1 Corinthians 13:1-7
06/23/13
Matt Rawlings
If you regularly attend our church, you are aware that we
are in the middle of a mini-series entitled Living
at Peace Together, as Disciples in Community. We started the series the first week of May and we will be
wrapping up soon. And the reason we believe that God has had us teach on Living at Peace together as Disciples in
Community, is because God wants us to help us all grow into an even
stronger and more effective church that will be used by Him in our community to
reach others with the good news about Jesus Christ. But one of the biggest
barriers to the effectiveness and health of a church is disunity and conflict.
So many churches are affected by conflict and fall apart because of unresolved
conflict and disunity. Let me share a few statistics with you.
According to stats compiled through Peacemaker
Ministries:
- · 25% of the churches in one survey reported conflict in the previous five years that was serious enough to have a lasting impact on congregational life.
- · There are approximately 19,000 major, scarring, church conflicts in the U.S. each year.
- · 32% of born again Christians who have been married have gone through a divorce, virtually the same percentage as our general population.
- · 34% of all pastors presently serve congregations that forced their previous pastor to resign.
- · The seven primary reasons for forced exits all involve some form of conflict.
- · It is estimated that the cost of people who profess to be “born-again” Christians filing lawsuits against others who profess to be “born-again” Christians is approximately 40 billion per year.
- · It is estimated that 61% of church members leave their church because of unresolved conflict.
So, we have to ask - what is the cause of all of this
conflict?
- · Is it jealousy, bitterness, resentment, unforgiveness?
- · Maybe it is lying and deceit?
- · Or perhaps it is insidious gossip, slander or dissention?
- · Maybe it is grumbling and complaining that spreads like a cancer and causes suspicion, doubt and disunity?
- · Maybe it is unaddressed sin that is left unconfronted?
- · Maybe it is more simple things like people assuming the motives of others or continual lack of kindness?
- · Maybe it is careless words spoken without thinking that caused a rift to grow?
- · Maybe it is things like being condescending when someone doesn’t do things the way we think they should?
- · Maybe it is being judgmental and self-righteous because someone else has a preference or conviction that we disagree with?
- · It could be as simple as just a misunderstanding that grows larger than life because we assume or question the motives of others uncharitably.
The reality is – it is all of these things but I believe
that there is really one cause behind all of these things that leads to
conflict. It is a lack of love. Yes, we can all learn techniques for how to
resolve conflict and we can all grow in understanding others. We can even learn
how to resolve conflicts Biblically. But, if we don’t have love for one
another, we will inevitable fail. Let’s read God’s Word together in 1
Corinthians 13, to find a right perspective
on life in the body of Christ.
1 Corinthians 13:1-8 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.
If there is one passage in the Bible that is most used in
weddings , this is probably it. Everyone has been to a wedding and heard a
definition of love from this passage. And this is a good and right application
of the passage and this passage applies to everyone of our life as believers.
However, this passage was originally addressing a church
in trouble. It was a written to the church in Corinth that was experiencing
disunity and division - where there was pride and jealousy, selfish uses of God-given
gifts, immorality, and conflict. For some Corinthians, speech and eloquence in
oratory were seen as significant gifts and a sign of superiority. Earlier in
the letter, Paul had to address their arrogance and their perceived sense of
superiority.
There was all manner of sin present in the church.
- · There was jealousy of the gifts of others.
- · There was bitterness, resentment, discord, and disunity in the church.
- · Some were taking their fellow brothers and sisters to court before seeking the wisdom that God provides in the local church body.
- · There was comparison and pride about their spiritual gifts
- · They were causing each other to stumble over what they ate and they took pride in their freedom. But, they weren’t loving each other in their weaknesses.
- · There was grumbling and many had elevated their preferences and desires to the level of idolatry.
It seems from the more immediate context of chapter 12,
that many in the church in Corinth had elevated some gifts above others and
they thought that speaking in tongues was the greatest gift of all.
