190303 Sermon on 1 Corinthians 13 (Quinquagesima) March 3, 2019
Love is the highest of all possible things. Love is the content of God’s Law. There are a couple Bible passages that we
might mention in this regard. When Jesus
as asked what is the greatest commandment he said, “You shall love the Lord
your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and
with all your mind; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Loving God and loving your neighbor are the
highest things. St. Paul is saying the
same thing when he says “All of the commandments are summed up in the word
‘love.’” And “’Love’ is the fulfilling of the Law.”
Knowing what God’s Law says is a great gift and
privilege. It is the most important
knowledge there is. Perhaps it is only
because it is so readily accessible that it is despised the way that it
is. If God had hidden what his will for
us was—the way that he wanted life to be ordered—no doubt folks would crave
this knowledge and savor it once they had learned it. But since all you need to do is to open your
Bible to know what God’s will is, it is despised.
But that is inexcusable.
Who do you think you are? Are you
not a creature? Is God not your
Creator? Then knowing God’s will that he
has revealed to us is not some optional thing.
It is something that we are to meditate upon day and night. Assuming that we are believers and are going
to heaven, we will be students of God’s Law forever, the content of which is
love.
What is love? What
does it mean? Since we use that word so
much, we might think that we know what it means. But that would be a mistake. The way that the word “love” is used by the
natural Man, the way that it is used by the person who is fallen into sin, is
always going to be bound up with selfishness and personal advantage. When we sinners speak of love we are talking
about the way that other people or other things are beneficial or rewarding to
us. We do not love just for love’s
sake. We love because something is good
for us.
Maybe a picture might make this clearer. Think of breathing. You breathe in. You breathe out. We breathe in the goodness that we find
around us. Our love is the response to
these good things. If we get a favor
from someone, then we are likely to give a favor in response. If we receive affection from someone, then we
are likely to give affection in response.
When you hear about love in movies or music, this is always the kind of
thing that is going on. It is because of
mutual and reciprocal affection that love is spoken about as being
present. But what happens when that
affection starts to dry up? What happens
then? Unfortunately this cold and
loveless world has no better advice than that we should move on to someone else
who hold better prospects of providing us with affection.
That is what the world means when it speaks about love. What is real love—the kind of love that God
speaks of as being his will for us?
Instead of love being a breathing in and a breathing out, real love is a
breathing out continually. It one big,
long, exhale, filled with goodness and kindness and truthfulness and
patience. Love is giving and giving and
giving and giving some more—not just to those who deserve it, but to whomever
it might be that God puts into our path.
One big, long exhale—to whomever it might be who’s there.
But you might say, “Pastor, that’s not how breathing
works!” I’m glad you noticed that. True, divine, Christian love is a
miracle. It is something that only God
can do and give. It is a gift God gives
to those whom he has chosen for salvation.
It is the reversal of what happened with the fall into sin. At the time of the fall we lost God’s
image. We quit loving and became slaves
to our own desires instead. When we are
baptized into Christ’s death, this old way of life is to be drowned and
die. A new man is daily to emerge and
arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever. Dying to ourselves and living to God—denying
out urges, stilling our anger, and being obedient to God instead of
ourselves—this is the miracle worked by the Holy Spirit in the lives of
Christians. Just as impossible as it is
for us to resurrect ourselves, so also it is impossible to live with true
love. But what is impossible with Man is
possible with God. It is impossible for
us to only exhale, to only give. But
with God all things are possible.
I’d like to look at another example so that we can learn
more about this true love. In John
chapter 4 we hear about Jesus’s exchange with a woman from Samaria. Jesus knows about the way that this woman
“loves.” Jesus knows that she has had
many husbands—trying to find that one who will give sufficient mutual,
reciprocal affection. She’s gone from
man to man looking for love. She’s been
thirsty for love, you might say. But her
thirst for love has been according to the flesh’s understanding of love that is
always looking to receive rather than give.
So Jesus says to this woman, “If you knew the gift of God and who I
am, then you would have asked of me and I would have given you living water.”
Now living water is not just plain old water. It’s a miracle, you might say—something out
of the ordinary. The woman is only
thinking of normal water and so she wonders where Jesus’s bucket is, and how
he’s going to draw the water out of the well, and whether he is greater than
Jacob and his many descendants. Her
thoughts are entirely confined to an earthly understanding of water and wells,
just as our thoughts about love might never rise higher than the kind of love
spoken about on the radio.
So Jesus teaches her some more. He says, “Everyone who drinks of this
earthly water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water I give him
will never thirst. Indeed, the water I
give him will become in him a spring of water bubbling up to eternal life.” Earthly, natural love can only go so
far. Eventually it is going to run
dry. But the love that Jesus gives
quenches and satisfies. Furthermore, in
those who believe in him there is a spring that is created by God. A spring of water comes up out of the ground
and its supply is endless. Water just
keeps on coming out of it. It gives and
gives and gives and gives some more unto eternal life. The will of God is that our supply of love be
endless, just as the supply of love in God is endless. We are to love and do good not just to those
who benefit us, but also to those who hurt us—to those from whom we get no
inhale of fresh air.
