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The most basic thing 1 Cor 13: 1 – 13 Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 15 Jun, 2008 |
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IF THERE is one passage which is linked very, very securely to the gospels, it is Paul’s great chapter on love in his letter to the Corinthians. It is a clear commentary on Jesus’ own teachings. You all know it from wedding services, but, originally, Paul wrote it to encourage warring factions in a troubled church to restore their broken fellowship. I know how stressful weddings can be, so maybe more couples need to be reconciled as part of the wedding than we think! Maybe there is another explanation for why it is so popular! And it is a passage which speaks to churches needing revival, because often the root cause of our unhappiness is that we have let our relationships sour. The first church I attended before I became a Christian was very strongly fundamentalist. Pre-millennial, pre-tribulationary, and more second comings than you can poke a stick at. It was also a deeply troubled church, mainly because there was a trouble maker whom the kept inviting back. He would cause chaos in the church, force out anyone who opposed him, and, eventually, his plans would fall apart. So he would leave. Then, after a couple of years, he would come back, and the cycle started over again. You can look at a person like that and analyse the destruction he caused, but you have to realise that the church let him do it. They didn’t say, “You are going too far!” They didn’t love each other enough that, when one of them was hurt by this chap, they were able to see the pain and try to heal the hurt. They just left their wounded to die along the roadside. They were a friendly church, but, at that time, they were not a loving church. How much are we a friendly church but not a loving church? One big problem with all kinds of fundamentalism is that fundamentalism keeps people focused on right beliefs rather than on right relationships. And that distorts the gospel. A man came here — I mentioned him last week — pushing a different kind of fundamentalism among our people than the kind in that first church I attended. But saw what he was doing. He was creating a situation where people would be in conflict over whether our salvation was predetermined by God or whether we could freely choose to respond and obey. I had to challenge him. He tried to make me feel like my doctrine was wrong, but I stood my ground. I said, “I am not disagreeing with your doctrine. I am disagreeing with your approach to these people. Do you know which ones have only just come to faith in Christ? Do you know which ones are struggling with the issues in their life, and don’t need anything else to worry about right now?” He admitted he didn’t. I said, “Then you aren’t really here to show God’s love. You are here to persuade people to join your faction. That is wrong in anyone’s terms!” He didn’t come back after that. It doesn’t matter what kind of fundamentalism we are talking about — Calvinist, Dispensational, Charismatic. If the focus is on having the right ideas rather than on loving in the right way, it is not in line with the gospel. We need right ideas and we need right relationships. But right relationships take precedence over right ideas. If you acknowledge Jesus as Lord, if you believe that his Spirit is in you, if you seek to express your salvation through good works and acts of love, there is not much wrong with you. You might not understand every aspect of the creation or the second coming or the extent of our free will. You might not even be right about these things. But if you have love, you’ve got the main thing. That’s why Paul taught what he did to the Corinthian church. They were so proud of their spiritual gifts. The tongues speakers said, “We can talk to angels and they will understand us.” They never thought about whether they would understand angels when they speak! The prophets said, “We know the secrets of God’s will and of things to come.” But they didn’t understand the secret of how to get on with the tongues speakers. And so it went on. Some said, “I was converted through Peter!” Other said, “I was converted through Paul!” Still others said, “Paul! He’s a short bloke with bad eyes and he’s sick half the time he comes to a church! What good is Paul!” So they argued all the time. Jesus died for all of them, died to make sinners into saints, to give life to the dead, to open blind eyes. And all they could see was things to divide over. Paul hit them between the eyes. He said, 1COR 13:1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. This is his challenge to the tongues speakers. Some Christians say it is wrong to speak in tongues. Others say it is unbiblical, because they say that tongues have ceased. Both are wrong. And Paul does not tackle the problem in that way. He could have said, “Give up speaking in tongues, because it will come to an end very soon.” But that is not what he said. He told them, “It doesn”’t matter how well you speak in tongues. The important thing is if you love people.” “You can be the greatest linguist in heaven and on earth, but if you don’t love, it doesn’t mean a thing. Next Paul comes to the people with the more useful gifts. These people can understand God’s will, they can grasp the deep things of spiritual teaching, They know what the gospel is about. They have great faith, so that everyone marvels. But what does Paul say about them? 