D. Scott Meadows
It would be hard to exaggerate the place of love in the Bible. God is love. His love is infinite and eternal. The one God always exercises love among the divine persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In love He created all things. In love He governs all things. In love He redeems His justly cursed cosmos, and will restore it to a state of blessedness exceeding the excellence of the original creation, which He had pronounced very good.
Love also is the divinely revealed one word summary of God’s will for us. We must love our God supremely and our neighbor unselfishly. Upon these two great commands hang all the other precepts and prohibitions. They are just so many elaborations on what the holy love of God requires and forbids. God has been working since the beginning to redeem a people for His own glory who will thus love Him and one another. The greatest historic step forward in this redemption plan was the incarnation of Christ, followed by His righteous life, atoning death, and triumphant resurrection and ascension.
Ever since, the Church of Jesus Christ is the special realm where this spiritual, ethical, divine love is practiced and on display. The loving reverence toward God with its brotherly love exercised within the Church is a foretaste of our future happiness, that Spirit-filled, blissful, human-divine fellowship in the eternal kingdom of grace and glory, centering upon the enthroned Lord of lords, even Jesus Christ.
God is the sole Author of all Scripture, working through human writers to produce it. Therefore, the whole Bible is His Word and presents one, internally consistent doctrine of God and His ways, along with how we are to live for His glory. Last week we brought to your attention the witness of John, “the apostle of love,” concerning the truth about love as it pertains to God and to our duty. Now let us see how the writings of Paul agree with and complement John’s infallible teaching.
“Love” and its cognates, or “charity” which means the same, appear 120 times in 105 verses in Paul’s epistles (counting Hebrews). Every single epistle uses the word at least three times (even Philemon in only 25 verses). The highest concentration of any epistle is Ephesians, in each of its six chapters for a total of 19 occurrences.
Paul’s best-known passage on love is, of course, 1 Corinthians 13. Even worldly people recognize its exquisite beauty and profundity. For example, in 1997 Prime Minister Tony Blair read it at the funeral of Princess Diana.
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2 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, and have not charity, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. 4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; 6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; 7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
“Charity” translates the most important Greek word for love (ἀγάπη, agape). It used to have this primary meaning: “love, benevolence, good will; that disposition of heart which inclines men to think favorably of their fellow men, and to do them good. In a theological sense, it includes supreme love to God, and universal good will to men,” and only subordinately, “liberality to the poor” (1828 Webster). Thus it was a good translation choice back then.
The first three verses stress the indispensability and superiority of love to all other spiritual gifts, virtues, and ministries. What is linguistic ability, supernatural or otherwise, without love? What is all knowledge and faith without love? Perhaps the hardest one for us to accept in this rhetorical trilogy is the last. So what if you give all up all that you have to feed the poor and sacrifice your very life in a noble cause? People sometimes do these things from inferior motivations. Without love, you are nothing, and you profit nothing! Who can imagine a more forceful assertion about the greatness of genuine love in the sight of God?
The love in view here is that which God imparts and supplies by His Spirit in the souls of real Christians only, those regenerated by grace and exercising faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. “The fruit of the Spirit is love” (Gal 5.22), and this fruit only appears in followers of Jesus. We have no reverent love toward God or Christian love toward one another unless and
until we are radically changed by God’s sovereign grace.
The next four verses (1 Cor 13.4-7) describe the kind of love which is in view. Wuest’s expanded translation is good commentary:
Love meekly and patiently bears ill treatment from others. Love is kind, gentle, benign, pervading and penetrating the whole nature, mellowing all which would have been harsh and austere; is not envious. Love does not brag, nor does it show itself off, is not ostentatious, does not have an inflated ego, does not act unbecomingly, does not seek after the things which are its own, is not irritated, provoked, exasperated, aroused to anger, does not take into account the evil [which it suffers], does not rejoice at the iniquity but rejoices with the truth, endures all things, believes all things, hopes all things, bears up under all things, not losing heart nor courage. Love never fails.
Paul wrote so much more about love, but this is plenty for our meditation, self-examination, repentance, and resolve. This is a revelation of the love of Jesus Christ our Lord. Let us pray to be like Him. Amen.
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