Again, with man this is impossible, but with God all things
are possible. Wherever and whenever you
have this gift of God given, you will have this divine love—this endless
spring. With this gift of love we have
the beginning of our eternal lives. The
process of us being conformed to the image of God in the crucified Christ begins
when we are baptized. Throughout our
Christian lives in this earthly existence we are conformed more and more to
this image of inexhaustible love. This
happens with great weakness and many fits and starts because the devil, the
world, and our sinful nature never tire of trying to turn us away from this way
of living. This process of being turned
outwards in love will be complete when we are in heaven with our resurrected
bodies, and yet at the same time, I believe, it will only have just begun. Heaven is the place where divine love reigns
forever. Everybody in heaven loves with
a perfect love just as God loves, because God is love. The life of sacrifice and giving and service
is what is truly good and it will overcome what people imagine to be strong
according to a worldly, natural way of thinking.
People think that scraping and cheating and using one
another is the way to get ahead in life.
That is being so shortsighted as to be nearly blind. Maybe the devil, the prince of this world,
will reward these his followers with earthly riches, but they will always get
thirsty for more. Already in this life
people should see that selfishness and greed are bankrupt and get you
nowhere. But that will only become
clearer in the next. This damned
dog-eat-dog world is held in check by God’s goodness in this life. God doesn’t allow people to run riot over one
another. But all these restraints will
be taken away in hell. People will go
after what they believe to be their own without anything to stop them. The people and demons will claw each other’s
eyes out. This is the very opposite of
what will be in heaven, which is love.
Our Epistle reading, 1 Cor. 13, speaks about the love that
we have been talking about today. The
situation in Corinth at the time of St. Paul’s writing of this letter, was that
these eager converts were filled with joy upon receiving the seed of God’s
Word. In their eagerness they were
desiring God’s spiritual gifts. They
were wanting to be wise and eloquent.
They wanted to be able to do miracles of healing like they had heard
about and seen in the apostles. They
wanted to be able to speak in tongues.
All of these things are indeed good gifts from God. He has given and still today gives these
kinds of things in order to build up his Church. But St. Paul recognizes that the Corinthians
were not just interested in the gifts because these gifts would be useful in
building each other up, but they also wanted these gifts so that they could cut
a good figure in the eyes of their fellow congregants. They wanted others to be impressed.
And so in our reading St. Paul is showing them a more
excellent way. The Corinthians were
desiring the gifts that were showy and impressive. The vastly greater spiritual gift is
love—sacrificial, selfless, service.
Love is so much greater and essential that the other, seemingly more
impressive gifts, are useless and vain without love. Even if a person should speak with the
eloquence of an angel, but there be not love, then it sounds like tin pans
banging together. Nobody is edified by
that kind of loveless talk because it is inevitably going to be more about
establishing the greatness of the speaker than it is about leading the fellow
sinner into the rich pasture of God’s Word.
Love also brings people together. Other shiny, glittering gifts have the tendency
to drive people apart because we are all miserably envious. We naturally resent it when someone else is
given more than what is given to us. But
when a person serves, when a person girds up their loins and washes the feet of
their fellows, when a person does what is unpleasant—nobody envies that
person. Our stupid reason thinks that
lowly service is worthless, when in fact it is the highest thing. But because love has this lowly unimposing form
it is also friendly and brings people together.
It is gentle, patient and kind.
It does not envy or boast. It is
not rude or arrogant. It does not insist
on its own way.
Finally, St. Paul shows that love carries over into eternal
life. God gives us the gift of preachers
and teachers and many other spiritual gifts that are necessary to bring people
to faith and to keep them in that faith.
But these things shall pass away when the fulfillment of Christ’s
kingdom comes with his second advent.
And so we must not think that pastors or professors or other people whose
job it is to speak or lead are higher or better than any layman or even a Christian
child who is given the gift of love together with their faith in Christ. In the life of the world to come there will
be many, many saints who were not recognized for their greatness in this life,
but who will there be honored by God.
Housewives, factory workers, janitors, and others who were Christian,
and who loved according to the gift that God worked in them, will be rightly
exalted, while those Christians who were regarded as pious or wise in this life
will have already received their reward.
Love never ends. In
this life we only see the greatness of this good thing dimly, like in a hazy,
distorted reflection (which was what mirrors were like in St. Paul’s day). When we die and when Christ will come then we
will know love face to face when we see him.
And so we should become wise according to the Word of God that is spoken
to us. Because of the fall we are
predisposed to think that the true love that the Bible speaks about is
undesirable. It sounds like a lot of
work and suffering. It seems weak. And in a way it is these things, just as Christ
hung in great weakness on the cross. But
those whose eyes are anointed by the Holy Spirit will see that love is the best
of things, the highest thing there is, and it will prevail over everything else
eternally. And so it is something that
we should ask for, pursue, and cultivate.
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