It is interesting to note that Paul didn’t discourage the
pursuit or exercise of the spiritual gifts, even though there was excess, but
he did seek to put them into the right place. So he tells the church, listen...
“If I speak
in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a
clanging cymbal.”
Even though some in the church in Corinth may have had
the gift of tongues and even if they had a gift so great that they could claim
to speak in the tongues of angels, Paul says it doesn’t matter, unless they
exercised their gifts with love. He didn’t say that the gifts weren’t
significant or important – but he says that they aren’t the most important
thing.
Paul is letting them know that exercising their gifts
without love would make them about as pleasant to the harmony of the church as
a noisy gong would be in the middle of a beautiful mozart piano piece.
A noisy gong is something that draws a lot of attention
but it doesn’t sound good. And if someone was constantly hitting a gong in the
middle of our church service, it would not make for good music – it would be an
irritant and seen as obnoxious. It would just be a loud, unpleasant noise – and
that is like the exercise of gifts in the body without love.
I really enjoy drums and about 20 years ago I used to
play the drums. I even played the drums in the church worship band. I played
this massive, wrap-around set that I had to spin around to hit everything. It
had over 13 drums and I think about 12 cymbals. When I played them all
together, and in appropriate proportions, it sounded good. But if I only hit
the cymbals or more specifically, if I only hit them in a way to make them
clang loudly, it would interrupt the music and it wouldn’t add to the worship
experience but it would distract and take away from it – it would make it
unpleasant. Paul is saying that even if we were incredibly gifted and we could
speak in the tongues of men and angels, but didn’t have love, we would be like
this in the body. We would be unpleasant, distracting, unhelpful and it
wouldn’t add anything positive to the local church. In Corinth and today, often
the gifts that God gives can become a point of division or disunity. They can
lead to comparison, jealousy, resentment, and envy.
So what does this have to do with our church? I think
that at times, we can be jealous of the gifts God has given others in the
church. We can resent that God didn’t give us certain gifts, skills, and
abilities. We don’t want to admit it but it’s true. Others of us think that
because God has given us different gifts, we are superior to others in the
church who aren’t as mature as we think we are. But both the sin of jealousy
and pride, thinking that we are better than others, can come from a lack of
love and they are like sounding a loud gong – it isn’t pretty. And a lack of
love can come from not understanding and applying God’s love for us in our own
lives. In verse 2, Paul goes on to put the greatest spiritual gifts in
perspective. He says...
"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."
In verse 31 of chapter 12, Paul said that they should
earnestly desire the greater gifts. But then he said he would show them a still
more excellent way. He is saying that love is even more excellent than
prophetic powers and the ability to understand all mysteries and all knowledge,
even better than the kind of faith that could remove mountains.
We desire as a church to grow in the pursuit and practice
of the spiritual gifts – all of the spiritual gifts including the ones that are
seemingly more spectacular. But even greater than this, we desire to grow in
being a loving community that exercises the gifts that we do have, with love. In
these verses, Paul is saying that no matter how great the gifting, if I don’t
have love in the way that I exercise the gifts God has given, than I am
nothing. He says if I don’t have love, I “am”
nothing. I amount to nothing. I am worthless if I don’t love. All of my gifts
amount to nothing if I don’t have love. I am nothing if I don’t have love. Then
in verse 3, he ratchets it up a few notches. He goes to the extreme and says...
"If I
give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not
love, I gain nothing."
Today, it is increasingly popular to talk about giving to
the poor and social justice. In fact, as a church, this is something we want to
grow in. It isn’t evangelism itself but it is a part of a strategy to preach
the gospel and love the unlovely by practically showing them the love of Christ
to care for their needs. But Paul is saying that it is possible to give away
all that I have to the poor and not have love. We could do great philanthropic
deeds and yet, it is possible that we can do it not out of love but out of
other motives and this Scripture tells us that if this is the case, it will
amount to nothing.
