1 Co 13
28 January 2001
“John Doe is Patient, Jane Doe is Kind¼”
For those who’ve been gone the past two weeks—or could benefit from a quick review—this is the third, and final, installment in my series on Paul and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. There's still chapter 14, in which the apostle goes into some detail as to how spiritual gifts are to be used during worship. However, I’ll stop with chapter 13, since I won’t be the one preaching next week!
Previously, I’ve said that despite the varieties of gifts of the Spirit and ways in which our Lord calls us, we’re still serving the same God. And closely related to that, all of us who are in Christ are members of a single body. For the body to function properly, the members need to seek the still more excellent way of love. And that, very quickly, brings us to today’s epistle reading.
1 Corinthians 13 has been called by various names: the love chapter, a hymn to love, a psalm in praise of love, and so on. It’s popular at weddings, since it seems to be appropriate at a moment in which two people are about to be married. And it is. Still, Paul is thinking of a lot more than the ideal matrimonial bond. We need to remember the context of the carismata [charismata], the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Of course, once we start thinking about how God relates to us, we’re compelled to consider how we relate to each other. And being grounded as this chapter is, in the real-life struggles of a Christian community, we’re brought to the ways in which the love of God and the love of others intersect.
This isn’t the first time in the epistle that Paul addresses a subject in one chapter, and then in the next, raises the discussion to a higher level. For example, in chapter 8, he takes on the controversial issue of Christians eating food that’s been sacrificed to idols. Then in chapter 9, Paul explains that while he may have the right to do many things, out of concern for those who may be led astray he accepts limits on his freedom. As he says in verse 12, “Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ.”
So it is with chapters 12 and 13. The Corinthian believers are using their gifts, but not for the common good. Each is trying to outdo the other in being spiritual. Again, Paul has to show them the way. He raises the discourse to a higher level. Without love, they only pull themselves down.
But the apostle doesn’t simply point the finger. He includes himself in the warnings he issues. He’s careful to use the first person: “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels¼if I have prophetic powers¼If I give away all my possessions¼ but do not have love, I gain nothing” (vv. 1-3). He begins this song of love by letting his readers know that without love, nothing matters. As we’ll soon see, he uses the next four verses to describe the qualities of love. And his final section, starting with verse 8, is dedicated to praising the permanence of love.
At this point, I probably should explain what the sermon title’s all about! When I was at Bible college in Florida, my roommate and I had a mutual friend who came up with a note of encouragement. He simply took verses 4 to 7 and substituted my roommate's name wherever the words "love" or "it" appear. And as it turns out, my roommate's name just happened to be Paul. So it resulted in: "Paul is patient; Paul is kind; Paul is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Paul does not insist on his own way," and so forth.
Of course, that name doesn't work for everyone, so I decided to let those generic people, John and Jane Doe, do the job! The task remains for each of us to plug our names into the text and see how it sounds. I have to admit, if I heard someone recite that litany with my name inserted, I'd have to respond with, "James who?"
Considering the situation in Corinth, people there may be thinking something similar as they hear the apostle Paul's description of love. This isn't the vague, fleeting, emotional high that we often call love. Rather, this is a much more tangible critter, something to be seen in action. Borrowing—and changing—a line from Forrest Gump, "Love is as love does."
One of my favorite writers, a continuing source of inspiration and imagination, was Thomas Merton, a Roman Catholic monk who died 33 years ago while visiting Thailand. In one of his many books, he talks about just this subject—the nature of love. Specifically, he mentions what he calls a "romantic" tendency "to turn from the love of people to the love of love itself."[1]
This is a distortion of love, one that loves the idea of love. This is the love that's defined by the feeling it produces. It's very much like the empty faith criticized in the epistle of James. This is the love that sees "a brother or sister...naked and [lacking] daily food," and says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill" without actually providing the food and clothing (2:15-16). Perhaps it means well, but it accomplishes nothing.
Merton warns us of another type of love gone wrong: legalism. This is a love that values law more than it does "the persons for whose benefit the law was instituted." If the romantic tendency is too weak, then the legalistic tendency is too ham-fisted to be of any good. This love, "instead of broadening [its] view to comprehend the views of another, insists on bringing everyone else into the stifling confines of [its] own narrowness."[2]
Legalism is often associated with so-called conservative concerns, such as opposition to indecency in the arts. But there are examples of legalism among so-called liberal concerns, as well. In the early '90s, we saw the rise of political correctness. I'm not saying that, on the one hand, we shouldn't distinguish between pornography and legitimate art, and on the other hand, pay more attention to the words we use to describe people. I am saying that, no matter how important the cause, people are even more important. Maybe you’ve heard the saying, “You gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet.” Well, people aren’t eggs!
There's one more love I want to mention as a possible danger, and that's the love of another person. (Stay with me a moment, before you conclude that my heart has now completely turned to stone!) Much like the devotion to a cause, the love of a human should never be the highest good. We often hear people on TV or in movies say things like, "He's my reason for living," or, "She's my whole world!" That could be considered either inspiring or tragic.
I wouldn't want Banu to tell me that she loves me more than anything else. You see, that's a position that only God can properly fill. Indeed, whatever we love more than anything else, whatever is our highest priority—be that a person, a cause, an institution, whatever—that is our god. It may seem impossible to believe, but I have failed Banu! I do fail Banu, and it's entirely likely that I will fail her again.
The reason for that is simple: I'm not God. Any love focused on me, apart from God, will find that I have limits. The same is true for the rest of us who aren't God (who, by the way, is love). What doesn't have limits is love itself. When we love the Lord more than anything else, all the other loves in life find their truest fulfillment.
That leads us to the last part of the chapter, which takes its theme from the beginning of verse 8: "Love never ends." This, the still more excellent way of love—and indeed, love without distortions, some of which I’ve mentioned—this is the gift that surpasses all. Paul challenges the Corinthian church to recognize that they need to grow up. Again, he uses himself as the example: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways” (v. 11).
The journey of love and toward love never ends, at least not in this life. While at this point in time “we see in a mirror, dimly,” the time will come when we will see love—the one who is love—“face to face” (v. 12). As Thomas Merton puts it, “The command to love creates a new world in Christ. To obey that command is not merely to carry out a routine duty; it is to enter into life and to continue in life. To love is not merely righteousness, it is transformation from brightness to brightness as by the Spirit of the Lord.”[3]
The love to which the apostle calls us, to which he would have us outdo each other, is “the sweet air of Christ, a divine air,…[an] ‘air’ [which] is God Himself—the Holy Spirit.”[4] The Spirit of Christ is the spirit of love. As we strive together for that love to be born in our midst, we will receive all the gifts we need to flourish. But as I said last week, it won’t happen automatically—we have to want it, we have to pray for it, and we have to do it. We have to want, pray for, and do the love of God.
The good news is that God longs for us. God wants to fill us with the Spirit’s love. As that happens, anxiety over falling membership totals will be replaced by the faith that God is indeed doing a new thing. Confusion as to what direction we need to take will give way to the confident hope that we are part of what the Spirit of God is doing in the world and in our community. And we’ll find that this faith and this hope are supremely well-founded, for they’re grounded in the love which never dies.
[1] Thomas Merton, “The Power and Meaning of Love,” Disputed Questions (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1960), 113.
[2] Merton, 115
[3] Merton, 122.
[4] Merton, 126.