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I remember that as a young junior high Sunday school student, I memorized 1 Corinthians 13. That’s the famous love chapter, and I can still quote it almost perfectly. I’m sure most of you have heard a sermon or read a book about love as described in 1 Corinthians 13. But sometimes a passage in the Bible can become so familiar to us that we miss the impact of its message on our daily lives.
I’m going to take the risk of becoming just another voice telling you something you’ve heard before, as I talk about what the Bible says is the greatest thing in the world: love.
I want to begin by reading a portion of this familiar chapter one more time. I’m going to use the Phillips translation, which may help you to hear this passage in a fresh way:
If I speak with the eloquence of men and of angels, but have no love, I become no more than blaring brass or crashing cymbal. If I have the gift of foretelling the future and hold in my mind not only all human knowledge but the very secrets of God, and if I also have that absolute faith which can move mountains, but have no love, I amount to nothing at all. If I dispose of all that I possess, yes, even if I give my own body to be burned, but have no love, I achieve precisely nothing.
This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience–it looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive; it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance.
Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not touchy. It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails.
Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen.
In this life we have three great lasting qualities–faith, hope and love. But the greatest of them is love (1 Corinthians 13:1-8a; 13).
This is more than beautiful prose or great writing. It is not sentimental sayings about love, like you find on greeting cards. This describes a way of life and an attitude that is quite different from what most people call “love.”
When I taught customer service seminars, I said that there is one basic principle underlying all good customer service, and that is the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If every company treated customers the way they would want to be treated, every company would have a very high level of customer service and satisfied customers.
The same is true for us as Christians. If we focus on ONE thing–being filled with love for Jesus and love for others–all other things we need to be will automatically follow. Yet so often we reverse the process. I think of a woman who prays all the time; she studies her Bible constantly; she is at every church service; she keeps herself separate from evil; her life is exemplary in many ways. Yet, she frequently causes others to be uncomfortable and hurts feelings because her words sound unloving and self-righteous.
Oh, we need to pray and read our Bibles and keep our lives separate from worldly evil, but those things should follow love, not precede it. Without love, even circumspect living can be ineffective. This is what 1 Corinthians 13 is trying to teach us–without love, everything we do is useless.
Paul begins 1 Corinthians 13 by contrasting love first with eloquence. I would truly love to be a great speaker. I’d love to be one of those people who can mesmerize an audience with her incredible ability to communicate. But Paul reminds me that even if I could speak with the tongue of an angel, it would be a big zero without love.
Then he contrasts love with the gifts of prophecy and the ability to understand great mysteries and knowledge. Just imagine being able to speak prophetically, to explain the deep truths of the Bible. Wouldn’t it be great to have all knowledge of these things, so that we could clear up mysteries and impart understanding? Yes, but without a loving, caring heart, it counts for nothing.
I want to be a woman of faith. I pray often that God will increase my faith, because I know that it is sometimes weak. But, you know, I could demonstrate faith so great that miracles could take place in front of your eyes, but without love for Jesus and for people, it would amount to nothing.
I don’t know any martyrs personally, but there have been many, even in our day. People who were willing to give their lives for the gospel. I often wonder if I would have that much commitment, if it came down to it. Well, even if I did, without love, it wouldn’t count. I could give away everything I own to poor people, but it’s not enough without love.
Paul certainly wanted to get this point across to us, didn’t he? That’s because he knew that love is the missing ingredient so very often. And he knew that if love is there, all these other things follow in the right way.
How about in your life? Are you busy doing things for Jesus, giving your time and resources? That’s great, but does it come from a heart overflowing with love? Do you stand true to Jesus on your job? Is your life pure and blameless? Great, it should be. But how about your love for those people you rub shoulders with each day? Do you love even the unlovable, even your enemies?
The definition of love is not easy to come by, because when we talk about love, it can have all kinds of different meanings. We say, “I love my dog, I love my job, I love my new shoes, I love my family, I love God.” But all of those have different meanings and values to us.
