Sunday, January 8, 2017

The Most Excellent Way

1 Corinthians 13:1-4

Welcome! Today we are beginning our series entitled Of First Importance which, over the next few months, takes us through I Corinthians 13-16. Viewed another way, this is the conclusion of our earlier series Broken but Indispensable which took us through the first 12 chapters; this series took place last year from May through early October. With the Christmas season approaching, we chose to do a shorter series on worship and then pick up I Corinthians this year so that we wouldn’t feel rushed through the incredibly rich and dense material that we see in the latter part of I Corinthians. We wanted to take our time so that the content would really sink in, so that we would have time to really explore the practical applications of the material.


Because it has been a few months, and because I Corinthians is a single letter rather than a bunch of disconnected passages, I thought we would start today by reviewing in summary the primary message of the first 12 chapters.  Now Corinth was a relatively new city, built upon the ruins of a very old city. Its population at the time was probably around 400,000, and it was an important center of trade. It was known for its promiscuity, for its cultic religious practices, and, due to its closeness to Athens, for its more than fair share of intellectual elite. If you are looking for a modern city with significant similarities, I would choose San Francisco, which is also known for its promiscuity, for lots of new-age religious thinking, and with Silicon Valley nearby, for its abundance of liberal-leaning intellectuals.

Just as I am sure that the underlying pervasive culture of San Francisco no doubt pressures individual Christian believers and entire churches there, the same was true for Corinth. Much of the first 12 chapters of I Corinthians deals with problems affecting the church. Chapters 1-4 and 11 focuses on the pride among its members and on divisions in the church. Chapter 5 and the first part of Chapter 6 deals with sexual immorality. The second part of Chapter 6 deals with the fact that things were so bad that church members were suing each other in the public courts rather than working out things among one another without outside involvement.

Beginning with Chapter 7, Paul talks about topics where there was disagreement in the church about the right way to do things. In Chapter 7, Paul discusses marriage vs. singleness. In Chapter 8 and in part of Chapter 10, the topic is whether it is acceptable to eat meat sacrificed to idols. In both cases, the answers are somewhat grey. Both marriage and singleness are acceptable; eating sacrificial meat is also acceptable, unless you are in the presence of those who see it as a defiling sin.

In Chapter 9, Paul defends his qualifications and authority for speaking definitively on these topics. And then, in Chapter 10, he warns them against all kinds of idolatry. He says to do all things for the glory of God and to follow him in this as he follows Christ. In Chapter 11, he addresses practices that occur when the church body comes together – head coverings and the Lord’s Supper (that is, communion). In Chapter 12 he continues this theme by discussing the topic of spiritual gifts. He tells them that the gifts are varied and that all gifts are valuable to the entire body. Thus neither should people boast about having a “better” gift nor should they demean those they believe have a “lesser” gift. Speaking to the overall theme of the letter, he tells them that the Spirit has given out the gifts as He wanted so “that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.” He ends the chapter by saying, “And I will show a still more excellent way.”

And this brings us to Chapter 13 which flows straight out of Chapter 12 on gifts:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 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. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. – I Cor. 13:1-3

This is powerful. This is profound. This is poetic. Let’s first talk about how this applies to the Corinthians, and then we will talk about how it applies to us.

The Corinthians had a lot of problems. In chapter after chapter, Paul is dealing with the individual and specific problems. In general, this kind of thing is quite exhausting. It seems like there is a bigger “something” these guys are not getting. If only they understood this bigger something, all these specific rules, corrections, and guidelines would not be necessary.

Those of you who are parents know exactly what this like. If a child is determined to push boundaries, break the rules, etc., you need more and more rules, more and more complicated conditions for the rules, more and more exceptions to the rules, and so on. It’s all never-ending.

As a professor I also find this true – especially with the rules for my course. When I taught my first course as a professor 24 years ago, my course syllabus – which communicates the rules for the course – was one page. Today, for my online classes, my syllabus is a full seven pages filled with rules. Much of this has been added as a response to new misbehaviors, new inappropriate actions, new conflicts. The syllabus is seen by students as a rulebook – if it’s not in the syllabus, presumably (to them), that means it’s OK.

