Jody's Devotionals

⁸Love never fails. But prophecies will fail, tongues will cease, knowledge will vanish. ⁹Because we know partially and we prophesy partially. ¹⁰But when what is complete comes, what is partial will vanish. ¹¹When I was a child I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. When I became a man, I put aside childish things. ¹²For now we see dimly in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know partially, but then I will know in the same way that God knows me. — 1 Corinthians 13:8-12

We looked at why love was given the priority over lots of wonderful things. Gifts are wonderful, but they must be guided by love. Spirituality is wonderful, but without love to drive it to action, it can be a dead thing. Giving and self-sacrifice are great, but without love to drive them, they are just empty gestures. Even great faith, without love, becomes nothing.

It’s interesting that we often celebrate leaders for their gifts, their spirituality, and especially for their great faith, but we don’t celebrate them for their love quite as often. A preacher distinguished by love may get little attention, unless he also has one of these other capabilities.

A friend sent me a copy of Mark Twain’s “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.” Now Twain was often quite an irreverent man, but he caught something of the difference between God’s view and the world’s view. Stormfield is talking to his friend Sandy who has just referred to Sir Richard Duffer, a baronet from Hoboken:

“What, Sandy, a nobleman from Hoboken? How is that?”

“Easy enough. Duffer kept a sausage-shop and never saved a cent in his life because he used to give all his spare meat to the poor, in a quiet way. Not tramps,–no, the other sort–the sort that will starve before they will beg–honest square people out of work. Dick used to watch hungry-looking men and women and children, and track them home, and find out all about them from the neighbors, and then feed them and find them work. As nobody ever saw him give anything to anybody, he had the reputation of being mean; he died with it, too, and everybody said it was a good riddance; but the minute he landed here, they made him a baronet, and the very first words Dick the sausage-maker of Hoboken heard when he stepped upon the heavenly shore were, ‘Welcome, Sir Richard Duffer!’ It surprised him some, because he thought he had reasons to believe he was pointed for a warmer climate than this one.”

That’s a good illustration of how God looks at things differently than we do. God is interesting in what’s real, not what’s showing. The important thing in our life is not how much faith we had, or how powerful our gifts were, how spiritual we appeared to be, how well we knew our Bible, or whether we had all our doctrines in order. The important thing will be whether we used whatever gifts and talents we had guided by divine love.

Our knowledge, Paul tells us will pass away. Our prophecy—it will become old and useless. Think about it! What use will you have for prophecy when you see Jesus face to face. How much of the knowledge that you have accumulated on this earth will crumble to dust before your eyes in the first few moments of heaven?

Love will remain because it is an eternal characteristic of God, the guiding principle of his kingdom. But all our methods, our thoughts, our plans, our dreams will be overcome by the glory of the eternal home God has prepared for us.

⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It’s not jealous or boastful. It’s not self-important. ⁵It doesn’t behave indecently, nor does it seek its own way. It doesn’t get provoked. It doesn’t plan evil. ⁶It doesn’t rejoice in injustice, but it rejoices with the genuine. ⁷It endures all things, believes all things, hopes all things, is patient through everything. — 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

We’re continuing to look at the characteristics of love in 1 Corinthians 13, and learning just how hard it can be. We can’t just use any old definition of love. There are some amazing ideas out there about what love really is. Indulgence, indiscipline, sexual promiscuity, jealousy, divorce, and other kinds of conflict often are blamed on love.

But Biblical love is different. We finished last time with the statement that love doesn’t seek its own way. Since love calls on us to seek the interests of others, in a love based community, everyone is always cared for by someone (see Philippians 2:4).

Now we find that love doesn’t easily get provoked. This one is a tough one for me and I believe for many other Christians. It is so easy to be provoked to anger by children, spouses, fellow church members, unbelievers who say nasty things about us. But consider the last time you were provoked and ask this question: “Did my getting angry help resolve the situation and make things better?” If I am honest, I must say that my answer is no. Getting provoked just made things worse.

Many of these characteristics of love are hard to live up to, and we can start to feel that we are giving everything away. But what exactly am I giving away if I follow this principle, if I decide to remain calm under provocation? I’m giving up the privilege of making the situation worse than it is and making my life harder than it has to be. Perhaps “not being provoked” is a better idea than I thought.

Love doesn’t plan evil. Now there’s a tough one. This gets us when we’re planning that means of getting back at someone who has hurt us. It’s related to not getting provoked. That’s the starting point. This one relates to staying provoked. Love looks for reconciliation, not revenge.

