1 CORINTHIANS: The Love Chapter
Pastor Steven Osborne
Transcribed by PulpitAI (with edits)
Being Biblical
I wrote a blog about a week and a half ago on something that was on my mind, and then I took our golden doodle out last Friday morning—there right across from the Burrito Union there’s a beautiful little trail—and so it was Friday morning, and I took her out. She had a lot of energy. And just walking, I was kind of pondering again on this question on why is it so hard to be biblical? Because it is hard, right? And kind of as I was writing about this, that it is—a lot of times it’s easy for us to be biblical when we want to prove a point, right? And when we, again, when maybe there’s some issues or things that we’re passionate about, and then we say, “Well, let me show you Scripture.” But it is hard to be biblical in all of life and all of the things that life throws at us, and as we think about the complexities and the things that we hear on the news and the things that challenge us, to actually step back and to say, “What is man-made ideologies and man-made wisdom, and what is actually biblical? And how do we live that out?” And I don’t know about you, but that’s not always easy. It is hard. It is hard to be biblical. And I’m being challenged in this area every day. There’s always a temptation to form your ideas from culture or popular ideologies. But to actually kind of pause and say, “Okay, let me look at Scripture, and let me allow that to shape my view.”
Love in Our Culture
On Thursday night, somebody blessed me with a gift card for Valentini’s. So I haven’t been to Valentini’s in the new place, so it’s been years. Usually I can’t afford it. And so somebody blessed me with a gift card, and I took Venessa on Thursday night to Valentini’s, all dressed up. I even took a shower. And I knew we were not able to really celebrate Friday night for Valentine’s night. And it’s through this that I learned a really new hip word, right? “Galentine’s Day.” Anybody familiar with that? Okay, there’s five of you. So yeah, I had no idea. So I heard about this from Venessa. I guess you celebrate that on February 13th. It kind of came from a TV show back in 2009. I think that’s where that was formed. And that’s an opportunity to go and celebrate the day before Valentine’s Day with a friend. And so I was able to go and celebrate, fancy dinner, with my friend, with Venessa.
Obviously, everyone was all excited about the next day, about Valentine’s Day. And a lot of times when you look at the stores, just after Christmas, they remove all of the Christmas decorations, and then all of the Valentine’s stuff is in the stores, right? It doesn’t take long before Target switch things around, and you see all of the pink chocolates and the pink flowers and different things. And we are obsessed as a nation and probably as a world on this topic about love, right? It is a fun topic. And especially as a pastor, and when I get to do weddings and stuff, a lot of times we will work through this chapter that we will be reading through, 1 Corinthians 13. It is known as the Love Chapter. And over the last several months, we’ve been looking at this book in 1 Corinthians 13, and again, this chapter today, they’re looking at this topic about love.
Now let’s turn—if you have your Bibles with you, please turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 13. I thought we just might have some time to do 13 and 14, but that’s not gonna happen. And then Dean will be preaching next week on chapter 15, so you will have to suffer through that sermon. I apologize. It’s gonna be great. It’s gonna be awesome.
Scriptural Context
All right, verse 13. Actually, just look at that last verse in chapter 12. It says:
And yet I will show you the most excellent way.
So what we’ve learned so far is Paul is addressing some of the challenges that was happening in this church. It’s a church that he planted, right? Different cultures—Greek, Roman, Jews, Christians—and there’s some complexity. Somebody wrote to him and said, “Man, we’re struggling. There’s some division that’s happening in this church, and people are not acting in a godly way.” And so Paul wrote to them. He’s trying to correct this. He’s trying to create unity, and again, just trying to teach them the biblical way.
So in 1 Corinthians 12, we said 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14 kind of all goes together. Last week, we looked at spiritual gifts, because we have seen that obviously this church was using spiritual gifts. They were actually excited about their spiritual gifts. And it’s like, that’s a good thing. We see how the Spirit was moving and working in their lives, and it’s like, that’s awesome. But they weren’t using that in a biblical way. There were some of them that highlighted certain gifts and said, “Well, maybe these gifts are more important,” right? And then Paul was talking about these gifts, and he says that every believer’s got a gift, and at the end of the day, it is about edifying the body of Christ.
