1Co 13:1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
1Co 13:2 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.
1Co 13:3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
1Co 13:4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant
1Co 13:5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
1Co 13:6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
1Co 13:7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
1Co 13:8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
1Co 13:9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
1Co 13:10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
1Co 13:11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
1Co 13:12 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.
1Co 13:13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
If you recall we looked at the world's definition of love and contrasted that to the Biblical definition of love. The worldly love must be accompanied with feelings and emotions. Biblical love is a command by God that may very likely not have any feelings towards the individual at all. I used the reference in Deuteronomy where we are instructed to love the sojourner from another land. By the worlds definition of love how could we have warm feelings about someone we have never met. But we do know God and we have a relationship with God and he commanded us to love. So if for no other reason we should be loving out of obedience. Even if we don't feel like it! I had two phrases that I told you last time and it is important to this entire study so I am going to continue to remind you and myself.
Love is an action commanded by God not a feeling concocted by us.
Feelings are a result of love...not... love is a result of feelings.
We then discussed that we have to pursue love, chase after it because it is not going to come naturally to us. We are naturally, since the fall of Adam, a self serving people. We naturally will always look for things that are in our best interest and not others. But real love is self sacrificing. It is always looking out for others. Those that are closest to you and those that you don't even know.
I heard a sermon last week and there were 3 points of why we are supposed to be evangelizing or spreading the gospel. The first was compassion...Jesus had compassion for His followers. The second was concern...Jesus had concern for His followers needs. And thirdly it was a command. Love has all the same requirements for all the same reasons. Of course if we are loving someone how could we not tell them about the savior who died for their sins.
We are going to eventually look at all the different facets of love laid out in 1 Corinthians 13 but before I start with that today I wanted to point out that all of these actions point us to Jesus and what His life and death were for us. If you think that you can just try real hard and be compassionate and be concerned and then you are going to fulfill the command of God for us to love one another then you are wrong. Am I confusing anybody yet? Christ did all of this perfectly when He was here on earth but He is the only one who can or could or will. We are to strive to be like Him but we will never become Him therefore we will never love perfectly. And without Jesus helping us we can't do it even a tiny bit of it at all. Remember we are still fallen man. If we could love perfectly for even a second then there was no reason for Christ to die on the cross.
So, the goal in all of this, and the focus of all of this is to learn to “love” Jesus. Then Jesus can show His love, through you, to others. It is about becoming a conduit of Jesus' love. It does not come from within us. Our requirement is to be submissive and obedient to Him and frankly that is going to require an attitude adjustment for most, if not all, of us. So as we look to the scriptures and learn what love is and how to apply it to our lives, if we look at Jesus in the Word first, we can then gain a proper perspective of what “our” part is in loving one another and allow Him to love through us.
Love is patient... (long suffering) It is translated into suffereth long —which implies... under provocations of evil from others.
Being patient is more than just waiting. It is not just I am going to sit here and be patient until my children come visit me. It is, my children never come visit me they are mean to me when they do come but I am going to be patient, still love them and not take them out of my will.
Isn't that what Jesus does for us? We are part of His family and we don't visit with Him like we should, we sometimes may even be angry with Him, we hardly ever call on Him unless we need something. Yet once He puts us in His living will, He will never take us out.
Patience is the ability to be wronged, and while having the power to retaliate, doesn't do it. That should be a major part of marriage counseling in my opinion! Jesus illustrated that for us when He was on the earth. He was mocked, abused and could have struck them all dead or diseased but He didn't. He prayed that God would forgive them because they knew not what they were doing.
As I said earlier we are looking at Jesus first and what he did for us and now we look at how can we be a conduit of His love.
We show God's love through patience by being a servant of God.
A servant of God will ministering to the needs of God's people regardless of consequence. Paul writes in his second letter to the Corinthians...
2Co 6:4 but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities,
2Co 6:5 beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger;
2Co 6:6 by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love;
But as you can see we must commend ourselves in every way... unless it doesn't go along with my plans for my life. Not quite. That is our part, like I said earlier, submission and obedience to God is how we love others. That is how we can love those that we don't even know. By being submitted to the only One who can truly love. Do you want to know how to love your spouse more? Submit to God.
Being a servant of God requires patience which allows you to be a conduit for God's love to flow through.
We show God's love through patience by preaching His word.
A preacher of the Word is sharing the good news of Jesus with the lost and is training and maturing other Christians. As we see in 2 Timothy this requires some patience.
2Ti 4:2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.
2Ti 4:3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,
2Ti 4:4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
2Ti 4:5 As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
Preaching and correcting others is showing God's love to others. Even when the congregation doesn't listen, when the person your counseling does everything exactly the opposite of your counsel and then blames you for the calamity in their life. This does not just apply to a preacher preaching at the pulpit. This applies to you sharing the gospel with your neighbor or helping a friend through a hard time. Your patience in reproving, rebuking and exhorting and preaching the word is how you can be a conduit for God's love.
We show God's love through patience by walking worthy (being an example)
A person who is being an example to others of God's love is actually showing others, God's love.
Eph 4:1 I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called,
Eph 4:2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,
A person who knows that their sins have been paid for by their savior reacts differently to circumstances in life. If a Christian loses their job they don't think it is the end of the world because they know where their provisions come from. Much the same if a christian has a terminal disease. Because they know their eternal destiny they do not fear the future. That shows God's love for His children to others. But we according to verse 2 should be careful not to be prideful of this hope that we have. We shouldn't be prideful of gaining what we did not earn. The example of the love of God on the Christian's life should be a draw for those who haven't experienced that love.
We show God's love through patience by being a servant of God.
Jesus was a servant of God while He was on the earth. He said “Not my will but thine be done”
We show God's love through patience by preaching His word.
During Jesus' ministry he was always preaching and teaching whether to hundreds or just one.
We show God's love through patience by walking worthy
Jesus lived a perfect life on the earth.
Remember, we are not Jesus so we will fail. But even in our failures we must show that God does not fail and show His love love through our failures. He showed his love by being patient with you even when you spit in His face (figuratively). Show your love to others by showing your patience to them.