Love doesn’t rejoice in injustice, but looks for what is true, right, or genuine. God doesn’t see things the way we do, and we should seek to come closer to God’s view, looking at what really is, not what is on the surface. In church this will involve not choosing leaders based on how socially acceptable they are, or how spiritual they appear to be, but rather on their genuine experience with God, as best as we can tell. Looking on the surface is a problem at home, at work, and at church. Rejoicing in injustice also means that we don’t accept something that is wrong just because it is favorable to us. We do our best to see justice done under every circumstance.

Finally, no matter what happens, love can handle it. Guided by love we keep our faith and our hope as we endure whatever comes patiently. Love doesn’t easily get knocked off track. Love doesn’t give up hope.

That’s a challenging set of principles for life. Love is the royal law, the foundation of God’s kingdom. If we make it the foundation of our churches and communities, imagine what life could be like.

Tomorrow we’ll continue looking at the relationship between love and our gifts and talents.

⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It’s not jealous or boastful. It’s not self-important. ⁵It doesn’t behave indecently, nor does it seek its own way. It doesn’t get provoked. It doesn’t plan evil. ⁶It doesn’t rejoice in injustice, but it rejoices with the genuine. ⁷It endures all things, believes all things, hopes all things, is patient through everything. — 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

In two previous devotionals we’ve looked at the importance of love and how it is the guide to our actions as Christians. We have been reminded that Jesus defined love for us through his life. Today we look at some of the characteristics of love.

Love is patient. This is a hard one for most of us. Even when we’re legitimately provoked, if we live according to the principle of love, we will be patient. That doesn’t mean we won’t take action if necessary, but we will not be hasty or thoughtless.

Love is kind. If our lives are guided by love, we will be kind to others, not assuming the worst, and not treating them as they may deserve—in our eyes—but as we would like to be treated. Even better, we will treat them as we know Jesus would like them to be treated.

Love is not jealous. Jealousy drives a great many evils. In fact, love as we see it in the popular media constantly produces jealousy. I love someone, so I am jealous of everyone else. I guard my relationships against others. I look with suspicion on my wife or girl friend’s associations. That kind of love makes me dangerous. That’s why we must always look to Jesus for the definition of what love really means.

Love is not boastful. Love doesn’t rub other people’s faces in its own successes. The person who loves doesn’t have to be the center of attention. He doesn’t have to be the most important person in the room. He’s willing to share his success with the team.

Love is not self-important. It’s so easy to become self-important. A healthy self-esteem annoys the devil, so he tries to pervert it into a sense of self-importance. God’s view is that each of us is important as a child of the king. If we are fulfilling our call in life, however the world rates that call, we can be joyful in that accomplishment. But the world rates importance by comparison to other people. The world will tell you there’s only so much “important-ness” or “special-ness” to go around, so you better make sure you grab your share. Love doesn’t work that way. When we’re guided by love, there’s always enough special-ness to go around!

Love doesn’t behave indecently. I looked around quite a bit for the right English word to use here. You’ll find a great variety in the English translations. The idea here is that love doesn’t behave in such a way as to offend people’s moral standards. If we are guided by love we will not want to scandalize others. Our behavior should not be a stumbling block.

Love doesn’t seek its own way. If we are guided by love we won’t have the attitude of “my way or the highway.” We’ll be prepared to listen, to give consideration to the desires and views of others.

Easy? No, love isn’t easy. We’ll look at some more characteristics tomorrow.

¹If I speak in languages both human and angelic, but do not have love, I have become like a clanging gong or a clashing cymbal. ²And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know every mystery and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so that I can remove mountains, but have no love, I am nothing. ³And if I give up all my possessions and hand over my body so I can boast, but have no love, it doesn’t profit me anything. — 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

The key to 1 Corinthians 13 is priority. It’s often so hard to balance love and doctrine or love and exercising the gifts of the Spirit, and even love and our own acts of service and of giving. Some people read passages like 2 Timothy 4:3, about people who don’t want to hear “sound doctrine,” and we make having correct doctrine a priority. Others read passages like 1 Corinthians 13 and decide that doctrine, or good teaching isn’t all that important. Love is all that counts.

You can probably divide up your coworkers in a similar manner. Some are focused on rules of etiquette in the workplace, while others do what comes naturally and believe they are doing well as long as they truly appreciate their coworkers and try to get along. And large numbers of both groups tend to do pretty well. Good motivations can sneak up on us when we practice good behavior, and good behavior tends to result from good motivations. Not 100% of the time, but often!

