Useless Love
1 Corinthians 13 • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 3 viewsIn 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 we see that Christians can do things well, know things well, and still be missing the mark of what it really means to be a Christian.
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For the month of May I’m gonna be teaching for Ken and we are going to be looking at a very popular, very well known, very often quoted section of Scripture in 1 Corinthians 13. Each week we will take a little chunk of this chapter and really get to the meat of what Paul meant as he wrote this well-known chapter to the church in Corinth. We’ll look at verses 1-3 tonight, 4-7 next week, 8-13 the week after that, and then we sort of cheat and we will look at Romans 12:9-21 for our last week together but we are going to view it through the lens of 1 Corinthians 13. Now when you hear 1 Corinthians 13, what word or theme does your mind instantly go to? Love! Now where do you hear 1 Corinthians 13 quoted more than anywhere else? At weddings right? Now it’s appropriate to use these verses for marriages but despite what so many brides and grooms think, that was not Paul, under the direction of the Holy Spirit’s purpose in writing this chapter. What some people don’t always recognize is that 1 Corinthians 13 isn’t a chapter on the love between a man and a woman, it’s a chapter that really is about spiritual gifts. Chapter 13 is smack dab in the middle between 2 other well-known but controversial chapters that both talk about spiritual gifts. The church of Corinth wasn’t too much unlike a lot of Christians today that desire greater spiritual giftedness, they want to steal a word from the Pentecostal's, a second helping or baptism of the Holy Spirit but as Paul writes to the church in Corinth, he wants to take the focus away from external spiritual gifts like tongues and healing which would fade away by the end of the apostolic age and point the believers to something that is far more useful and something that we will see is much more eternal. The Puritan John Flavel once said that a drop of grace is better than a sea of gifts and Paul would certainly have agreed with that statement. Paul at the end of 1 Corinthians 12:31 says: “But earnestly desire the greater gifts. And I show you a still more excellent way.” Well what is the more excellent way? What is the greater gift? It’s what we are going to read about in 1 Corinthians 13 over the next few weeks. Let’s open with prayer and if anyone has any prayer requests that we could be praying for, feel free to let us know. Once we do that we will read 1 Corinthians 13:1-3:
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
A Useless and Distracting Love (Verse 1)
A Useless and Distracting Love (Verse 1)
What I want to do tonight is just take 1 verse at a time and we will see that while the things that Paul mentions are good things, if they are devoid of love, they are ultimately useless things. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:1 “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” Paul begins with some hypothetical possibilities and these hypotheticals are likely all things that the church in Corinth advocated for or even were guilty of practicing. It’s important for us to see that Paul starts verse 1 with “If I.” The preacher includes himself in the sermon. Even Paul needed to know that everything that he did had to be done in love. We are mastered by the love of God but it is impossible this side of Heaven for us to master love. Even Paul, the great missionary and leader of the early church did not exclude himself from the message that he preached. The first half of this verse is fairly easy to understand. Paul references the tongues of men and that word tongue no doubt refers to language. If you look back at Acts 2 at the day of Pentecost where a great number of people from all over the Roman empire have gathered in Jerusalem, all of them hear the apostles speaking in their own languages. Acts 2:11 says, “We hear them in our own tongues speaking of the mighty deeds of God.” Paul then starts with what the church of Corinth was most interested in. The supernatural gift to speak in all sorts of languages peaked the interest of the Corinthians just as it seems to peak the interest of our Pentecostal friends. But we could also argue that even just speaking a different language was not enough to satisfy the church of Corinth. They wanted more than just language, they wanted inspired language. They wanted great oratory and it is likely that Paul as he addresses the tongues of men is addressing the content and delivery that the church in Corinth wanted. Earlier in 1 Corinthians 1:17, Paul tells the church that Christ did not send him to baptize but to preach the gospel, “not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void.” In 1 Corinthians 2:1 “And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.” Again we see this stress on great oratory skills and Paul is saying that he did not come to be a great communicator but he came with a great message. Later on in 2 Corinthians 10:10 Paul acknowledges that the Corinthians were not impressed with Paul’s skills as a communicator. “For they say, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his personal presence is unimpressive and his speech contemptible.”” Put all of that together and we see that Paul is addressing a uselessness in languages without love and a uselessness of oratory skills without love. You can be a fantastic communicator and miss the mark. You can be a fantastic communicator and fail to preach the Gospel. Moving on Paul addresses the tongues of angels and chances are that Paul is using hyperbole. From what we see in Scripture, nothing seems to point to an angelic language that man is able to learn and to share with others. What Paul is likely doing at this point is pointing to the highest possible level of communication and that even if that were to be possessed, if it was done without love it would be useless. What does Paul equate this with or compare it to? He says if he speaks with the most amazing and beautiful languages but does it without love that he has become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. Now why do you think that Paul uses that imagery specifically? Paul will come back to this again later in 1 Corinthians 14 which we will get to in a few minutes but think about going to a concert. If you went to a concert and the only thing that happened for 2 hours was the drummer constantly hitting a cymbal and nothing else, how would you feel? You’d probably leave right? You probably would think, “Something is wrong here, this can’t be right!” Music that is like that is useless, it’s damaging, it’s off-putting, and it makes no sense. Paul is saying, “Don’t have a useless love. Don’t be so obsessed with tongues and languages that you push people away.” Paul says that this gift is absolutely meaningless if there is no love. He says in 1 Corinthians 14:6-12:
But now, brethren, if I come to you speaking in tongues, what will I profit you unless I speak to you either by way of revelation or of knowledge or of prophecy or of teaching?
