TGIF
During the Christmas Advent season, I wrote a lot about the four foundation characteristics of a Christian highlighted during Advent – peace, hope, love, and joy. Then I realized that the last 3 TGIF messages I most recently sent out were on joy, peace, and hope even though I had no specific thought of choosing those related topics. That led me to decide that this week my message needs to focus on love to complete the Advent message once again!!!
So when you think of love and the Bible, what first comes to mind? The answer should be 1 Corinthians chapter 13, considered by many people to be the greatest literary passage written by Paul. For come context to this chapter, also consider chapters 12 and 14 immediately before and after this chapter. These 3 chapters form a single message to the Corinthians regarding spiritual gifts including prophecy and tongues, and their use in God’s service. Yet in between the discussion of gifts in chapter 12 and tongues in chapter 14 is the message of love in Chapter 13. Chapter 13 is even more powerful when read in context along with 12 and 14. Its clear message is without love, nothing else matters!
I provide Chapter 13 below so you all have easy access to it. But I suggest to each of you, if you can, to get your Bible and read these 3 chapters together for the full impact of Paul’s message to the Corinthian people.
1 Corinthians 13 – If I speak in the tonguesof men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 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 do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, 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.
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 completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 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 the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a 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.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
AMEN!