Love: The Measure of Life

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Love (part of the Fruit of the Spirit) is more important than the gifts given by the Spirit. This is because love gives the measure of all things.

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Love: The Measure of life

The Value of Replacement Insurance
A farmer’s barn burned down, and his wife called the insurance company. She told the agent, “We had that barn insured for fifty thousand dollars, and I want my money.”
The agent replied, “Whoa there, just a minute. Insurance doesn’t work quite like that. First, we will ascertain the value of what was insured and then provide you with a new one of comparable worth.”
There was a long pause before the woman replied, “If that’s the way insurance works, then I’d like to cancel the policy I have on my husband.”
We spend an awful lot of time figuring out the monetary value of things. Does monetary cost determine the value of a person or item?
Is it possible to know the price of everything and the value of nothing?
The Bible teaches that life is far more important than things. This is especially true with regard to a life that is right with Jesus!
Matthew 16:24–28 (CSB)
24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will find it. 26 For what will it benefit someone if he gains the whole world yet loses his life? Or what will anyone give in exchange for his life? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will reward each according to what he has done. 28 Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
I yearn to follow Jesus . I want to live a life that has value. I desire to hear “well done good and faithful servant when I meet Jesus. So I need to know how to know the value of all things, right? And only do those that are good in Jesus’ eyes!
Do you want that same thing?
Today’s text is 1 Cor 12:31b-13:13, and in it Paul tells us the way to measure value is love. Love (part of the Fruit of the Spirit) is more important than the gifts given by the Spirit. Anything devoid of love is devoid of any value, and love increases the value of everything it touches! Paul has convicted me that I want to be known for my true love. I know, that means a great deal of work lies ahead of me. Thankfully most of that labor will be the Spirit’s. If you care to join me in that quest our labor is to be teachable and willing to follow the Spirit’s lead.
1 Corinthians 12:31b–13:13 (CSB)
31b I will show you an even better way.
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.

The Text In Its Context

1 Corinthians 12:31b (ESV)
31b And I will show you a still more excellent way.
The Corinthians thought of the more numinous gifts as the highest experience of spirituality and divine presence, but Paul will now show them the “better way”, the “most excellent” way is found in love.
Spiritual gifts are significant, and the Corinthians should be zealous to experience the greatest gifts, but something is greater than any and all of the gifts.
Love is meant just for some believers, it is the foundation, a “way of life” that should give guidance to the expression of all the gifts: love.
If you are familiar with the Star Wars series titled the Mandalorian you might be familiar with the phrase “this is the way!” You hear it as often in the new series as you heard “May the force be with you” in the original material. The phrase sums up the entire way of life or code of the Mandalorian race.
If Disney made a series on the Apostle Paul the phrase might well be Love is the way!

True Love Is Priceless

1 Corinthians 13:1 (CSB)
1 If I speak human or angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
The value of love is beyond estimation. No gift or possession is profitable without it.
1 Corinthians 13:2 (CSB)
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.
In these verses Paul compares the superiority of love to the gift of languages, the gift of prophecy, miraculous faith, and the doing of sacrifices and good deeds.
1 Corinthians 13:3 (CSB)
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.
We must recognize the value of love also, for God’s love enables us to do His work effectively. God is love and the more like Him we become, the more love we will possess.

What True Love Looks Like

1 Corinthians 13:4–7 (CSB)
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.
The virtues of love include kindness, humility, selflessness, patience, compassion, faith, and love.
Many people are trying to express the virtues of love without the possession of love. This is impossible to do.
We must possess the Spirit of Christ if we are to succeed in performing the work of Christ. Being filled with the Holy Spirit enables us to practice the virtues of love.

Love Is Permanent (1 Cor. 13:8–13)

1 Corinthians 13:8–13 (CSB)
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.
Loved ones, friends, pleasures, and possessions sometimes fail, but “love never faileth.”
Faith pleases God, but faith serves its purpose only in this life. We cannot live without hope, but hope will not be needed in the world to come.
Love is a necessity; everyone needs to love and be loved. Love is eternal; it will unfold in greater beauty and glory while endless ages roll. Victory is assured those who are filled with God’s love.

