Planting Seeds
Planting Seeds
A More Excellent Way
1 Corinthians is written to a church that is deeply divided in attitude and practice. Paul writes them in an effort to affect unity within this community of believers. Even though the church is ancient, the problems are not. As a matter of fact, many churches and denominations still argue and divide over these same issues today. Hopefully, we can learn from Paul's letter how we can experience greater unity within our faith families.
Welcome to this episode of Planting Seeds. I'm Keith Jones, the Preaching Minister of Calera Church of Christ, and I've prepared a short message from Scripture that's intended to be the planting of a seed that, if cultivated, will in time produce fruit in the lives of the listeners. Now let's get started. In this episode we'll continue our study of the book of 1 Corinthians looking at 1 Corinthians, chapter 13, beginning in verse 1. If you have a Bible with you, follow along while I read:
Keith Jones: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. If I give away all that I have and if I deliver up my body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing. 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's not irrational or resentful . t o n at , but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, 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. 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, 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. So now, faith, hope and love abide these three, but the greatest of these is love.
Keith Jones:While this chapter may have been popularized by reading it at weddings for our purposes, we want to make sure we remember that Paul is writing this in the context of how the Spirit manifests itself in our public assemblies. As he mentioned several spiritual gifts in chapter 12, he mentioned that they all came from the same spirit, so they shouldn't be exercised in a way that creates division. And he closed chapter 12 by saying there's a more excellent way than any of the gifts he had already mentioned to make the spirit known in our assemblies, and this chapter lets us know that that more excellent way is the way of love. The way that we love one another will reveal to believers and non-believers that the Spirit of God is in our assemblies. Paul begins in that first paragraph by letting us know that there is no action that we take in the name of Christ that has any meaning or purpose apart from love, that no work is a good work without love.
Keith Jones:Paul mentioned several things that he could do, and if they were void of love they would be meaningless. He says that even if he could speak in the language of angels or reveal everything that's a mystery and actually know everything there is to know, even if he could literally move a mountain with his faith, none of that would mean anything if he didn't have the love of Christ. And Paul says this is also true even if he gives away everything that he has to the needy and gives himself up as a martyr. If love is not the motivation, then it's meaningless. And that leads Paul to define love for his readers, to make sure they understand what he's talking about when he says that they should love one another and that love is a more excellent way of making the Spirit known than any of the gifts he had mentioned. It's a good thing he does as well, because often what we call love looks very different than what Paul describes here.
Keith Jones:Paul is describing a love that gives and not one that takes. It's something that's not dependent on the way I feel or the mood that I'm in, or even the way the other person makes me feel. Right, paul is not writing to people so they can tell if they are being loved. He's writing to make sure that we know how to love others and, as we see from his description of this love, there are no conditions for that. This is the kind of love that Jesus has for us. So as we read verses 4 through 7, we kind of see a barometer for determining whether or not we are expressing love for our fellow man. We can evaluate our behaviors and our attitudes to see if what we're giving others is love, or do those actions and attitudes toward others represent something else entirely.
Keith Jones:Paul lets us know that we stop loving others as soon as we become anxious about the outcome of the relationship. That's what he means when he says love is patient. I don't have to withhold love pending someone else's right response. I can love them, even if that love is unrequited. We also stop loving as soon as we miss opportunities to be kind, when we get so comfortable with a relationship or the benefits that it's providing us that we neglect to be kind to the other person to do things that are helpful for them. We've moved into something other than love.
Keith Jones:Paul says love does not envy. So we've stopped loving others when we want more than we have, when it becomes more about what we get than what we give. We're no longer loving another person when we're bragging or overconfident, as Paul says, when we're boastful or arrogant. And he lets us know that we've stopped loving others when we stop being courteous because love is not rude, when we stop being courteous because love is not rude. In the translation I read, his next phrase is that love does not insist on getting its own way. Other translations say keep no record of wrong.
Keith Jones:What Paul's describing there is when we get into a relationship and keep score and our capacity to show love to the other person is limited by whether or not we feel like they've given as much to us as we've given to them when we demand to get our own way. When we reach that point, what we're offering the other person is not love. Paul also says we've stopped loving as soon as we become irritable and resentful. Those are reactions we're having to other people based on our expectations of what they do for us, and that's not love. And we certainly aren't being loving when we rejoice when they get what they deserve. And we stop loving others when we stop having faith that God's way is the best way, when we stop hoping for the fulfillment of his promises in the life of that person and when we stop enduring, being willing to do whatever it takes to get there.
Keith Jones:Paul is not describing a romantic love here, and he's not talking about the vows that husbands and wives make to each other when they get married. He is talking about the way we should see other people, especially in our churches, and how we should treat them, even if we're not getting that back in return, because over time that's how we build strong, healthy churches, when everyone in our assemblies has learned to love each other this way. In doing so, our burdens become lighter because they're shared and our joys are multiplied because they're shared with people who want everything for us that God wants for us. Paul says this kind of love never ends. Some of the things that they were arguing about and using to jockey for position within the assembly were going to fade away. Prophecies would go away. Speaking in tongues, even knowledge itself, goes away, he says. That's the case because those things may be helpful in developing spiritual maturity. But once we become spiritually mature we're not going to need some of those things. We're going to understand more fully what God wants of us, what God was doing and how our actions affected others.
Keith Jones:Paul says right now, because of our limitations, we see things dimly, as in a mirror. You have to remember, a mirror for a first century person was a piece of bronze that had been polished. Corinth was actually known for their mirror production, but it didn't give an exact image. It wasn't always easy to see every detail. But Paul lets us know that as we grow in love, all of these things become more and more clear to us. The Spirit's presence becomes more and more obvious to us, and there will come a day when we shall fully know, in the same way that we have been fully known.
Keith Jones:So as Paul finishes up his thought in this chapter, he reminds his readers of the things that will always be there, the things that will last forever. The things they were arguing about, the things that they thought marked them out as more special than other people,
Keith Jones:those were all going to go away, but faith, hope and love abide forever. And out of those three amazing virtues, the greatest of those is love. We have all been blessed by God with a variety of gifts and abilities. You may think you don't have any, but they're there. As stewards of those blessings, we are to allow God to cultivate and grow those in our lives, and we should use those for his glory. But as we look to make the Spirit of God known in our world and in our churches, we cannot forget that the greatest manifestation of the Spirit of God is the way we love one another. Thank you for listening. You can find more of these messages on our website, calerachurchofchrist. org, or subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast app. You can also like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. You.
