Love Personified
1 Corinthians 13 • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 1 viewJesus is love personified. By referring to love in a personified form, Paul makes us think beyond love as just an action and look to love as it is seen in a person
Notes
Transcript
Tonight we get to really the heart of Paul’s great chapter on love and there are quite a few different directions that we could go with this but what I want us to do is take 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 and I want us to read it alongside the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23. The reason that I want to do this is because what Paul does in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 is he takes love and he personifies it. As we’re going to see, Paul doesn’t talk about love as if it is an action; he talks about love as a person. As long as we think about love as something that is impersonal, we won’t love to the extent that Christ calls us to love others. Paul is telling the Corinthians and by extension all of us that if all that love is is an impersonal force, we miss the mark and the significance of what makes love really love. Love doesn’t come solely from emotion, love is found and created in a person. The reason that Paul is able to talk about love in a personified form is because he has experience love personified in Jesus Christ. We don’t look at love as something impersonal but as something that is seen in the fullest extent in our Lord and Savior. Derek Prime puts it like this: “Love is the chief aspect of the Spirit’s fruit; in fact, all the rest illustrates it. If we think of the various aspects of the fruit of the Spirit as a mathematical sum, the sum adds up to the character of our Lord Jesus.” We will see this as we look at Galatians 5 and the fruit of the Spirit. When it comes to the fruit of the Spirit, I think that we negatively think that they are like the gifts of the Spirit where we excel in one or two but may not necessarily possess some of the other gifts. But Paul doesn’t talk about the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 as something that we possess only a few of. The whole lot is to be represented in the life of the believer. Some of you probably already have Galatians 5:22-23 memorized but just in case we don’t here is what Paul lists as the fruit of the Spirit:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
What is the first fruit? What is the first mark of a Christian? It’s love! Everything else from that point proceeds out of love. Love leads to joy, love leads to peace, a loving person is a patient person, a loving person possesses kindness and goodness, and on and on it goes. What should the love of the Christian contain? What should make up the Christian as they seek to imitate Christ? That’s what we are going to see in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 so let’s open up in prayer and then we will dive in.
Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant,
does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,
does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Verse 4
Verse 4
So, what we will do tonight is keep the fruit of the Spirit in our minds and we are going to just work through all of the different aspects of love that we see in the 4 verses that we just read. What we’ll do is take each aspect of love and see how it connects to God and is personified in Him and we’ll just see what we get through. If we get through all of the verses, great! If not, think of it as homework or studying that you can do on your own. Or maybe we can even finish it next week, we’ll see what happens. What we see in these verses, really in the entire chapter, and on top of that the entire Bible, is that the standard of love is astronomically high. Only by the movement of the Holy Spirit can we as fallen people come anywhere close to loving to the extent that God commands us to love. R.C. Sproul once said of 1 Corinthians 13, “When I read that passage, I’m wounded by almost every stroke of the Apostle’s pen. Love does not seek its own benefit. Love is patient, tender, and kind. These are all things that I would like to be, but just as the law reveals our sin, so the perfect expression of love that we find in 1 Corinthians 13 shows how high this standard of love really is.” It’s an incredibly high standard. It should absolutely humble us but in the best possible way it should build us up because we know that Jesus Christ loves us perfectly and because He loves us perfectly, everything that we do really is in response to what He has already done and is doing. Let’s start working through verse 4, the first thing that Paul says is that love is patient. This is love that doesn’t have a temper. This is a love that says not only are you important, the time is important. I’m sure you all can think of times where your impatience drives you to be unloving. One of my pet peeves is being late to things and if you are the car in front of me while I’m running late to something, chances are you are not driving in front of a very patient person. Of course there is a big difference being impatient with the circumstance that you are in and being impatient with the person. When you are impatient towards a person you are saying, “My time and my schedule is more valuable than you are.” It’s that patience towards other people that Paul is referring to here in verse 4. What does a patient love from a Christian look like? St. Chrysostom describes patient Christian love like this: “It is a word which is used of the man who is wronged and who has it easily in his power to avenge himself but will never do it.” Just as Christian love is self-sacrificial, Christian patience is loving and self-sacrificial. We see this multiple times in Scripture in describing the patience of God. We see it in the character of Christ. Peter writes in 2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” We are not owed chances to repent but God is patient because He is a God of love. No one deserves a second chance, yet God is perfectly patient towards us. He’s patient towards the world. Paul says in Romans 9:22 “What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?” John MacArthur said of this verse, “God has every right to act gloriously in such judgment, but He has, by His mercy, endured with much patience a world of sinners. He has endured their unbelief, rejection, hatred, blasphemy, and iniquity, while patiently allowing time for repentance.” As we look at the life of Jesus we see that Christ had perfect patience towards not only His friends, but those that hated Him. Peter reminds us in 1 Peter 2:21–23 “For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously.” I think of the number of times that Jesus told His disciples that He came to die but that He would rise from the dead but they just did not seem to get it. That takes patience right? I know that if I tell my kids something once and I have to repeat it that my patience is already starting to get a little thin. Jesus never once looks at them