The Greatest of These is Love

The Greatest of These is Love

Pastor Allen Snapp  7/26/15

1 Cor. 12:31-13:13

If you want to measure something accurately, it's important to begin with the correct unit of measurement. When someone wants to know how big a house is, we talk in terms of square feet, not gallons. When you are baking a cake, it wouldn't make sense for the recipe to call for a foot of flour. There are all kinds of specialized units of measurement to help us measure things like length, circumference, distance, volume, weight, ratios like mph and mpg, time, and so on. But even with all these measuring tools, there are situations when ordinary units of measurement can't do the job, and so over the years some unusual units measurements have been devised. 

For instance, there is the beard-second. The beard second works on the same principle as the light-year, only it was devised to measure incredibly small distances. What is a beard-second? It is defined as the length an average physicist's beard grows in a second (about 5 nanometers). 

Then there's the smoot. In 1958 some MIT students measured the length of the Harvard Bridge using Oliver R. Smoot, who happened to be 5'7". The bridge turned out to be 364.4 smoots minus one ear. Their markings are there to this day and are repainted twice a year.

What if you need to measure how bad something smells? You land a job that requires you traveling to bathrooms, landfills, and church nurseries around America, measuring with precision the relative stench level of stinky places, what do you use? For that there is a measuring unit called "Hobo Power". Hobo Power rates stenches on a 0-100 basis. Just to give you an idea, an odor with a rating of 50 Hobo Power will have you hurling projectiles of vomit and a rating of 100 Hobo Power is believed to be fatal. 100 Hobo Power has never actually been documented in nature, so like absolute zero, 100 HP is purely scientific theory. 

But, what if you want to measure how cool someone is? How do you quantify coolness? Beard-seconds, smoots, and hobo power don't do it. For that there is a measurement called the Megafonzie. I'm not making this stuff up! The Megafonzie is based on the uber-cool character Fonzie in the TV show Happy Days. For those of you too young to remember Happy Days, the Fonz was so cool he could cause girls to swoon and bullies to flee just by combing his hair. As far as I know, no one measuring a million times cooler than the Fonz has ever been documented in nature either, so Megafonzie takes its place alongside absolute zero and 100 Hobo Power as scientific theory. 

These are all real, albeit nutty units of measurement, but they demonstrate the challenge of measuring things that can't be measured with the ordinary forms of measurement. So, on a more serious note, how do we measure how a church is doing? More than just its size or budget, we want to assess how it's doing in the things that are important to God, how healthy it is, how  spiritually mature it is? What unit of measurement can give us an accurate reading on a church's (or a believer's) spiritual health?

That's exactly the issue that Paul is dealing with in chapters 12-14 of this letter. The Corinthian church had taken their measurement and determined that they were over the top spiritually mature. They were better and more spiritually mature than the average church. And one of the measuring units they used was how advanced they were in the spiritual gifts. They were a dynamically charismatic church with people operating in miraculous spiritual power everywhere you looked! They were so spiritually advanced that they really had no time for the less impressive spiritual gifts - only the most impressive gifts need apply. You have the gift of helps? Administration? You want that boring church down the road. We're looking for people who have sensational gifts - especially tongues. Tongues was their favorite because it was so unusual, so impressive, such a show stopper. Using spiritual gifts as their unit of measurement they were convinced that they were a cut above the grade and special to God. 

So in chapters 12-14 Paul pulls out a different ruler and comes up with a different measurement of this charismatic church. In chapter 12, as we looked at last week, Paul teaches the church that all spiritual gifts are important for the building up of the church and we can't look down on some gifts simply because they are less sensational. Then, as he closes the chapter, he says, now let me show you a still more excellent way. That's a measurement: I'm going to show you a better path, a higher road, a more excellent route for becoming the church God has called you to be. And then he purposely shocks them by declaring that 

1.  All spiritual activity is worthless to God if it's not accompanied by love, 

How do you measure the worth of a church, the value of a ministry, the maturity of a believer? In verses 1-3 Paul personalizes three extreme hypothetical situations: 

• If I could speak in several unlearned earthly languages, and was fluent in angel- speak…
• If I had superhuman spiritual powers, able to prophecy and reveal mysteries no one else can fathom and can read your mail with words of knowledge, and if I could move mountains by faith…
• And if I literally gave away everything I owned to the poor and then gave my greatest possession - my life - to be burned as a sacrifice…

By now the Corinthians are pulling out their measuring tapes and taking measurements: fluent in tongues, prophecies and moves mountains…gives away everything, even their life…really mature! Really healthy! Really worth a lot in God's eyes! Then Paul shocks them by saying that, if all this is done without love in the heart, it is worthless to God. Zip, zero, nada. Goose-egg. 

