THE ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT – 1 Corinthians 13:1-3
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on August 18, 2019 under 2019 |
Bethany Bible Church Sunday Message; August 18, 2019 from 1 Corinthians 13:1-3
Theme: Love is the essential ingredient that makes the spiritual gifts a blessing to God’s family.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
In 1 Corinthians 13, the apostle Paul wrote;
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:1-13).
Many people—even unbelieving people—cherish those words. We often hear them quoted at weddings. They have inspired many poems and songs. But as beautiful as they are, they were not meant to be thought of by us as mere sentimentalism. They are strategic and practical affirmations. The apostle Paul—through whom the Holy Spirit gave us those words—wrote them to born-again people in order to solve a very serious problem they were having.
The ancient Corinthian Christians had been misusing their ‘spiritual gifts’—the spiritual endowments that the Lord Jesus Christ gave to His redeemed people in order for them to serve one another and to build up the church. In 1 Corinthians 1:7, Paul thanked God that the Corinthian believers “come short in no gift”. They had every spiritual gift that they needed. But they were misusing the gifts that they had been given—inappropriately elevating some gifts over others in importance; and using them to serve themselves rather than each other. They were getting things out of balance.
In Chapter 12, Paul wrote to explain the theology of the spiritual gifts. He taught them about the Lord Jesus’ purpose in giving these gifts to His church. In 1 Corinthians 12:31, he wrote, “But earnestly desire the best gifts. And yet I show you a more excellent way.” And that’s when we come to this wonderful chapter on love. The ‘more excellent way’ that he spoke of was an abiding principle by which they could always identify the gifts that were the most useful to the whole church family—and of how best to put them to use.
And that ‘more excellent way’ was by following the principle of love.
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To really understand this passage as we should—and to gain the benefit from it that God wants us to gain—we need to understand what we mean by ‘love’. Even the Beatles used to sing, ‘All you need is love’. But what they meant by ‘love’ isn’t exactly the same thing as what the Bible is telling us in this chapter.
In the ancient Greek language, there were three basic words for ‘love’. One of them is a word that represents the idea that the people of this world most often think of when they hear the word ‘love’. It’s the idea of ‘love’ that most of the songs are about that we hear today. It’s the word eros; and it’s the word that referred to romantic or sexual love. It’s a word that does not appear in the New Testament; and that may be because, in ancient times, eros had grown to suggest romantic and sexual love in an unholy way. (It may be that the Holy Spirit did not want that word to be found in His holy book because of what it had come to mean to people.)
But another ancient word for ‘love’ that we find very often in the New Testament is the word phileō. It’s the word that refers to the strong affection that binds friends together. A bunch of us guys were sitting around at the doughnut shop the other day—talking about this passage on love. We all happen to love each other. The kind of love that we were feeling for each other over doughnuts and coffee is this kind—phileō – of love. It’s the affectionate kind of love that friends or family members have for one another. You already know this word from the name of the city of Philadelphia. It’s the city of brotherly love—the phileō (the affectionate love) you have for your adelphoi and your adelphai (your brothers and your sisters). May God grant us more and more of this kind of love toward one another!
But there is a third word in the New Testament for love. It’s the word agape; and it represents the highest kind of love there is. It describes the kind of love that is willing to sacrifice one’s own rights—even to the point of laying down one’s own life—in an effort to seek the good of the other person. It’s the word that describes the kind of love God has for us—and that we are called upon to have toward one another as believers.
There was a time when a man came to Jesus and asked Him which was the greatest commandment of God’s law. And in answering him, Jesus used this word for love—agape.
Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40).
That describes the nature of this love; doesn’t it? It’s an active kind of love that gives everything for the good of the one who is loved. It’s a love that expresses itself with the whole of one’s being. It’s the word for ‘love’ that the Bible uses to describe the way that God loves us. In John 3:16-17, we’re told;
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved (John 3:16-17).
This self-sacrificing, self-giving love—this agape love—is the kind of love with which the Lord Jesus loved us—and that He commands us to demonstrate toward each other. He said;
This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends (John 15:12-13).
And I believe, dear brothers and sisters, that the greatest way for us to understand this agape kind of love—the surest way for the meaning of it to truly grip our hearts and to transform the way we live—is to look at Jesus Himself. He is the very embodiment of agape love to us. His coming into this world for us was an active expression of the agape love that God the Father has for us. And it was Jesus’ agape love for us that moved Him to willingly give His life on the cross for us in order to atone for our sin and save us. He is risen from the dead, and ever lives for us, and forever agape loves us.
