Word of Salvation – Vol.32 No.48 – December 1987
The Greatest Is… Love
Sermon by Rev. M. C. DeGraaf on 1Corinthians 13:13
Reading: 1Corinthians 12 and 13
Singing: BoW.H.18, 828, Ps.H.447, 278, 449
Brothers and Sisters,
The chapter in which our text appears this morning must be one of the most well-known and best loved in the Christian world! Many people will be able to recite great slabs of it to you; others will at least be able to give you its general drift! As I said it is very popular. If you saw Charles and Diana’s wedding a few years back you would have heard it read there. It is part of many wedding ceremonies. The Anglican order of service includes a reference to it as does the Presbyterian, even OUR Blue Book quotes from this chapter. Many people choose part of it for their wedding text. AND FOR GOOD REASON. Its teachings about self-giving love; its call for patience and kindness and… its call to steer away from pride, envy and the like ARE VERY RELEVANT in the MARRIAGE situation. AND AS A GENERAL RULE for living with neighbours and friends it is also a very good passage! BUT if this is all we feel this passage is saying, then we have missed its true point!!
You know, the real danger with familiar passages is that we can so easily take them out of their proper context and just remember them on their own. By so doing we water down their FULL message. We often do that with the Beatitudes or with John 3:16. Rip them out of their wider context, remember them on their own, and lose their full meaning perhaps even give them a false meaning!!
This often happens with 1Corinthians 13. Many people see it as little more than a New Testament equivalent of the ‘Song of Songs’.
And as we have said, to a certain extent that is true. It is a great song about LOVE! BUT it is NOT a song about LOVE in general, in the world, in any situation. NO, it applies directly to Christ, the Christian and the Church.
TO UNDERSTAND THIS PROPERLY we need to understand this text’s immediate context, the framework in which it is found. Reading through Paul’s letter to the Christians in Corinth we see that those believers had real problems as far as their spiritual life was concerned! The first thing we see is that they misused their Christian Freedom and saw it as being little more than an excuse to indulge their sinful desires. It seems they thought that as they were now SPIRITUALLY right with God their bodies were irrelevant. So they could get drunk, be sexually immoral, and generally act as they wanted. In chapters 5, 6, 8, 10 & 11 we see Paul warning against this kind of indulgence. In chapter 5 he warns against the yeast which corrupts the Church. In chapter 11 we see that this kind of indulgence has even corrupted the Lord’s Supper and other aspects of the congregation’s worship!
The heart of the problem seemed to be, as is so often the case, their own PRIDE. They felt they could do as they wanted: hang the consequences – either for themselves or their brother and sister!!
Closely related to this misconception we see a pride in their own personal spiritual lives. In chapter 12, Paul has to remind them what the gifts of the Spirit were really about! It seems that there was a certain competitiveness between the brothers and sisters about who had received the greatest GIFTS of the SPIRIT!! They were proud of what they could do. They would argue about who could speak in tongues the most and who was most important. Others would be busy prophesying and trying to attract admirers! Others would try and show how important they were by healing! The gifts were being used as a way of putting themselves on a pedestal. Where there should have been quiet devotion and service for one another and God, there grew a fanaticism and a desire for SELF-GLORIFICATION. It even went so far that a brother or sister’s value as a person and a Christian was being measured by these so-called spiritual standards of how well they performed! To this kind of thinking Paul comes and tells those Corinthians WHY the Spirit and His gifts were REALLY given – and what a TRUE spiritual gift really was! He shows them, and He shows US, that these gifts and these standards which they had, are not from the HOLY SPIRIT but they simply reflect the sinful human spirit. The same human spirit which judges men by how much they earn, and women by how they dress, by what colour you may be and what kind of education you may have. Putting people into categories and classes, according to OUR values rather than judging all in the light which God has sent us!
As Paul says, “We are all baptized by one Spirit into One Body whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free”. Everyone is part of it. Everyone has a part to play. As Paul notes at the end of chapter 12, through the Spirit everyone is given a role to carry out. NOT SIMPLY TO PLEASE OURSELVES. BUT to build up the others. We are GIVEN, so that we may GIVE. God has given a variety of gifts, not so that people will become jealous or proud BUT so that the body will be blessed! As Paul ALSO says at the end of chapter 12 – not all are the same, but all are needed like a jigsaw puzzle, each piece needed to complete the whole.