If we aren’t loving in the way that we give and if our
motives are not to love others and love God through our giving, then there is
no eternal gain. We could actually sacrifice our body for someone else and not
do it out of love. And if we paid the ultimate price of our lives, it still
would be of no eternal gain to us if we didn’t do it out of love. Radical Muslims
give their bodies up for their faith all
the time but it is not an act motivated by love for God and as such, it gains
nothing. Just because we do all the right things, and even if we did the most
extreme things that seemed altruistic or seemed to be the ultimate good, it
does not mean that we are doing them out of a motive to love God and love
others. And if I did the greatest humanitarian things but I didn’t have love I
would gain nothing. Paul goes on to tell us what love in the body of Christ
looks like and he says...
"Love is patient and kind;"
Paul moves from the way we exercise the gifts God has
given us and from extraordinary actions to the more mundane areas of life and
challenges us to love in these areas. The reality is that the mundane, the
ordinary moments in life are where most of us live the majority of the time. One
can normally only give away everything that they have in an extravagant manner
a time or two in their lives. Maybe you could live in a way that you
continually gave away everything you had. But in our normal, everyday life, we
are challenged at a more basic level.
When someone is telling a story – do we love them enough
to be patient and wait for them to finish? What if it’s a dumb story or one
that doesn’t excite us? What about if someone in your life doesn’t do things
the way that you want, or they take too long to do things, or they don’t
understand how to do something and you have to show them – will you be patient?
Paul says love is patient. I can think about so many times when I am impatient
with my kids when they are taking too long for my convenience or when I have to
take the time to show them something that I think they should know how to do. I
am impatient with my wife at times when she doesn’t do things the way that I
want or in the timing that I want. Often, I am impatient with others because I
think I would do it better or because I expect someone else to do better than
they are doing – I am self-righteous
Impatience leads to all kinds of conflict. We can get
angry because someone else is imposing on our time, our agenda and because we
have to make effort and we really are just being lazy. Have you ever been
impatient with someone because you weren’t getting your way and you just
snapped at them? Maybe you yelled at your kids, or rolled your eyes, or spoke
harshly to you parents or spouse or friends. Love isn’t like that – Paul says
love is patient.
How many times have we done the same thing over and over
again and needed help? How many times have we made mistakes and yet, God is
patient with us and slow to anger – rich in love? How many times has God been
patient with our foibles and our failings? God is patient with us when we
really should know better, when we take too long to do something and when we
fool around or just ignore His urging at times.
Jesus was the ultimate definition of patience with His
disciples, when they said and did dumb things and asked dumb questions, or had
arguments about who was the greatest among them – missing that it was
irrelevant because none of them was as great as Jesus and they never could be.
They missed that their worth came from knowing Jesus and yet Jesus was patient
with them.
Love isn’t just patient though – it is active – it is
kind. Kindness is actively pursuing the good of someone else. Kindness is
carrying out loving actions by doing things to bless the person you are loving.
Are we seeking to be kind to the people around us because we love them and want
to practically show our love to them?
I remember after we had just rented a new home in Vancouver.
The grass had gotten long and I came home to find that my friend Pat had mowed
the grass – this little act of kindness showed his love and practical care. Right now, we are in-between two homes as we
finish up our new home and sell our existing home. And a little while ago,
Chris Sipe came over and mowed our lawn. Guys like Chris Johnson and Ben Buisch
have come over to help me lay new flooring. Love is seen in practical kindness
like this. Our church abounds in this kind of loving care for each other. I
want to commend you all for the many different ways that you are a kind church.
In specific prayer, in meals, in serving each other – you demonstrate the love
of God for us.
Love is patient and kind. We need to keep asking
ourselves, are we kind to our spouse, our co-workers, our family, our children,
our parents, our friends, our neighbors? If not, are we really loving those we
say we love?
What would kindness motivated by love look like?
·
It might look like going out of our way to do something
for someone else who is in need.
·
It may look like getting to know your friends, your
family, your siblings enough to find out what would bless them and then showing
them kindness because you want to show them God’s love.