and says, “You idiots, I already told you!” Even with people like the Pharisees Jesus showed more patience than they deserved. The second way that Paul personifies love is by saying that it is kind. The Greek word that Paul uses for kind is only seen once in the New Testament. The word chrēsteuomai (Cray-stu-oh-my) could be described as both good and kind. Leon Morris says, “Love reacts with goodness towards those who ill-treat it; it gives itself in kindness in the service of others.” It is a giving love. To be harsh, to be cruel, to be mean towards others is completely contrary to love. To lash out in anger is totally unloving. I have often said that in order to be Christians, we need to be thick skinned but tender hearted. We need to be able to roll with the punches while also loving those that push against us. When we think about the love of Jesus, Scripture describes Him as being rich in kindness. Romans 2:4 says, “Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?” What do you think of the last part of that verse that it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance? How does God’s kindness lead sinners towards repentance? I think it is almost like we become overwhelmed with mercy. God in His mercy makes us aware of the depths of our sins and when we see the depth of that sin and separation, the more we savor that mercy, grace, and kindness which leads us to repentance. Ephesians 2:7 emphasizes this as Paul says, “so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” The surpassing richness of God’s grace is seen in the kindness that He gives to us in Christ. The greatest kindness ever shown was the giving of Christ for undeserving sinners. Paul says in Titus 3:4–5 “But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,” The kindness of God and the love of God cannot be separated. To love is to be kind. Coupled with Paul’s connection to love being kind is that it is also not jealous. Some translations say that love does not burn with envy. Love roots for the success of others. It doesn’t covet the good things that others have. Love finds contentment wherever we are. The book of Proverbs is full of warnings against becoming jealous or giving into jealousy. One example is Proverbs 23:17 “Do not let your heart envy sinners, But live in the fear of the Lord always.” We know that Scripture says that God is a jealous God but what that means is that God is the infinitely greatest good anywhere. If there was something that was greater than God, God would fail to be God. God is a jealous God not in the way that He desires what others have but in the way that He knows He alone is the greatest good that others should take part in. James 3:14–16 shows us the dangers of jealousy. Jealousy is antithetical to the truth. James writes, “But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing.” Jealousy is more than the absence of love; its the presence of disorder and every evil thing. The next thing we see Paul mention is that love does not brag and for time’s sake we will go ahead and look at what he connects that to at the end of verse 4 that love is not arrogant. The last thing that the Christian should do is boast about their own gifts. It is not loving for you to brag to others about your success story. The last thing that we should ever want to do as a Christian is take glory from Christ. If we decide to brag or boast in ourselves, all we are doing is saying that I am worthy of more attention than my Savior. We may not intentionally be doing that but that is a part of it. My desire as a preacher is not to have people come up to me after a sermon and say, “Wow, what a great preacher we have” or “wow what a great sermon.” My flesh wants that but I really pray that I don’t make that the priority. What I want is for people to leave every Sunday saying, “What a great God we serve.” That’s the purpose of your life. That’s the purpose of your interactions with others: That people would feel so greatly loved by you that they have no choice but to look to God with praise and worship. We don’t need Christians going around exalting themselves. Proverbs 27:2 says, “Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; A stranger, and not your own lips.” This final note in verse 4 is an important addition for the Corinthians because they had the tendency to boast of their own spirituality and their own spiritual gifts. Paul is really saying that to boast in spiritual gifts is to take attention and worship away from the One that bestows the spiritual gifts. Bragging and arrogance is claiming glory for yourself in the eyes of the world. Jesus in John 8:50 says, “But I do not seek My glory; there is One who seeks and judges.” Jesus did not seek glory in the ways that fallen mankind seeks glory. He sought to glorify God in His life and ministry. He sought to glorify the Father in every possible thing and He did. The glory that Jesus sought was His Father’s glory which was also to be His glory. You are not the Son of God so you should not boast or glorify in yourself but in love give yourself up. I know that was a lot to cover but are there any thoughts or questions before we get to verse 5?
Verse 5
Verse 5
Paul says in verse 5 that love, “does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered.” What does it mean for love to not act unbecomingly? The NIV translates it as, “Love does not dishonor others.” The ESV translates it to just simply: rude. Love isn’t rude. The Greek word that Paul uses for it means that love does not act or behave in a dishonorable way. It is highly possible that Paul is referencing the incest situation that is brought up earlier in 1 Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians 5:1–2 Paul says, “It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife. You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst.” Then in verse 6 he tells them that their boasting of this is not good. This is love that does not boast about the things which we should be ashamed about. MacArthur says, “Love is much more than being gracious and considerate, but it is never less. To the extent that our living is ungracious and inconsiderate it is also unloving and un-Christian. Self-righteous rudeness by Christians can turn people away from Christ before they have a chance to hear the Gospel. The messenger can become a barrier to the message. If people do not see the gentleness of Christ clearly in us, they are less likely to see Him clearly in the Gospel we preach.” There is a certain level of appropriateness that is necessary for Christian love. The next way that Paul personifies love is by saying that it does not seek its own.
Verse 6
Verse 6
Verse 7
Verse 7
Charles Spurgeon said, “The word rendered ‘bear’ might as correctly have been translated ‘covers.’ This love both covers and bears all things. It never proclaims the errors of others. It refuses to see faults unless it may kindly help in their removal. It stands in the presence of a fault with a finger on its lips. It does not attempt to make a catalog of provocations.”
