Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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I. The Reading
A reading from 1 Corinthians 13:1-13.
This is God’s Word:
This is God’s Word, Amen.
II.
The Exhortation
I urge us to think together about the way love is elevated among the three abiding graces.
Verse 13 again says -
“The greatest of these.”
That word “greatest” is a relative word.
Meaning, it exists in relationship with other things.
Something cannot be the “greatest” if it is the “only.”
This means the life that God gives us, the life lived by the Holy Spirit, is multifaceted.
It consists of more than one side.
More than one grace.
1 John 4:8 reveals this about God:
We’ve all heard that, right?
God is love.
And that is true.
But God is not “only” love.
The Word also reveals to us that God is spirit, God is light, God is unchanging, God is holy, God is just, God is a consuming fire, God is righteous, God is truth.
And lest we think that we could ever fully describe God, the Word tells us that God’s judgments are unsearchable and his ways are incomprehensible (Rom 11:33).
We cannot put God in a box.
Many have tried to do that.
It’s called idolatry.
It’s called fashioning God after our own image.
God does not fit in a box of our making.
God does not fit within our dictionary of words for describing him.
God is love, but God is not “only” love.
Beyond this, God is not just an idea to be described.
God is living, and God acts.
God reveals His nature to us through His Word and through His Works, such that “his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.”
So that there is no excuse for not knowing the Creator - God who loves.
Often times, we humans just want to know God through one characteristic.
We filter our understanding of God through one adjective, one attribute or one theme.
And this leads to scary misunderstandings and misinterpretations.
If you believe, for example, that God is “only” love, then eventually, love becomes God to you.
Life then becomes “all about love” rather than “all about God.”
And without God, love loses its meaning.
This is why the world distorts love.
This is why we, the church, revolt at most of the ideas and practices of the world in the name of “love.”
It’s not love without God, for God is love, but God is also truth.
God is also righteous.
God is love, but love is not God.
I encourage us all not to think about God in such a limited way, and not to think about “love” in such a limited way either.
Love itself, as defined by God, is multifaceted.
And we are in danger of wrongly treating love as we wrongly treat God, by making too much of only one side of love.
By making too much of one aspect of love.
And if we do that, we end up losing the truth about love altogether.
Craig Blomberg helps us with this warning.
He says —
It has often been observed that one could substitute the word “Jesus” for “love” throughout verses 4–7.
Indeed, as the only sinless person in human history, he provides the perfect model for helping us to understand what patience, kindness, lack of envy, and so on, are.
In so doing, we also guard against misinterpreting these attributes.
If Jesus was all-loving, but could clear the temple in righteous indignation (Mark 11:15–18) or unleash a torrential invective against the hypocrisy of the conservative religious leaders of his day (Matt.
23), then our concept of love must leave room for similar actions.
Blomberg cautions us from saying of someone else’s actions: “that’s not loving” or accusing a person of “not acting in love” because WE do not define what love is.
We are not interpreters of love.
God defines love.
And God reveals love.
Quoting Lewis Smedes, Blomberg points out that being patient does not mean tolerating evil.
Being kind does not mean you cannot at the same time be both intelligent and tough.
He says that if someone were to run off with your spouse, it would be loving and even right, for you to be upset about it.
(NIVAC)
This “love” of God, the word here is [ ἀγάπη ] , is multifaceted, in that it gives permission at times to be angry and still be loving, and allows for us to be irritated and at the same time to still love.
Our marriages prove this as well.
For while in our union, we may disagree, fight or be angry at times, we are nevertheless still held together in the bonds of this multifaceted thing called “love.”
Love is more than a feeling.
Love is a wonderful grace of God that allows us to experience all bands of emotions, but to experience each one rightly and appropriately - lovingly.
Love is given and received in different ways by different people.
For some, it is loving to serve and be served.
For others, it is loving to give and receive.
For some, it is loving to speak and receive words of affirmation.
God created us all to love, but we all value different expressions of love.
Introduction to Text
With this in mind, the apostle is speaking to a multifaceted church in Corinth that is experiences many problems.
And when you have a body experiencing many problems, it needs a multifaceted solution.
Simple is not always sufficient for the complex situations.
The church needs a multifaceted grace, and that grace is this multifaceted “love.”
This congregation in Corinth is divided.
There are schisms.
“I follow Apollos.”
“I follow Cephas.”
“I follow Christ.”
These are Followships.
Not fellowship, the apostle says.
This congregation in Corinth is deceived.
How many times has the apostle said “Do you not know?”
“I do not want you to be ignorant.”
“I do not want you to be uninformed.”
They did not know the truth of God’s Word, and they certainly were not living by it.
They were not standing with the truth.
They allowed an evil person, living in blatant and public sin, to remain among them in the church with no consequence.
They boasted about their own wisdom and sued one another in public courts.
They dishonored the apostle and his ministry who was God’s gift to them and for them.
But they didn’t discern his needs or care for his living as God expected and provided for them to.
This congregation in Corinth is disgraceful.
They gather to worship and partake of the Lord’s Supper but fail to discern those who are needy among them.
Instead those who have, take more, and get drunk on what belongs to the Lord for His body.
They do not remember how Christ gave up his own body by being obedient to God’s will and humbling Himself before God.
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