We Must Love Like Jesus: Contemporary Application

THE NEED FOR GENUINE, Christ-like love remains as great today as ever. Yet one of our greatest problems is defining what true love is.
Popular culture—in television, movies, books, music, advertising, social media—uses the word to mean just about everything except what the Bible means by it. They focus on how it feel- on the hormonal and the emotional. So even Christians are easily misled into thinking love is primarily a feeling, something you fall in or out of. We speak of a persons “lover” or of “making love.”
But Paul, actually the entire Bible, speaks of love as an action or choice, an unconditional commitment, a promise that is never broken. The promise to place other’s needs above our own.
Christian spirituality refuses reduction to a mere personal experience of the divine. Inspired by love, its focus is to reveal Christ. It points outward rather than inward. The aim of a Christian spirituality is to shout from the rooftop what was revealed in the prayer chamber (Matt. 10:27).
Matthew 10:27 (CSB)
27 What I tell you in the dark, speak in the light. What you hear in a whisper, proclaim on the housetops.
Paul’s argument is that a Christ follower must demonstrate Christ’s character. Christian spirituality is not about feeling good but about willingness to participate in the sufferings of Christ. In Paul’s mind, the connection between faith, hope, love, and suffering is immediate.
Romans 5:3–5 (CSB)
3 And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, 4 endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. 5 This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
The Spirit gifts believers in order to empower the Christ community to exemplify Christ. Since gifts are expressions of power, their misuse can produce the opposite of their intended result. This happens when they bring glory to the person receiving the gift(s) rather than to the giver of the gift(s).
Paul’s point here is that all gifts, whether spectacular or more ordinary, must become embedded articulations of Christ’s love rather than illustrations of personal devotion. Paul calls love the more excellent (lit., “hyper-propelling”) way exactly because it safeguards against such selfishness.
When love drives the use of spiritual gifts, they become expressions of Christ’s presence and thereby strengthen Christ’s body. When selfishness drives the use of gifts, they reveal the presence of the gifted and thereby come to obscure rather than amplify God’s voice.
Because gifts are provisions for the present time given to enable the continuation of Christ’s ministry, their significance is found only as they bear witness to Christ. Paul illustrates this by highlighting an exceedingly selfless act—giving everything one owns to the poor. Even that can be done for the selfish reason of parading one’s devotion. As testimonies to Christ, however, selfless gifts help lead both believers and nonbelievers to a deeper understanding of the nature of Christ and his transforming power.
Love transforms speech into revelatory events of blessing and instruction. Love converts knowledge and wisdom from points of pride to instruments for counsel and guidance. Love relocates mountain-moving faith from the avenue of display to the path of empathy and help. Love even transports giving from the realm of self-gratification to the place of suffering and participation. Paul’s contrast between the temporal nature of the gifts and the eternal nature of love leads him to give an array of unforgettable images that all contain a promise of something greater to come.
What we have now is partial, but the partial will be replaced by the perfect. The grandest expressions of God’s power and presence are mere examples of what will become the norm. Just as the childish ways of the young are put aside when they are recognized as immature, gifts also bear witness to a greater time to come. Likewise, the promise of a dim mirror is the clarity of twenty-twenty vision. What the dim mirror vaguely reveals must exist and will later come to be seen with full clarity—face-to-face. Then, as Paul exclaims, “I shall know fully, even as I am fully known [by God]” (12:12).
God willed to reveal himself to his creation as love (John 3:16). Love is the way the world knows God’s people (John 13:34-35). For spiritual gifts to function according to God’s purpose, their use must reveal the character of the God who gives them. Without love, spiritual gifts will obscure what they were given to reveal.