·
It could look like anticipating what would bless someone
else or thinking about someone else’s preferences and then taking action to
defer to them or do something that they prefer instead of what you prefer.
·
It could be something as simple as getting someone else a
drink when you get up and go to the kitchen, to picking flowers for your wife,
or doing the dishes without being asked, or holding the door for someone else.
We have opportunities to express God’s kindness to others
in a thousand small ways every week.
Are we actively looking for ways to be kind because God
has been kind to us and we want to show others God’s love through kindness? After
all, it is God’s kindness that leads us to repentance.
But not only is love patient and kind, Paul says in the
second half of verse 4 that...
“love does
not envy or boast;”
Love doesn’t envy what God has blessed someone else with.
And conversely, love doesn’t boast about what God has blessed you with. Envy
leads to all kinds of bitterness in the church – bitterness against God and it
also leads to resentment of others in the church. Both envy and boasting in
fact are very self centered. Envy is being more aware of what others have and
what you don’t have – it says I want something, I need what they have in order
to be happy and why I am not happy is because I don’t have it. And it can take
the form of being envious about a home, or a car, or how many friends someone
has or, someone else’s spouse, or money, or gifting and talents. Envy is the
opposite of loving God and others – it is selfishness and self-centeredness.
Boasting isn’t any better though. Boasting says that God
didn’t make me this way and God didn’t give me these things or gifts – I got
them on my own or I earned them. Boasting is unloving to God and it is unloving
to others as well. Paul isn’t done though, he goes on to say that love is not
arrogant or rude.
"it is
not arrogant or rude."
How many times has arrogance or rudeness lead to conflict
in your life? When someone is arrogant, it makes you not like them and it
tempts you to not want to be around them. If someone is rude, it is unpleasant
and can lead to judging others and hurt feelings. Arrogance and rudeness are
not love. And Paul says in the latter part of verse 5 that love...
"It
does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;"
If I insist on things being done my way, I am setting
myself up for severe disappointment. Because God didn’t make everyone else like
me – thank God! And despite what we may think, our way is not necessarily the
only right way to do something. But if I insist on my own way, it will lead to
conflict and offense. It will lead to irritation and resentment as well.
What Paul is saying here in verse 5 is that love isn’t self-seeking,
instead it seeks the interests and edification of others. Verses like this
challenge us to ask ourselves whether we are seeking the interests and
edification of others. If we wonder whether we are loving others in the church,
we should ask ourselves if our lives are characterized by regard for others. Are
we creatively, actively working to find ways to look out for the interests of
others? Is most of our time spent thinking about our own needs when we are
around other people or are we seeking to think about and care for their needs
because Jesus has cared for us? Love isn’t just seen in our external actions
though, we can love or not love people in the way we think about others as well.
Verse 6 says, love...
"it
does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth."
Have you ever been secretly happy when someone else
messed up? I think most people have. I remember quite a few times when I’ve
been cut off in traffic by someone and then they drove recklessly and sped away...
only for me to see them a mile or two ahead pulled over by a cop and I thought
good – that guy got what was coming to him! Love doesn’t gloat over the
failures of others. Love rejoices in the truth of God. Love rejoices in the
truth of the gospel. Love doesn’t take joy in evil of any kind. But love is
glad when the truth of God is revealed. Then verse 7 finishes up Paul’s praise
of what love is with some positive things. He says...
"Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all
things, endures all things."
Love bears all things. It is loving to bear with someone
else when they are difficult. It is loving to bear with the weaknesses of
others. It is loving to bear with or put up with someone else’s deficiencies. I
like the way that Leon Morris expressed it when he said...
“Love conceals what is displeasing in another and does
not drag it out into the pitiless light of public scrutiny” – Leon Morris
There are some of us who require more bearing with. Maybe
some people smell bad, or are loud and you can’t get them to stop talking all
the time, or maybe some are quiet and you feel like you can’t get them to talk.
If someone has preferences and asks us to do things their way – do we bear with
them or do we become resentful and irritated?
Love means that we may have to bear with the weak
consciences of others – where they are more strict in an area than we would be.
