Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. Today, love is front and center, and Margie not only emphasizes the importance of love, but how it should be expressed through our actions and our attitudes, and the role love plays through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But there is so much more to this story and the importance of love. Hello, and welcome to Share the Word. I’m Margie, and this is 1 Corinthians chapter 13. Today’s teaching is entitled, Love is the Heart of the Matter, because 1 Corinthians 13 is commonly referred to as the love chapter.

One thing I’ve noticed over my many years here on planet Earth is that most people love a love story. Some prefer heartbreakers, but I think most folks, at least here in America, prefer rom-coms, romantic comedies. My favorite is the hilarious Princess Bride. It’s a 1987 fantasy adventure directed by Rob Reiner, starring a ridiculously fabulous cast of characters, from the heroine, Princess Buttercup, played by the beautiful and talented Robin Wright, to her love interest, the farmhand Wesley, played by the dashing British actor Cary Elwes. The whole love story is framed within the narrative of a grandpa reading to his grandson. Anyhow, spoiler alert, true love, or as the old priest says, true love, saves the day.

But what strikes me every time I watch it, which is more times than I will admit, is Wesley’s devotion to Buttercup. His consistent reply to her endless list of silly tasks and mundane orders is, As you wish. Wesley acknowledges her requests and then immediately goes about serving her, fulfilling her heart’s desire. His posture is humble, other-minded, and so loving. Wesley is truly more concerned about Buttercup’s well-being than his very own. Well, that is what chapter 13 is all about: acting in to love, listening to, serving, and ministering to others out of love.

I’ve been in about 13 weddings, and I’ve attended even more, and portions of this chapter have been read in almost every single ceremony. But in reality, chapter 13 is more than a wedding poem. It’s really about the unity of the church. The Corinthians appeared to be a rather large, thriving, and wildly gifted church, but they were not using those God-given gifts with love, to bless, to serve, to help care for, or to minister to one another. Please remember that when this letter was written by the Apostle Paul from Ephesus in 55 A.D., it did not have chapters and verses in the text. It was one continuous letter.

So, though we are discussing the chapters individually, chapters 12, 13, and 14 are really all on the same topic: the gifts of the Holy Spirit and how they should be employed within the church. But it is chapter 13 that gets to the heart of the matter, because it’s chapter 13 that reminds the reader that the gifts of the Spirit must be used in love, which is today’s big idea. God’s gifts should be used and infused with God’s love. Now, Pastor Paul did an excellent job explaining the gifts of the Holy Spirit. If you did not hear it, please go back and listen, for it will certainly help put these next chapters into context and make them so much more meaningful. In chapter 12, the Apostle Paul used the illustration of the human body to show how the church body should function as one entity, stressing that each of the many parts are important.

Though they are all different, those parts are designed to work together. So, in keeping with that example, I want to remind you of the value and the importance of the heart in the physical body. The Cleveland Clinic Cardiac Division writes, The muscular heart, the main organ in your cardiovascular system, is vital for life. Its parts work together to move blood through your body in a coordinated way. It consistently sends oxygen to your cells and takes away waste. Many conditions affect this organ and keep it from working well.

And though only the size of a fist, without the heart, the body cannot survive. In this chapter, I feel as though the Apostle Paul is saying the same thing about the church body. Without love as the heartbeat, the church body is dying or dead, and the gifts are useless, because love is the heart of the matter. So let’s jump into the text. Oh, but first, a joke. I know how Pastor Tony loves the joke.

He may be the only one. Why did painters fall in love with their models? Because they love them with all of their art. Ha ha. The word love is mentioned nine times in these 13 verses. In the English language, we only have one word for love.

The same word is used to describe a variety of affections, anything from I love dogs to I love cheesecake to I love my spouse. In truth, they are varying degrees of emotions, interest, or pleasure. At least I hope so. I would hate to think that my husband Larry is declaring his love for me with the same meaning or intensity that he has for a Wawa soft pretzel. The Greeks, on the other hand, had three or four distinct words or phrases for love, all of which we have discussed before, but here we go again. Phileo, brotherly or friendship love.