Main Passage
And now today in chapter 13, he’s gonna continue kind of, and he’s gonna really share with us the heart behind verse 12—why we have spiritual gifts, how we should use spiritual gifts, but what’s kind of even the heart behind it, and what’s more important. So and then at the end of chapter 12, he says:
And yet I will show you the most excellent way.
So all of us should now ask, like, “Okay, what is that excellent way? I want to know what’s the excellent way.” Okay? So let’s find out.
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.
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.
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. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 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. 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.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
And then in chapter 14, I want to invite you to go and read that when you maybe get home this week and have some time, because he’s gonna help them to see the order of worship. How do you use some of these spiritual gifts? And he’s talking about tongues in worship and what does that all look like, and so just a lot of great wisdom to the early church and about what a worship service should look like.
Types of Love
So this morning, kind of just as we look at this area of love—in the New Testament, we actually have four Greek words that’s important in this area of love. And so one of the first words that we have in the New Testament is phileo or philia, right? And then you also have eros (Old Testament), you have agape (that is in the New Testament), and then you have storge. All of these are important Greek words that describes love.
Now phileo or philia talks about a friendship love. Right? So again, if you go out with your friends, that brotherly love.
And then you have eros love that you have for your spouse. That talks about that passionate love.
And then you have storge love. That’s a natural love. So even if you have like the ugliest kid, right? And you look at them and you go like, “Oh, that’s my baby. I so love them,” right? That’s what Christo’s mom said. It’s alright, he’ll be preaching one of these days and I’ll get it back. But storge love is that natural love.
And then today the word that we’re looking at, and that’s the word that we’re seeing in 1 Corinthians, is the word agape.
Agape Love
Now, when we think about this word, what does agape mean? Agape is the highest form of love. It’s a selfless, a sacrificial, and unconditional love.
One thing, when we look at this word, it is such a countercultural word, amen, and experience. I mean, in a sense, when we think about love in our culture and how it’s countercultural, we’re called as believers to be selfless, forgiving, and in our culture, a lot of times we see vengeance. We’re called to love our enemies, and a lot of times in our culture, we see, “Well, let’s get even.”
And so this word love, when we think about this, and a lot of times when I do premarital counseling, there’s a whole chapter on this, and we work through some of these words, and I’ll sit them in front of me, and we’ll work through it. And I think part of the—in the book, it says that love is like blood is to a marriage and to life. And so love is very important, and in marriage you need the agape, you need the brotherly, and you need the eros love.
But in context of church world today, we need agape, and that’s our focus this morning. And so Paul is addressing…
A Clanging Cymbal
I want to get one of our students or kids. Is there a kid that’s still in here, or a teenager? All right. Come on, Aubrey. I won’t pick on you guys. All right, come, Vaida. Because you’re always so shy. One time? What do you mean? It’s all the time. All right, so Vaida, today you’re gonna play some drums for us. Okay, so make yourself comfortable. You’ve done this before, right? Okay, I’m just gonna teach you an easy beat today. All I want you to do is I want you to just beat on that thing as loud as you can, on that cymbal. Just the whole time. Don’t stop. Just make it pretty. Okay, don’t stop.
Now, Paul is dealing with the church. This is really fun. Yeah, you really have a gift. Hey, don’t go on the other drums. I didn’t tell you to use the other, just the cymbal.
So the example that Paul is giving us, he says, “You know what? You can prophesy, aou can be a really good speaker, you can speak the language of angels, right, you can brag about how you’re giving up your body and how you’ve been sacrificing for the good of God, but if there’s no love, you’re just noise. I think Paul gets it. I think you get it this morning, right? And again, it’s like, yeah, I mean, we can preach, we can do, but really, if the heart and motivation behind isn’t agape love, we are just noise.
Vaida, great job. I see a future for you. And now you have to stay for second service as well.
