1 Corinthians 13:1-3

We are continuing with our study of Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, picking up this morning with what is perhaps one of the most recognizable passages in the whole of Scripture - 1st Corinthians 13, or what some have called, "the love chapter". The words found here are often quite familiar as they have been quoted by all sorts of writers and speakers and even film-makers who wished to bring these truly immortal words into the service of their own particular agendas. Many otherwise secular wedding ceremonies will include a reading of this passage, simply because of its poetic simplicity and beauty. And, indeed, there is certainly a universal aspect to these words. The things that Paul says here about love are profound and foundational and have an appeal beyond their immediate context.  

Nevertheless, there is a depth of meaning to them that can be missed when we forget that these words are part of a letter and that they come after certain things have been said in that letter and before certain other things are introduced. And, while it is the most natural thing in the world for you and I to hear these words read in the context of something like a wedding ceremony, that was not the way they were first received.  

As Dick Lucas points out, when these words were first read to the church in Corinth, it is highly unlikely that an engaged couple listening to them would have been leaning over whispering amongst themselves about how this would be a great thing for someone to read in their upcoming wedding ceremony. And the reason they would have not been saying that is because when you read 1st Corinthians 13, after reading chapters 11 and 12, and on the way to 14 and following, you realize that the intent of these words, the purpose of these words was not to provide some definitive thesis on the beauty and glory of love but actually to serve as a mild rebuke of the Corinthian!  

The effect would have been something like what happened in the movie, The Sound of Music, where Maria (played by Julie Andrews), is this sort of a live-in nanny who comes to stay with the Von Trapp family. And, after being badly treated by the Von Trapp children upon her arrival, culminating in her sitting on a pine cone at the dinner table, Maria delivers a short speech in which she talks about how kind everyone has been, and about how warmly she has been welcomed and how much at home she has been made to feel. And as she goes on with these lovely, kind words, the children begin feeling more and more miserable for all the things they had done and realized, of course, that Maria's words didn't really apply to them at all. In the end, they all ended up crying and leaving the table. It's a great scene.  

Well, the reading of these words, I submit, would have had an effect something like that upon the Corinthian congregation. Now, I don't know if anyone ran off crying, but I think that, at the very least, they would have felt somewhat chastened by Paul's words - as well they should have been, for that was Paul's intention.  

Now, as many of you know, this chapter comes to us in the second main division of 1st Corinthians, which began at chapter 7. From that point forward, Paul has been answering questions they have submitted to him, on a number of topics. In chapters 11-14, he deals with questions that related particularly to their public meetings together and the bulk of those chapters, 12-14, are devoted to addressing one main issue - spiritual gifts: their use and abuse in corporate worship, especially the gift of tongues. In looking at this subject, we have already seen a number of helpful things, including:  

1) The importance of evaluating expressive gifts like tongues and prophecy, according to their context and content - and specifically content which centered on the proclamation of the Lordship of Christ.  

2) We have seen that there is a diversity of gifts in the body. There are all sorts of gifts out there, by God's design, and the lists that we have of them in Scripture were never meant to be considered as exhaustive - only representative.  

3) We have seen that the purpose of the gifts is expressly stated as being for the common good. That is: not for private benefit or personal advancement.  

4) We have also seen that each gift is valuable and is equivalent to every other gift in terms of its worth.  

5) We have further seen that there is a relationship of interdependence that exists between the various gifts. Each person and gift needs the rest of the gifts to function properly. Otherwise the Body is some sort of freak - all one part, with all the others neglected.  

6) Finally, we have seen that, while all the gifts are valuable, if we are to seek any of them above the others, we ought to have a preference for those gifts that build the body as a whole over those which tend to edify the individual.

In short, over against the Corinthian tendency to misuse the gifts and wield them in a way that created division and hurt, Paul is writing to reform the way they think about gifts in general so that they will stop using them in such a destructive fashion. And so, having made these sorts of opening remarks on the subject of gifts, he turns now to the "more excellent way" that he spoke of in 12:31 - to the topic of love. Why he does this and what is being said here will be the subject of our next few studies. Before we begin looking at that, however, let's pray....              