Let’s talk a little about that word love in this passage. In Greek the word is agape, which we have talked about previously. The coming weeks will highlight what this love is all about, but let me say at the outset that it is not talking about romantic love or even about an overflowing emotional feeling. The point of the passage is not that, despite all these gifts, you are nothing without this kind of love, the kind of love that is referenced in tons of secular songs. Neither is this talking about brotherly love, “best friends forever” kind of love. Neither yet is this talking about tolerance, which has somehow become the new definition of love in our culture.

Now, the Bible tells us in I John 4:8 that “God is love.” The agape form of love is used here. This tells me that our understanding of agape will be necessarily limited just as our understanding of God is limited. There is depth, and meaning, and a richness to agape that is simply beyond our grasp.

Nevertheless, there are aspects of agape that we can understand, and this is what Paul is going to explain further in I Corinthians. Before we get into that, I want to explore a few other passages that use agape. Let me start with the two John 3:16 passages:

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. – John 3:16

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. – I John 3:16

This type of love is about sacrifice, but more than that, it is about rescue. Someone might try to argue that tolerance is a form of sacrifice; if someone comes to church who has a perfectly fine home but he hasn’t taken a shower or a bath in a month and he stinks awfully, it may be tolerant to act as if he doesn’t stink, but love is to gently and respectfully get with him and find out what is going on. Maybe he has major plumbing problems – in that case you offer to help him fix it, or if he has plenty of funds, to help him find a good plumber to fix it. Or maybe he has developed a severe phobia of water (I know this is unlikely but go with me on this), so you offer to help him talk to one of the pastors about it or to see a professional counselor, or you simply talk to him yourself to try to understand where this phobia came from and help him overcome it. Or maybe something has happened in his life that has caused him to become severely depressed, and it is all he can do to get out of bed; in this case, again, there are options ranging from personal help to talking with a pastor to getting professional help, but my point here is the agape love is about rescue. If someone’s life stinks, agape love is all about finding a way to improve it.

God did this for us. Our lives stunk, and they stunk so bad that there was only one way to help us. A chat from a friend wouldn’t have helped. A talk with a religious official wouldn’t have helped. And even a professional counselor couldn’t help, if it weren’t for the one person who actually rescued us – Jesus Christ. He did something so extreme it is unthinkable – He gave up His own life to rescue us. This is agape love.

When a fireman goes into a burning building started by an arsonist to rescue a little girl he has never met who has succumbed to the smoke, when he does so knowing there are extreme risks to his own safety, that there are no promises he will live through the attempt, he is practicing agape love. In a terrorist situation, when a person uses himself as a shield against another person he does not know, putting himself in harm’s way so that a bullet hits him instead of the person he is protecting, he is practicing agape love.  And yet these pictures all fall short of the agape love God has shown us. We need to modify the fireman story so that the fire started by the arsonist has already killed the fireman’s only child, and the fireman rescues the arsonist from the fire. We need to modify the terrorist story so that the terrorist was the leader of a group of terrorists, and has already personally killed the person’s only child, and we need to modify it further so that the other terrorists have turned on the leader and are about to kill him, and, finally, we need to modify it so that the person, the one who has lost his child, rescues the terrorist. This is a more accurate picture of agape love.

But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. – Romans 5:8  

This verse demonstrates agape love. This is the picture we are to have. This is the standard. This is the definition. And with these ideas clearly focused in our minds, we can go back to I Corinthians 13.

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 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. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. – I Cor. 13:1-3

We have a natural tendency to think the opposite of this when we think about leading other people to Christ. If only I could speak more giftedly, people would come to faith. If only I would know exactly what to say, I could lead people to Christ in my conversations. If only I had a better understanding of Scripture, I could blow away everyone’s questions and they would come to Christ. If only I had more money or more time, or both, I could go on mission trips and people would get saved all over the world. If only I helped people out financially, they would appreciate me and come to Christ.

Let me stop on that last one for a second. Do you know that often the opposite is true? I want to read an excerpt from The Insanity of Obedience by Nik Ripkin.

I went to a strongly Muslim country to interview Muslim background believers in five different settings. The interviews were rich and varied. They understood their faith in the context of local history and culture. After the first set of interviews, I asked a final question, “Would you be willing to share with me what makes a good worker from the West?”

