Welcome to the MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my fifth episode. Tonight I’m going to present you with a sermon on 1 Corinthians 13. I delivered this sermon live at my church. Please enjoy.
Before I begin, I’d like to tell you all a story of a man who was on death row. The date of his execution came. They put him on the gurney, they prepared his lethal injection. Then, a chaplain walked into the room. He approached the man and he asked him if he had any last words he’d like to say or any final Scriptures he’d like to hear. The man looked at the chaplain and said “Sir, if I believed what you believe, I would get down on my hands and knees and I would crawl across London on broken glass to save just one. To save even just one person.” He said to the chaplain, “Get out.” The chaplain left the room and the man was executed.
A murderer, about to die, understood the paramount importance of Christ’s work because built into him was the ability to love. Everyone has built into them the ability to love but not everyone will choose to use it.
What I’m going to talk to you about today is love. In English we just say love. I love my wife, I love my family, I love my dog, I love pizza. All different kinds of love – just one word. In Greek, they have four words to distinguish between the different kinds of love. There is eros which is romantic love of the sexual passion. Fileo is friendship love or brotherly love. Storge is the love parents have for their children. And agape is God’s unconditional love. Today we are going to focus on agape or what I’m going to call real love.
Everything in life, everything you do, and everything in the Bible amounts to nothing if you remove love. I’ve always been comfortable with my ability to learn and understand new concepts and use those concepts to my advantage. I assumed that advancement in anything simply required mastery. Then as I got older I knew friends who had all of the right education and all of the proper training, but who were unable to get hired for the job. I knew wealthy people who were attractive and fit, but who were miserable and alone. I knew professors who were experts at their subjects, but who were unable to cause students to learn. And I knew churches who were sanctified well-versed, but who were unable lead people to God. In all of these instances the connections were not made because love was missing.
And today, in our society, tolerance and political correctness have rushed in to fill the vacuum where love has been removed. We have advocacy groups for everything from gender to ethnicity to sexual orientation and we need advocacy groups because we’re forgetting how to love our neighbors. Every month protesters gather against establishments they don’t understand to support causes they couldn’t describe to you, they have no coherent message because what they’re trying to say but what they can’t pin down is that the love is missing. Churches die and Bibles get left on the bookshelves when Christianity falls into the pool of dysfunctional worldviews that attempt to explain reality without love. We step away from God Himself and we no longer notice Him working in our lives when we stop loving Him. If you will demonstrate love, real love, then God will work with you to make your spirit joyful.
Notice what I’m saying: I’m saying God will work with you. You have responsibility in this, this is actionable. He will work with you to make your spirit joyful. I’m not saying your life will be perfect. I’m not saying that if you lovingly scratch that lottery ticket you’ll never have to work again. Tragedies will happen to you. Hardships will happen to you. But your relationship with God will be strong enough to carry you through the hardships and back into a joyful spirit.
When considering all of the problems I’ve laid out our task seems daunting. But it’s really not. In order to get to the correct solutions we must ask the correct questions. So the first question that surfaces is this: Why is success dependent on love if we can just acquire knowledge and mastery? If you have talent and you work hard enough, isn’t that all you need? Let’s see what the text says in 1 Corinthians 13:1-2
If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing.
Let’s take a look at this first verse where Paul says If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. Here we’re given a clue. It does not matter what you know, if you don’t love the people you are trying to engage with, they won’t listen to you. It will fall on deaf ears. One of the most popular and well-respected books in the business world is called How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Carnegie covers this topic of loving people before engaging with them really well when he says:
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
Generally, people do not care about how many countries you’ve been to, they don’t care what kind of car is in your driveway, or how many wild stories you have. People are most interested in whether you care about them. If it seems like people in your life are giving you a hard time I would ask you the question, do you love people? Because if you don’t, I would encourage you to try it out and see how that loving engagement will make all the difference in how they treat you.
I also want you to notice where Paul says and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. Do you know any nasty or bitter people who have a bad attitude toward others but they expect God to make everything in their life great for themselves. And then when things aren’t great they turn that same attitude up against God. Today everyone is talking about having a voice. I’m saying if we want to have a voice, if we want people to respect us, we must first love those whom we are seeking to lead. People may follow a leader they fear, but people will die for a leader they love.
There’s something I need to warn you about. When I tell you to love people I don’t mean virtue signaling. Virtue signaling is when a person is always first in line to help or first to take the sacrifice upon themselves but only when they have spectators. When something bad happens this person usually jumps on social media or television and their publicity goes something like this: look at me, I’m virtuous because I’m condemning this act or that person, and by the way while I’m here let me share my own views and how I always do better. That’s virtue signaling, and Paul dealt with it as well, verse 3:
If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it, but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
How do you avoid virtue signaling? You make love your motive for doing good, not attention to the fact that you’re doing it. Naturally when you get involved at a high level people are going to take notice of you. But you must never allow the attention to become your motivation.
So now we know that success with people and good work begins with and is dependent on love. Earlier I said how you need to have real love. But what is real love? What does that look like? This next part is incredibly important, so I want to spend some time on it it.
