A Sermon on 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13 has been lightly edited.
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Please take your Bibles now and turn with me in them to Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth. We are in 1 Corinthians. We’re going to begin in the last sentence of chapter 12 and we’ll read all the way through the end of chapter 13 as we continue our study on the fruit of the spirit.
I’m going to mention a few songs throughout this particular sermon today. Please don’t take that necessarily as an endorsement of the song, but each of them helped me make a point and also hopefully each of them will help you to remember some of the highlights of this sermon today as well. But as I said, just because I mentioned these songs by name I’m not necessarily endorsing them.
If they ever show up on a playlist that you’re listening to as worship songs, please examine whoever made that playlist because they have some problems. But anyway, with all that said, we will begin today in the last part of chapter 12, the last sentence of chapter 12, and read through chapter 13 of the book of first Corinthians. This is God’s word:
“And I will show you a still more excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have and if I deliver up my body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 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 gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide these three, but the greatest of these is love.”
Let’s pray. Father above, you fully know each and every one of us, and yet as we’ll see, you loved us long before we loved you. And so Lord, since you know each of us fully, speak to us through this word in ways that will change us, in ways that will draw us closer to you, in ways that will show that you are renewing day by day, minute by minute, moment by moment, the image of Christ in us. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
INTRODUCTION
So were the Beatles right? Is it true that “All You Need Is Love”? And if so, how do we define love? Last week, we looked at how we are called to live holy lives, that holiness described and defined by those nine fruit of the spirit that we see in Galatians 5:22-24, and that each of those Fruit of the Spirit is an aspect of the jewel that we call holiness. We are not adding a new checklist or a new law to the life of the Christian.
We are not saying I’m going to work on love this month and then joy next month and peace next month. These are all aspects of what God is growing in us. This is the call to holy living that we are called to as we are united in Christ. Today, we are going to put our focus on this fruit of the spirit that we call love.
Some commentators think that this is the foundational fruit of the spirit and everything else flows out of that. There is merit to that as we consider Paul’s definition of love. We will see other fruit of the spirit show up in that definition, fruit like kindness, fruit like patience, fruit like joy.
But we need to keep this in mind that these all nine of these are just different facets on the life of holiness. And so today, as we do consider what it means to love, we’ll let Luke Combs take us to Oklahoma and show us that there “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma.” We’ll move on from there and let Haddaway ask and help us answer “What Is Love?”
And finally, Huey Lewis and the News will show us the “Power of Love” as we go through. And hopefully, we’ll see as we wrap this up that we love, we are called to love, we are called to act in love because he first loved us.
AIN’T NO LOVE IN OKLAHOMA
First, Luke Combs says there “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma.”
What was the problem in Corinth that Paul was addressing here? Most of us are familiar with First Corinthians 13 because it shows up in wedding sermons quite frequently. But was Paul addressing marriage in this particular place? Well, no, not really. He was addressing the use of spiritual gifts in the church in Corinth.
And this is kind of the middle section of a three chapter discourse on how we are to use spiritual gifts. And Paul’s main critique of the church in Corinth was that they were pursuing very visible, very vocal, very attention drawing gifts, gifts like prophecies, gifts like tongues, gifts like giving away stuff, gifts like dying the martyr’s death. But his main critique is not that they pursued the spiritual gift, but they pursued those spiritual gifts without love.
He says here, “If I speak the tongues of men and angels, he said, but I don’t have love. He says, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” He’s either saying that that I am just engaging in pagan worship as banging a gong or clanging a cymbal in the temples there in Corinth was a sign of the pagan worship.
Or he’s saying that I am just somebody who’s seeking to bring attention to myself by doing these things without love. He goes on to say that I could have God’s knowledge, God’s infinite knowledge to know all mysteries, to know all prophecies, to have all the knowledge that he could have. He could have an astounding faith, faith that does what Jesus says the faith of a mustard seed will do, which is to root up a mountain and toss it into the sea.
He says, I’m nothing. I’m just bringing attention to myself. He says, like they did in Acts chapter two and Acts chapter four, I could sell and give away all that I have, I could be beaten and die for the sake of the gospel. But if I have not love, I have gained nothing.
And he says this because this is what the Corinthian church is doing. They are pursuing these very public and visible gifts of the spirit, but they are doing it without love. They don’t have love for one another. They don’t have love for God. They’re doing it for some other motive beside love.
