Love Never Ends

1:18One of their greatest hits is a song called The Power of Love, where Huey sings that love is a curious thing that makes one man sing. And another man weep. It's more than a feeling, he says. It's the power of love. Love is indeed a powerful thing, and it is certainly more than just a feeling. Well, Paul wrapped up chapter 12 by encouraging the Corinthians to earnestly desire the higher gifts and noting that he would show them a more excellent way.

2:00And friends, this morning, that's what we're going to be talking about. We're going to be talking about the more excellent way, which is love. And I hate to break hearts this morning, but this passage is not about the love between a man and a woman. This passage is about love between believers in a local church. And so, what we're going to learn this morning from 1 Corinthians 13 is that without Christ-like love, all signs, knowledge, and sacrifice are nothing.

2:38So, let's take a look at the text now together in verses 1 through 3. From the content of Paul's letter, we know that division was a big problem in the church at Corinth. And part of the problem was the theology and the use of the spiritual gifts in the church. At Corinth. And that's why Paul begins chapter 12 by writing these words. Now, concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. So they were uninformed.

3:15They didn't have a right theological understanding of the spiritual gifts. But the problem was deeper than that. It wasn't just that they lacked understanding. The sad reality was that they lacked love for each other. And in Paul's mind, that's a much bigger problem. So in the first three verses here of chapter 13, Paul names several spiritual gifts, which were maybe the spiritual gifts that the Corinthians valued the most. That seems to be the case from the fact that he mentioned these same gifts in chapter 12, and he's going to expound upon them in this chapter and then again in chapter 14.

4:00So he mentions here in these first three verses tongues or speaking in unlearned languages. He mentions prophecy, declaring the word of God. He mentions wisdom and knowledge, faith, and giving away life and possessions. And these gifts, I think, can be divided into three broad categories that I'm going to call signs. Knowledge, and sacrifice. In chapter 14, Paul is going to write that tongues are a sign not for believers, but for unbelievers, because they authenticate the Word of God.

4:48That's why in the book of Acts, you often see believers speaking in tongues when the gospel comes to a new people group for the first time, because tongues are a sign for unbelievers. So, signs is the first category. The second broad category, I'm calling knowledge, because Paul mentions understanding all mysteries. And later on in verse 2, he mentions having all faith. Now, faith requires knowledge because, as Paul says in Romans chapter 10, you can't believe in a Savior that you've never heard of.

5:26So, knowledge is the second category. The third and final broad category, I'm calling sacrifice, because giving away all of your possessions is a form of sacrifice, and so is delivering up your body to be burned. So, sacrifice is the third and last category. And, friends, the reason that I'm giving you these three broad categories is to understand both how the Corinthian church was struggling to love one another and how churches today largely mirror. Those same exact struggles.

6:03Does it not seem to you that most churches tend to overemphasize one of these categories of the spiritual gifts, signs or knowledge or sacrifice? In many charismatic churches, signs are overemphasized. And in particular, the gift of speaking in tongues is overemphasized. Some churches will go as far as to say that if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you will be given the ability to speak in tongues. And if you don't speak in tongues, they'll say that you haven't received the Holy Spirit.

6:42They'll insist on surrounding you and praying for you until you do. I know of churches who have done this to believers. And what these churches are doing is creating division by forming a class system among Christians. There are those who have been saved by Christ, and then there are those who have received a second baptism of the Holy Spirit and now speak in tongues. Paul was clear at the end of chapter 12, which Pastor Beau covered last week, that not every believer is going to be able to work miracles. Not every believer is going to be able to heal others. And not every believer is going to be able to speak in tongues. And that's because as we saw... Two weeks ago in chapter 12, verse 11, all of these gifts are empowered by one and the same Spirit who apportions to each one individually as He wills.