(Read 1 Corinthians 13:1-13)  

Paul talks very forcefully and eloquently here about love in 3 fairly well defined movements:  

vs 1-3  - The Necessity of Love

vs 4-7  - The Nature of Love

vs 8-13 - The Enduring Character of Love

This morning, our attention will be on the first three verses, which focus on the necessity of love. In studying these verses, our hope will be, as we've seen, to re-connect this passage with its original context - and so gain an even richer understanding of it - but without neglecting the aspects of these verses that have been typically and rightfully highlighted.   Looking then at the construction of these verses, we see that there is a recognizable pattern going on - a series of conditional statements about particular gifts and practices, which are contrasted with love, followed by a final declaration. In all, there are seven conditional statements found in these verses and, if I may, let me put them all together, just so you get the full impact:  

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels...
If I have prophetic powers...
If I understand all mysteries...
If I understand all knowledge...
If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains...
If I give away all I have...
If I deliver up my body to be burned...
 

...BUT have not love...

  ...I am a noisy gong or clanging cymbal
...I am nothing
...I gain nothing

When you put them all together like that, it is easy to see that Paul is trying to paint a fairly comprehensive picture of the sorts of things that people could get up to. And his point in all this is to communicate that you could do anything and everything, even seemingly great things, but if you do not have love - then, in the end, it means NOTHING.  

Now, the particular things that Paul mentions here are chosen for a specific purpose - to impact on his Corinthian audience in an unforgettable way. In mentioning specific things like speaking in various tongues, and using prophetic gifts, and having special knowledge - in mentioning those sorts of things Paul is getting personal. He is taking the very things that the Corinthians have been going on an on about, the very things that they have used and misused as "badges of honor", as signs that they are more spiritual than their brothers and sisters, or that they are more valued and honored members of the Body of Christ - Paul makes a point of mentioning all the things that they are glorying in - And he does so in order to restore some sanity to the Corinthians in how they are viewing and using these things.  

But he does not just highlight things that the Corinthians are glorying in, he goes on to mention other things that someone might glory in - indeed, as some scholars have suggested - Paul includes here things that he might glory in - if he were of a mind to.  

He mentions things like exercising an extraordinary faith of the kind that Jesus spoke of - faith that could speak to a mountain and it would move. He talks about things like giving up all that one had, including giving up one's own life and facing the most painful martyrdom imaginable - being burned alive. Paul adds these sorts of things to the list because he wants to paint the most comprehensive picture he can to make his point. No matter what one might do, or endure, or give up, if love is missing from the equation - then it is meaningless.  

And so whatever significance the Corinthians have attached to their gifts, because they have behaved so un-lovingly toward their brothers and sisters in wielding them, then it has been all for nothing - and it will continue to be so as long as they remain in that pattern.  

Now, it is important to understand that Paul's problem is not with the gifts themselves. Paul does not have a problem with the gifts. He does not have a problem with the gift of tongues or prophecy. He recognizes that they are good gifts from the Father and, indeed, practices these gifts himself - as he will make clear in the next chapter. So, Paul is not demoting the gifts as much as he is putting them in perspective by setting them within their proper context - a context of love, - a context that the Corinthians seemed to have completely lost sight of.  

So, again, Paul is not trying to abolish tongues here; he is trying to govern and reform their use within the gathered community of God's people. To put it another way, it wasn't so much that the Corinthians had a "gift" problem, as much as they had a "love" problem. And, if you have been with us for this series, you should immediately recognize how true this is. If you were to go back to the beginning of this letter and beginning flipping through, you would find in virtually every chapter, numerous illustrations of the Corinthians' un-loving treatment of one another....  

...we saw it in chapter 1 in the way that the Corinthians had created various personality cults around their different leaders like Paul, Peter and Apollos, and so created division within the body, dismissing one another in the process...  

...we saw it in their criticisms of Paul's preaching as simplistic and weak, simply because he chose to stay focused on the cross of Christ...

...we saw it in their turning a blind eye to sexual immorality within their own church and seeking to justify it on theological grounds...  