And we know from other issues that Paul deals with in Corinth, whether it’s Christian liberty, whether it’s the wrong use of the Lord’s supper, much of the problem of the Corinthian church was that they were engaging in the things of the Scripture in order to bring attention upon themselves in order to lift themselves up in the eyes of other people. “I have the gift of prophecy, so God must love me more.” Or, “I have the gift of tongues, so God must show his favor upon me more than you.”
“Look at what I gave away the other day. Doesn’t that make me important?” And it points us to this truth that love in our sinful nature, love is more often defined as radical self-centeredness than it is defined in the way that Scripture defines it for us.
The rock band Tool at the end of their song “Sober” repeatedly over and over again, at least 10 times, “I want what I want. I want what I want.”
And that defines love in our world today. That defines culture in our world today. The cultural slogan “Love is love.” beyond having no logical meaning, beyond being a false statement because you can’t define a word with that very same word, points to the truth that love is what I define it to be, and love is what fills me. Love is what makes me feel important. Love is what serves my needs.
Love is whatever I want it to be. Radical self-centeredness marks our culture’s definition of love and it’s nothing new because the church in Corinth was dealing with the very same thing.
WHAT IS LOVE?
So if there ain’t no love in Corinth, with Haddaway, we ask the question, “What Is Love?”
And Paul goes on to define what love is for us here in verses 4 through 7 of chapter 13.
And we could summarize this if our cultural view of love is a radical self-centeredness. We could summarize what Paul says here by saying that love, true love, according to the scriptures, is radical self-sacrifice.
Tim Keller, in his book on marriage, talks about that passage in Ephesians chapter 5 verses 22 through the end of the chapter.
Wives, submit to your husbands. He spends more time on the second part of it, which is husbands love your wives as Christ has loved the church. And he says that the way that Christ is loving the church is he is bringing the church into holiness.
It’s not going to be complete until we see Jesus face-to-face. It’s not going to be perfected until Jesus returns and we stand in those resurrected glorified bodies before our God and Savior. But he said Jesus, through his love, is bringing the church to holiness.
And he applies that to marriage. And he says it is the husband and wife, as they work together in marriage, they are walking together toward holiness. And he says he says one of the most powerful things you can do in a marriage is whether you’re in the living room one night or sitting at the dinner table across from your spouse is to look across and say, “I long for and I desire to see the day when you stand before God in the fullness of your holiness and be able to say, I have always seen that. And I am willing to do whatever it takes to get you toward that perfect vision of holiness.”
That is what love is. It is saying, “I will set aside my wants. I will set aside my needs,” not in a not in a doormat type of way, not allowing ourselves to be abused or excusing sin without confronting it, because that’s not holiness. That’s not love.
But saying, “You know what? I’ll be patient with you when you’re difficult, because that is going to lead you to holiness. I’ll set aside my passive aggressive sarcasm and be kind because that leads you to holiness. You know, you have strengths that I don’t, and I’m not going to envy about envy you for those strengths because God has gifted you with those strengths and that is leading you to holiness.”
“I am not going to boast in what I do.” Well, husbands, you know, let’s say this week you wash the dishes. You don’t walk into the living room and you don’t go, “Hey, honey, do you feel loved? I washed the dishes. Look at what I did. I washed. I know it’s been six years, honey, but I washed the dishes.” We don’t brag. We don’t boast. We are we’re humble in the way we treat one another.
Love is not arrogant. It is not puffed up or self-important in the way that it is expressed. It is not rude. I looked up the word rude in the original language trying to figure out what it means, and most of the Greek dictionary said that the word rude, the word that is translated rude, means rude. We all know what it means to be rude. Love is not rude.
It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable. It is not resentful.
It does not rejoice in wrongdoing or does not keep a record of wrong. It keeps those accounts short and offers forgiveness and reconciliation quickly. And it rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things. Love believes all things. Love hopes all things. Love endures all things.
You know, Paul goes on to say in Ephesians five that that marriage is a picture of the relationship between God and the church. And as much as we look at our spouse with that hope that we will one day see them glorious and holy as we know they can be, and we are willing to sacrifice, self-sacrifice for that holiness in them, we should do the same thing right here.
We should look across the aisle. We should look at the people sitting in front of us or behind us and say, “Hey, one of these days when Jesus comes back, this bride, his church will be adorned in its glorious trappings. And I can’t wait to see that for each and every one of you.”