After the normal hesitation, one of the men said, “We cannot tell you what makes a good worker, but we can tell you about the worker we love.” I prompted them to continue and they told me a Westerner’s name. I asked them again to tell me what he did to deserve such an emotional response and they replied, “We don’t know why, but we love him.” In my notes, I wrote down, “They love him.”  

I went to a second location and interviewed some men and women believers. Later that day I asked them the same question about Western workers. Surprisingly, they answered my question in the same way. “We don’t know what makes a good worker,” they said, “but we can tell you who we love.” Then they proceeded to tell me the same man’s name. Again, in my notes, I wrote down, “They love him.”

I traveled to five different locations to interview Muslim background believers. In every setting I asked the same question about Western workers. I wanted to learn what makes workers successful and welcome in local eyes. As I moved from place to place for my interviews, I heard the same man’s name and the same words of description: “This is the man we love.”

After hearing these words over and over, I found myself becoming jealous. After all, I had never been loved this deeply. I was intrigued and felt compelled to figure out what these words meant.
Finally with the fifth group, I refused to budge. After finishing another set of interviews, I moved on to the familiar question: “What makes a good Western worker?” True to form, these people mentioned the same man.

I stubbornly crossed my arms, sat back in my chair, and told them that I was not leaving until they told me why so many people in this country loved the same worker from the West. Finally, one of the men leaned aggressively across the table, looked me in the eye, and tapped me on the chest with his finger. He said, “I’ll tell you why we love him. He borrows money from us!”

I thought to myself, well, that’s nothing. I could do that! Yet I knew there had to be more to the story, so I began to draw them out. Finally, they began to share the details. They said to me, somewhat aggressively and with pride, “When this man’s father died and he did not have enough money to go home to bury his father, he did not go to the other Westerners to borrow money. He came to us and we took up an offering so that he could go home and bury his father. When his family had given away so much of their money that they had trouble putting meat on the table, paying their rent, and raising the school fees necessary for their children, this brother did not go to the Westerners for money; he came to us. And we loaned him what was needed. So this is why we love him. He needs us. The rest of you workers have never needed us.”

Look at the passage again:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 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. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. – I Cor. 13:1-3

What is the point of these gifts? It’s not to make me more capable, to make it so that I can independently go out save the world like those Western missionaries that the Muslim background believers were not particularly impressed by. They also said to Nik,

“You give us Bibles. You bring the gospel. You bring materials for discipleship. You rent places for us to meet. You bring your songs from America. You bring the baptism. You bring everything, expecting us to sit passively and simply appreciate everything that you give us. It is as if we are not worthy of contributing anything of value ourselves. It is all about your giving. And we feel like we should simply sit quietly and receive.”

Although those missionaries mean well, do you understand that something is missing? What is missing? Agape. Agape between man and man is all about interdependence, not one-way dependence. Back to I Corinthians 12:

But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. – I Cor. 12:24-26

I don’t normally do this, but I want to highlight someone who has lived this out for me. This person is Micah Lee. For years he has lived in another part of the state, but he still calls me regularly and our relationship has always been that of equals in Christ, not as that of pastor to member. He always asks me how I am doing, how he can pray for me, and offers me advice as I share my trials and struggles. I do the same for him. He regularly listens to the audio recordings of our messages, so it will be fun when he gets to this part. But he lives out the verse that “its parts should have equal concern for each other” and has done so for many, many years. It is because of this relationship that, like the Muslim background believers, we would say of each other, “this is the man I love.”

Now many of you do this also, very much so – so please don’t think that by not mentioning you by name that I think you have done this any less!

Really, what the end of I Cor. 12 is saying is that the point of the spiritual gifts is to help us live out agape love to one another. And let’s look the beginning of I Cor. 13 one more time:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 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. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. – I Cor. 13:1-3

So what the beginning of I Cor. 13 is saying is that apart from this driving force of agape love towards one another, the spiritual gifts are completely useless, or even worse than useless. Don’t be a resounding gong or a clanging symbol! Don’t be nothing! Don’t gain nothing! Serve one another with a spirit of agape love, the love of self-sacrifice, and watch God use the gifts to abundantly multiply your influence and effectiveness. If we all do this interdependently, serving and allowing ourselves to be served, we will be functioning exactly as God wants us to be.

