Quinquagesima
1
Cor 13:1-13
2/15/26
Love is in the air. It was yesterday, and it is this morning in our
epistle lesson. Yesterday was, of course, Valetine’s Day, named after St.
Valentine. There was indeed a Valentine who was martyred because of faith in
Jesus Christ. Actually, there is evidence for two men named Valentine – one a
bishop, and the other a priest – who were martyred in Rome around 269 A.D. However,
we are not sure exactly which one prompted this day in the commemoration of the
Church.
The other available evidence about St. Valentine are contradictory and contain information that is historically
questionable. Included among these are the claims that Valetine
secretly performed Christian marriages and provided hearts cut from parchment
as a reminder of the marriage vows and God’s love. Another says that
he left a note for the child of his jailer that was written on a piece of
irregularly shaped parchment. Both traditions provide a basis for aspects of
Valetine’s Day as we know it. The Feast of St. Valentine became associated with
romantic love during the late medieval period.
Needless to say, it is
quite a jump from a pastor being killed because of faith in Jesus to a day that
celebrates romantic love and which must be honored with cards, flowers, and
chocolate. We are told that Valentine’s Day is about love, and I suppose that
is true. But “love” is a word that you can fill with very different
content.
Romantic love is often associated with the warm fuzzy feeling that exists
in the beginning of a relationship.
While on the surface this love is directed towards that other person, in
the end it is really valued because it makes me feel wonderful. “Falling in love” feels great. There’s really nothing like it. But if it
didn’t feel great for me, I wouldn’t be doing it. That’s why we also hear
about people “falling out of love.” When this love thing ceases to be good
for me, then it’s time to move on.
On the other hand, we hear about a very different kind of love this
morning as St Paul writes to the Corinthians. This is not love that is focused
on feeling good. Instead, it is love
that is action. It is a way of behaving that is generated by the Spirit of
Christ. It is life that is modeled on
Christ. And unlike romantic love, it is something that will never end.
The church at Corinth was definitely Paul’s “problem congregation.”
Almost all of 1 Corinthians is Paul dealing with problems at Corinth. Problems
and challenges continue in 2 Corinthians.
Several weeks ago I preached on a text from chapters nine and ten in
which Paul was in the process of addressing issues related to pagan temples and
meat that came from sacrifices there. Today, Paul is in the midst of addressing
yet another problem.
Many of the Corinthians had a very high view of themselves. They thought that spiritually they had
arrived. They were mature and they had real knowledge. They were also quite prideful, and were drawn
to things in the Christian faith that would make them stand out in the midst of
other Christians.
Paul began his discussion in the previous chapter as he said, “Now concerning spiritual
gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed.” Literally, the
phrase is “concerning spiritual things.” The apostle is referring to different
ways that the Spirit manifested himself in the life of Christians – things like
the utterance of wisdom and knowledge, healing, the working of miracles,
prophecy, speaking in tongues, and the interpretation of tongues.
Paul has made the point that God gives many different gifts for the good
of his Church. He said, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for
the common good.” In chapter twelve, he
described the Church as the body of Christ as he explained: “For just as the body is one
and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one
body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized
into one body— Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made
to drink of one Spirit.”
The apostles’ point is that the
body has many different members – there are feet, eyes, and ears. They don’t
all do the same thing, yet the body needs all of them. In the same way God has given different gifts
to individual Christians, and the Church needs all of them. Just before our
text Paul asks: “Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all
work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do
all interpret?” Then Paul adds, “And I will show you a still more excellent
way.”
That more excellent way is the way
of love. Paul begins our text by saying that without love, the gifts the
Corinthians are desiring – the ones they want because it will make them stand
out - mean nothing. He says, “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.”
Paul’s language about tongues has
received a great deal of attention from the so-called Pentecostal movement. The
book of Acts is clear that on Pentecost the disciples spoke in the foreign
languages of those who were present in Jerusalem. However, that is not what
Paul is describing here. To be honest, we don’t know what this sounded like.
But we do know that it was language that required an interpretation that only
God could provide. And Paul is clear in the next chapter that speaking in
tongues should only take place when someone is able to interpret. So the
practice today in which multiple people carry on, and no one has any idea what
they are saying, is not from God.
