Unconditional Love
1 Corinthians 13: 1 – 13
Many of us will recognize the scripture that we just read as the “Wedding Scripture” because it is regularly used as a staple in many wedding ceremonies. It seems to highlight the qualities of romantic love that are embraced and valued as couples enter the bonds of matrimony. In fact, if you were to google “verses for wedding ceremony” you would find it in the top two or three of every list that comes up. I know because I did it, and there it was at the top of every list that I found. But we have missed the point that the Apostle Paul was making about love and faithfulness in this scripture.
With that in mind we come to our lesson today, which is a continuation of the discourse on the meaning, purpose, and necessity of spiritual gifts within the Christian community that Paul has so painstakingly described in our last two lessons.
Paul was telling us that despite the diversity of spiritual gifts that are incorporated within the Body of Christ, unity and difference of gifts can be, make that should be, acknowledged, respected, and celebrated because Christian love should be, must be at the center of what we do and who we are as a Christian community.
To really understand what is meant by Christian love we need to reflect on the meaning of the word ‘love’. It has many different meanings in the English language, but nowadays we mostly use it to describe an emotion. “I love this and I love that”. I love my wife, I love my son and daughter in law, I love my grandchildren, I love my home, our dogs, the cats and I love the Buckeyes, sometimes, most times maybe a little too much.
Paul, however, was writing in Greek, not English, and Greek is a richer, more fully expressive language when it comes to words for love. There’s ‘eros’, which refers to what today we would call romantic love – love that is a response to beauty or goodness in the beloved. There’s ‘phileo’, from which we get our word ‘philanthropy’; in Greek its meaning is close to what we would today call ‘friendship’. There’s ‘storge’, which carries the sense of ‘love of the familiar’ – the love we have for family members or people we’ve known all our lives.
But Paul doesn’t use any of those words, and neither do most of the writers of the New Testament. Instead, they use a word that they may have actually invented themselves because it doesn’t appear in any earlier Greek literature, maybe because until this point in time there was no context for this kind of love because it was shown by only one person, God.
The word that English translates from the Greek as love is the word agape. That is the word that Paul usesextensively to describe God’s self-sacrificing love for mankind that He displayed in the sending of his Son, Jesus Christ knowing our disobedient nature and knowing the task for which he was sending Jesus.
The word is intended to represent unconditional love, choosing to love another person regardless of your emotional feelings. You could not have friendship love or romantic love for your enemy, but you could have “agape” love. Paul is telling the Corinthians then and is telling us today you can choose to love your enemy unconditionally regardless of how they treated you.
The word ‘agapé’, and it doesn’t describe an emotion at all. Agapé isn’t based on affection or approval; it’s totally unconditional, coming as a free gift, not because the beloved deserves it but because the lover chooses to give it.
It is a decision to act in the other person’s best interests, whether we feel like it or not. It’s getting down from the supper table and washing your disciples’ feet. It’s being willing to lay down your life to save people who don’t know you and don’t even care about you. It’s the way God loves us, and the way God calls us to act toward others as well to love unconditionally.
So, to be clear that Paul is not talking about the romantic love that I have for my wife or that you have for your spouse or significant other. He is also not talking about my “love” or fondness of types of food, pets or favorite sports teams. He is also not talking about the collegial relationship that we have with friends and associates. He is not talking about the “hey I love you bro” crowd.
So, let’s collect our thoughts here for a second, we are continuing our lessons in 1 Corinthians, have been for weeks, considering how each Christian receives spiritual gifts intended to build up the church as well as how we are expected to use the diversity of these spiritually gifted souls within the Body of Christ to create unity of purpose within the church, we need to ask a question. So how and why did Paul seemingly change course on us. The answer is quite simple in fact, in God’s universe, gifts are good, but love is better!
Love is more important than all the spiritual gifts exercised in the church body. Great faith, acts of dedication or sacrifice, and miracle-working power produce very little without love. Love makes our actions and gifts useful and purposeful. We all have different spiritual gifts, each member of the body is different, and everyone can’t have the same gift but Unconditional Love is available, Spiritually provided and useful to everyone in the Body of Christ and it makes our giftedness effective for God’s purposes.
We must love the truth at all costs. We must love people without condition. Paul is telling the Corinthians that if they are going to live into their purpose, if they are going to live with intentionality and manifest the spiritual gifts that you have been given, they must employ and empower those gifts through the Unconditional Love that Jesus embodies in His sacrificial works otherwise our actions are hollow and meaningless and our God given gifts are ineffective and pointless no more than blaring brass or crashing cymbals.
Gifts, Paul tells us, will eventually cease to become relevant in our lives. There will come a time our when our ability to serve the good of God’s church on earth becomes less effective because of our mortal bodies. The gift of prophecy will cease; tongues will be stilled; knowledge will pass away. All worldly spiritual gifts are temporal because in our human condition they are incomplete, flawed, and imperfect because our knowledge of the entire ways of God is imperfect.
One day, however, we will understand fully and completely when we come to see Jesus face to face when we journey to meet him in Heaven. At some glorious point in time, the entire world will become perfect in knowledge when Jesus returns. Then gifts will not be required for individuals because we will all be perfected. Paul tells us when spiritual gifts are no longer required in the world only these three things will remain – faith, hope and love. The greatest of these is love.
Paul is writing about how to take the unconditional love of God, understand it, and apply it to our human relationships. Anyone who has ever been angry with a spouse, a friend, a church community, or a pastor, knows how challenging this kind of unconditional love is to express and accept. God loves us unconditionally, but that doesn’t mean we get everything we want. Rather God’s unconditional love inspires and moves us to aspire to share that same love with ourselves and others.
Hear the Good News my friends……..
Friends our scripture today is so rich in meaning and context but unfortunately, we simply do not have the time to go into the characteristics that Paul gives for the positive and negative manifestations of Christian love. Maybe we can come back someday and spend a Sunday or two to go through the list in greater detail, but I have provided for you Paul’s list of what “Love is and what it is not” and I would like you to read them with me!
What Love is and isn’t……….
Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, love does not boast, love is not proud.
Love does not dishonor others, love is not self-seeking, love is not easily angered, love keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
Now I want you to re-read it with me but insert your name where you see the word “Love”!
That is the message of Paul’s letter for us today that we may seek to love others as God loves us. Jesus is the only one who truly fulfills this beautiful picture of love. He is the prism that breaks love down into its constituent parts so that we can see it more clearly. Rather than getting discouraged over your own shortcomings, cast yourself upon Christ who is perfect love. And let God do his work in your life, transforming you ever more into the likeness of Christ by the power of his Spirit. That is the secret to growing in love.
Faith and hope are essential to the believer. We are justified through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And hope is “an anchor for the soul, firm and secure”. One day however we will have no need of faith and hope because faith will become sight and our hope will be realized when we see our Savior face to face. But love is eternal, for love is of God and we love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:7-8). “Now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But The Greatest of These is what comes first and last, God’s Unconditional Love. Amen.