1 Corinthians 13:1-8 “Love Is the Answer”
In the Bible reading for today, the idea of love, or αγαπε in the Greek, is rather difficult to explain, but here goes: it is the love that God desires you to have in your heart. It is a spiritual love that could lead one to sacrifice for the sake of that love. It is a kind of love that will tolerate no violence or ill will. It is a permanent love that lasts through eternity. It is a love that is shared between friends who know that they will always be friends and between people who know that that love will never die.
Agape is the love that we are to understand when we read that “God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16). Agape is the word used when Jesus tells us the greatest commandment is to love (Matthew 22:36-40). Agape is the word used in Greek to translate the Hebrew word that is used in Deuteronomy 6 when we read “Hear O Israel the Lord Your God is One God, and you shall love the Lord Your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.” The same love that God has for us, that Christ displayed for us, is the love that we should celebrate with one another in our relationships.
I think that we that we should be living in αγαπε with one another. Because of the poorness of our language we simply think that “love” is “love,” and we do not think that there are different kinds of love in this world. We say that we love our wives, and we say that we love Fig Newtons in the same breath and do not even realize how strange that really sounds! There is a profound difference in these two types of love. There is a beer commercial on television that depicts a man and a woman in a bar having drinks. The woman leans into the man and says that she loves him. The man tries to respond, but the word “love” cannot cross his lips. The word will just not come out of his mouth. Then, the waitress stops at the table and asks if he would like another beer. Without hesitation he is able to say the word “love”: “I would love another beer!” He responds.
One of you told me that when you listen to me preach on Sundays, you always really like it when I say the one main idea that I want you to hear, that one message that I am trying to have you take home after the service. In other words, I may be talking for a long time up here, but there is usually one sentence that you should really hear and take home with you. I should announce it. This week I will do this again right at the start: “Love is patient, love is kind.”
I say this right from the start out of the fear that I might be like that noisy cymbal or clanging gong that Paul talks about when I preach. I might just be up here on the chancel making a lot of noise unless you hear the promise of love that God has for you!
But, those two lines in verse four: “Love is patient, love is kind” are really what I believe Paul himself is trying to get across to the people in Corinth. You will recall last week I talked about the divisions in the church there. Corinth was a church with quite a few imaginary lines running through it. Paul seems to have seen the place as a particularly loveless church. That may be hard to imagine, but when we read the letters Paul wrote to the Corinthians it is hard not to come to that conclusion.
“Love is patient; love is kind.” Take that home with you today if nothing else from this sermon! However, let me unpack that for you a little as well. When Paul says this in the Greek, it comes out as “H agape makrothumie; christevetai h agape.” I think it was a catch phrase for the people to remember the commandment to love. Note that the word “agape” starts and finishes the phrase. It is also a piece of concrete poetry. In English, if we follow the Greek word order, we should read this as “Love is patient; kind is love.” In hearing this we have to ask ourselves, “what is in the middle of love?” “Oh, yes, patience and kindness.” Love stands on both sides of patience and kindness!
Now, is the Greek word “makrothumie” really best translated as patience? Well, yes, that can be a good translation; however, there is another idea associated with this word, and that is an understanding of the larger picture. “Makrothumie” even sounds like this in English: “What is the ‘macro theme’?” We might say this better as “What is the larger picture?” Love is understanding the larger picture! That larger picture is the Godly perspective that is otherwise missing in our relationships with others. Yes, Paul is talking about God.
Although the word “patience” is an adequate translation, we need to understand that we are patient because we have that larger picture of love that God has shared with us through Jesus Christ. We are not just patient in love because we like to suffer a lot. . . .No! We are patient because we have seen the larger picture of God’s love working things out in this world.
When Paul uses the word “christevetai” that we translate as “kind,” I am so sure that everyone hearing this word being spoken (and recall that these letters were always read aloud because not too many people could actually read back then) that they would have had to make a double take. “What did he say?” The word “chistevetai” sounds like “Christ.”
Now then, we see this as the term “love” on both sides of God and Jesus. Or, we can say that God and Christ are in the middle of all love. So, take the idea of “Love is patient and love is kind” home with you today, but realize that Paul is also implying heavily that in the middle of love is God and Christ.
And as if there is any doubt of this at all among us this morning, let us turn to 1 John 4:7-8, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is form God; everyone who loves is born from God and knows God. Whoever does not love, does not know God, for God is love. . . .”
In this Scripture is the warning about those who do not have love. Those people just make a lot of noise, like a clanging cymbal, but really have nothing discernable to say. I recall a time when I had caught a youth smoking drugs on church property, and I was upset and harshly told the youth that what they were doing was illegal and could have serious consequences.
The youth looked at me hard. I noticed he was not looking at my eyes but rather my mouth. He said, “You know, I see your lips moving, but I don’t hear what you are trying to say. That is all you are. . .just moving lips.”
In the church, if we are not speaking the Truth in love, then we are just a bunch of lips moving with indiscernible sounds coming out. I was telling this youth the Truth, but not in a loving way. He could only hear that noisy gong in my voice. I needed to address him in a more loving way. If you address people in anger, no one is listening.
Another youth was recently walking across down my neighbor’s driveway. I looked at him, and he kind of gave me the stink eye. My neighbor has recently been robbed and has had to call the police for people trespassing. So, called over to the boy. I did not recognize him, so I asked him what his name was. He kept on walking as if he had not heard me. I called a couple more times. No response. Then, I tried to say it in a most pastoral and loving way that I was concerned for my neighbor because there had been robberies and I wanted to know what he was doing there coming down from my neighbor’s house.
The young man went into a stream of hateful screaming as he continued to walk down the driveway and onto Ola Road. He just kept on screaming coarse language and racial epithets at the top of his lungs. In spite of the hate that he was spewing out, I just looked at him and smiled. I asked the Lord to bless him in his life. Anyone who had that much hatred in his heart needed a lot of prayer. When you hear somebody else going off like a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal, then you really have to be patient and kind. You have to consider the larger picture and put Christ and God into the middle of it.
In verse 7, we read, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.” Note the repetition in this phrase. The Greek again here for “all things” is “panta.” You might know the English word “pantaphobia” which is the fear of everything. Four times we hear that word “panta, panta, panta, panta.” When something is repeated three times in the Bible, then it is the superlative. For instance, “Holy, holy, holy” really means the superlative “holiest.” When we see something then four times, that is emphasized one more time than the superlative in English. That is to say, Paul is making it clear that love endures, believes, hopes, bears, all things, all things, all things, all things (saying “all things” each time louder). In this we must understand that there is not anything left that love cannot endure!
Love can endure and bear being publicly humiliated and nailed to the Cross. Love can bear the crown of thorns. Love can hope for humanity even in the fits and throws of a final breath. Love can forgive those who persecute. Love is God. God is love. If God can sacrifice his only begotten Son because He so loved the world (John 3:16) and this is the love that is inside of us now, then yes we can bear and endure all things, all things, all things, all things.
In verse 8, we read that “all things” are going to cease anyway except for love. So, be patient, be kind. Whatever you face in your life, love is the answer. God and Christ are in the middle of that love.
Amen.