1 Corinthians 13
I have spoken to you for three consecutive weeks about love, what it is and the sacrifice that love requires. I've told you a lot about what you have to do to love, or better say what we have to do to love. I gave you an example of what Jesus did to show us what love is.
However, I do know that it could sometimes sound like Emotional or Spiritual Abuse. So I would like to tell you about a specific writing that we can find in the Bible about love.
As I told you before, Jesus came to earth out of love for us, to sacrifice himself for our sins which separated us from God the Father. As I defined it to you, it seems that love is weak on some level. He gives everything, sacrifices himself. But if we look at what Jesus did out of love, we realize that he knocked down tables, “insulted” some people, calling them hypocrites, “wicked” people, “vipers” and people who will never reach the Kingdom. This is what some may see as a little radical. But it was for love. Because love is true, does not lie, but above all corrects and puts back on the right track.
But that's not all, Paul, the author of most of the New Testament books, has written about love. He is very well known, among other things, for one of the most beautiful New Testament chapters on love: 1 Corinthians 13. But as believers, we are also human and make mistakes. This chapter is magnificent. I do not disagree. But he wasn’t meant to be. The apostle Paul was literally blaming a church he loved because it lacked love.
I suggest you discover, if you don't know it, this famous chapter …
1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.
11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.
12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
This message is, at least for me, magnificent. But what you need to know is that it comes from a place of attitude correction. So Paul in his love comes to reproach the Corinthians for their lack of love and dictates to them what to do. For God is love, and what Paul describes is a perfect description of the Holy God. So loving is not easy.
It's so hard it took an entire chapter in a book. Knowing that the introduction to this passage takes place in the previous chapter and that the real conclusion is read in the next chapter. Loving is more valuable than intellectual knowledge, which means that it must come first in our lives. To love is to correct, to be tolerant but above all to take someone back when they are on the wrong track.
As I told you above, Jesus, in His love, called some names that I would not like to be named. Because Love is true, he cannot let others make mistakes without taking them back, correcting them or bringing them closer to the goal. In a Christian context, the goal is to get closer to the Father.
There is this saying that tells us that it is only the truth that hurts. And sometimes, being faced with your mistakes, your missteps is actually very hurtful! But you have to believe that the one who loves you will do it out of love for you and not with the intention of hurting you. This is exactly what this chapter of 1 Corinthians 13 refers to. I can know anything I want, have all the theory in the world, but what matters most is knowing how to convey it all out of love.
I hope you liked this message, a bit long I admit, or that it edified or corrected you,
With all my love,
Do