There is no substitute for love in church, pure and simple, folks. Love is the core value that makes everything else valuable. Love is the work of the Holy Spirit that precedes and empowers all other works of the Holy Spirit. Paul's point isn't that these other things are bad - they are good! - his point is that without love, they are worthless to God.Their value is tied up in the core value of love.

Love is at the very core of who God is. 1 John 4:8 declares that God is love. Love is also at the very core of the gospel: God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. Jesus said the two greatest commandments are to love God and to love our neighbor. The one commandment Jesus gave his disciples is to love one another and he said that it would be our love for one another that would convince the world we are his disciples. As believers, we all live, as it says in Gal 2:20, "by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" …love is at the very core of the gospel. 

There is no substitute for love in the church. I remember as a young Christian my first experience going to a high powered, hyper charismatic church. Every service was like a rock show! And I began to look down on the gentle, spirit-filled Methodist church where I had first come to know the Lord. But over time I observed that there was a coldness in the rock-show church, and a warm sense of love in the Methodist church. No substitute for love. 

Without love we take good things and make them worthless things, just like the Corinthians were doing. For one church it might be their emphasis on sound doctrine and careful biblical exegesis. For another it might be their evangelistic focus. Another church is proud of their hipster image. And still another is proud of their strict adherence to long held conservative traditions. Give me that old-time religion is their favorite hymn. Whatever it is, if we use it as a yardstick without measuring in love, it will give us a false reading. 

For us, GCC, God's word reminds us that as we take our own measurement, we need to make genuine love is our primary unit of measuring. We won't be perfect at it - no church is - only Jesus loves perfectly. Our message will never be "look how loving we are", but "look how much Christ loved us that He would give his life to save us." But we always want to make it our goal to be a loving church and to be growing in love. There is no substitute for genuine Christian love in the church. Without it, anything else we do is worthless to God. Strong words, but it's God's word.

So what does love look like? Paul goes on to give two major characteristics of love.

2.  Love is measured by action for the good of others (4-7)

John Mayer has a song that says, love ain't a thing, love is a verb. Paul lists 15 verbs to describe love - seven positive verbs (what love does) and eight negative verbs (what love doesn’t do). We don't have time to go through each verb this morning, and I did go through these verbs more extensively in  a couple messages in August of 2014 if you are interested in that, but I want to give four action categories and briefly consider how Jesus modeled them perfectly in his life and ministry. 

a.  Love shows compassion

Love is patient and kind…(vs. 4)

Many times in the gospels we read how Jesus was moved with compassion. In a fallen world where people fail and fall, love is patient and kind. It gives people room to fail and time to grow. Love isn't harsh and quick to write people off - it gives people grace when they mess up. 

b.  Love doesn't make it all about me

Love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way…(vs. 4)

All five of these verbs have this in common: they indicate a heart that's self-centered. A perspective that sees ourselves as the most important person in the room. The word for "boast" could be translated "windbag". Pride makes a windbag out of us. Pride makes it all about me. 

Love frees us from this incessant obsession with ourselves by refocusing us on others. That's good for them but it's even better for us. The saying is true, there's no smaller package than a man who is wrapped up in himself. 

c.  Love doesn't retaliate, it forgives

Love is not easily angered, it keeps no records of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. (vs. 5-6) NIV

Again, we live in a fallen world surrounded by sinners. People are going to hurt, disappoint, and offend us. And when they do, emotions like anger and resentment can actually provide us with energy and motivation in the short term. If someone does something to offend or hurt you, you may well experience a burst of energy and power by feeling resentful, angry, and/or bitter. But in the long run those same emotions that provide short term energy drain us of energy and hope and joy. And as we sink into a feeling of listlessness and emptiness, we start to look for something that will put the spark back in us, and that something often becomes a fresh offense, a new reason to be angry, a new crime to be outraged about.  Some people like feeling angry because they never feel so alive as they do when they're lit up.