Points To Ponder

“Life is unmanageable without love” by Roger Ellsworth

Next, Paul says the challenges of life are unmanageable without love (13:4–7). Stop and think about what life throws at us. First, we have to contend with our own sinful nature. We are constantly told to think well of ourselves, to concentrate on our good points and to ignore our weak points, but the perceptive person cannot ignore his own heart. He knows he has more than a few weak points, and lying at the very heart of his nature is a foul swamp that constantly gurgles and bubbles up in his behaviour. Life would be challenging enough if we had only to deal with our own sinfulness, but in addition to that, we have to deal with the sinfulness of others.
The mere thought of these twin challenges is enough to make us throw up our hands in despair. How can we ever manage such demands? Paul says love is the answer for us. He gives fifteen characteristics of love, characteristics that tame the beast that lies within us and enable us to cope with the same beast crouching in others. A quick glance at these characteristics reveals each one had special relevance to the Corinthians. Paul didn’t just pick these out of the air. The Corinthians were, at this particular point in their lives, exhibiting the very opposite of these traits. Let’s go through Paul’s list.
The characteristics of love
First, love ‘suffers long’ (13:4). That simply means love is patient, or slow to anger. It enables us to put up with all that is distasteful and trying in others.
Love ‘is kind’ (13:4). It is gracious and tender. Like Jesus, it is touched and moved by the needs of the poor, sick and downtrodden.
Love ‘does not envy’ (13:4). Envy is that sullen feeling of disappointment when another’s success or prosperity surpasses our own. Love enables us to be happy when others are blessed.
Love ‘does not parade itself’ (13:4). It doesn’t allow us to put ourselves on display and to live for the notice and applause of men.
Love ‘is not puffed up’ (13:4). It isn’t arrogant or conceited.
Love ‘does not behave rudely’ (13:5). It is too gentle and sensitive to even consider doing anything that will bring shame or embarrassment to another.
Love ‘does not seek its own’ (13:5). It isn’t selfish. It doesn’t insist on its own way but constantly insists on seeking the well-being of others.
Love ‘is not provoked’ (13:5). It isn’t irritable, temperamental, touchy, thin-skinned, or easily offended.
Love ‘thinks no evil’ (13:5). It doesn’t keep a ledger of all the wrongs that have been done to it with a view of getting even.
Love ‘does not rejoice in iniquity’ (13:6). It doesn’t get any pleasure out of the failures and misfortunes of others.
Love ‘rejoices in the truth’ (13:6). Love is never opposed to the truth, nor sells it out, but is always glad to see truth win out.
Love ‘bears all things’ (13:7). It passes over in silence and keeps confidential all that is repugnant in others.
Love ‘believes all things’ (13:7). It is always ready to see the best in others and to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Love ‘hopes all things’ (13:7). It isn’t pessimistic about future relationships with those who have been troublesome in the past. It is never ready to give up on others.
Love ‘endures all things’ (13:7). It has steadfast fortitude. It refuses to be conquered and dismayed.
That list of characteristics pretty well covers every area of life! If we live in love, we shall be able to meet all that life throws at us! It sounds as though all we have to do is just make up our minds to be loving, doesn’t it? But many have made up their minds time and time again, only to fail time and time again. How can we ever live like this? We must realize that what we have in these fifteen characteristics is nothing less than a composite picture of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. If we want to have these characteristics in our lives, we must have him in our lives. The apostle John put it in these words: ‘Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God … In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins’ (1 John 4:7, 10).
Knowing Christ doesn’t mean we shall love perfectly. The Corinthians proved that. Being a Christian is not the same as being perfect. Sin still resides in the Christian’s nature and he has constantly to struggle against it. But we can be sure of one thing: no one who does not know Christ has the slightest hope of resembling this picture of him.
[Roger Ellsworth, Strengthening Christ’s Church: The Message of 1 Corinthians, Welwyn Commentary Series (Darlington, England: Evangelical Press, 1995), 211–213.]