AND TO MAKE HIS POINT EVEN CLEARER Paul goes on and changes from talking about these special gifts and begins to talk about what he calls “the greater gifts”. We could call them the essential gifts. The gifts which EVERY Christian receives from the Spirit and is called on to exercise! We see these gifts listed in our text this morning. They are Faith, Hope and Love! The special spiritual gifts come and they go. Sometimes they are needed, sometimes they are not. They can NEVER be used as some kind of standard in our Christian lives, though sometimes we are tempted to do that.
But as for Faith, Hope and Love they are ESSENTIAL for the Christian Life! They remain as the backbone of our spiritual living! Through faith we receive Jesus Christ and all his benefits. In FAITH we give up our self-pride and self-trust and throw ourselves/our trust onto Him. FAITH is foundational of our life IN Christ. Putting our confidence in Him, not in our own works, our own efforts. In the New Testament the word “Faith” sometimes refers to that gift of the Spirit which enables the believer to do great things. In other places it refers to believing in Christ. It is the second meaning which we see here. It is also very much a gift of the Spirit. Without the Spirit’s breaking down of the sinner’s wall of resistance we could never believe! It is of course an essential gift in the church. It is also a gift which binds us together. Each one of us, through the Spirit, can be shown who we are, what Christ needed to do for us, and where we are going. This is something we share, something we have in common. A dependence on the way God has revealed Himself to us.
Closely related to this we see the second gift about which Paul writes, “HOPE”. It also is to be a sign of the Christian life. A trust in the FUTURE because all is in God’s hands. A trust in a God who is in control. We have faith in what He has done, we have hope because of what He will do!! In a world where hopelessness is rife, where people are constantly fearing what tomorrow will bring, the Christian can be different. He can trust and have hope! Now of course, this too is a gift of the Spirit! We go through times of strength and times of weakness according to our needs. Just like the apostle had times of insecurity, so too we can have moments of doubt and questioning! BUT our doubt can never be such that it becomes despair. Scripture reminds us again and again, our God is a faithful God AND even though there may be times of testing, HE does not let go!! Like FAITH, HOPE is a great comfort for the Christian!
But then Paul goes on in 1Corinthians 13:13 and he tells us of the greatest gift to the church, and this of course is LOVE!!
NOW IT IS IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER THAT OUR LOVE FLOWS FROM OUR FAITH AND OUR HOPE. Because I have faith – because I can trust in Him – because I no longer trust in myself – because of what He has done for me, I can love God and love my neighbour. Because I have hope – because I have nothing to fear – because He will return in glory, my Love can rich and deep! I can have a new life dedicated in service to Him and my neighbour!
It is ALSO, of course, very much a GIFT OF THE SPIRIT. It is not a flashy gift, it is not one you can show off. It may not make you a hero! BUT IT IS the ESSENTIAL gift. The foundational gift. The gift which breathes new life into the church. Without LOVE prophecy is useless, so are tongues, and knowledge. You can be the wisest man or the most generous, BUT without this gift of LOVE all is in vain. The other gifts will come and go! But faith, hope and love will remain for without them the Church would no longer be alive! And of these LOVE is the greatest. It is the cement which holds us all together.
Each one of us as a Christian loves the God who sent His Son to die for us. And each one is called to love his neighbour as Himself, sacrificing yourself as Christ sacrificed Himself on that cross for YOU!
You know, many of us pray for a revival to come into the church; for the church to be shaken back into life. We pray for great preachers, we pray for leaders, we pray for knowledgeable men and women. We study; we try to deepen our understanding. AND OF COURSE ALL THESE THINGS ARE VERY IMPORTANT. But Paul reminds us again here that the backbone of the Church HAS TO BE LOVE!! It is from LOVE that its life springs forth. The boasting and pride which was so much a part of the Corinthian Church, showed that they l lacked this essential foundation! Through love Christ guides people and their gifts into true service of God and others. It is a gift each one of us is called on to pray for and develop; a gift to strive for as we serve our Saviour in His Church. PUTTING aside our pride, our self-interests, our self-righteousness, and BECAUSE of our faith and our hope, we are to LOVE as we ought; reaching out to those around us as TRUE BROTHERS AND SISTERS, MEMBERS OF THE ONE BODY, OF THE ONE WHO BOUGHT US WITH HIS BLOOD.
AMEN.