Love has a different power source. No one has ever been more wronged than Jesus was - but as he hung on the cross, nailed there by jealous, corrupt religious leaders, a cowardly crowd, and callous Roman soldiers, he didn't allow his heart to be filled with vindictive emotions. He didn't cry out "Father, strike them all dead!" Even at that moment his perfectly loving heart was filled with generous forgiveness: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they're doing.

We don't know that any of them repented of their sin or regretted what they did - but Jesus didn't sink to their level, he didn't let his heart get clogged up with anger and bitterness and a thirst for revenge. There are times when it is right to be angry, but God doesn't want us to live in that place. Anger is a God-given emotion to motivate us to make healthy and positive changes (where we can), and then move on, not staying in that place, not staying angry. Love doesn’t retaliate, it forgives.

d.  Love is relentlessly and realistically committed to building others up 

Verse 7 almost seems like a set up for being hurt and taken advantage of: always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres (NIV). And then verse 8 makes this blanket statement: love never fails. These verses could leave us pretty discouraged and depressed if we tried to protect, trust, hope and persevere and it all seemed fail. We did verse 7 but didn't get verse 8.

And yet there is this unqualified measurement: love never fails. How effective is love? 100% effective. It never fails. Again, we need to look at Jesus' life and ministry. He had real enemies who never stopped hating him. He loved the rich young man who rejected his offer to become a disciple and walked away sad. Judas betrayed him, soldiers mocked him, religious leaders scorned him. Jesus loved perfectly and yet, if success is measured by how effective he was at reaching everyone, there seems to be a fair amount of failure.

But that's not how God measures success. Jesus was 100% successful in fulfilling God's will for his life. He was perfectly effective in transforming the lives that God had given him. And he was never derailed from God's path for him. As we pursue the excellent way of love, we aren't guaranteed that every relationship that we try to protect, trust, hope for, and persevere with is going to go the way we want it to, but we can know that God will keep our lives in His will and blessing. 

Love protects us. Sin messes with our minds and we can start spiraling into a life of selfish, vindictive, or pessimistic attitudes that clog up our hearts and rob us of love, which derails our lives from what God intends for us. Love keeps our heart moving in a positive, hopeful, working for the good of others direction and that will never fail. 

3.  Love lasts forever

There is one other characteristic of love that sets it apart from most other Christian qualities: it lasts forever. Paul says that all the other stuff will cease because they won't be needed, they won't have value, in eternity. There will come a day when we won't need prophecy, we won't need tongues, we won't need words of knowledge. When the perfect comes, the imperfect disappears. When Jesus comes back, we won't need these other things that help us know him and see him now in a mirror dimly. That doesn't mean that what we see in the mirror isn't accurate - it is - it's just not the same as seeing Jesus face to face, having our knowledge exploded exponentially by knowing God the way He knows us.

There is a triad of qualities that are essential to the Christian life: faith, hope, and love. These are all precious and essential to our lives as believers, but only one of these qualities will endure into eternity. We won't need faith - we will see with our eyes. We won't need hope - you don't have to hope for what you have. But love will last forever. There is no substitute for love.

Conclusion:

As we close, let's consider how we apply this and I want to use two words. 

1.  Receive - I've heard it said that it's a good exercise to your name in the place of love in vv. 4-8. "Allen is patient, Allen is kind. Allen does not envy, Allen does not boast…" By the end of the passage, we feel our failure to live up to this! Only Jesus perfectly walked this out, so before we apply this to ourselves we apply it to Jesus and remember his unfailing love for us. We receive for ourselves 's love poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. (Rom. 5:5)

2.  Act - In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote, "Do not waste your time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less."

Love is a verb. As we act in loving ways, act to do good to others, we will find that God's love for them will grow in our hearts. Don't try to feel loving, try to act loving, and the feelings will follow. And Grace, as we grow in this more excellent way, people are built up and that is of great value in God's sight.