...we saw it in chapter 6, where they were dragging one another into court and suing one another...  

...we saw it in the way they conducted themselves in their marital relationships...  

...we saw it in chapter 8, in the way they insisted on their rights and freedoms in idol temples, and all at the expense of their brothers and sisters' consciences....

And I could go on and on; but you get the point. All through this letter the Corinthians have regularly and consistently shown that, whatever they might boast about their allegedly superior spirituality, they knew very little of love. And in Paul's understanding, this fact reveals how little they understood about spiritual things, and undermines their every boast.  

Now, while we will have more to say about the nature of this love that Paul talks about next week, it is worth at least commenting on Paul's use of this word, at least in a preliminary way, this morning. In these three verses, Paul talks about "having love" or, more precisely, about "not having love". What does Paul mean by this?  

Well, from the outset, it needs to be made clear that when Paul talks about "love" here, he is not talking about love as a gift. Some have taken the position that he is and that when Paul talks in verse 31, about "desiring the higher gifts", he is thinking of love as the higher gift which all should seek. But, while that is an interesting suggestion, it simply cannot be right, for at least two very important reasons.  

First, seeing love as the "higher gift", to which he is referring, ignores the verses which precede verse 31, especially verse 28, which very pointedly presents a list of gifts in which only the first three are enumerated. If you take the view that "higher gifts" refers to Paul's description of love in chapter 13, then this, it seems to me, makes his enumeration scheme in verse 28 much more difficult to make any sense of. If you don't believe me, see the commentaries.  

Second, and more significantly, to include love as one of the gifts would mean that, like every other gift, we ought not expect that every Christian would possess it. And, since not every Christian could be expected to have the gift of love, this would completely undermine the point that Paul is making in chapter 13 by setting love as the necessary context for the use of all of the gifts.  

And so, love is not another one of the gifts but is, instead, more like a way of living, it is a mindset, a heart-attitude and practice which is the foundation from which, and within which, one exercises the gifts, indeed within which one does anything.  

That's the first thing to say about Paul's use of the word love in this context. Another thing to see is that when Paul talks about love here, he clearly is not thinking of love as a mere feeling or emotion. As we will see more clearly next week, love for Paul is an active thing - it is not merely the motivation for action, it is the action itself. It is demonstrated by what a person does, and what a person refrains from doing, by what a person holds on to, and what a person lets go of - not merely by what a person feels.  

Now, such a view of love is not Paul's invention. It is love as defined by God the Father, as shown by God the Father in the person and work of Jesus Christ. As Paul writes elsewhere,  

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person- though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die- 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. €" Romans 5:6-8.

Here is Paul's paradigm for love - the love of God, the sacrificial love of God, sending his own Son into the world to take upon himself the sins of his people, to give up everything he had, to give up his own life for undeserving sinners, to humble himself, to put himself out.  

And so, again, the love that Paul is highlighting here is like God's love. It is a very active thing. More to the point, and as we will see more clearly next week, it is action that the Corinthians are not currently displaying toward one another. Paul might have said a million things about love and what it is. But the words that he chooses here, and the actions he commends and rebukes - all of those things are drawn from what has been going on in the Corinthian congregation. In other words, his description of love is very "site specific".  

It's sort of like when I was a kid, and I would get in a fight with my sister and call her names. And my mother would sometimes rebuke my by pointing out that calling your sister grapefruit head is not a loving thing to do. And in doing that she was, unwittingly I think, doing what Paul did with the Corinthians. She was saying that my behavior was the opposite of love - that my actions in that specific instance - were the opposite of loving actions.  

Again, next week we will look at this more closely, but simply note for now that when Paul says, "If I speak in the tongues of men.....and have not love" what he is saying is that he can exercise the gift of tongues all day long, but if that action is not springing from a life that is characterized, in general, by action that is imitative of God's actions - that is self-sacrificing, other-centered, etc. - then his tongues speaking is worthless. It's just a bunch of pointless noise that doesn't actually accomplish anything of lasting worth or value.  