Let’s look at verses 4-7:
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
That is real love. Patience, kindness, supportive of the truth, always hopeful, and enduring through every circumstance. Those are characteristics of real love. What does it look like when someone knows real love, when someone demonstrates real love? This is a person who is stable, optimistic, faithful, secure in their self-control, and truthful about the good things and the bad things. You see, real love intercedes. Real love stands in the gap between the loved ones and danger. Real love gets down in the mud to understand and to be there even when there is nothing to gain.
Paul provides us contrast by telling us what real love is not. Real love is not jealous, boastful, proud or rude. Real love does not demand it’s own way, it’s not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. This is especially important for our married couples: if you love your spouse you will forgive them, you will not keep records of how they have wronged you. If you want your spouse to change, the worst thing you can do is bombard them with a history of their past mistakes. Paul says love does not rejoice about injustice, love never gives up, and love never loses faith. Thankfully God’s love is perfect. If we’re using a metric of faith to determine love then there are often moments where people lose love for God, imagine if He lost love for us even once. It’s 400 degrees below zero on the other side of earth’s atmosphere – I don’t want Him ripping the blanket off!
I want to continue to emphasize what real love is not by explaining the dangers associated with misunderstanding love. Our society is heading toward postmodernism. A postmodern society emphasizes self-conceptualization. Self-conceptualization means following your heart and being proud of yourself just the way you are. Those two principles become the popular guiding principles of the day. It’s why we have ideological censorship disguised as tolerance. It’s why we have participation trophies. It’s why we have a divorce rate near 50%. If you are following your heart – if your feelings are your primary guide – I urge you to stop in your tracks and reevaluate. If your self is the framework from which you determine value, I urge you to stop in your tracks and reevaluate. Why? Because following those principles leads to group identity and the inability to be a free thinker. Following those principles will allow your culture to overrule your rationality. Because following those principles takes you in the opposite direction of following God.
We are called to lead our own hearts. Not let our hearts lead us. To determine value based not on ourselves, but based on our likeness to the person of Christ.
The Prophet Jeremiah says:
The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?
The heart is not just blind. It’s worse than blind. Left unchecked to carnal feelings, the heart spiritually malignant. What happens when you shut your eyes follow your heart? It takes you somewhere you do not want to go. It spawns a thousand enemies in your life because if you have problems or bad habits it assures you that you’re fine just the way you are and that if anyone thinks anything’s wrong with you, they need to change. It pits you in opposition to the people who care about you. The human heart inflates your ego, it pretends to protect you from addiction. That’ll never happen to you it says, I can quit anytime it says. It builds you up and bathes you in sin until you become your own god. The heart will turn you into a person who would rather go to hell than submit to God that you need Him.
Don’t be mistaken by the popular sentiments about the heart. Every single one of us has a line running right down the middle of our metaphorical hearts. On one side is the love that loves to do good. On the other side is the love that loves to do evil. Leading your heart simply means choosing to love the love that loves to do good. And hate the love that loves to do evil. You must love the love that loves to do good. And hate the love that loves to do evil. Now most of us so regularly choose good that we can tend to think the other side doesn’t even exist. But history is bloodied by people who have proven to us that evil does exist, and we must guard against it.
So we know what real love is and why we need it to be spiritually joyful in this life. But if I’m telling you that real love will allow God to work with you to make you spiritually joyful, I’m implying that love is a spiritual thing. In other words, love is eternal.
Paul discusses this in verses 8-10:
Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when full understanding comes, these partial things will become useless.
When you leave this life and you meet God face to face, you will come to a level of understanding that no amount of study can achieve. Everything you discovered and learned in your life will seem trivial compared to the complete understanding. But your love will remain. Your love is eternal and will follow you into eternal life.
That’s why it’s so important to know how to love the right way and to make love the motivation for all of your actions. Paul continues in verses 11-12:
When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, Just as God now knows me completely.
Just as God now knows me completely. That line right there is why in this life we have to depend on love and not on intellect or talent. God is telling us that while we are here we cannot have a complete picture. He’s also telling us that when we pass away we will receive a complete picture and love will be an essential part of that picture. You can build marvellous things with intellect and talent, but if you want your work to last love has to run through it. Depending on knowledge or skills alone is like going up in an airplane without a pilot. It’s like trying to cross the Atlantic in a kayak. But if you trust God and you depend on your ability to love, then whatever it is you’re building in your life, it will be built to last.
In 1 Corinthians, this is earlier in the book – chapter three – but this is important:
Anyone who builds on that foundation may use a variety of materials–gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a persons work has any value. If the work survives, the builder will receive a reward. But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames.
The work that will survive the flames of judgment is the work that is built of the eternal material that is love. No matter how insignificant you think your work is, not matter how unimportant you think your job is, if you do it with love then God Himself sees it as important work.
Remember when Jesus said:
You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself. The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.
What is the only aspect common to the two greatest commandments? Love. Jesus sums up the entire law and the entire Bible and tells us that all of it is based on love. If you learn nothing else in your life, learn real love. God will work with you to make your spirit joyful if you will demonstrate real love. Paul closes in verse 13:
Three things will last forever – faith, hope, and love – and the greatest of these is love.
Faith is the saving power of Jesus Christ. Hope is what He gave to us when He died on the cross. And love is the reason He did it. Thank you.
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