Yet even lifeless things, either flute or harp, in producing a sound, if they do not produce a distinction in the tones, how will it be known what is played on the flute or on the harp?
For if the bugle produces an indistinct sound, who will prepare himself for battle?
So also you, unless you utter by the tongue speech that is clear, how will it be known what is spoken? For you will be speaking into the air.
There are, perhaps, a great many kinds of languages in the world, and no kind is without meaning.
If then I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be to the one who speaks a barbarian, and the one who speaks will be a barbarian to me.
So also you, since you are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek to abound for the edification of the church.
Again in these verses we see this reference to a musical instrument that if it does not produce a distinct or orderly sound, that it accomplishes nothing. In fact, if tongues were to be done without love, without Christ-centered devotion, it may do more to encourage pagan living than Christian devotion. John MacArthur said, “In New Testament times, rites honoring the pagan deities Cybele, Bacchus, and Dionysus included speaking in ecstatic noises that were accompanied by smashing gongs, clanging cymbals, and blaring trumpets. Paul’s hearers clearly got his point: unless it is done in love, ministering the gifts of languages, or speaking in any other human or angelic way, amounts to no more than those pagan rituals. It is only meaningless gibberish in a Christian guise.” To possess this great gift without true Christian love is to have a useless and distracting love. Before we dive into verse 2, does anyone have any thoughts or questions on verse 1?
The Uselessness of Knowledge without Love (Verse 2)
The Uselessness of Knowledge without Love (Verse 2)
Looking at 1 Corinthians 13:2 we read, “If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” Paul moves from one area that the Corinthians desired to another area that was incredibly important to them and that is the area of knowledge. Earlier in 1 Corinthians, Paul emphasized the gift of prophecy over the gift of tongues because it speaks out truth and edifies the church. Paul is not saying that the Corinthians are speaking out God’s Word like the prophets of the Old Testament but instead the gift of prophecy is proclaiming the truth about who God is. Paul is saying that even if you know all of the mysteries of God, which is impossible, and even if you possess all knowledge, but have not love you have nothing. That’s such an important contrast that Paul makes in this verse. He says you can know all things and yet have nothing. When I was in college, I had a professor that used to say that “people don’t care what you know until they know that you care.” That really hits the mark of what Paul is saying here. You can know your Bible back and forth, you can be a great teacher, a great preacher, a great communicator of truths, and yet be totally off the mark. Paul says not only is our great learning nothing, we ourselves are nothing. We also know that just because you know a lot of Scripture and know the Bible well, that does not make you a Christian. There are incredibly brilliant men and women that teach at universities the Bible and Christianity that are not saved by the Gospel. We see this exact sort of thing in the New Testament. Which group of people possess a high degree of spiritual and Scriptural knowledge but are utterly unchanged by it? The Pharisees! The Pharisees knew the Old Testament incredibly well, better than the vast majority of the world at the time, but they are nothing. In Matthew 23:1-3 we read:
Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples,
saying: “The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses;
therefore all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things and do not do them.