It also means bearing with those who are more free in an area and it is
difficult for us. Love is not becoming condescending and resentful. So much
conflict and disunity arises when we aren’t lovingly bearing with or putting up
with the weaknesses and faults of others. This is because we really aren’t
aware of how God through Christ bears with us and puts up with us in all of our
annoying traits – He is not annoyed with us.
Next, it says that love believes all things What does
this mean? Does this mean that we are supposed to be gullible? That it is
loving to somehow blindly believe things to be true that aren’t true? No – but
it does mean that we are actively seeking to believe the best in others and
that we are actively guarding against suspicion and speculation.
Are we actively seeking to believe the best about others
and their motives? Or, do we presume the worst about them and read into things
when people don’t respond to us the way that we want or when they forget to
write back when you text them, or email them, or facebook them? Or maybe when
you go by someone else in church and they don’t greet you, you automatically
think that they are being mean or, rude or, that they are hating you, when they
just may be busy, or distracted or, sick or, have something on their mind.
Believing the best looks like not getting offended when
there is a perceived offense or slight. Love believes all things. Love isn’t
deceived but love is always willing to give the benefit of the doubt. Love also
hopes all things. Love hopes for change in others. Love hopes for growth. Love
hopes in God that He will be at work in your life and in the lives of others. Love
refuses to take someone else’s failure as final and refuses to write others off
when they mess up – as if God cannot change them. Lastly...
"love
endures all things"
This isn’t a passive giving up. The word for endurance
here denotes an active refusal to give up. It is like the active endurance of a
soldier in the midst of the fight. When things are rough, he endures and presses
on. This kind of love continues even when things are difficult.
So what does all of this have to do with Living
at Peace Together, as Disciples in Community? It has everything to do with it.
Yes, this passage was originally written in the midst of Paul addressing the
Corinthians specifically about their abuse of the spiritual gifts. But it was
really their pride and self-centeredness that lead to their conflict. It was a
severe lack of love that led to their conflict and disagreements. And if we are
not approaching the normal conflict and disagreements and differences of
opinion and preferences that all of us will face in our personal lives and in
the church from a desire to love God and love one another, we will end up as
just another statistic.
So, how do we do this? It has to start with a change of
heart. This kind of love is just not possible unless God enables us. Now, in
saying that, if you are genuinely a Christian, don’t think that we can cop out
and say it is just too hard for me. It isn’t too hard for us if we are actively
relying on God and seeking to know God’s love for us. The problem is, that so
often, we forget what love God has had for us. We forget how undeserving we
were.
We need to go back to the basics like the apostle Paul
did at the beginning of his letter to the Corinthians. How did he love like
this and how can we begin to love like this? Towards the beginning of this
letter, Paul said, "And I, when I
came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God
with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except
Jesus Christ and him crucified." (1
Corinthians 2:1-2)
Loving others begins with understanding what Jesus did on
the Cross for us. And later in chapter 15, Paul said, "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also
received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that
he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the
Scriptures." (1 Corinthians 15:3-4)
It is only if we understand God’s great love for us in
sending His only Son that we can begin to be motivated to love others. It is
only as we see the love that Jesus the Son of God had for us that we can give
that same love to others. We need to see His love for us as He lived a perfect
life for us, was punished, ridiculed, mocked, beaten, whipped and hung on a
Cross for us. We need to see that we were undeserving and we require the
patience of God. We depend on God’s kindness and His mercy, His long-suffering
and His love for us. Jesus gave of Himself to the fullest. He was humble and
didn’t insist on His own way and instead everything He did was for our good. Christ’s
love for us is never failing.
So, as those who have been changed by His love, let us
seek to know His love, to enjoy His love and to express His love to others. Let’s
pray for Him to enable us to grow where we need to, knowing that as we seek to
love Him, He will change us into His image. And let’s seek to practically love
others motivated by His love for us. If we are a church that lives this way, we
truly will be Living at Peace Together,
as Disciples in Community.