Let me say a little more on that last point and then we’ll move on to verse 4. As I have already mentioned agape love is modeled by what Christ did for us. And I emphasized that His dying on the cross rescued us. In the same way, if we really want to exhibit agape love as a body, we have to be open to each other, open enough so that we can “rescue” each other. Our self-sacrifice most be for a purpose, not just an act in itself. We should be in the continual process of building each other up, of helping one another up, of helping each other overcome the hindrances that entangle us, and to do this, we must be open with one another. This of course doesn’t mean that you have to share your struggles with everyone in the church, although the Lord may possibly lead you to do just that in some cases. But in every case it does mean that you need to open up to someone. Then, as we respond to these genuine needs with a spirit of loving self-sacrifice, real needs, real problems, real hurts, real challenges, will be met. And we will be a church of love.

Let’s go on to verse 4.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. – I Cor. 13:4

Now in the English most translations are similar to this in that they use adjectives – love is this, love is not that. Patient. Kind. Non-envious. Non-boasting. Non-proud. But in the Greek these are actually verbs. This is going to sound wrong, because it is, but here is my attempt to capture the sense of the Greek:

Love “patients.” Love “kinds.” Love “non-envies.” Love “non-boasts.” Love “non-prouds.” – I Cor. 13:4 (BBPV) (Bad Baum paraphrase version)

It is somewhat ironic, but one the least literal translations of the Bible, The Message translation, actually gets close to this. Here is how The Message puts it:

Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, doesn’t have a swelled head. – I Cor. 13:4 (The Message)

My point is that here it doesn’t say that love is stuff, it says that love does stuff. So what does it do? There are five things here.

First, love is patient. Love “patients.” The Greek word is makrothumia which literally means long-suffering. And as others have said, and I have said before, long-suffering means suffering long. It’s makrothumia, not microthumia, OK? This is long-lasting patience with people that make you suffer, to be blunt. This means after you are wronged, and wronged again, and wronged again, whether that means something major, like you were cheated, or something relatively more minor, like you weren’t appreciated, you don’t retaliate, you don’t take revenge, you don’t hold onto a grudge about it in your heart. You let it go. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you can never talk to them about what they have done; there are times that might be appropriate. That would presume that they are open to such correction – they should be, we all should be – but some people aren’t there, or they are only there with a small subset of people. Even if they are open to it with you, you don’t get to do it all the time. Most importantly, you need to do it prayerfully and coming from a point where your desire is to “rescue” or help them. Just remember that verse about the speck vs. the plank in one’s eye before you do it. Search yourself before you go to them. Is this a big deal to you because it just happens to be of your hot buttons, or is it because they are really hurting themselves in a major way and you want better for them?

What I picture here is the family dog that never complains or retaliates when the toddler pulls his tail, touches him on the face, or otherwise treats him roughly. The dog somehow knows that this little person doesn’t yet have the control or the knowledge to know how to play appropriately. The dog is practicing makrothumia.   Let us not be outdone by dogs!

I should point out here that our culture generally does not appreciate longsuffering – quite the opposite. Our culture loves to hear stories of how the wronged person creatively and decisively gets revenge. This is a major form of humor for us. Now sometimes we think it is very inappropriate, but usually our attitude is quite conditional. It all depends on how big a jerk the other guy was. If he was really awful, we smile (on the inside, at least) and think, “Well, he certainly had it coming.” This is the opposite of makrothumia.

Second, love is kind. Love “kinds.” What this means is that a person does many kind and thoughtful things for others. Interestingly, a form of the same word is used in Matt. 11:30 when Jesus says, starting at verse 28,

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  - Matt. 11:28-30

The word translated “kind” in I Cor. 13 is a form of the word “easy” here. My yoke is kind. When we yoke ourselves to Him, He returns kindness to us. That gives a new take on this passage, doesn’t it? But back to I Cor. 13:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. – I Cor. 13:4

Kindness is doing the little (and no so little) self-sacrificial things to help others, self-sacrificial in that it comes at the cost of your time. The doctor who spends extra time with each patient. The professor who helps the student who comes in for help, letting it take as long as it takes. The mother who reads the whole two stories at bedtime to her young child, without rushing through it.