They know the right things but they are living the wrong way. All the right knowledge in the world doesn’t make a difference in their lives. In fact, all of this knowledge may even be more of a curse than a blessing. It is possible to be so puffed up with knowledge, scriptural and unscriptural, that you puff yourself up and push others down. It is totally possible to know all about the human mind, body, and soul, and care nothing about the person that possesses them. Going back to John Flavel, he once said, “Your charity (love) for others may be your duty, but your too great confidence may be your snare. Fear what others may do, but fear thyself more.” You may be so confident in your wisdom and knowledge that you make that the source of your confidence and salvation. You say things like, “I know the Bible, I know theology, I know Jesus” and that’s all it is: pure knowledge void of love and really void of truth. When Jesus talks to the church of Ephesus in Revelation 2 we see another picture of great knowledge, great spiritual works even, that without love are not only seen as nothing but are also condemned! Jesus says in Revelation 2:2-5
‘I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false;
and you have perseverance and have endured for My name’s sake, and have not grown weary.
‘But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.
‘Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place—unless you repent.
Here is a church that clearly knows right from wrong. They clearly know to call out false teaching, they know what needs to be done to see if a certain teaching is scriptural or not, they have endured but look what Jesus says! “You don’t love me like you used to.” May Christ never say that of us. May Christ never be able to look at us as His church and say, “Even though you know me better than you knew me before, your love for me has somehow gotten smaller. Despite your Scriptural knowledge growing, your love for me has not.” In the Chronicles of Narnia, there’s a moment in Prince Caspian where Lucy finds Aslan, the Lion that C.S. Lewis uses to represent Christ, and says, “Aslan, you’re bigger!” But Aslan hasn’t gotten any bigger. Lucy has though. Aslan says to her, “Every year you grow, you will find me bigger.” Aslan, just like Jesus, never changes. But as we grow, we should see Him more and more as He really is. In the same way, our love for God and for our neighbor should grow as our knowledge and understanding of Jesus’ grows. In 1 John 4:20 we see that as our love for God grows, our love for our neighbor grows as well. In fact, John says that we cannot truly claim to love God if we do not love our brother. John says, “If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.” How does this connect to Revelation 2 and knowledge? Look at what Thomas Schreiner says, “Abandoning one’s first love means, then, that one has strayed from both love of God and love of fellow believers. The two are inseparable. The church at Ephesus was persistent and orthodox, but a hardness, a callousness had arisen in its ranks. They needed a renewed fervency, a renewed tenderness for the Lord and for one another. True orthodoxy is always warm, loving, and generous in spirit.” The last part of verse 2 we will just touch on briefly. Paul says that if he possesses all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, he is nothing. Paul is not talking about saving faith. He isn’t talking about justification. Instead he is more than likely referring to what Dr. Akin refers to as “bold spirituality.” This is the kind of people that are risk takers for the glory of God and people that want to accomplish great things for God but they lack love. They are doing it all for some other reason. They may even claim that it is all for God and they are doing it out of love but deep down, they have another motive and it isn’t love. These people claim to possess everything but without love, they have nothing. Any thoughts or questions before we jump over to verse 3?
Martyrdom without Love (Verse 3)
Martyrdom without Love (Verse 3)
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:3 “And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.” Here we see giving but no gaining. There’s no profit of any value. Here we see an act of service that is happening outside of love and we even see martyrdom without love. Do you have to be a Christian to be self sacrificial? No! Both religious and secular people usually have no issue with giving to the less fortunate. Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, all of them would say that we should help the less fortunate, that is in no way distinct to Christianity. You can give to the poor with good motives, you can give with bad motives, you can give with a focus entirely on yourself! Giving is not a sign of Christian change. Just look at Judas. Do you remember what Judas said when Mary came to anoint Jesus’ feet with oil? John 12:4–5 says, “But Judas Iscariot, one of His disciples, who was intending to betray Him, said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and given to poor people?”” Judas is saying that it looks like all of this is just waste! Why not give it to someone who needs it, why not sell it for roughly a year’s wages and then give all that away? But what does John say in John 12:6 “Now he said this, not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief, and as he had the money box, he used to pilfer what was put into it.” Judas never cared for the poor. He cared that he couldn’t profit off of them. Yes, we absolutely need to be sacrificial. We should be people that have no issue with helping those that are in need but why do we do it? Is it just to check something off of our spiritual checklist? Is it just so that we can tell others that we did it or claim it on our taxes? Why should we give? Because God so freely gave to us. Remember John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” Not because He had to but because He loved us. We can do a whole lot without love. We can do things that appear loving without love. We can act like Christ without loving like