7:45It is the Spirit who decides which gifts each believer will receive. But see, the Corinthians in many charismatic churches today overemphasized signs like speaking in tongues. And because they weren't using those gifts and love, Paul says here in chapter 13 that they are nothing more than noisy gongs or clanging cymbals. But now we have to get a little more personal. In many Reformed churches, knowledge is overemphasized. Many Reformed churches do essentially the same thing as charismatic churches, only it's with a different set of gifts. Instead of overemphasizing signs, we overemphasize understanding all mysteries and all knowledge.

8:36And if you happen to be a Reformed church in a university town, well, let's just say that you're even more prone to overemphasize understanding and knowledge. Many Reformed churches create division by forming a class system of their own. There are those who have been saved by Christ, and then there are those who have read and can discuss the Christian. Complete works of Augustine and Spurgeon and Edwards and Piper and Packer and Sproll. Remember what Paul wrote in chapter 8. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.

9:20When we overemphasize gifts of knowledge, we become prideful, arrogant. We begin looking down on those who may not be as gifted as we are. And Paul says here in verse 2: even if we have all understanding, all knowledge, even if we have all faith, if we don't have love, we're nothing. So we may think we're something, but in God's eyes, we're nothing because we aren't using our gifts in love. Finally, in many activist churches, sacrifice is overemphasized.

10:04In some churches, it may be ministry to the poor. In other churches, it might be marching and demonstrating for political change. In other churches, it might be championing certain social justice issues. In activist churches, if you're not giving away all that you have, all of your time, all of your energy, all of your money, all of your possessions for whatever cause, Then you're not first class. You're a second class believer. There are those who are saved by Christ, and then there are those who give away everything they have for the cause.

10:46I want you to remember Jesus' words in Matthew chapter 6. These will be on the screen for you. Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.

11:32Jesus is saying that you can do a lot of good things. You can give away everything you have. You can even give up your own life. And yet you can gain nothing. And that's because we can do it to receive the praise that comes from men rather than the praise that comes from God alone. And so, church, we must beware of the age-old error. Equating gifts of signs or knowledge or sacrifice with Christian maturity. I hope we've learned over the past few years, as we have seen so many Christian leaders who have disqualified themselves from ministry, that you can be tremendously gifted and not be a holy, faithful, or mature Christian.

12:34Just because someone can speak in a tongue or teach a class or preach a sermon or give generously doesn't mean that they are mature or faithful. And according to Paul in our text today, if they lack love, they definitely aren't mature or faithful. So, since that's true, we need to define love. So, let's look and reread verses 4 through 7, and we'll start by saying what love is not, and then we're going to move on to what love is. Look at verse 4.

13:14Love 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. As you think back over all that we've learned in the first 12 chapters, you can see the problem in the Corinthian church. All of the descriptions of what love is, patient, kind, forbearing, believing, hopeful, enduring, they couldn't be rightfully applied to the Corinthian believers and how they were treating each other in the church.

14:11And all of the descriptions of what love is not, well, those words accurately describe the members of the church. They were envious, boastful, and arrogant, which showed in the way that they were divided over their favorite teachers and apostles. They were rude and selfish, which showed in the way they refused to lay down their rights, insisting on eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols, insisting on uncovering their heads in public worship. They were irritable and resentful, which showed in the frivolous lawsuits that they filed against one another before unbelievers.

14:58And they rejoiced in wrong. They celebrated sin, which showed in the way that they tolerated or participated in the twisted sexual practices of the surrounding culture. And so Paul wrote this paragraph to help them understand what love isn't and what love is. And what a necessary, timely word this is for us today. Friends, here's what I want you to understand. When we read our English translations, almost all of the words in this set of verses are translated as adjectives. So what you have is love, noun, is, verb, patient, adjective.

15:55Now, there's nothing wrong with translating it that way because that's how we would say it in English. And what translation requires is us taking words and phrases in one language and rendering them into words and phrases in another language that make sense to the reader or to the hearer. But what you need to know is that all of these words, patient, kind, rejoices, bears, believes, hopes, endures, every one of those words is a verb in the Greek.