Indeed, the language that Paul uses to make this clear is very compelling in this regard. He talks in verse 1 about how speaking in tongues - apart from love - is like being a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. Now these words, for us, might spring up images of something like Junior High Band when we sat there playing, or listening to someone play the cymbals - banging them together at all the wrong moments, and creating this terrific noise that occasionally went along with the other music being played, but which, for the most part, was fairly nerve wracking stuff.  

But for the Corinthians, they didn't really have Junior High Band experiences to draw upon. What they did have, however, was the many, many pagan cults and mystery religions in their city - like those connected to Cybele and Dionysius - in which part of their ceremonies involved the sounding of noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. And so, what it seems that Paul is likely saying here is that the Corinthians use of tongues - apart from a context of love - was about as much use as the clanging of noisy cymbals in a pagan ceremony. There's a rebuke for you! He's saying that they might as well be engaging in pagan practices! All of their emphasis on the gifts, in the end, accomplishes nothing, does not build them up in any way, or gain them any advantage.  

Those are some strong words. And they are words for us to ponder ourselves as they point to the absolute necessity of, and even the priority of love, for God's people. Just as there were great varieties of gifts within the Body of Christ in Paul's day, the same is true for God's people today. And, whatever those gifts might be, and in whatever ways we choose to act toward one another, the reality is that everything we do is capable of being done in a way which is either consistent with love or it is not.  

For example, someone might have both the resources and the desire to be a generous person, and so minister in that way to the Body of Christ. But such acts of generosity can be done in a very superior, self-serving way, or they can be done in a very humble, Christ-honoring way.  

Alternatively, a person might have great musical gifts and can use them in a way which says, "Hey, look at me. Isn't it amazing how gifted I am?" and so promote envy and introduce a spirit of divisiveness into a congregation. Or, the same person might use her musical gifts in way that says, "Look at Jesus. Isn't he beautiful? Isn't he gracious and kind?" and so promote unity within the body.  

And, the same thing applies to things like preaching. I cannot tell you how many times I have been rebuked by this very passage. Times when I have been so concerned with planning for and preparing for this moment of preaching that I have - in the process - acted in very un-loving ways - toward my family, toward people in my congregation, toward you guys. Now, to be sure, I understand the argument that says that part of how you love your congregation as a preacher is by studying well - as Paul told Timothy - in order to handle accurately the word of God. And that's all fine and good, but there comes a point where the pursuit of that reality, at the expense of loving your people in other ways - sitting down with them, listening to them, and pastoring them €" there comes a point where the pursuit of excellence in preaching is just plain sin. Indeed, for me it is most often an act of unbelief and little faith as I do not trust that God can and does work - always - through my weakness, not through my imagined strength. Again, there is a balance there. But, what I am saying to you is that I read Paul's words here as a fellow traveler, as one who knows painfully well the very things of which Paul is speaking.  

And, please understand, the point here is not merely that God's people are to exercise their gifts and minister to one another in loving ways and for loving purposes. It's bigger than that. We are to be acting in loving ways because that is who we are - it is part of our identity - as children of the God who is himself, Love, who demonstrated his love toward us as sinners. We are children of that God, endowed with His Spirit, being made into His likeness.  

In other words, it is to be the case that of course our use of our various gifts would be from a context of love. Why? Because that is who we are, and it is our normal way of being in the world.  

Now, there is more to be said about these things, and in particular about the reality that, in fact, so often we don't act in loving ways toward one another and so we need to think about that and what our response ought to be to those situations, which I hope we can do as we continue to look at these verses next week. But it is enough this morning for us to consider the truth of the absolute necessity of love.  

Great gifts and great deeds, coming from a life that is not otherwise characterized by love, are of no value whatsoever. They do not accomplish anything, they do not build us up, they do not ultimately promote the kingdom of God, and they do not gain us anything from God.  

Conversely, those things which ARE done from a context of love - IN love, FOR love, indeed AS love - those things have a lasting value and worth in the eyes of the Father. They are not a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal, but are instead the harmonious notes, and powerful chords, in the symphony that finds its source in the very heart of God.