Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Above All, Love
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Above All, Love
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
December 16, 2018
Lord’s Day Worship
Sean Higgins
Download the bulletin.
Download the Kid’s Korner.
The sermon starts at 15:10 in the audio file.
Or, The Aim of Our Charge
Last week I started with a couple lines from yesterday’s pop-culture. Today’s title and sub-title are much older, and from a different source.
Peter urged the readers of his first letter to consider that the end is near and that, “above all” they should “love one another earnestly.” Above all, love. It’s very interesting that he wanted them to love “since love covers a multitude of sins” (verse 8), that he connected love with non-grumbling hospitality (verse 9), and then that he exhorted them to use their varied gifts of God’s grace, whether in speaking or serving (verses 10-11). Before everything else, in a community context with others who may even be sinning against you or needing things from you, above all, love.
Paul knew that the goal of his work was love. His telos, the perfect point of completion for his ministry, was not understanding, or even holiness and hopefulness. “The aim of our charge is love,” and then he followed with the sort of heart he wanted that love to flow “from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” These aren’t four goals, it’s one goal, love, with three ways to describe the source. The aim of instruction (another word for “charge”) is pure, good, sincere love.
So orthodoxy (straight teaching and accurate understanding) is not the ultimate end. Orthodoxy tells us who and what to love. True doctrine is not the finish line, it’s the starting line; demons could run laps around our Bible interpretation and shuddering, and we’re supposed to do better than them.
Even the use of our spiritual gifts is not the primary objective. Spiritual gifts are worthless without love. This is exactly the context in which Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 13, and it’s exactly how he began the chapter. Spectacular speaking gifts are a sort of torture when exercised without love. Mind-blowing insight and earth-moving faith add nothing to a man’s true significance without love. Even martyrdom, apart from love, profits nothing.
These are things that God’s people really should know. Love is the great “hearing,” the great shema in Deuteronomy 6, that parents were to pass on through every generation. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (see Deuteronomy 6:4-9). The first four commands in the 10 commandments are about loving God, which Jesus summarized as the Great Commandment, and the next six are about loving our neighbors, which Jesus summarized as the second greatest commandment. Jesus commanded His disciples to love one another just as He loved them, and said that the world would know that they were His disciples by this love.
And yet Christians continue to get the heart of our calling wrong. This is partly because our spiritual enemy would love our love to be perverted and fragile and anemic, and it’s partly because our sinful self would love to love itself above all. We do always do what we most want to do. We always follow our strongest affection. And sometimes we don’t want to have to look in the mirror and see our attachment to our ego.
It’s why the mirror of God’s Word is so good. It’s why Paul slows down in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 to let us look closely at the description of love, at its attributes and activities. The paragraph causes us to look to Christ, as He is the perfect example of this life of loving, and as we live in His strength to love like Him.
There are fifteen verbs of love in these three verses. Most recent English translations turn them into adjectives, and okay. But the plethora of verbs is why I said that these verses describe the activities of love. Th[...]
View all episodes
By Trinity Evangel Church1 Corinthians 13:4-7
December 16, 2018
Lord’s Day Worship
Sean Higgins
Download the bulletin.
Download the Kid’s Korner.
The sermon starts at 15:10 in the audio file.
Or, The Aim of Our Charge
Last week I started with a couple lines from yesterday’s pop-culture. Today’s title and sub-title are much older, and from a different source.
Peter urged the readers of his first letter to consider that the end is near and that, “above all” they should “love one another earnestly.” Above all, love. It’s very interesting that he wanted them to love “since love covers a multitude of sins” (verse 8), that he connected love with non-grumbling hospitality (verse 9), and then that he exhorted them to use their varied gifts of God’s grace, whether in speaking or serving (verses 10-11). Before everything else, in a community context with others who may even be sinning against you or needing things from you, above all, love.
Paul knew that the goal of his work was love. His telos, the perfect point of completion for his ministry, was not understanding, or even holiness and hopefulness. “The aim of our charge is love,” and then he followed with the sort of heart he wanted that love to flow “from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” These aren’t four goals, it’s one goal, love, with three ways to describe the source. The aim of instruction (another word for “charge”) is pure, good, sincere love.
So orthodoxy (straight teaching and accurate understanding) is not the ultimate end. Orthodoxy tells us who and what to love. True doctrine is not the finish line, it’s the starting line; demons could run laps around our Bible interpretation and shuddering, and we’re supposed to do better than them.
Even the use of our spiritual gifts is not the primary objective. Spiritual gifts are worthless without love. This is exactly the context in which Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 13, and it’s exactly how he began the chapter. Spectacular speaking gifts are a sort of torture when exercised without love. Mind-blowing insight and earth-moving faith add nothing to a man’s true significance without love. Even martyrdom, apart from love, profits nothing.
These are things that God’s people really should know. Love is the great “hearing,” the great shema in Deuteronomy 6, that parents were to pass on through every generation. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (see Deuteronomy 6:4-9). The first four commands in the 10 commandments are about loving God, which Jesus summarized as the Great Commandment, and the next six are about loving our neighbors, which Jesus summarized as the second greatest commandment. Jesus commanded His disciples to love one another just as He loved them, and said that the world would know that they were His disciples by this love.
And yet Christians continue to get the heart of our calling wrong. This is partly because our spiritual enemy would love our love to be perverted and fragile and anemic, and it’s partly because our sinful self would love to love itself above all. We do always do what we most want to do. We always follow our strongest affection. And sometimes we don’t want to have to look in the mirror and see our attachment to our ego.
It’s why the mirror of God’s Word is so good. It’s why Paul slows down in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 to let us look closely at the description of love, at its attributes and activities. The paragraph causes us to look to Christ, as He is the perfect example of this life of loving, and as we live in His strength to love like Him.
There are fifteen verbs of love in these three verses. Most recent English translations turn them into adjectives, and okay. But the plethora of verbs is why I said that these verses describe the activities of love. Th[...]