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.
No comments:
Post a Comment