"If I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have no love, I am nothing!" (I Corinthians 13:2)
In last week's lesson, on I Corinthians 12:13-31, the apostle Paul used the metaphor of the human body, with its many different parts, to describe the diversity and yet the unity and harmony of the "body of Christ," the church--and the sovereignty of God to bring it all about! Noting that just as the human body is a beautiful and miraculous display of God's handiwork--the "crown jewel of His creation"--with its many parts, carrying out the many functions of the body (made up of 37 trillion cells, among other things, as Mark Wever noted), so the body of Christ, with its many diverse members, is the living organism known as the church!
Ephesians 1:22-23 says that He (God the Father) has put all things in subjection under His Son's feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him who fills all in all"! Romans 12:4-5 says, "For just as we have many members in one body, and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another." And Paul writes, in verse 13, that "by one Spirit we were are all baptized into one body, whether Jew or Greek, whether slave or free, and were all made to drink of the Holy Spirit"! Describing how the church was formed, and continues to grow, as the Holy Spirit is "immersed" into the life of a believer at the time of his (or her) conversion. Constable notes that the "drinking of one Spirit" recalls the words of Jesus, in John 7:37-39, when on the great day of the Passover feast He cried out saying, ""If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink...and he who believes in Me, as the Scripture says, 'From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water"! Jesus speaking, John writes, of the Holy Spirit whom those who believed in Him were to receive "after he was glorified"!
In verses 14-20, Paul emphasized again how every member, each with his own divinely-provided diversity, is essential for the effective functioning of the body; and he uses the analogy of the foot and the eye to make his point! "The foot cannot say, 'because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,' and the ear cannot say, 'because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body! So, God has placed many members in the body of Christ, just as He desired...and now there are many members but one body. And so, as individual members, we need to discover how God has gifted us, and become as effective as possible where He has placed us, rather than longing (as some of the Corinthians did!) to have a different gift, or insisting on doing something that God has not gifted us to do!
And that led Paul, in verses 28-31, to refer again to some of the key gifts that God gave, beginning with apostles and prophets, who "laid the foundation" of the church," and received and declared the revelation of God's Word, and gave confirmation of the Word through signs and wonders, and miracles! But noting that with the church established, those gifts, including the gifts of healings and miracles, and of tongues (and the interpretation of tongues), were no longer needed! But the gift of teachers (or pastor-teachers), to interpret the Word of God for the church, and the gifts of helps and administration (as well as other identified in other parts of Scripture) are still needed and vital, and will continue to be given to believers for ministry throughout the church age!
Chapter 12 ends, we noted, with what appears to be a reprimand from Paul to the Corinthians, some of whom were apparently not satisfied with the gifts they were given, and "desired the greater gifts"! Perhaps, we speculated, knowing the Corinthians, the more showy and exotic gifts, like "speaking in tongues"! To which Paul said that he would "show them a still more excellent way"! And that set the scene for our lesson last night on I Corinthians 13--and "the way of love"!
Many consider I Corinthians 13 to be the greatest and most inspiring passage ever written by the apostle Paul! And, among other things, it puts all the other spiritual gifts in their proper context! And here's how it begins, as picked up by the Phillips translation: "If I speak with the eloquence of men and of angels, but have no love, I become no more than blaring brass or crashing cymbal! If I have the gift of foretelling the future and hold in my mind not only all human knowledge but the very secrets of God, and if I also have that absolute faith which can move mountains, but have no love, I amount to nothing at all! If I dispose of all that I possess, yes, even if I give my own body to be burned, but have no love, I achieve precisely nothing!" Wow!
Interesting that Paul writes this in the "first person," as an admonition to himself first! And also interesting that chapter 13 is positioned where it is--in the middle of a book that, as MacArthur notes, is so "problem-oriented"! Coming "like a breath of fresh air, an oasis in the desert, in the midst of a dissertation of almost continual reproof and correction of wrong understandings, wrong attitudes, and wrong use of God's ordinances and spiritual gifts"! Where the very absence of love is the culprit, the missing ingredient, that has led, among other things, to divisions and quarrels within the church, and to idolatry and immorality, and exhibitions of selfishness and pride!
And Paul begins by referring to "tongues," as Constable notes, "because of the Corinthian's fascination with them"! And he says simply that even if someone is able to speak with the fluency and eloquence of the greatest speakers in the world, and even with the tongues of angels (here using "tongues of angels" as a hyperbole since there's no evidence in the Bible of angels speaking in a specific heavenly language), without love they only become "a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal" (likening them to pagans who engaged in ecstatic sounds, incoherent babble, and emotional gibberish, accompanied by smashing gongs, clanging cymbals, and blaring trumpets in their worship of idols)!