Prophecy in the Old Testament is
most often the act of declaring God’s word to his people. It is teaching. Sometimes it did involve
foretelling events, but this was not the most common aspect of prophecy. In the
New Testament it continued to be the same thing. Individuals were gifted by the
Spirit to speak and teach God’s Word in authoritative ways. The Spirit of God
gave them knowledge and insight to do so.
You can see why the Corinthians
wanted to focus on these. But Paul says that without love, they are nothing.
Instead, the apostle states in our text: “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.”
Love as defined by Paul is patient
and kind. It is willing to wait for others. It is kind and does not insist on
its own way. These all describe an
orientation that seeks the good of others – that puts others first. Paul
expressed the same thing when he told the Philippians, “Do nothing
from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others
more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own
interests, but also to the interests of others.”
Because love is oriented towards
others and seeks their well being first, Paul explains that love does not
envy or boast. It’s not jealous of what others have or have done. This means
the person does not seek to boast about oneself. The person does not act as if he
is better than everyone else. The individual does not treat others in a
dismissive fashion.
“Love” is a word that can be used
in very in different ways. It is a word
that is popular in our world today because it is defined as the acceptance of
what others believe and do. This includes homosexuality, and every other kind
of sexual immorality. “Love is love” we
are told.
But Paul says that since God is
the source of love, anything that we are going to label as love must be true to
his will and ordering. He says that love “does not rejoice at wrongdoing,
but rejoices with the truth.” Love
will call wrongdoing what it is. It will call it sin. Love will not go along
and accept the things that are contrary to God’s will, because they are in
fact wrong. And because according to God they are wrong, these are things
that bring spiritual and worldly harm.
Paul describes love as an active
thing. He says that, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all
things, endures all things.” It is
ongoing and does not stop in the face of challenges and difficulties.
The love that Paul describes has
only one source. It comes from God. John
says in his first letter, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us,
that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through
him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us
and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
God revealed his love by seeking
our good. Paul told the Romans, “but God shows his love for us in
that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” We are sinners who
fail to love. We find it easy to act in selfish ways. But God loved us by
giving his Son as the sacrifice for our sins. Indeed, Christ loved us by
carrying out the Father’s will when he offered himself on the cross. Paul told
the Ephesians to “walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself
up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
Jesus was the offering through
whom God provided atonement for our sins. The holy God judged sin in Christ so
that sin no longer stands as a barrier between us and God. And then he raised
Jesus from the dead on the third day through the work of the Spirit. Now that same Spirit has given you
regeneration and renewal through baptism.
You have been born again to the life of faith in Jesus Christ. You now live as those who are in Christ.
This faith is trust and belief in
Jesus Christ as the crucified and risen Lord. But because this faith has been
worked by the Spirit; because this faith means being joined with Christ, it
act; it does. Paul told the Galatians, “For in Christ Jesus neither
circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith
working through love.”
Love is the life of faith in
Christ, worked by the Spirit. Its source
is in God the Father who loved us by giving his Son. John said, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we
also ought to love one another.” Its model and pattern is Jesus Christ himself.
John tells us, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us,
and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”
In our text this morning, Paul
emphasizes the enduring character of love. He says, “Love never ends.” This
stands in contrast to the things the Corinthians are prizing. The apostles
adds, “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.”
All of these other things will
come to an end. They are temporary and point forward to the eternal that will
be present when Christ returns. For now, all our knowledge is imperfect. It is only in part because we are limited by
our sinful fallenness. But that will change when our Lord returns in glory and
raises us from the dead. Paul says, “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.”
Paul concludes our text by saying,
“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is
love.” Why is love the greatest? It is because only love will extend into
eternity. Faith and hope both involve things that are not yet seen. When Christ
returns and we see God face to face there will no longer be any need for faith
and hope. But there will be love, because God is love. The mutual love shared
by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has existed from all eternity. God has restored
us to sharing in that love through Christ.
Our life in Christ is one of love – love that already shares in the life
that we will have with God forever.
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