"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 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. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist ...on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist ...on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
"Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
"So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."
(1 Cor. 13)
This chapter is one of my personal favorite passages in Scripture, and also one that makes me extremely uncomfortable at times. It gives us a perfect description of what love truly is and what it looks like, and yet it makes us realize just how far short we fall. The demands of love are impossible for us to perfectly attain. In fact, if we are honest with ourselves, our efforts to love others are pretty, well, lame. At our best, we have some selfish motive behind our acts of love almost all the time, and it is so hard to love selflessly. And yet, it is still commanded.
But how can we not love selflessly? Look at what our Lord did for us! How can we not give grace and love to others unconditionally, when Christ unconditionally gave his life for all? (1 Tim. 2:5-6, 1 John 2:2)
And yet this isn't the point I want to make. Rather, something I was caught by when I read this is that love is the greatest of all virtues. Love is greater then faith, greater than hope, greater even than knowledge alone. In fact, faith without love is useless, hope without love is useless, and correct doctrine without love is useless. Really, everything is like a hill of dung if love is not present.
And that is what we must be careful about. We must study the Word, work to gain a fuller knowledge of God, be charitable, have all faith. And yet in doing so, we must never neglect love. Ever. The instant we do, we've become useless.
"So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."
(1 Cor. 13)
This chapter is one of my personal favorite passages in Scripture, and also one that makes me extremely uncomfortable at times. It gives us a perfect description of what love truly is and what it looks like, and yet it makes us realize just how far short we fall. The demands of love are impossible for us to perfectly attain. In fact, if we are honest with ourselves, our efforts to love others are pretty, well, lame. At our best, we have some selfish motive behind our acts of love almost all the time, and it is so hard to love selflessly. And yet, it is still commanded.
But how can we not love selflessly? Look at what our Lord did for us! How can we not give grace and love to others unconditionally, when Christ unconditionally gave his life for all? (1 Tim. 2:5-6, 1 John 2:2)
And yet this isn't the point I want to make. Rather, something I was caught by when I read this is that love is the greatest of all virtues. Love is greater then faith, greater than hope, greater even than knowledge alone. In fact, faith without love is useless, hope without love is useless, and correct doctrine without love is useless. Really, everything is like a hill of dung if love is not present.
And that is what we must be careful about. We must study the Word, work to gain a fuller knowledge of God, be charitable, have all faith. And yet in doing so, we must never neglect love. Ever. The instant we do, we've become useless.
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