All bible quotes not otherwise marked are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016)
How important is love to the Christian? It is of paramount importance. We cannot be in fellowship with God who is love and not love.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
God doesn’t care if we don’t do it in love. We can do great things by any measure but without love they will be meaningless. Paul here says “I gain nothing”. This is a reference to the bema judgment seat that all believers will stand before to receive their rewards for this life.
Jesus here tells us the greatest of the commandments. Love God and love people.
Matthew 22:34-40
34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.
So love is pretty important. It’s part of the big too. Stealing and murder only made it into the big ten. The key is that these two embody the whole law. If you couldn’t reference the law, you could base your actions on these principles in the big two and do alright.
I hear a lot of people talk and what I find at the root of their conversation is fear. Even inside the church I hear a lot of people speak of being fearful. If this or that happens something else terrible will happen. The church has been stirred to fear. It’s not a good testimony.
1 John 4:18
18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
What does fear do? It makes you lose your head. It makes you angry. When we feel threatened our nature is to fight or flee. We start looking for ways to do damage to our foes. We start looking for allies even those we shouldn’t ally with sometimes. When we start thinking everything depends upon us, we begin to compromise. The very first lesson I wish every young Christian could learn is dependency on God. It’s a beautiful life affirming and lifting way of viewing the world. He is in command. He will see you through the storm.
The danger is when we stop loving. Those we start hating or find unlovable have to be dehumanized. We can’t humanize them or we will realize we cannot hate them. So what does society do? It divides up and forms groups and tries to hate the other. When we live in terror we look for allies wherever we can find them. That means we accept bad people as allies. Security in God’s control and provision arms us against making desperate deals with the Devil.
So what does it mean to love? Some of you may be thinking I’m crazy to even ask as we all know what love means, right? No. Apparently many of us don’t.
We’ve defined love as a combination of affection and lust. Affection for family and affection/lust for our spouses. Love is a lot more than just affection and lust. A whole lot more.
1 Corinthian 13:4-8
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away
Love is patient. When people are acting like fools, it means we are patient. When traffic is moving slowly or that old man in a pickup truck thinks the speed limit is 25mph in a 35mph zone, love is patience with that man. When kids are rowdy on the church van, it means patience. Screaming at the kids is when patience fails.
Kindness. Are we seeking opportunities to be kind? Do we offer to help carry something if someone is struggling? Even a stranger? Even someone we don’t like spending time around.
If you read these verses carefully, you will see that it is about putting other people first. It’s about mourning sin and not being arrogant that we’ve not yet fallen into it. It’s about restoration and not condemnation.
We must bear all things. I love the word longsuffering. We are to be longsuffering. When you tarnish your witness before the lost of this world, you may be doing things that have eternal consequences for them. They may reject Christ for good that day.
We teach and learn a lot of doctrine in the church. What Paul is saying, in verse eight, is that doctrine doesn’t matter if it is not accompanied with love. Our motives matter. We can build the finest school for kids but if we don’t do it out of love it’s not worth anything in heaven. God may still use it but we get nothing in terms of credit. When we stand before that Christian bema seat, all those times we held our tongue and patiently helped those who were hard to suffer, Christ will remember. Those rare elements will resist the fire.
1 Corinthians 3:12-15
12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. 14 If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
It is very hard to be loving and to exhibit love all the time. It is very easy to slip back into sin. It is God’s will that you love anyway. It is one of the big two. He means it. Jesus confirmed it. Seek to obey for it is God’s will.
When we do so, Christ is willing to forgive us when we fail. If our hearts are seeking his purpose, He will forgive our failures. And there will be failures. None of us is sinless.
1 John 1:8-10
8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
We want to be people of truth. Stand on the truth but do so lovingly. Love is very important. I know I’ve repeated myself a few times but I cannot emphasize this enough. When we act out God’s word we must surround our actions with love.
Thank you for reading. There will be more God willing. I love you all. I pray God blesses your mission.