Christ. David Garland in his commentary on 1 Corinthians said, “One can put on a show of love without having love, but one who truly has love cannot help but show it.” There are plenty of Christian leaders, plenty of pastors, that do all that they can to look loving but whose hearts don’t really possess it. The love that Paul is talking about in this chapter is agape love. It is the very love in which Christ loves us. It’s not a sentimental or a romantic love, it is a love that sacrifices and it is a love that is pure. Paul doesn’t stop at just the giving of good and services, he goes as far to say that even if he surrenders his body to be burned but he does it without love, it profits him nothing. Now what does he mean by that? There are a couple of different ways that people interpret this. Some say that at this point in the life of the church, martyrdom through burning was not common so that probably isn’t what Paul has in mind. Instead he means giving life to the absolute limit. Some even say that it is a vague reference to branding that would be done on slaves to show that they were owned by a certain person. But if we follow Paul’s hyperbole through these first 3 verses, doesn’t he always land on the extreme? Think about verse 1 where Paul mentions first the tongues of men and then jumps to the other end of the pendulum to the tongues of angels. In verse 2 he goes from prophetic knowledge to the faith to move mountains. Paul wants to use language that grabs our attention. Even if it was not a common practice at the time of Paul to burn Christians at the stake, how would branding as a sign of devotion stay in track with what Paul has been doing in the previous 2 verses. No, it seems that Paul is pointing to something as extreme as a martyr’s death by burning on a stake. Wouldn’t you think that it would catch the attention of the Corinthians for Paul to say, “Not only is it not enough to give all your physical goods without love, it isn’t enough to die the horrible death of being burned alive if it is done without love.” Is it possible to die as a martyr and do it without love? Absolutely it is. To the Islamic leader that straps on a suicide vest in the name of Allah and blows himself up as a martyr, that’s not love. That’s hate under the guise of love. To the Buddhist monk that is so detached from the physical world that he decides to set himself on fire, is that love? Is that true loving sacrifice? No! And just as we see Paul say, it profits them nothing. Sacrifice, even the ultimate sacrifice of giving one’s life cannot truly be an act of service if there is no love. So let’s think for a minute about how a martyr’s death in the name of Christ may be possible without love. I can think of 2 ways right off the top of my head. The first is the mindset of, “If I die as a martyr, I’ll be remembered as a legend.” The thought is that if I die for Christ, people will remember me as this great saint and I’ll have this great legacy. Books will be written about me, movies will be made for me, and everyone will be able to think about all that I did in the name of Jesus. Really no love in that. People may look at your life and your death in the name of Jesus and be inspired by it, some may even open up to the truths of the Gospel or go on a life of mission through it, but ultimately God is not glorified in it because you were focused on your own legacy and glory instead of His. What’s the second way? The second way is, “If I die for Jesus, if I sacrifice everything for Jesus, then I’ll be accepted! Then God will reward me, then God will love me!” Well, what’s the primary motivation for that? It isn’t for love of God and it certainly isn’t for love of our neighbors. It’s self promotion isn’t it? It’s boasting in one’s self. I’ll tell you what it really is, it’s an attempt at salvation by works. It’s an attempt to earn the favor of God through work instead of through faith. Are there any other ways that you can think of people giving their lives over to God but not doing it in love? What else might that look like? True spiritual gain can only happen with love. Signs without love is useless, knowledge without love is nothing, sacrifice without love is profitless. What is it that can motivate someone to love in all that they do? The only way that someone can do it is if they take Jesus seriously. The only way that they can do it is if they themselves have been totally changed by the Gospel. Love is not an option for a Christian, it is their natural function. Maybe even their supernatural function. Only the Christian can love as God intended. Look at 1 John 4:7-11
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.
In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
The one that does not love, does not know God. They may have knowledge of who God is but they do not possess a saving knowledge of who God is. They can know the facts of Christianity and unless their is love, those facts won’t save them. That’s exactly what Paul shows us in verse 2. We cannot truly claim to love God if there is no love within us. John Stott wrote, “The argument is plain and compelling. For the loveless Christian to profess to know God and to have been born of God is like claiming to be intimate with a foreigner whose language we cannot speak, or to have been born of parents whom we do not in any way resemble. It is to fail to manifest the nature of Him whom we claim as our Father and our Friend. Love is as much a sign of new birth as is righteousness.” Our love is to know no limits. Our love is not based on the worthiness of those that we are called to love. Our love is based on the love that Christ has already shown to us. Anthony Thiselton writes, “Christians are not to love only those whom they find attractive, or who share their values, social status, or theology. What motivates Christian love is a prior experience of the love of Christ, not a reciprocal return to those who are kind to us.” Next week we’ll look at verses 4-7 and I’m really excited to look at that because we’re going to see love personified so what questions or comments do you all have?