If you have trusted Jesus as your Savior, have you then ever taken the time to really allow the love of Jesus for you to sink deeply into your heart? You cannot really allow His love to sink deeply into you unless you have first trusted Him as your Savior and been born-again. That’s how a relationship with Him begins—by placing our faith in Him and what He did for us. But if you have indeed placed your faith in Him, have you then taken the time to read from the Bible about His love for you, and meditated on that love, and allowed it to sink deeply into your thinking in a personal way. Have you allowed your heart to be warmed by His love for you?
What a wonderful love His agape love for us is! I love to read what the apostle Paul wrote about marriage in Ephesians 5; and to just bask in what it tells us about Jesus’ love for us. Paul wrote;
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones (Ephesians 5:25-30).
Personalize that to yourself, dear fellow believer. Jesus loves you that much! He loves you with a love that is greater than the love any bridegroom could have for his own bride. Jesus loves you and cherishes you as His own flesh and bones. Jesus loves you so much that He will give you everything you need, and adorn you with whatever grace you require, so that you will be able to be a glorious delight to Him forever. He loves you so much that He gave His own life upon the cross in order to make you holy and spotless and without blemish before Him forever—the beautiful and splendid object of His love throughout eternity, with whom He joyfully wishes to share everything that He has.
Just let the agape love of Jesus sink into your heart, dear brother and sister—and by the grace of the Holy Spirit, it will completely transform the way you live and think and serve. How can it not change you dramatically to know that Jesus infinitely loves you—right now—imperfections and all—with a love that sees you as glorified in His presence forever? It would change the way you love Jesus Himself; because, as the Bible tells us, “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). It will also change the way you love others—and especially the way you will love your brothers and sisters in Christ; because, as the Bible tells us, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11).
And this brings us back to our passage in 1 Corinthians 13. If the agape love of Jesus for us is kept always in our view—if we let His love for us become the dominant theme of our heart—then it will change the way we use the spiritual gifts. We will no longer seek to use them in order to elevate ourselves over one another; or to—in any way—use them for selfish reasons. Instead, we will devote ourselves to using them in the way God intended for us to use them; and that is, in order to sacrificially serve each other and build one another up in the eternal love of Jesus.
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Now; that’s the point that is being made to us in 1 Corinthians 13. If you’d like to organize this wonderful chapter down into its different parts, I’d say that verses 1-3 explain to us the absolute necessity of love. Then, in verses 4-8, Paul goes on to give us a description of what that love looks like in action. What Paul really gives us in those verses is a description of what Jesus Himself is like—and of how He loves us. And finally, in verses 8-13, Paul gives us a description of how such love endures and outlasts everything else—even the spiritual gifts themselves.
And so; this morning, let’s just concentrate on verses 1-3; and on how it teaches us that this particular kind of love—agape love—this self-giving, self-sacrificing, others-serving kind of love—is the absolutely essential ingredient that makes the spiritual gifts a blessing to us as God’s family.
First, in verse 1, Paul tells us that …
1. WITHOUT IT, AMAZING GIFTS OF SPEECH ARE JUST AN ANNOYING NOISE (v. 1).
Paul wrote, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.” In saying this, Paul was eluding to some of the spiritual gifts that he had already mentioned in Chapter 12—gifts that have to do with the use of the mouth and of the powers of speech—such gifts as those of teachers, or preachers, or of those who spoke in unknown tongues, or who interpreted the messages given in tongues.
There have been people in history who possessed astonishing powers of speech. They have moved people to action in powerful ways and have changed the world—people whose speeches have been written down and are still read throughout history. Abraham Lincoln was such a man. Martin Luther King, Jr. was another. They say that the great preacher George Whitefield was able to move great crowds of people to tears just by the way he could say, “Oh –!” But what if someone were able to speak with more than just merely the tongues of men? What if they were able to even speak with the tongues of angels? What if they were able to speak the language of heaven itself, and move people with the power of heavenly words?
The power of speech is a great thing. When the Lord Jesus distributed His gifts to His church, He included some kinds of spiritual gifts that move people by the power of speech. But as Paul is telling us here, if I were to speak with astonishing eloquence, with even the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have agape love—in other words, if the love that Jesus Himself demonstrates to us is not included as ‘the essential ingredient’ in my speech—then I am, in the end, nothing more than a noise-maker. I may use a great gift of speech; but I only end up like one of those little wind-up monkey dolls; bouncing around; clanging my cymbals; and doing no good at all for the edification of the body of Christ.
I think of this very much in my role as a preacher. How many preachers are there who speak eloquently and who talk of great subjects; and yet, are not captivated by Jesus’ own love for His people? Have you ever heard a great preacher who you knew did not really love you? How many teachers are there in churches who accurately arrange the facts and figures; and yet, are not doing their teaching with Jesus’ own love dominating their hearts? I don’t want to be one of those. I don’t want to end up suffering loss as I stand before the throne of God one day, because I ended up being nothing more than sounding brass or clanging a cymbal.