We can brag about many things as a church and all of the great things that we do and support, but if the heart behind and the motivation behind it isn’t love, then really it is just noise. And again, there’s many great things that this early church did right. Right? I said, we see that they’re using their spiritual gifts. And this is a young church. And there’s probably great things to be excited about, and even in all of that, they still get some of it wrong. They’re losing the heart. They’re worrying about all of the prophecies and who’s better, who’s the eye and who’s the ear and who’s, you know, the hand, and Paul is correcting them to say, “You know what? It’s all about love.”
And I can stand here today and just say, “I get it.” It is hard. It is hard. It’s easy on a Sunday morning to read about some of these things, but it is hard in the context of marriage sometimes to love your spouse. It’s sometimes hard to love your kids. It is sometimes hard to love church people. Amen? And just, we live in a broken world. But none of those things matter if we don’t have love, if it is not God’s Spirit that’s doing a deep work in us and when that motivation is not love.
And I love how Paul is just summarizing and then bringing all of those things together and saying, “Hey, those spiritual gifts are great. But where’s the love? How’s that ministering to the communities?”
Jesus’ Example
I mean, even when we look at the life of Jesus, I mean, Jesus was such a good example for us when it comes to this agape love. I mean, we see it with him healing the leper in Mark chapter 1, right? Like, here you have an outcast. Nobody wants to hang out with them, and Jesus goes in right to the heart and ministers to him. What about forgiving the woman caught in adultery? We see these examples, and then we see even in his teachings. Just think about the parable of the Prodigal Son, or think about the Good Samaritan. This is all behind the heart of Jesus.
Attributes of Love
Now, when we look at 1 Corinthians 13, a lot of times it’s easy for us to just kind of read over that, and we miss what that all means. How do we apply that to our lives when we look at these things? And so when I have couples, when we’re doing premarital counseling, we kind of slow down, and we start there at verse 4. And 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.
And then the couple need to take each of those attributes, and they have to write down three ways that they will apply that in their marriage. Now a lot of times, for most couples, that is really hard. But imagine how much better our world will look like if we actually love the way that God wants us to love. Imagine what our marriages will look like if we actually take all of these attributes and ways that God is telling us how to love and we apply it to our families. That would be an amazing world. Imagine the Church.
And here’s kind of the kicker this morning. This passage has really nothing to do with marriages. And I mean, this is the passage where we read about at weddings, and I’ve preached on that several times. But Paul is writing this to the Church. He’s writing it to us, and it is still relevant to us today, because we’re not always great in loving this way. And again, man, I can totally relate, because it is hard. We’re human, and a lot of times we want to run the other way. Who wants to practice these things?
And so this morning, I want just take some of these attributes here and for us to just kind of like, what does that mean? What does it mean? We’re not gonna take all of them, we won’t have time, but just several of them.
It says, “Love is patient.” You can take a photo of this link if you want to go and read through the other descriptions. But it says:
Love is patient – It can be translated as longsuffering (a fruit of the Spirit), a quality that does not seek revenge but endures wrong in order to express grace.
So love is patient. And when we even think about this chapter, an aspect that we don’t always think about is, yes, we are called as a church to love this way, but I believe when we look at this, we also see how God loves us.
Love is kind – It can be translated as gracious, virtuous, useful, mild, or pleasant; the opposite of harsh, sharp, or bitter. This is actually a verb in Greek.
Love is not boastful or arrogant. These are related ideas of self-promoting, puffed up; in context, this has to do with considering others as more important than self.
Love does not keep a record of wrongs. The word literally refers to bookkeeping/mathematics. Some people say this means that “love always sees the best in people.” No, it’s more “love doesn’t remember the worst in people.” This means that love always forgives wrongdoing.
So when you look at these descriptions this morning, and we just think about, again, how Paul is kind of calling out the Church, but again, how relevant it is to us, and when we look at these, it’s like, do we see this fruit in our lives? Is this actually part of our lives? Is this the way that we are living it out? And again, I’m saying, it’s like, man, it is not always easy. But it is doable. We can do it.
The Language of Love
It is almost like we have to learn a new language.
