinal system that you could quote off Pat, and yet you could be so bereft of agape love that the whole of what you have engaged in is a mere charade, a performance. You say it's strong teaching. It's no stronger than it is in here.

If anything, I'm preaching in a watered down fashion. Says Paul, I'm a zero. I'm nothing.

If I don't have this love, it's a preeminent characteristic necessary in the service of God, on the part of the servant of God. The preeminence of love, how does it rate? It's superlative. Without it, nothing else counts for anything at all.

But what about the performance of love? If the preeminence of love and how it rates is in the first three verses, here, without doing any injustice, I trust, to the context in the next four verses or so is the performance of love. How does it show? From the fourth verse down to the seventh and onwards indicates this. There is no more important teaching in the whole of scripture than what is locked up in verses 4, 5, 6 and 7 of this chapter.

Here, spilt out in 15 different ways is the manifestation with which love will show itself. Here is a ruler, if you please. Stand alongside it and measure your spiritual stature.

Here is the acid test for any service as to whether it's acceptable or unacceptable. Are these characteristics shown? Because agape love is not mental alone. It goes into the personality and it compels someone, some people, some men, some women, millions of them within the body of Christ to be different creatures to what they used to be.

For agape love is unnatural. It's not a souping up of a natural characteristic. It's a bestowal by God so that into the sin-polluted personality the man or the woman who has trusted Christ as Saviour emerges something new.

I've been trying to teach you as much as I'm able about the body of Christ. We had to look into that analogy. It's in the 12th chapter and it's spelt out so beautifully by Paul.

But the body of Christ means this, that you, me, incorporated into it derive the life of God into our personality. Let Peter the fisherman put it perhaps a little more clearly than I can. We become partakers of the divine nature.

Something happens to me that is extraordinary if I belong to the Lord. And how do I know? Well, I know through the performance of love how it shows in my life. It's said almost by every commentator whether they be Calvinistically inclined or more Arminian in their approach to Scripture.

It's noted that here from the 4th through to the 7th verse although they don't use the word there's the identikit picture of the Lord Jesus. Here are all his virtues. But you can't stop there you see because if you're a follower of Jesus you don't just mimic him.

You partake of his nature. And therefore at least in some degree and increasingly so this picture has to describe you and me. It's a ruler by which you measure yourself.

It's a photograph which you put alongside your own face and look into a mirror and see if the reflection bears any copy any resemblance to that photograph. Fifteen characteristics. Let's alas rush through them.

We discover that love is patient. Verse 4. Keep your eyes on these verses now we're moving quickly. Love is patient.

Alas you couldn't find that in the Corinthian church not throughout the entire congregation. They came behind in no gifts but they lost out on patience. That's the reason why they were taking brother and sister to court and why Paul has to write and tell them to desist.

Love is kind. It's generous. But in Corinth when they had their love feasts when they fed people before the morning service the rich got in early and took the food and the hungry went away empty.

A travesty of the Christian ethic. Love does not envy but jealousy bedeviled Corinth one person's gift reckoned to be more than another person's gift thus the analogy of the body that we looked at last week and weeks before. Love is not boastful it is not proud or as I think it's Phillips dares to put it in his paraphrase love is not a windbag it's not puffed up because the Lord Jesus had no arrogance had no boasting had no pride in his nature and those who follow Jesus at Corinth are to be like him.

Love, continue verse 5 is not rude it is not self-seeking. In Corinth some were saying we're of Paul others were saying we're of Apollos others were saying we're of Peter they were vying against one another but this sort of love that Paul refers to will not go along with anything that will divide the body of Christ and split people into factions. Love is not self-seeking nor is love easily angered it is not irritable.

