Hands 3: Loving your fellow church members
Head Heart Hands Holy Worship • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Bible Reading:
Bible Reading:
1 If I speak human or angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.
3 And if I give away all my possessions, and if I give over my body in order to boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant,
5 is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs.
6 Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth.
7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.
9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part,
10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will come to an end.
11 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 put aside childish things.
12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, as I am fully known.
13 Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love—but the greatest of these is love.
Today I want to talk about one of if not the most famous text in the Bible. The text we read is a favourite at weddings, whether the people are believers or not. I myself have officiated two marriages where the couples had chosen this text as their wedding text.
And this text does give us fantastic Biblical teaching about what it means to truly love, and os in the context of a marriage ceremony, this text is great.
But when you read 1 Corinthians 13, you find that this text isn’t primarily intended to be about how to love your spouse (although of course it does teach us important things about how to love).
It is not primarily about the virtues of love for our neighbour (although of course love is virtuous and we need to love our neighbour).
It is also not primarily a text that intends to teach us a good theology of Biblical love (although it does give us a Biblical theology of love).
1 Cor 13 is a text that teaches Christians how to love each other IN the church.
Seeing 1 cor 13 as a text that teaches something else is like the story of the tired salesman.
The story goes that there was once a weary travelling salesman arrived at his motel one evening after yet another day of unsuccessful activity. For the previous couple of weeks he’d been travelling the highways and byways and back-ways of the state, trying to spruik the stuff his employers wanted him to offload. He was tired, actually he was exhausted. But even more importantly,he was depressed.
He could not seem to sell anything, his money was running out, and he just felt he’d lost it.
As he flopped down on his somewhat rickety motel bed, his eyes fell on the Bible that someone had left in the room.
So in his exhaustion he thought he would open the Bible. He thinks to himself, the first place I open to, the first verse my eye falls on will be the verse that God is giving me for this moment. This is the thing that will change my life.
So he shoots up a quick prayer, and the first hting he sees is that he lands on Matthew 27:5
5 So he threw the silver into the temple and departed. Then he went and hanged himself.
Well, he thought, that doesn’t sound like the verse he want’s to shape his life. So he flips forward another 30 odd pages.
Without reading the whole text, he closed his eyes and put his finger on a verse, and this is what he read in Luke 10:37
You go and do likewise.
Understandably he didn’t find this all that helpful either, so he again skipped over a few pages but as he put his finger down and picked another text, he saw another command by Jesus in where Jesus says:
And what you are going to do, go and do it quickly.
Obviously that story isn’t true, but when we rip a text out of its context, we miss the point.
So if we want to really understand what God is teaching us about love, we need to go to 1 Corinthians and understand its context.
What then, is the context of this passage?
The book of Acts tells us that Paul arrived in Corinth during his second missionary journey. He stayed there for about 18 months, and many Corinthians came to faith. But after he left, division and factions arose.
It should be said at this point that the Corinthians were a difficult people to deal with. Their quarrelling and divisiveness and factions centred around their various teachers. Not that the teachers caused the problems –no, it was the people who quarrelled about spiritual gifts, and all in the name of “wisdom”.
You see, dear friends, these Corinthian Christians had become “puffed up” with their importance. They were given to boasting about themselves and about their teachers. They emphasised speaking in tongues over other workings of the Holy Spirit to such an extent that wild disorder resulted in their worship services.
And it is against this background that Paul is writing to them.
The whole point of the classic text and chapter on Love is written by Paul to the corinthian church, precisely because they did not know how to love each other as a church!
The love-chapter, chapter 13, is smack-bang in the middle between two chapters (12 and 14!) that have to do with speaking in tongues, prophesying, preaching, and healing gifts.
This sandwiching of the chapter on love between the other two chapters dealing with the same subject, is a technique to emphasise the importance of the passage.
And we know that this passage is of immense importance. If the members of the church were going to love each other. If they were going to get love right, they needed to pay attention.
And so just before this chapter, Paul has been talkiong about how there are no better or worse spiritual gifts, about how the gifts should be used to build up the church, and then just before he launches into this great teaching he says this:
Earnestly desire the higher gifts.
And I will show you a still more excellent way
It’s almost like he’s pre-empting the question “Why are you carrying on so much about love? It’s just an emotion, isn’t it?”
But you see, unlike Tina Turner, who sang about love being a second-hand-emotion, Paul is singing from a different song-sheet.
He’s telling them “Love is what it is all about”. Listen, you Corinthians, he says, you boast about all those other gifts, but they are useless if they are not based in love!
They don’t have any value in the eyes of God unless they are grounded in a deep-seated love.
They don’t mean a thing if they’re not centred on the type of love that Christ told us about.
