Sermon Tone Analysis

“Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate the union of this man and this woman in holy matrimony...”

I’m sorry... That’s typically what is said before the reading of 1 Corinthians 13.

So many weddings have these familiar words about love read aloud by the minister officiating the wedding.

Out of curiosity: how many of your weddings featured 1 Corinthians 13?

This is commonly known as the love chapter.

I was tempted to sing the love medley from “Moulin Rouge” this morning, but Meghann refused to play Nicole Kidman to my Ewan McGregor.

“Love is a many-splendored thing.

Love lifts us up where we belong.

All you need is love.

‘All you need is love, all you need is love, all you need is l-o-v-e.’

‘Love is just a game.’”

I also thought about trying to pull off a parody of the SNL skit: “What is love?

Baby, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more.”

There are so many songs, so many movies and books that deal with love (or at least the cultural conception of love) it’s not even funny.

In church-circles and church-speak, ‘love’ is one of the standard responses, one of the most common Sunday school answers: “Jesus, God, Love, and the Bible.”

Shoot with any one of those, you’re bound to hit somewhere close to the target.

Paul would say: “Love is the central thing.”

Some find this chapter out of place here in the midst of the discussion on spiritual gifts, almost as if Paul dropped the pages of his letter on the way to the post office, the wind blew them around a bit, and, after he gathered them all up, he couldn’t get them back in order quite the way he had them, and just sent them to Corinth as they were.

But that’s not the case.

Neither is this chapter a diversion or a rabbit trail.

Paul’s not trying to slip in a random chapter on love—“Whoops-a-daisy! I guess I should probably say something about love before I finish.”

He’s making it clear that love is central to the whole discussion—to the whole of what he’s discussing.

It’s what’s lacking in Corinth, love; especially where their worship is concerned.

Where their exercise of spiritual gifts is concerned, love has to be the central thing, the controlling dynamic, the umbrella under which everything sits.

Paul’s writing to them about spiritual gifts in chapters 12 and 14, and sandwiched in between the two is this magnificent chapter on love.

It’s love, understood rightly, Biblically; it’s love and only love that will guide the Corinthians (and us) to a proper use and understanding of our spiritual gifts, our fellowship, our gathering.

1 Corinthians 13 is so central to Paul’s argument, so central to the Christian faith, that we are going to spend two weeks looking at this wonderful chapter.

If you have your Bible (and I hope you do), please turn with me to 1 Corinthians 13.

If you are able and willing, please stand with me for the reading of God’s Holy Word, out of reverence for Christ:

May the Lord add His blessing to the reading of His Holy Word!

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In the context of “worship issues”, Paul has been instructing the Corinthians about spiritual gifts, about belonging to a body—a diverse body made up of many different parts.

Every part has a different function and a different purpose.

The Corinthians need to understand that they all belong together in the body of Christ.

Paul set that out at length in 1 Corinthians 12.

But their understanding that they are part of a diverse and varied body won’t be any good if they simply try to put these truths into practice while grumbling about it or shrugging their shoulders over it.

The Corinthians need to take moment, pause, and deepen their understanding of the highest virtue, the greatest quality, the most Jesus-like characteristic you can imagine: love.

Love is the central thing.

It has to be our motivation, that which colors and informs everything else we do.

Paul insists that love is essential for Christian living, especially for communal Christian living and its shared worship (i.e. as a church).

Many people assume the chapter is about love between a man and woman, that it was written to provide guidance and insight for married couples.

It’s perfectly appropriate for husband and wife to learn how to love each other through the reading and study of this passage.

But its original purpose—its primary purpose—deals with the Church at large.

This is speaking about how the Church must love, how its members must relate to one another.

This chapter is primarily about living in Christian community in a way that glorifies God, and this is by learning to treat other members of Christ’s body the way God has treated us—with self-sacrificing, others-oriented love.

This is what has come to be referred to as agape love, which is a bit redundant.

Agape love means ‘love love’.

Like “ATM machine” or “VIN number”, it doesn’t need to be said.

Agape is one of the Greek words for love (one of the four).

The word is used 10 times between 13:1 and 14:1.

The word (agape) wasn’t invented by Jesus or by His followers (as some assume).

However it did come to be the preferred word among Christians for the love shown and expected by Christ.

Agape has the basic meaning of “warm regard for and interest in another.”

The New Testament dedicates a ton of space to explaining what love means for and requires of believers, unpacking the two basic texts of the Greatest Commandments:

So much of the NT expounds on these two great commands—Love God first, and love your neighbor as yourself:

Paul’s entire ethic is love.

It matters deeply that we love, and love well.

Jesus, who loved us and who enables us to love others, is not merely our example, but our strength and ability to love.

So Paul begins by stacking up all the impressive things the Corinthians might say, know, and do and asserts firmly that none of them are of any advantage unless there is love as well.

Without love, without the central thing, we have nothing.

As Christians, as the Church, if we are not marked by love, we might not be the Church; in fact, we might not be Christians at all.

Love must be central to what we say

The way Paul writes here in the 1st-person probably means he’s preaching to himself, too.

The phrase the tongues of men or of angels probably refers to the gift of tongues, but it’s also general enough to cover speech of any kind.

The Corinthians were obsessed with impressive speech and they were intrigued by the idea that they might be able to speak supernatural languages.

An individual can speak any language he wants, can be as eloquent as she’d like to be.

But if it’s not undergirded and infused with love, it’s just white noise.

A believer can sing all the love songs he’d like, but if he doesn’t mean it, if it is just a means to some other end, then Paul doesn’t want to hear it.

It’s just noise.

It might be impressive or eloquent, but it’s empty of necessary meaning.

Love fills what is said with necessary meaning.

We are a communicative people, most of us.

Every year or so I lose my voice and it’s almost torture (torture for me, blessing for those around me).

We communicate with one another online, via text message; phone calls and FaceTime.

We gather together in one another’s homes and go out to eat so we can talk to one another at some length.

Between casual conversation and the requisite conversation for work, we move our mouths a lot.

A good thing to consider is how much of what we say is seasoned with love?

More to the point of the passage in context, how much of what I say to my brothers and sisters in Christ is marked by this agape love?

How much of my communication with and about my fellow Christians reflects the love Jesus has shown?

How much of my preaching, my teaching, my leading comes from a place of love—self-sacrificing, others-oriented love?

Love must be central to what we know

The Corinthians are a group of real dandies.

They are obsessed with eloquence and excellence; they placed a high premium on intelligence, insight, secret knowledge.

They worked real hard to access some higher plane of spiritual knowledge.

We know what this looks like.

If we run into an incredibly intelligent, knowledgeable person who lacks kindness and humility, we probably won’t be very impressed with him.

No one likes that person—the one who is smart and nothing else.

Knowledge without love is nothing.

Intelligence without love might as well be ignorance.

Even if we’re in the right, others would rather likely not want to hear what we have to say.

Having a handle on prophecy and understanding mysteries and possessing extra-special knowledge doesn’t count for anything without love.

You’ve heard it said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

This is true.

If you’re knowledgeable but devoid of love, you are nothing.

Love must be central to what we do

Imagine this scenario: someone comes to the church because they need some help paying their utility bill and they need some money for groceries (this happens almost weekly, by the way).

They come to us because they are in need of financial assistance and because we have a fund set up to help them.

Now imagine we say, “Sure, we can help you with your needs, but you have to understand a couple of things: we don’t love you and we don’t care about you.

We are really only interested in giving you some money because it will make us look good.

Also, Jesus tells us to give, so we do this because we have to; again, not because we love you or care about you.

Got it?”