You and I cannot truly serve one another through the speaking gifts—not in the way that God wants to use us—unless we make sure that the agape love of Jesus permeates all that we say and teach in the household of God!
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And it’s not just in our speech that such love must be present. We might think that great miracles of a spiritual nature will always benefit the body of Christ—no matter what the heart condition may be of those who perform them. But that’s not true at all. Do you remember how the Lord Jesus once said that people who performed miracles will one day stand before Him and give an accounting to Him? He said;
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’” (Matthew 7:21-23).
No; just performing miracles is not enough. Not even great and astonishing miracles. Even then, agape love must be the essential ingredient. In verse 2, Paul went on to tell us that …
2. WITHOUT IT, IMPRESSIVE WORKS OF SPIRITUAL POWER MAKE US NOTHING (v. 2).
Paul wrote; “And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” And here again, Paul is making mention of some of the spiritual gifts he had spoken of before. There’s the gift of prophecy—the gift of being able to speak-forth a message from God. Or there’s the gift of knowledge—the ability to understand and grasp the mysteries of the kingdom of God, or to know things that only God can reveal to man. Paul even speaks of the gift of faith—a faith so great that it can move mountains. Jesus spoke of this kind of miracle. He once told His disciples;
“… for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20).
The faith to move mountains! What an impressive display of faith that would be! But look at what Paul says about it. Such great miracles may be done; as in speaking a word of prophecy, or of having the knowledge of great mysteries, or of performing great acts of faith—performing healings or casting out demons or doing great wonders. But if they are done without the kind of agape love that Jesus has for us, then it’s not just that those works are nothing. No! Paul says that we ourselves are nothing! We’re not prophets or miracle workers or doers of great acts of faith. We’re none of those things at all. We’re just nothing!
Those great acts of spiritual power are only meaningful in the family of God if they are done in Jesus’ own love. In fact, the weakest and most humble act of faith—done sincerely in the agape love of Jesus—is greater than the greatest miracle done without it.
We must make sure we always have Jesus’ own agape love as the essential ingredient in all our acts of spiritual faith in the household of God—great or small.
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And there’s more still. In verse 3 Paul urges that we must have that essential ingredient of love; because …
3. WITHOUT IT, GREAT ACTS OF SELF-SACRIFICE CANNOT PROFIT US (v. 3).
Paul wrote; “And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.”
There was a very wealthy man who came to Jesus once and asked what he needed to do in order to be saved. He said that he had kept all of the law. But what was left? And Jesus told him “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me” (Matthew 19:21). That man walked away sadly. Jesus was simply showing him that it would be impossible for anyone to do enough to save themselves—and that we really need to trust in God’s grace to save us. But what if we actually did what that man found it too hard to do? What if we actually sold all that we had, and gave all the money to feed the poor? Wouldn’t that be a great act of self-sacrifice? Even the unbelieving people of this world would be impressed by that.
Or more; what if I even went so far as to give my body to be burned? (Some translations have it that I give my body over to suffering and hardship ‘that I may boast’; but I tend to think that Paul’s idea was that of giving one’s body over to the ultimate sacrifice of being burned—that is, as a martyr for the cause of Christ.) What a great and noble act of self-sacrifice that would be!
But even such things as that can be done without agape love. Such things can be done in order to impress others. Or they can be done in such a way as to simply harden one’s heart while doing them—performing acts of self-sacrifice; but with a bitter and resentful spirit. That, sadly, is how some people try to exercise the spiritual gifts God gives them—that is, with a bitter attitude, or with a selfish motive. And if even such great sacrificial acts as those are done without the agape love of Jesus for others, then they profit us nothing. It would be a waste. Nothing will have been gained from it.
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So; no matter what it may be—whether it is the use of the spiritual gifts to speak great and eloquent words, or to perform great spiritual works of faith, or even to give up something of ourselves in some sacrificial way—it absolutely must have the essential ingredient of agape love. It must be done in Jesus’ own love for others. Otherwise, it is just noise. We are nothing. No good thing will be gained.
I liked very much what one commentator said about this. He wrote; “… if we have no love, we have nothing; but if we have love, though we may lack much else, then we have what matters most.”1 So I say dear brothers and sisters; let’s concentrate more on keeping our gaze upon Jesus—and more upon loving one another as Jesus loves us—than we do on our own spiritual gift.
If we make it our goal to love each other with the love that comes only from Jesus, then we will always use our gifts toward each other in a way that pleases Him.
1Alan Redpath, The Royal Route to Heaven (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1960), p. 159.
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