And so Paul says that love is more important than any other spiritual gift and that it is first and foremost "a fruit of the Spirit," according to Galatians 5:22, which comes only by "walking in the Spirit," and which, according to MacArthur, is "Paul's way of defining one's day-by-day obedience to the Word of God and submission to the Lord"! And so it's what most clearly demonstrates the Spirit's presence in the life of a believer!
So what exactly is this love that the Bible teaches? It's the Greek word, "agape" which is defined as the highest form of love and, according to MacArthur, "the supreme measure and example of God's love--the love that caused Him to send His only begotten Son to the Cross"! And so, it's totally "self-giving" and sacrificial--and best described for us in verses 4-7 of I Corinthians 13!
And here it is: "Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things!" Wow! And so, basically, as we discussed last night, "love is what love does"! What more need we say!
Love is, in fact, "the one thing that will still stand when all else has fallen"! (verse 8, in Phillips) Constable says that "love cannot fail because it shares God's nature and God's eternity! And he further notes that "in heaven we not only have no more need for faith and hope, but no need for the gifts of teaching, preaching, helps, prophecy, discernment, knowledge, wisdom, tongues, miracles, healings, faith, mercy, or leadership! None of these gifts will have a purpose in heaven. And yet love is, and forever will be, "the very air of heaven"! Verses 9-10 say, "For we know in part and we prophecy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away!"
And when will "the perfect come"? For the believer, we believe, it's when we go to be with the Lord, either at death, or at the Rapture, when the Lord takes His own to be with himself! The "perfect" is "the eternal heavenly state of the believer! "But now we see in a mirror dimly," Paul writes, "but then face to face; now I know in part; but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known!" Wow!
I Corinthians 13 ends with this probing thought: "In this life we have three lasting qualities--faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of them is love!" But we need to go on to I Corinthian 14:1 (which we'll talk more about next week, which says, so compellingly: "Follow then the way of love...!" The "more excellent way," which Paul promised to show the Corinthians, and us too (at the end of chapter 12)!
But hang on! I can't leave this lesson without citing a few more verses, and reference to some great old gospel hymns:
John 13:34-35--"A new commandment I give you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another!"
I Peter 5:8--"Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins!"
Ephesians 4:15--"But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up itself in love!"
I John 4:7--"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God, and knows God!" Wow!
And some songs? How about (and I'll only give the titles, or a key line, here, lest I run out of paper)?
And so, fellow MOBsters! "Pursue love!" You gotta chase it! It doesn't come naturally!
Lowell
In last week's lesson, on I Corinthians 12:13-31, the apostle Paul used the metaphor of the human body, with its many different parts, to describe the diversity and yet the unity and harmony of the "body of Christ," the church--and the sovereignty of God to bring it all about! Noting that just as the human body is a beautiful and miraculous display of God's handiwork--the "crown jewel of His creation"--with its many parts, carrying out the many functions of the body (made up of 37 trillion cells, among other things, as Mark Wever noted), so the body of Christ, with its many diverse members, is the living organism known as the church!
Ephesians 1:22-23 says that He (God the Father) has put all things in subjection under His Son's feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him who fills all in all"! Romans 12:4-5 says, "For just as we have many members in one body, and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another." And Paul writes, in verse 13, that "by one Spirit we were are all baptized into one body, whether Jew or Greek, whether slave or free, and were all made to drink of the Holy Spirit"! Describing how the church was formed, and continues to grow, as the Holy Spirit is "immersed" into the life of a believer at the time of his (or her) conversion. Constable notes that the "drinking of one Spirit" recalls the words of Jesus, in John 7:37-39, when on the great day of the Passover feast He cried out saying, ""If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink...and he who believes in Me, as the Scripture says, 'From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water"! Jesus speaking, John writes, of the Holy Spirit whom those who believed in Him were to receive "after he was glorified"!
In verses 14-20, Paul emphasized again how every member, each with his own divinely-provided diversity, is essential for the effective functioning of the body; and he uses the analogy of the foot and the eye to make his point! "The foot cannot say, 'because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,' and the ear cannot say, 'because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body! So, God has placed many members in the body of Christ, just as He desired...and now there are many members but one body. And so, as individual members, we need to discover how God has gifted us, and become as effective as possible where He has placed us, rather than longing (as some of the Corinthians did!) to have a different gift, or insisting on doing something that God has not gifted us to do!
And that led Paul, in verses 28-31, to refer again to some of the key gifts that God gave, beginning with apostles and prophets, who "laid the foundation" of the church," and received and declared the revelation of God's Word, and gave confirmation of the Word through signs and wonders, and miracles! But noting that with the church established, those gifts, including the gifts of healings and miracles, and of tongues (and the interpretation of tongues), were no longer needed! But the gift of teachers (or pastor-teachers), to interpret the Word of God for the church, and the gifts of helps and administration (as well as other identified in other parts of Scripture) are still needed and vital, and will continue to be given to believers for ministry throughout the church age!