Paul defines love by giving us a list of its evidences, and here they are: patient, kind, generous, humble, courteous, unselfish, good tempered, without guile. You’ll notice that all of these relate to people and how we treat them. Loving God is not difficult to do. But loving people–ah, there’s the rub.
Someone has said, “The greatest thing a person can do for his Heavenly Father is to be kind to some of his other children.” Every time you or I lack patience in our treatment of others, we lack love. Whenever we fail to be kind, even to strangers and people who are not kind to us, we have failed in the love department. When you lose your temper or behave in a sullen and moody way, you’re not living in love. When you talk about yourself a lot and make yourself the center of attention, you’re not treating others lovingly.
In his small but powerful book entitled The Greatest Thing in the World, Henry Drummond writes: “Politeness has been defined as love in trifles. Courtesy is said to be love in little things. And the secret of politeness is to love. Love cannot behave itself unseemly. You can put the most untutored persons into the highest society, and if they have a reservoir of love in their hearts, they will not behave themselves unseemly. They simply cannot do it.”
Unseemly is an old-fashioned word which simply means unbecomingly. A person who is full of love cannot behave unbecomingly toward others. CANNOT–it isn’t possible. That’s why love has to come first in our lives, because everything else we should be for Jesus flows from a heart of love.
Try to practice the evidences of love without loving. You can’t force yourself to be kind to someone for very long unless your heart feels kindly toward them. You can’t practice patience toward people who are driving you crazy, unless you’re able to put yourself in their shoes and care about them. How long can you keep from talking about yourself and promoting yourself if you don’t love other people and think about them?
So, when we see unbecoming behavior in our lives–behavior which doesn’t match 1 Corinthians 13–it’s because we haven’t first focused on filling our lives with love. How much do you pray that God will fill you with his love? How much do you think about the qualities of love in your life?
Friends, this hits near to home for me, how about you? As I’ve explored the meaning of love according to 1 Corinthians 13, I’ve wanted to crawl under a table a few times. I miss the mark frequently. Oh, I may have a radio program and speak at lots of functions across the country. But if love doesn’t consume me so that I demonstrate these qualities in my life consistently, all this time and effort I put into the ministry counts for NOTHING.
Just try to let that principle sink into your head and heart. What we do counts for a big ZERO if we don’t show the marks of love on a consistent basis.
Well, how in the world do we learn to love like 1 Corinthians 13? Let me encourage you to begin by reading that chapter every day for at least the next 30 days. Just keep reading it and reading it. That’s a very good place to start. The more you read it and meditate on the overwhelming importance of love, the more you’re going to want to love. That’s the beginning.
First John 4:19 says “We love because he first loved us.” Because Jesus has first loved us, we love him and others. We cannot love to order. We must first love Jesus, and then by loving him, we become more like him. Stay close to Jesus and you’ll have to love more and more.
Let me read again from Henry Drummond’s book:
Do not quarrel therefore with your lot in life. Do not complain of its never-ceasing cares, its petty environment, the vexations you have to stand, the small and sordid souls you have to live and work with. That is the practice which God appoints you; and it is having its work in making you patient, and humble, and generous, and unselfish, and kind and courteous.
If we saw every difficulty of life as an opportunity to learn the true meaning of love, how our lives would change. I have a challenge to issue each one of you listening to me now. This is not a difficult challenge and everyone of us can do this pretty easily. I promise to do this myself. Here’s the challenge:
Make a commitment that you will read 1 Corinthians 13 every day for the next 30 days.
That’s not hard, is it? Just read that chapter every day for 30 days, and before you begin, pray that God will truly teach you how to become a 1 Corinthians 13 lover. If you will do that sincerely, I honestly believe–no, I honestly know that you will see some changes in your life. It would be even better if you memorized it, but believe me, reading it every day for 30 days will have life-changing effects on you for the good.
We have some copies of this book—The Greatest Thing in the World—and we will send it to you for a donation in any amount. I’ve read it many times and it never ceases to inspire me to be a better lover—a 1 Corinthians 13 lover