You're beginning to feel uncomfortable I hiccuped this morning when I got to that particular verse and I thought if Rowena's in the congregation and she hears me on this one then she could give you a more honest assessment of me than you've probably formed for yourself. It is not rude it is not self-seeking it is not irritable it is not easily angered it keeps no record of wrongs in other words it doesn't brood over other people's failings are you still remembering what somebody did wrong a year or so ago how they offended you then does that in some way taint your relationship now then that's not of Christ because love does not delight in evil even other people's evil rather it rejoices with truth it covers and that's what Paul means when he goes on and says in the seventh verse there are four always here it always protects it always trusts it always hopes it always perseveres love you see has this commodity it never gives up it never considers failure to be final what a problem that would have been in the life in the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ as he reviewed Peter Peter you will deny me Peter rejects the notion but Jesus persists realizing that this is the case Peter will fail him he will fail him miserably but Jesus goes through the failure of Peter and recognizes that it's not final love continues you see love continues to believe and to hold on despite the fact that there are those who perhaps might otherwise have given up and rightly so at a human level here then is love it always protects it always trusts it always hopes it always perseveres 15 characteristics of love we have here listed for us in 1 Corinthians 13 we spoken then of the preeminence of love how it rates of the performance of love how it shows and we must ask ourselves to what extent this describes us and then the permanence of love how it lasts look at verse 8 love never fails do you ever ask yourself before you buy something will it really last remember during the days of the second world war when my mother was trying to bring up myself and my brother on a very miserly income at times she'd buy shoes for us one of the first things that she used to have to ask was will it wear out or will they wear out will love wear out will the influence of the Lord Jesus Christ wear out because it describes him all those characteristics and we have to say no the influence of Jesus is intact because he's the embodiment of agape love which never, never, never fails it wasn't so much what Jesus did that he reckoned as important in terms of his miracles and the signs it was what Jesus did well then as you work your way through from the 8th verse right down to the 13th there is the concept of the Lord coming back again implied and we gather that when the trumpet of the Lord shall sound when time shall be no more certain things will follow that event prophecy will bow out where there are prophecies they will cease tongues will be absorbed into the love song of the redeemed in heaven and will therefore have no more part to play here on earth whether there are tongues they will be still as for knowledge well confronted with the ultimate knowledge of almighty God it will be absorbed by the heat of the latter but there is something that will continue to exist on and on into eternity even verse 10 when perfection comes and when the imperfect has disappeared you gather by dropping to the end of the chapter love will still exist says Paul down here on earth I'm just like a child and a child well in the nursery he plays with his toys the toys may be inadequate he's quite content to have a locomotive engine a replica of a real thing but if a man down on British Rail Station at Worthing was playing with one of those you'd think that something was a matter with him he should have turned his toys in and settled for the real thing now says Paul that will be like me in heaven all these are inadequate things prophecies tongues knowledge and so forth and I'll not be a Peter Pan in heaven I'll turn them over for the real thing he uses another analogy he says you Christians there in Corinth you know that there are bronze mirrors that are displayed in the bazaars now there aren't many of you who are rich who can afford a beautifully polished mirror and so when you look into the inadequate one you get a distorted reflection but the day is coming says the apostle when that distorted reflection that you have of God because there's a lot more of God to know than has even been revealed in the Bible when that distorted reflection shall be cleared up when you shall have fully focused a knowledge and an understanding of God akin to that of Moses on Mount Sinai and when that happens you'll see him face to face and all that's obscure all that's partial all that's incomplete shall be of days gone by never to be repeated again so here is Paul what is he talking about when he's referring to love well he's talking about its preeminence how it rates its performance how it shows its permanence how it endures he says in the 13th verse climbing the mountain peak of inspiration and now these three remain faith hope and love but the greatest of these is love why? why the greatest Paul? because love is the essence of God God is not hope God is not faith but God is love and love will ever abide and the mark of successful spirituality is indicated by the way in which you have appropriated the love of God you cannot disassociate the infilling or baptism whatever experience whatever term you want to use and however you think through your theology as to whether it's a one stage or two stage experience you cannot disassociate the fullness of the spirit and the exhibition of agape love Romans 5 5 makes it impossible when God pours his spirit into our hearts he pours in there agape love and you can tell me that you're orthodox for all the years that are to come that I might know you and if there's not an indication of agape love there then your orthodoxy carries your orthodoxy carries no weight you can claim to be gifted in this area of the charismata in the other area of the charismata but show me a critical and a carping spirit and I point you back to 1 Corinthians 13 I mean it when I say my own ministry is tested on the bounds or rather on the fulcrum of love if it's not spinning on that balance then forget everything I've tried to teach you in these last 12 years it was completely just like a clanging gong and a sounding and a sounding brass it was just a noise like the pagan noise in the Corinthian temples like the noise that I can still hear will you believe it when sometimes I put my head to the pillow and I think of the times I've been in temples in Nepal and in India it's the noise of ecstasy it's the noise of frenzy but it adds up to nothing at all you can be orthodox without love and your spirituality is zero you can be charismatic quote without love and your gifts are valueless but put the three together for this is what Paul is arguing and don't dare to conclude from 1 Corinthians 13 certain permutations of theology that Paul has not argued for Paul is not saying that love is to be the ultimate and nothing else matters he's arguing for charismatic enablings and orthodoxy of theology and agape love it's a sandwich and you've got bread and you've got the heart of the sandwich and you've got the other part of the sandwich too and he's offering it as being necessary for us all don't interfere with Paul's sandwiches because he was inspired in putting them together that's why he inserts the 13th chapter between the 12th and the 14th and that's why it remains very very necessary for us here in the tab to make love our aim and to ensure that all of Paul's teachings as he's inspired by the Spirit in other areas of our Christian life are accepted and practiced and lived out love the greatest Amen Father as we have thought this morning of the preeminence of love its performance and its permanence we ask that in our own hearts you who have determined that we should be incorporated into the body of Christ inserted into the vine which our Lord prefigures enable us to reproduce more of that agape love that comes from yourself and is not natural to us give us a baptism in that love for Jesus sake. Amen