16:30Take a look at this quote from David Pryor. The verbs Paul is using are all in the present continuous sense, denoting actions and attitudes which have become habitual, ingrained gradually by constant repetition. That's what we need to know, church. These words are actions and attitudes, and that is what love is made up of: actions and attitudes. But of course, we've been taught from a love, from a young age, that love is just a feeling. Nearly every song on the radio, nearly every movie that we've ever seen, reinforces the notion that love is merely a feeling.

17:18And I don't intend to argue today that love is not a feeling. I'm simply saying that love is more than a feeling. It is more than an emotional response. And to define it as merely a feeling is insufficient. And of course, we all agree with this. We know that if anyone says, I love you, but their attitudes and actions toward us are unloving, they don't love us no matter how much they insist on their feelings and the way that they feel.

17:58Love is doing what is Best for someone else, even at cost to ourselves. It is regularly putting the needs and preferences of others ahead of our own needs and preferences. So, let me encourage you this week to try a little exercise, and this is not my invention, this has been around for a long time. This week, I want to encourage you to reread verses 4 through 7 in the passage, except every time you see the word love or the pronoun it, I want you to replace it with the word Jesus.

18:35So, in the passage, we would have Jesus is patient and kind. Jesus does not envy or boast. Jesus is not arrogant or rude. And then, I want you to go back through the passage and substitute your own name every time you see the word love or it. So, we would have Alan is patient and kind. Alan does not envy or boast. Alan is not arrogant or rude. Boy, that's convicting, isn't it? This is an excellent passage to work through in that manner and to pray through in the same way that we pray together when we gather for our Tuesday morning prayer meetings. And since those aren't going On right now, you can use this wonderful passage this week to pray in that very same way. Praise God for all of the ways that Jesus perfectly demonstrates these attributes of love, lives out these verbs. Confess your sin, all of the ways that you personally fall short of Christ-like love, and then ask God to help you love others in these ways.

20:00So we've learned what love is, and we've learned that without love, it doesn't matter how gifted we are as Christians. So the only question that remains now is why? Why are we nothing without love? Well, that's the question that Paul answers in our final section, verses 8 through 13. Verse 8 begins with Paul's statement, love never ends. So we have our answer right there in the first three words of this section. The whole reason that we are nothing without love and gain nothing without love is because love is the one thing that never ends. Prophecies and knowledge, they will pass away. Why?

20:52Because now we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when the perfect Comes. That is, when Christ comes and we receive our resurrection bodies, He's going to reveal all things to us. At that time, we will know as we were meant to know and understand as we were meant to understand. There's going to be no more confusion, no more theological debates. At that time, it will be clear that we Reformed Baptists were right all along.

21:30What about tongues? They will cease. Why? Because as we mentioned earlier, tongues are a sign not for believers, but for unbelievers. And there are no unbelievers in heaven. And there are also no unbelievers in hell. As James teaches, even the demons believe the truth about Christ and shudder. Tongues, along with all of the sign gifts, will cease because they aren't needed any longer. There are no unbelievers in eternity. And in verse 11, what Paul does is he compares our time on this earth prior to Christ's return to childhood. He says, Look, when you're a child, you know and you understand in part.

22:23That's not to say that what you know and understand as a child is wrong. It's simply to say that. What you know and understand as a child is incomplete. It's partial, but when you grow into adulthood, what happens is that your understanding and your knowledge mature. You don't speak or think or reason like a child anymore. And what Paul is saying is that the whole reason we need the spiritual gifts now is because we don't see everything clearly. God or ourselves or others or the world. We don't see those things clearly. So we need spiritually gifted people to help us see and understand and believe what is true.

23:14What he says also, he switches metaphors. He says, our time on this earth is like looking into a mirror. And you have to remember, back then, mirrors were just polished metals. And so when you looked into a mirror, you saw a true reflection, but the reflection was dim and fuzzy. But when Christ comes, we will see him and the truth face to face. We will know fully, even as we were fully known by God to that point. What a wonderful promise that is.