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 have not love, I am nothing. Not even sacrifice itself is of any value without love. Whether we are big givers to God’s purposes or whether we risk our own lives, it’s love alone which gives the deed some value. Once again, Paul says, 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. There is a strong parallel with Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 25. When the King separates the nations as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, some say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ Jesus then says what the King will tell them: 45 “He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ Love is a choice to do what benefits our neighbour. Whether it is love towards God, or love towards other people, it begins with caring for others. I have been thinking lately about a TV drama I saw several years ago, called Professional Foul. It was written by Tom Stoppard, who wrote the script for the movie, Shakespeare in love. The play tells the story of a philosopher attending a philosophy convention in Prague before the fall of the USSR. The philosopher is world famous for his teachings on ethics and morality. In Prague, he is approached by a former student, who wants his teacher to smuggle some documents out to the West, where the extent of Communist oppression will be revealed in those papers. This faces the philosopher with a dilemma. If he takes the papers out, and is caught, he faces arrest and even the possibility of accidental death in prison. But if he fails to take the papers out, and saves his own skin, he leaves good people dying in prisons and psychiatric hospitals where they have been placed for their politics or their religion. And, if he refuses to take the papers out, he lets down someone he has a relationship with, someone he has a duty of care towards. You can’t teach someone and then walk away as though they never existed. And, furthermore, if he refused to smuggle out the documents, he also reveals that his high–minded philosophy is a sham. Too often we Christians talk about love, but we fail to love, and our profession is revealed to ber a sham. Paul challenges the Corinthians to be realistic about love. He describes what love is like: 1COR 13:4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, 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. When I was on beach mission one year, we worked hard for a week, and no one responded. Hardly anyone even came to meetings we set up. They just were not interested. Finally we met as a team to talk over what was happening. Terry Logan was on our team. Some of you remember him from when he was the pastor at Hurlstone Park Baptist. But he was a young clerk in those days. He put his finger on the spot, and it hurt. Some of us boys had particularly been teasing one of the girls, because she bit so easily. She wasn’t saying much, but she was hurt. One of the girls in leadership was bossing everyone around and playing favourites. Some of the talk after lights out was not very edifying, and even other campers were noticing. We repented. We apologised to those we had hurt. We resolved to change our ways. From that day, for the final three days of the mission, we had more people profess faith in Christ than in the full ten days of any previous mission. It was a true mini–revival! There are many great things in our Christian life. Some of us have been given prophecies to speak. Some of us know about speaking in tongues. Some of us have had a special word of knowledge to help build up the church. But these things are transient. They come, they go, they pass on forever. But, as Paul reminds us, 1COR 13:8 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 perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. Don’t distort this scripture. It does not say that spiritual gifts will end when the full New Testament is completed. That is nonsensical exegesis. It does say that, in the fullness ot the Age to Come, these partial and temporary things will no longer apply. And, in essence, Paul tells us to put away childish things, put away petty squabbles and boastful comparisons. 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 childish ways behind me. 12 Now we see but a poor 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. There’s a children’s song, My dog’s bigger than your dog,
I’m not afraid of the dark any more We laugh at a song like that, because kids are like that. They boast, they compare, they try to boost themselves and put down others. But it’s a different thing when we grow up and are still saying, My gift’s better than your gift, I’m not afraid of the devil any more, None of these things is really important, but love is. It is the only thing that truly lasts. There was a couple at the Assemblies of God church in Petersham who had a ministry to people with severe developmental delay. Many were adults but had never learnt to speak. They would come to church with nappies on, because they didn’t have bladder control. But these two loved them, and these people absolutely loved to be in church, to celebrate and sing, if it was only that they could make noises. The delight on their faces was a joy to behold. And then the husband of the couple developed Alzheimers, and, for several years, he was no longer a leader of this group, but he became one of them. He could not talk, he became little more than a vegetable. His fine mind was gone forever. He could not take in the simplest concepts. But one thing he could always take in, and that was love. As Paul says, 1COR 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. If there is one thing that the gospel is about, it is about love. As Karl Barth said, the most profound thing any of us can learn about the gospel is, Jesus loves me, this I know, When we fail to love, we no longer have brothers living together in unity, as the Psalm 133 says. When no longer live together in unity, we grieve the Holy Spirit. When we grieve the Holy Spirit, the anointing oil of the Spirit poured out on Jesus our great High Priest, no longer runs down on the Body, no longer fills the living church. And when the Church is no longer filled with the Spirit, then its empowerment is gone, Jesus no longer receives the glory, and the world marches by on its way to hell, jeering at us as it goes. Listen to what the Spirit is saying to our church! Jesus can transform a repentant church in a moment, he can restore fruitfulness where once there was barrenness. The greatest thing in all the world is love. |
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© Peter R. Green 2007. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.) |
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