We often quote 1 Corinthians 13 on its own, and so we look at it in isolation, but this chapter comes in the middle of a great deal of discussion of behavior. Chapter 12 deals with God’s gifts and how they are given to all of us to use for the common good and to carry out the ministry God has called us to. The foundation of the ministry God has called us to, of course, is his call to “love one another as I [Jesus] have loved you” (John 15:12).

Chapter 14 talks about how to behave in worship. What does Paul want us to do there? Do everything to build the body up. Why? Because that is the loving thing.

In these first few verses, Paul lets us know that Love is greater than our knowledge and teaching (mysteries and knowledge), our gifts (prophecy and tongues), our faith, and our extraordinary righteous actions (giving even our own bodies). None of these things are more important than love, even those “sound doctrines.”

But does that mean that these other things are unimportant? Not at all. The problem is that without love at the foundation, everything else goes astray. Without love guiding me, I may use my spiritual gifts in such a way as to drive people away rather than draw them toward God. Unless I’m motivated by love, I may have very sound teachings, but never put them into practice, or even contradict what I teach by the way I behave. Without love, I might figuratively be moving mountains and dropping them on other people’s heads. Without love, I may be making a show of heroism and of extreme giving, but doing so in such a way as to belittle and injure rather than to help.

Without love I am nothing. Without love I may even be a destructive force. It’s not that none of those other things are important. “Let’s forget about spiritual gifts and just love,” says someone. No! That will weaken the expression of love. Express your love through your use of spiritual gifts. “Let’s just love and forget about doctrines.” No! Let love guide the way you understand doctrines, the way you apply them, and the way you teach them.

Love has the priority not because other things are unimportant, but because love is what guides the way we use everything else.

There’s one more important connection. I quoted John 15:12. Notice the last phrase: “. . . as I have loved you.” Love itself has a guiding standard, the love of Jesus shown to us when he came and became like one of us, “tempted in all points as we are” (Hebrews 4:15) and “not ashamed to have us called his brothers and sisters” (Hebrews 2:11). Paul is going to point out some of the characteristics of that type of love in the next few verses. But the key to understanding this type of love is to look to Jesus.

¹If I speak in languages both human and angelic, but do not have love, I have become like a clanging gong or a clashing cymbal. ²And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know every mystery and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so that I can remove mountains, but have no love, I am nothing. ³And if I give up all my possessions and hand over my body so I can boast, but have no love, it doesn’t profit me anything.

⁸Love never fails. But prophecies will fail, tongues will cease, knowledge will vanish. ⁹Because we know partially and we prophesy partially. ¹⁰But when what is complete comes, what is partial will vanish. ¹¹When I was a child I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. When I became a man, I put aside childish things. ¹²For now we see dimly in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know partially, but then I will know in the same way that God knows me. ¹³And now these three remain: Faith, Hope and Love. But the greatest of these is love. — 1 Corinthians 13

At a meeting recently Linda Smith pointed us all toward John 17 and the prayer of Jesus for unity. Unity is achieved when we all practice love toward one another. People will be attracted to us as Christians and challenged by us when we practice the love that God has shown to us. As I was leaving that meeting, rushing to my next appointment, I was listening to 1 Corinthians 13 on CD.

One of our major problems is that we don’t really understanding what love means. I have been accused of being a “love preacher.” This is said by people who want something tougher and more demanding. “None of that soft stuff,” they say. “We want sound doctrine, righteous behavior, obedience, excellent church discipline.

But love is not an easy standard at all. “In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as a means of forgiveness for our sins.” — 1 John 4:10. Jesus has set the standard of love, and asks us to “love one another.” How shall we love? “As I [Jesus] have loved you!” ( John 14:12).

Now I don’t know about you, but if I was asked to allow myself to be crucified so that someone else could live, I would regard that as a pretty high standard! Yet that is the call. Preaching love is not soft, though it may require you to be soft. Love can and should be the most demanding message you will ever hear from a pulpit or in a Sunday School class.

And this love isn’t just a church thing. It’s for your whole life. It’s for when you’re with your family, your coworkers, your friends and relatives, and with strangers you meet. In each and every circumstance, each and every day, you’re called upon to love that person the way Jesus loved you.

Paul placed 1 Corinthians 13 right between chapter 12 where he talked about the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s presence in the church, and chapter 14, where he talked about how we get along in worship services. It’s no accident that many of the nastiest disputes in our churches come over how one conducts the worship service. Guess where the enemy doesn’t want you when it’s time for church? He’d like you anywhere but at church. Guess what he doesn’t want you to do? He doesn’t want you to study, pray, and worship with your brothers and sisters.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to write a number of devotionals from 1 Corinthians 13, looking at what it means to love one another at home, at work, at church, and at play.

What’s standing between you and your brother or sister?