Such love, Paul says, is the gift above all gifts.
Love is fundamental
love is alive
And love Love makes us look forward
1. Love is fundamental (1-3)
1 If I speak human or angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.
3 And if I give away all my possessions, and if I give over my body in order to boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.
In the first three verses, Paul explains that a church may possess many good qualities, but if it does not have love, it cannot be a church.
If we do not love each other, we cannot be the Church God wants for us.
Sure we might have the best teaching, we might have the best selah experiences, we might have the best architechture, the best paint colours, the best musicians, the best whatever.
But if we have not love, we are not the church God wants us to be.
Great teaching is admirable. Good prayer times are praiseworthy. Having special gifts from the Holy spirit are powerful, but if we don’t love each other, these thigns are nothing.
Teaching without love is just a lecture. And a church without love is just a gathering of likeminded people.
Love is fundamental.
It is so fundamental, that Paul spends quite a bit of time detailing how important it is.
He says:
Love is better than speaking in tongues,
Love is better than prophecy,
Love is better than charity,
Love is better than knowledge.
But we still get this wrong today dont we. We can major on teh minor things. Immature Christians are great at majoring on the minor thing.
For example: Some churches focus excessively on speaking in tongues – and boy, if you can’t do that, you’re not really a Christian, the Holy Spirit cannot really be in you!
That’s not love.
Other churches focus on the gift of prophecy – again, without this, you’re almost classed as a second-hand Christian! If you don’t get supernatural revelations from God, then you aren’t really Christian.
But that’s not love. (Let alone that I think they misunderstand what the word prophecy means in the Bible).
Reformed churches get this wrong too. If you don’t have your theology absolutely straight -= you can’t really be a Christian. You don’t really know Jesus if you arent as excited by him, or know as much as I know about him.
IF you can’t at least explain the 5 points of Calvinism, then you don’t get to speak at the Bible study group.
But that’s not love.
These things may be important, but they need to be built on the foundation of love.
Love is foundational. If we want to be a church that works, we need to love.
Love is foundational.
So what does congregational love look like.
It looks alive!
2. Love is alive (v4-7)
4 Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant,
5 is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs.
6 Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth.
7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Here Paul gets down to business. He now shows us what living love looks like.
He starts rattling off a buch of love characteristics.
Amongs other things, Paul says,
love is patient and kind.
It’s not arrogant or rude or boastful or prideful or self-absorbed.
Love isn’t just an emotion,
it is something that is dynamic – it’s a living thing!
It requires action!
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Now when you read these characteristics, you realise, hey, but actually these aren’t describing a feeling in the stomach when you see your boyfriend or girlfriend.
These things don’t describe the kind of deep seated longing you feel for someone when you haven’t seen them in ages.
These things don’t even describe how you feel towards someone you really like.
In each and every case, this kind of love, congregational love, love that a church is supposed to have for one another is a DOING kind of love.
Look at it, these are all statements of action.
Love isn’t a noun.
Love isn’t a thing.
Love isn’t an emotion.
Love isn’t something you feel.
Biblical love is a verb.
It is action.
Love hopes, love endures, love believes, love is patient. Love treats others kindly.
Love stops boasting.
Love wants what is best for the other person.
Love puts aside selfish desires, and acts for the good of the other person.
Look at the person two rows in front of you. Or someone 10 seats away.
When last did we sacrifice our wants for that person’s needs?
That person is your family in Christ, and so treat them as such. Treat them with the same love you would have in a healthy normal family, even though they are not a blood relation.
If they make you angry - forgive them.
If they frustrate you - be patient with them.
If they upset you, or disagree with you, don’t be rude or resentful - love covers a multitude of sins.
How do we do that?
I mean, if you are anything like me, you may have said words like “Come on. This is just who I am.
I get angry quickly.
I just struggle to let thigns slide - that just who I am.”
Paul here would say - so what? That’s who you were - you are now one of Jesus’s people. You walk in the way of Christ. You are a follower of the great forgiver. You are a student of the great sacrificer.
Quick to anger? Grudge holding? Never letting things go? Sure - that may be who you were - but if you believe in Jesus, that’s not who you are anymore.
You and I are called to put off the old self, for we have been made one with Christ! And if we have been made one with Christ, how can we still say or act or even think like that?
And that in public and in the church.
Verses 4-7 go on to tell us that love is evidenced by selflessness.
It doesn’t envy or boast, it does not insist on its own way, it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, it endures all things.
This wasn’t where the Corinthians were at. You see, they valued themselves so highly that they were like inflated balloons. But friends, love isn’t like a balloon full of hot air.
Love doesn’t puff itself up, instead it seeks to build up.