“Without love I offend others” by David Prior

In 8:1 he has already established the key principle that ‘love builds up’. When spiritual gifts are exercised in love, not in a competitive spirit, the body of believers is edified. That is Paul’s constant plea throughout his discussion of prophecy and tongues in chapter 14. The inevitable result of not using spiritual gifts in love is that others are offended.
The way Paul puts this is by an oblique reference to the devotees of Greek mystery-cults at Corinth, who worshipped Dionysus (god of nature) and Cybele (goddess of wild animals). Dionysus, the Thracian and Phrygian god of the reproductive energies of nature, was worshipped with orgiastic rites, including the tearing in pieces and devouring of animal, possibly also human, sacrifices. Worshippers, especially women, losing their own personality, were identified with him. He tended to specialize as the god of wine. Cybele, the mistress of wild nature, was often shown with lions and other beasts. Phrygia appears to have been the centre of her cult, which was introduced into Rome and had great popularity during the early Roman Empire (i.e. the first century AD), especially among women.
No doubt the streets of Corinth resounded with the noisy gongs and clashing cymbals which were a feature of such worshippers. A chalkos (gong) was a piece of copper; a kymbalon (cymbal) was a single-toned instrument incapable of producing a melody. Both were used in the mystery religions, either to invoke the god or to drive away demons or to rouse the worshippers. They were neither melodious nor capable of producing harmony. Both beat out a heavy monotone and caused as much offence as constantly-barking dogs.
Equally offensive, maintains Paul, are those who use the gift of speaking in tongues without the controlling motive of love. It does not matter whether the tongues are human languages (as they sometimes seem to be) or even ‘the language of heaven’ (which some people rather tendentiously assume): if there is no love they come across as unattractive and boorish.6 Some Christians with this particular gift insensitively impose it on others in the congregation; with considerable self-indulgence rather than a deep desire to build up the church, such people override the feelings of those who are either unaccustomed or unsympathetic to this gift.
[David Prior, The Message of 1 Corinthians: Life in the Local Church, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 227–228.]

“Spiritual Gifts” by Gordon D. Fee and Robert L. Hubbard Jr.

Paul’s emphasis on Christian unity and fellowship continues in an extended discussion of abilities endowed by the Holy Spirit to individual Christians for the common good of the church as a whole. Paul likens the necessary church unity of variously gifted Christians to the many-membered human body, made up of functionally different but all essential parts. Spiritual gifts (12:8–10) include wisdom (the practical application of moral law for success in life), knowledge (the intellectual grasping of truth); faith (beyond belief in Christ for salvation); healing (in the holistic sense); miracles (lit., “acts of power,” particularly in the spiritual realm, such as the performance of exorcisms), prophecy (words of God for specific situations), spiritual discernment (“distinguishing” between the forces of good and evil), tongues (the ability to speak in unlearned human languages, not ecstatic utterances), and interpretation of tongues (“translation,” necessary for personal and communal edification). Hierarchically ordered gifts include apostleship (being “sent” by God for a specific mission), prophecy, teaching (in religious and spiritual matters), miracle-working, healing, helps (supporting tasks), administration, and tongues (12:28).
The apostle encourages the prayerful pursuit of spiritual giftedness but elevates love as the overarching principle that gives spiritual gifts their value, that should govern their exercise, and that will outlast them in the end. Paul’s profile of active love describes what it does and does not do, not how it does or does not feel (13:4–8). These verses make clear that love takes the initiative to overcome feelings when necessary for righteous behavior.
Paul devotes most of chapter 14 to comparing the communal benefits of tongues and prophecy. He commends prophecy as the superior gift because of its greater capacity for corporate enlightenment, exhortation, consolation, and witness to unbelievers (vv. 3, 24–25). Since the Christian community can benefit from tongues only through an interpreter, and since the purpose of spiritual gifts consists in the common good of the church (12:7), Paul limits the public exercise of tongues to occasions on which an interpreter is present to assist the congregation in understanding. Further guidelines ensure orderliness so that all in attendance can hear and thus worship in mind as well as in spirit. (Verses 34–35 appear to address a specific problem in the Corinthian church, perhaps women interrupting worship with questions; cf. 11:5.)
[Gordon D. Fee and Robert L. Hubbard Jr., eds., The Eerdmans Companion to the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011), 655–659.]

A Week’s Worth Of Scripture

Monday 1 Corinthians 8:1 (CSB)
1 Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that “we all have knowledge.” Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.
Tuesday Proverbs 12:10 (CSB)
10 The righteous cares about his animal’s health,
but even the merciful acts of the wicked are cruel.
Wednesday
1 Thessalonians 1:3 (CSB)
3 We recall, in the presence of our God and Father, your work produced by faith, your labor motivated by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Thursday Galatians 5:22 (CSB)
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
Friday Philippians 2:4 (CSB)
4 Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others.
Saturday 1 John 4:8 (CSB)
8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
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