23:52And that brings us to verse 13 and Paul's conclusion here in this passage. He says, So now, faith. Faith, hope, and love abide. These three, but the greatest of these is love. They remain because they are greater than all the signs, all the knowledge, all the sacrifices. But the greatest of these is love because there will come a day when even faith and hope pass away. Take a look at 2 Corinthians chapter 5 on your screen.

24:36So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Take a look at Romans 8 on your screen. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. So friends, faith and hope are going to pass away because one day we won't be walking by faith anymore. We will be walking by sight.

25:22And one day hope is going to pass away because we won't have to hope when we can see Christ face to face, when all of our hope is. Are realized at his return. When he comes again and when we rise with him in our resurrection bodies, there's nothing left to hope for. All of our hopes have been realized. So faith and hope pass away, but love, love never ends. And it never ends because that's what we're going to be doing in the new heavens and the new earth: loving God and loving each other for eternity.

26:05Friends, this passage, especially verses 4 through 7, is one of the best known in the Bible. Even unbelievers are familiar with it. It gets quoted in secular speeches to extol the virtues of love and to charge people to act lovingly according to this passage. But of course, there's a massive obstacle to actually putting Paul's words into practice. And that massive obstacle is our sinful nature, which leads us to put ourselves first, what we want, what we desire, ahead of the needs and preferences of others.

26:57You see, it's not natural. For us to be patient and kind, to rejoice with the truth, to bear, believe, hope, or endure all things. It is natural for us to envy and boast, for us to be prideful and arrogant and rude, to insist on our own way, to be irritable and resentful, to rejoice at wrongdoing. In other words, what comes naturally to us is to sin against others, not to love them. But, friends, there is good news for all of us today.

27:42And that good news is what the Apostle John writes: that we love because He first loved us. Jesus said that no one had greater love than to lay down His life for His friends. But Jesus did far more than that. Not only did He lay down His life for His friends, He laid down His life for His enemies, for those who hated and rebelled against Him. And after dying for us on the cross in our place and for our sins, Jesus rose again from the grave, defeating not only death, but the sin that leads to death in the first place.

28:27Friends, the only people who can love us. Others, the way that we are called to in 1 Corinthians 13 are those who have experienced the love of God in Christ through repentance and faith. Only when we receive Christ do we then have the motivation and power through the Holy Spirit to be able to lay down our rights, our preferences, our hopes, and our agendas for the good of others, even at cost to ourselves. And that's because we understand that this life isn't all there is.

29:07So worry and anxiety and striving can be replaced with faith and hope in the promises of God. We can sacrifice everything, even our very lives, which is such a timely word in the midst of a global pandemic. We can sacrifice everything, even our very lives, because we know that we will live eternally and reign eternally with Christ. So, church, the sure foundation of hope and faith is found in Christ and in Christ alone. So, let's strive to love one another in these ways.

30:00Without Christ-like love, all the signs, all the knowledge, all the sacrifice are for nothing. Let's pray. Father, this is a very familiar passage, one that many of us know, that plenty of us have memorized, that we have been blessed by for much of our lives. Many of us have also understood it wrongly to be pertaining to human love between a man and a woman. It certainly applies in that context, but it applies much more broadly to the church.

30:52The place in the people where we are most tempted to be impatient and rude, to envy and to boast, to insist upon our own way, to get irritated with others who need our time and our attention and our resources, to resent those who perhaps are acknowledged more than we are, or who seem to get more appreciation than we do. Father, it is among The family of God, that we most need your grace and the power of the Holy Spirit to be able to live out the truths of this passage.

31:41And Father, I pray for everyone who is watching this on the internet this morning. I pray that for those who have not turned from their sin and received not only Christ and His salvation, but also the power of the Holy Spirit to be able to put these things into practice, I pray that you would meet them in their home this morning or wherever they're watching. I pray that you would call them to yourself. I pray that they would receive Jesus by faith.

32:17God, you are love, and we pray that as your people, we would exhibit your love first and foremost to one another and then to the watching world who so needs to see and experience it as well. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.