Kindness is also anticipatory. That is, kindness pays attention not only to what people say in response to questions, but to what they don’t say and to what is going on around them. A kind person always seems to be able to buy thoughtful gifts. A kind person notices when the other person needs a rest. And so on. A kind person also listens to the hints of the Holy Spirit in learning the best way to serve others.

Let’s go on to the third quality of love: Love does not envy. It “non-envies.” To envy is to be jealous of someone. You can be envious of someone for whom good things happen to, and you can also be envious, if you are going through a hard time, of everyone who isn’t going through what you are going through. Neither are characteristics of agape. The non-envious person rejoices with those who rejoice. They say “I am so happy for you!” and they really mean it without any thought of themselves. Think about that last phrase for a moment – thinking of yourself in context of the situation is the problem here. If you didn’t bring yourself into the situation, it would be impossible to be envious.

Interestingly, the Greek word is related to our word zeal and literally means to burn with zeal. If you think back to when you were jealous in the past, you will see that there is indeed this burning feeling wrapped up in it. As the recent wildfires should remind you, fires are dangerous. They can flare up completely out of control. Envy is like this. It can flare and consume you. Agape love, at the first hint of the fire of envy, puts the fire out. Yes, it would be best if the fire never even began to start, but the idea here is that it doesn’t burn. It’s like lighting a match only to have it immediately blown out. This is how we should be with regards to envy and jealousy.

By the way, why did Eve take the forbidden fruit? It was jealousy – the serpent told her she could be like God. Why would she want to do that, unless she was envious? Why did Cain kill Abel? He was jealous that Abel’s sacrifice was accepted but his was not. Why did Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery? They were jealous of him. Why did Saul want to kill David? He was jealous of him. You see how out of hand – like a wildfire – envy can easily become. Don’t mess with this ancient and dangerous sin.

The fourth quality of love is that it does not boast. Boasting is often a sign of insecurity. When another presents something about themselves, one wrong action is to be jealous, envious. Often this person is thinking “I can’t do that” and extrapolating to “I can’t do much of anything.” In contrast, the boasting person only briefly thinks “I can’t do that” but quickly moves on to “But I can do this, this, and this! So there!”

Each of these “not” qualities are opposites of agape love. So boasting is an opposite of love. One of the stories in the children’s book Frog and Toad illustrates this beautifully. In this story, Frog has a dream in which he shows off all his amazing skills for Toad. For example he plays the piano, quite excellently, and points out to Toad how great he is. With each performance, Toad applauds, but you notice something strange – he keeps shrinking. He gets smaller and smaller and his voice gets higher and quieter until, poof, he vanishes. “Oh, no,” cries Frog. “What have I done?” This is a profound picture of what we do when the spirit of boasting is within us. Love does the opposite – it makes people feel bigger, special, cared-for. How do we keep from boasting? By making ourselves smaller, rather than the other person. This is yet one more form of self-sacrifice.

And the fifth and final quality of love we will look at today is not being proud, that is humility. The word for being proud here is literally translated as “puffed up.” Again we get this idea of trying to make yourself look big. C.S. Lewis writes about pride being the sin behind almost every other sin, and I think he is right. We know that God opposes the proud – which is a fearful and terrible thing, if you really think about it – but gives grace to the humble. Agape love is characterized by a humble nature. Humble people don’t get offended. Humble people are easygoing. Humble people are almost hardwired to serve others sacrificially. I think of John the Baptist when he sees Jesus and says, “He must increase and I must decrease.” This is agape love.

We could say so much more about each of these qualities of love, especially the final one, but we are out of time. As we wrap up, I just want to mention two things. First, these qualities of love are closely related to the fruit of the Spirit as described in Galatians. That is, we cannot do this alone, but need the Holy Spirit’s help. We should pray for the Holy Spirit to help us if we want to grow in agape love. Second – and I really want this to sink in – note that these qualities of love are not spiritual gifts. Why is the distinction important? Because whereas a person normally only has one or maybe a few gifts of the Spirit, we are all called to exhibit all of the qualities of love. You aren’t allowed to say you don’t have the gift of kindness, because it is not a gift. It is love itself. We should all seek to grow in all the qualities of love. 

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