Theme for the week: The Love Chapter – 1 Corinthians 13
February 8, 2022 (Tuesday)
The second main paragraph of the Love Chapter (1 Corinthians 13) tells us what Love accomplishes in our lives and in the lives of others. The actions of agape love exceed all our expectations. Here’s what it says: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres (1 Corinthians 13:4-6 NIV).
Sad to report and tragic to have happened, there was competition among some of the people entrusted with spiritual gifts in the church at Corinth. Everything Paul mentions in the paragraph just quoted reflects happenings in the church at that time. The Love Chapter is about love, but it is in the Bible as part of a discussion of spiritual gifts. If the gifted can be impatient, unkind, envious, boastful and proud, then how are the rest of the members to be expected to live by the rule of love? This was an awful development of life within the body of Christ, and Paul pleads with the members to allow Love above all else to have first place in their lives.
As the followers of Christ, we must not “dishonor others, be self-seeking, and easily angered, keeping records of wrongs, delighting in evil instead of the truth. Real love is indestructible–it “always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Please read again the first paragraph of this blog. Real love is beyond reproach.
In the New Testament, we are told a dozen times to “love one another,” beginning with the words of Jesus: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (Jn. 13:34; cf. 15:12, 17). What’s new about this commandment is that our love for one another is to be the same kind of love that Christ has for us. Considering the fact that Christ loves us so much that He died on the Cross for us, this is an awesome commandment.
OH, WHAT LOVE
Words, William Runyan
Music, Wendell Loveless
1934
Wonderful it is that Jesus cares for me
Coming from His home on high
Into pain and sorrow poverty and woe
On Calvary’s cruel cross for me to die
O what love that He should die for me
Saving grace thus to supply for me
O what love O what love
Evermore I’ll sing it O what love
Not by works of righteousness which I had done
But through grace He set me free
I could not by merit open redemption’s door
Salvation was His own free gift to me
O what love that He should die for me
Saving grace thus to supply for me
O what love O what love
Evermore I’ll sing it O what love
Will He then not keep me all my journey through
Yea unto life’s latest hour
Never would I doubt Him for His promise sure
His both for saving and for keeping power
O what love that He should die for me
Saving grace thus to supply for me
O what love O what love
Evermore I’ll sing it O what love
The blogs this week are based on 1 Corinthians 13: Love is greater than:Spiritual Gifts, Expectations, Faith, Hope, Anything.
New International Version
If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Footnotes
1 Corinthians 13:1 Or languages
1 Corinthians 13:3 Some manuscripts body to the flames