Chapter 12 ends, we noted, with what appears to be a reprimand from Paul to the Corinthians, some of whom were apparently not satisfied with the gifts they were given, and "desired the greater gifts"! Perhaps, we speculated, knowing the Corinthians, the more showy and exotic gifts, like "speaking in tongues"! To which Paul said that he would "show them a still more excellent way"! And that set the scene for our lesson last night on I Corinthians 13--and "the way of love"!
Many consider I Corinthians 13 to be the greatest and most inspiring passage ever written by the apostle Paul! And, among other things, it puts all the other spiritual gifts in their proper context! And here's how it begins, as picked up by the Phillips translation: "If I speak with the eloquence of men and of angels, but have no love, I become no more than blaring brass or crashing cymbal! If I have the gift of foretelling the future and hold in my mind not only all human knowledge but the very secrets of God, and if I also have that absolute faith which can move mountains, but have no love, I amount to nothing at all! If I dispose of all that I possess, yes, even if I give my own body to be burned, but have no love, I achieve precisely nothing!" Wow!
Interesting that Paul writes this in the "first person," as an admonition to himself first! And also interesting that chapter 13 is positioned where it is--in the middle of a book that, as MacArthur notes, is so "problem-oriented"! Coming "like a breath of fresh air, an oasis in the desert, in the midst of a dissertation of almost continual reproof and correction of wrong understandings, wrong attitudes, and wrong use of God's ordinances and spiritual gifts"! Where the very absence of love is the culprit, the missing ingredient, that has led, among other things, to divisions and quarrels within the church, and to idolatry and immorality, and exhibitions of selfishness and pride!
And Paul begins by referring to "tongues," as Constable notes, "because of the Corinthian's fascination with them"! And he says simply that even if someone is able to speak with the fluency and eloquence of the greatest speakers in the world, and even with the tongues of angels (here using "tongues of angels" as a hyperbole since there's no evidence in the Bible of angels speaking in a specific heavenly language), without love they only become "a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal" (likening them to pagans who engaged in ecstatic sounds, incoherent babble, and emotional gibberish, accompanied by smashing gongs, clanging cymbals, and blaring trumpets in their worship of idols)!
And so Paul says that love is more important than any other spiritual gift and that it is first and foremost "a fruit of the Spirit," according to Galatians 5:22, which comes only by "walking in the Spirit," and which, according to MacArthur, is "Paul's way of defining one's day-by-day obedience to the Word of God and submission to the Lord"! And so it's what most clearly demonstrates the Spirit's presence in the life of a believer!
So what exactly is this love that the Bible teaches? It's the Greek word, "agape" which is defined as the highest form of love and, according to MacArthur, "the supreme measure and example of God's love--the love that caused Him to send His only begotten Son to the Cross"! And so, it's totally "self-giving" and sacrificial--and best described for us in verses 4-7 of I Corinthians 13!
And here it is: "Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things!" Wow! And so, basically, as we discussed last night, "love is what love does"! What more need we say!
Love is, in fact, "the one thing that will still stand when all else has fallen"! (verse 8, in Phillips) Constable says that "love cannot fail because it shares God's nature and God's eternity! And he further notes that "in heaven we not only have no more need for faith and hope, but no need for the gifts of teaching, preaching, helps, prophecy, discernment, knowledge, wisdom, tongues, miracles, healings, faith, mercy, or leadership! None of these gifts will have a purpose in heaven. And yet love is, and forever will be, "the very air of heaven"! Verses 9-10 say, "For we know in part and we prophecy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away!"
And when will "the perfect come"? For the believer, we believe, it's when we go to be with the Lord, either at death, or at the Rapture, when the Lord takes His own to be with himself! The "perfect" is "the eternal heavenly state of the believer! "But now we see in a mirror dimly," Paul writes, "but then face to face; now I know in part; but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known!" Wow!
I Corinthians 13 ends with this probing thought: "In this life we have three lasting qualities--faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of them is love!" But we need to go on to I Corinthian 14:1 (which we'll talk more about next week, which says, so compellingly: "Follow then the way of love...!" The "more excellent way," which Paul promised to show the Corinthians, and us too (at the end of chapter 12)!
But hang on! I can't leave this lesson without citing a few more verses, and reference to some great old gospel hymns:
John 13:34-35--"A new commandment I give you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another!"
I Peter 5:8--"Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins!"
Ephesians 4:15--"But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up itself in love!"
I John 4:7--"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God, and knows God!" Wow!
And some songs? How about (and I'll only give the titles, or a key line, here, lest I run out of paper)?
- "I love You, Lord, and I lift my voice...!"
- "More love to Thee, O Lord, more love to Thee...!"
- "Love lifted me...!"
- "They will know we are Christians by our love...!"
- "The love of God, how rich and pure...!"
- "Love divine, all love excelling...!
And so, fellow MOBsters! "Pursue love!" You gotta chase it! It doesn't come naturally!
Lowell
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