Go Beyond

   Nowhere else in all of literature, either sacred or secular, is the meaning of love more beautifully defined than in 1 Corinthians 13. This chapter of Scripture is like a prism. When a beam of light passes through a prism, it comes out on the opposite side broken up into its component colors — red, yellow, violet, orange, and all the colors of the rainbow. So it is with love when it passed through the Apostle Paul’s inspired heart — love emerged broken up into its component elements. Please keep in mind two very important things as we look at this chapter.

   First, Scripture was not written in a vacuum. This chapter on love is included in a serious letter to the church in Corinth. In this letter, Paul painted for the Corinthians a picture of themselves in their factions, their jealousies, their vanity, their carnality, their misuse of Christian liberty, and their bragging about their spiritual gifts. However, in the 13th Chapter, Paul momentarily turned aside from his direct counsels and rebukes to show the Corinthians an ideal Christian life, which was pretty much everything theirs was not.

   Second, unlike our language, the Greeks had several words for love. The word “eros” refers to love of deep desire, passionate and sensuous longing. It had a physical and sexual connotation. This word is not used in the New Testament. The word “storge” refers to the kind of affection found in a family. The word “philia” refers to brotherly love. Finally, the word “agape” expresses the unconditional kind of love that God demonstrates toward us through Christ. It implies loving when there is nothing worthy to evoke love. This is the word Paul used in 1 Corinthians 13.

   This beautiful love chapter begins with these words (verses 1-3):

“If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.”

   Notice the following three things in these verses.

   Ministry without Love is Meaningless | Paul said, “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels [a rhetorical way of referring to all possible speech], but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging symbol.” Since the time of Plato, superficial orators were referred to as gongs. Paul continued, “If I have the gift of prophesy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge … but do not have love, I am nothing.” A person may be straight doctrinally yet ineffective in ministry and service because of a lack of love. And, “If I give all my possessions to feed the poor, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.” It is possible to give without loving, but it is not possible to love without giving.

   Miracles without Love are Meaningless | Paul said, “If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.” Even mountain-moving, miracle-working faith without love is nothing. Teresa of Avila, a Spanish nun who lived in the 16th Century said, “Our Lord does not care so much for the importance of our works as for the love with which they are done.”

   Martyrdom without Love is Meaningless | Paul said, “If I deliver my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.” It is possible to give our possessions, our freedom, even our very lives — but if these acts are done by one who does not love, it profits him nothing. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, demonstrated love in martyrdom (Acts 7). Just before he died he cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:20). Stephen’s words of love and forgiveness pierced the heart of a young man standing in the crowd — Paul, the man who would later write the inspiring words of 1 Corinthians 13. We’ll take a look at what he wrote about love in Love Notes (Part 2).