I was thinking about just, you know, how impressed—well, Paul Norgren, he’s got about two or three lines in Afrikaans, and some mornings he’ll greet Christo and I in Afrikaans, and we’re always very impressed when he pulls out the Afrikaans. But I would really be impressed if he starts to have a real conversation with us, and if he spent a lot of time on Duolingo and learning Afrikaans, right, and suddenly we start to talk about sports and different things in Afrikaans. It is hard. Language is hard to learn.
In the same way, when we look at 1 Corinthians, Paul is saying, as a church, our task is to almost learn a new language, and that language is love. And here we have the definition. Here we have the “how” to do it.
The Importance of Love
So why is that important? Well, if you have, again, your Bible in front of you, turn to John chapter 13, verse 35. Because now we’re gonna see why this is important. John 13. I’ll start in verse 34.
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”
And then here, this is why it’s so important.
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
I kind of wondered this morning and stuff, just reading through the message again and kind of thinking about my own life and areas that I fall short in this area, kind of wondering, why is it so hard? And then secondly, just kind of the question about, “Okay, Lord, how do we experience more of that in our lives?”
And I think one area where we get to grow in this area to love people is when we go through hard times, right—when we experience hurt, when somebody impacts our heart, when there’s painful stuff—because it’s in that moment that you and I get to pick if we’re gonna act out in the flesh or are we again gonna say, “Let me look at Scripture and figure out how do I address this? How do I live this out?”
And again, there’s a whole world that is looking at the Church and saying, “Okay Church, how are you gonna live this out with all of the complexities around us? How are you gonna live this out? What makes you actually different?” Unfortunately, fair or not fair, the Church doesn’t have a good reputation, right? I mean, when the secular world is looking at us, they’ve got some choice words for us. And we might not be able to convince them, but the way that we can convince the world is by living this out and to make a difference and to impact one life at a time. And to look—how do we interact? How do we interact on social media? How do we interact with one another? Because if we can’t even get that right in the Church, how will we get it right in the world?
I think it was last Friday, I know there was something—Venessa and I was watching Conclave. It’s a new movie, and they show the process when a pope dies and they have to vote for a new pope. You know, and then they have to lock up all of these bishops, and then they get to vote for whoever’s gonna be the new pope, and maybe you’ve seen kind of that process, and when they burn the smoke, and they say, “Oh yeah, they came to a conclusion on who’s gonna be the new pope,” or “No, they have to vote again.” But in any case, can you imagine locking up all of these bishops in a room—and they did a good job in this movie. Venessa thought it was very boring; she fell asleep. I enjoyed a little bit of the drama. And here you can see all these bishops kind of fighting, and some of the things, the fleshly stuff that is kind of popping up. And it was just interesting to watch that. And again, this was just a movie and it kind of gives you a little—but I had to wonder, it’s like, if the world is looking at the Church, what do they see? When people are watching you at work, what do they see?
A Supernatural Love
And so all of that being said this morning, here’s what I know when it comes to agape love. You and I can only give that agape love—because it’s a supernatural love. It doesn’t come out of the flesh. It’s not easy for us. I cannot do this in my own strength. I will fail every time. So the only way that I will be able to be successful in this area is when I have had an encounter with Jesus Christ. I can only give agape love if the Holy Spirit has actually transformed my love and my heart—when I have experienced that, when I have experienced his forgiveness. Because how can I forgive if I have not experienced forgiveness in my own life? Right?
And so I think a key piece to growing in this area—because it’s not gonna come natural; it has to be supernatural—is first of all for you to have experienced the forgiveness that Jesus Christ has given us by dying on that cross for us. It starts there. And then I think it is that ongoing process of just being in his Word and for God’s Word to transform our hearts. And then I think it is when you are in those hard situations, when you’re dealing with trials, when you’re dealing with difficult people and challenging situations, to look at that situation and to say, “Okay God, what are you doing in this moment? What are you teaching me?” Because a lot of times we just want to act out, right? And we want to act out of pain, instead to step back and to say, “Here is an opportunity for me to forgive, to let go. I’m gonna practice this.”