That’s what we should say about each other. I think if we truly were willing to set aside our own wants and our own needs, those squabbles and petty arguments over things that are not Gospel-important would fade away. And we could truly pursue holiness as a church.
We could truly pursue growth and gospel growth as a church as we become more concerned about the other person than we are about ourselves. Love is a radical self-sacrifice that puts the other before itself so that the other person can grow in their holiness.
POWER OF LOVE
So there “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma.” “What Is Love?” And then finally, what is the “Power of Love?” The power of love comes in what we talked about last week. It comes in that union with Christ. 1 John chapter 4, beginning in verse 13, John says this,
“By this we know that we abide in him and he in us. [That’s that vine language there. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me will bear much fruit.] By this we know that we abide in him and he in us because he has given us of his spirit and we have seen and testified that the Father has sent his Son to be the savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.
God is love and whoever abides in him, in love, abides in God and God abides in him. By this love perfected with us so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment because as he is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love but perfect love casts out fear for fear has to do with punishment and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us.”
How are we able to truly show this radical self-sacrificial love to our brothers and sisters in Christ, to our brothers and sisters in our families, to our spouses, to our parents, to that cranky guy in the community that always just gets under your skin. We are able to love them because Christ loved us first. And how did Jesus love us? Philippians 2:5-11:
“Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus who though he was in the form of God did not equate or did not count equality with God something to be grasped but emptied himself by taking on the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death even death on a cross therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”
See radical self-centeredness says “I’m important and you need to acknowledge that I’m important.” Radical self-sacrifice in Jesus says “I am equal in authority power and substance with the Father and yet I will set that aside in a mysterious way and I will pursue love for you.”
It says there near the end of 1 Corinthians 13 it says that that Paul says one day I will know fully even as I have been fully known. God knew everything about you. God knows everything about you. He knows your rebellions. He knows your idolatries. He knows where you hated him at one point in time. He knows that left to yourself you would go to the grave, the eternal grave shaking your fist at him, turning your back upon him, rejecting him cursing him.
And the second person of the trinity took on flesh so that you might have salvation. When we talk about radical self-sacrifice we look to Jesus and we see what he did to save us despite who we would be without him and not only do we learn from that, not only do we just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and try to be more like Jesus, but if we abide in God we are radically self-sacrificing.
That’s part of putting off the old and putting on the new. We put off that old radically self-centered person who has been crucified in Christ. It’s still thrashing around like a snake like a poisonous snake if you accidentally bump up against its fangs you’re still going to get a jolt of poison even though it’s dead.
And yet we are called to put that off because what is true about us is that we are radically self-sacrificial because we are in Christ. The power of love is our union with Christ. If you do not understand the love that Jesus has for you today please talk to me, talk to one of the elders, talk to somebody else in this room that can at least direct you to somebody who knows how to talk to you about the radical love of Jesus. Because it is our only hope before a God who knows absolutely everything about us even those things we hide from ourselves.
CONCLUSION
We need to live life in a way that we make sure that our church, our family, our interactions with the community are marked by radical self-sacrifice rather than radical self-centeredness. We need to pray that the Holy Spirit would grow within us this biblical love that Paul describes for us. A dangerous prayer to be more patient, to be more kind, to no longer envy or boast, to no longer be arrogant or rude, to no longer insist upon our own way, to no longer be irritable or resentful, to no longer rejoice at wrongdoing but to rejoice in the truth, to grow in our ability to bear all things, to believe all things, to hope all things about each other and to endure all things in a way that is marked by Christ’s sacrificial love and not our own wants and our own desires.
Let’s pray. Father above, we do thank you that even though you know us fully, you still loved us first so that we could love each other. Lord, grow within us a desire to not only see your holiness in our brothers and sisters but also to give of ourselves so that that holiness can come about. Lord, help us to have the hard conversations when the hard conversations need to be had and help us to rejoice in the love that you have shed upon each of us. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
As we leave this place today, we’ll go home. We’ll go to friends’ houses. Tomorrow we’ll head to work.
We will go about our lives in a way that hopefully is seeking to bring God glory. But as we go, we take this blessing with us:
“May the grace of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, and the love of God be with you all.”
He who testifies to these things says, yes, I am coming soon.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
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