It flows out in showing appreciation for others, in affirming others. Love is characterised by affirming others, it means telling and showing others that you appreciate them.
Your love for others is a sign of your spiritual vitality.
So let me ask you – have you affirmed someone today?
Have you showed that you really care for them?
Now please don’t hear what I’m not saying – this isn’t something that will
save you, but it is something that shows you have been saved.
It shows you are walking in the love of Jesus.
What is your walk showing?
Our text also speaks of love not seeking one’s own advantage, or as verse 5 says, not insisting on your own way. Such a love focuses more not on privileges or on rights,but on responsibilities than on privileges.
Such a love focuses on what we ought to do than what we think others owe us.
I can’t help thinking about our Servant King, the One who came to serve, not to be served.
If Christ took on the work of a lowly slave to wash the feet of His disciples, if the King of all kings did that, can you and I really put our needs before those of others?
In the face of that amazing love, how can we not serve our brothers and sisters wherever and however we can?
The answer lies in our hearts. Such love, such a spirit of servanthood requires humility, not “puffed-uppiness”.
Yes, my and your hearts are still in that process called sanctification, so we will struggle with this humility.
But in the power of Jesus we can stand up and say “Here I am Lord, if You
lead me, I will hold Your people in my heart.”
Brothers, sisters, friends, love is truly about giving, rather than receiving.
Turn to Your God, come before Him in prayer and implore Him to let that
love for others flood all the chambers of your heart, so that you can fulfil
His command to love your neighbour as yourself.
So love is alive. It is an action. But Love makes us look forward
3. Love makes us look forward (v8-12)
8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.
9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part,
10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will come to an end.
11 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 put aside childish things.
12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, as I am fully known.
I think it’s interesting
that Paul spends quite a bit of time explaining the enduring nature of love.
he says.
Love outlasts all other gifts. Prophecies will have their fulfilment, tongues will serve their temporary purpose, and our partial knowledge will vanish.
But love will outlast them all.
Love outlasts the other gifts.
Love lasts throughout all eternity. As verse 13 tells us
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
Doesn’t this tell us that love is special? Doesn’t this tell us that it is all- important, that it is the most outstanding way?
And isn’t that exactly what Scripture’s command to love God with all our hearts and minds and strength and soul and to love our neighbours like ourselves really means?
so where do we get the power to sustain this kind of love.
if love is the most excellent way, how do we get to walk on that way in a way that endures?
because love, true sacrificial love is what characterises God’s love for us.
you see when we come to believe in Jesus, we are transferred into Christ. And so this love becomes natural to us, because we are given a new nature.
our love activity isn’t bound up in our strong will, our power, our grit…
our determination to put up with these people.
no our love flows from our Lord Jesus himself, through his holy spirit living in us.
and because that love now lives in us, we can love other enduringly.
In His amazing love, our Father sent His Son. And in His amazing love, Jesus came, and He died and was raised so that we may never die, so that we may have a secure hope in everlasting life.
And it is to this eternity that love like this points us and others.
You see there is this wonderful little phrase Paul gives there at the end of the chapter.
Now we see as in a mirror, but hten we will see face to face.
Some translations have this as now we see as though throuhg a veil, or throuhg a glass darkly.
What is he saying?
He is saying you know what, no matter how good your love is here- it does not compare to the Love of God in Christ Jesus. Sure we have an obligation to love.
We must do the loving each other thing, because we are brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus.
We have a duty to bear each other’s burdens, to share each other’s woes, to keep no record of wrongs and to be patient and kind and all those other things.
But you and I cannot do that, unless we realise that the source of this kind of love - does not come from in here (point to heart).
It doesn’t live in our human fleshy hearts.
The whole point of this chapter is that the corinthians have been doing the whole fleshy heart thing, they have been getting spiritual gifts fromt eh Holy Spirit and htey have been using them to make themsleves look amazing and great and powerful.
But no says Paul, these things come from God, to love one anotehr.
Why - because God so loved the world, that he gave his only son so that whomever believes in him, will have eternal life.
The love you have here is murky, it is as though looking through a dark glass, or a dirty mirror.
But when you glimpse the kind of love we are commanded to love each other with here - it points us to a much greater reality.
One day we will see love face to face. When we die, or when Jesus returns we will get to see the God of love face to face.
And the very best experience of love we can ever have here on earth will be but a glimpse of that wonderful reality there.
And the point is this - we have glimpsed that reality. When Jesus died on the cross. We saw what self-sacrifical love looked like.
And because we believed in him, we can now love in return with that same kind of love.
And that love doesn’t come from in here, from the heart,
but that kind of love comes from there (point to the cross).
And the more that love (point to cross) lives in here (point to heart), the more you will love out there.
Amen