Eros, romantic or sexual love. Storge, familia or family love. And then agape, usually referred to as God’s unconditional love. Agape is the form of love used here in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. Phileo, eros, storge are all considered conditional forms of love. They can be selfish, feeling-based, and ever-changing.

Agape love is a love that is not based on performance, achievement, merit, or fleeting feelings. Agape love is other-focused. Agape love is based on choice, like Wesley’s commitment to selflessly serve our Buttercup. Agape love focuses on the recipient, delights in the object of its affection, is selfless and unchanging. The Bible references point directly and repeatedly to agape love as God’s love. Agape love is God’s essence, God’s nature, His character.

That’s why we’re told in 1 John that God is love. He is agape love. Agape love is God’s mission. Jesus explains this to the Pharisee Nicodemus in arguably the most quoted verse in the Bible, John 3:16. For God so agape-loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, so that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have eternal life. Agape love is God’s message.

As the Apostle John says, This is love: not that we agape-loved God, but that He agape-loved us. Agape love is also God’s charge. A new command I give you, says Jesus to the disciples, love one another. As I have agape-loved you, so you must agape-love one another. Which, of course, brings us back to the big idea. God’s supernatural gifts should be used and infused with God’s supernatural love.

Agape love, which the Corinthian church was not doing. Remember from Pastor Paul’s teaching, episode 107, it was Romans chapter 15. He actually quizzed us on the only two reciprocal pronouns in the English language, which are one another and each other. Okay, I didn’t know that, or I forgot that little tidbit. But anywho, Pastor Paul said, to one another means to act in the same way towards each other. Being loving towards one another is a unique commandment and requirement for the New Testament church.

It is supernatural. It is not natural love. Listen up, believers. We really did this. It would change everything in the church and in the world. God’s supernatural agape love looks wildly different than man’s secular, human love, especially in Corinth at that time.

As Pastor Paul mentioned in the intro to the book of Corinthians, Corinth was the site of many pagan temples. It’s believed that there were at least 12 temples within the city. There is archaeological evidence to support this theory, although it’s not known for certain if they were all established during this exact time period. The most famous temple was dedicated to Aphrodite, the goddess of, wait for it, love. This temple promoted eros love, and it was very popular, as you can imagine. It represented carnal, counterfeit, lustful sexual love.

Basically, the worshippers of Aphrodite practiced religious prostitution. It’s thought that at one time there were between 1,000 to 2,000 sacred prostitutes. I know, I don’t even like saying those two words together, sacred and prostitutes. It’s a horrible oxymoron. And to make matters even worse, some of those prostitutes were children, boys and girls who were sold against their will into Aphrodite’s sex slavery. Just another awful reason that Corinth was known to be the site of great promiscuity, sexual immorality, and evil.

I mean, talk about perverting love as God intended. There was nothing loving and there was nothing holy about this practice. I’m sure that the Apostle Paul was desperately trying to show the Corinthian church the huge contrast between man’s lowly and selfish, in quotes, love and that of God’s great, holy, selfless, agape love. Here’s the thing. This topic is still so timely. We live in a society that is saturated and infatuated with sexual love and images, a system that still worships erotica and pornography.

So God’s agape love is just as radical and countercultural now as it was then. But I digress. I will get off my soapbox and back to the big idea of this chapter, that God’s gifts should be used and infused with God’s great agape love, which clearly the believers in Corinth were not doing. The Corinthian church was a little bit of a mess. It seems as though there were some who were envying one another in regards to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. There were some who were misusing the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Some of the church members were still participating in the sexual immorality, which led to marital issues. And then there were relational difficulties, divisions, and even lawsuits within the church. So rather than functioning as one healthy, loving, sacrificial body, they were fractured and broken and wounded. At this point, agape love was not the heartbeat of the church. Stepping back into the illustration of how the church body should operate like a physical body, each member with their own gift and purpose, the hands that help, the eyes that see, the ears that hear, the heart that beats, and so on. In the Corinthians’ case, instead of hands that help, prayed, or clap for one another, their hands were slapping each other or giving self-applause.

Their feet were out of step. They were getting ahead of one another or tripping or kicking one another. The mouth was not speaking words of life or encouragement or edification, but gossiping, slandering, or accusing one another. Now it cracks me up the way the Apostle Paul makes his point using hyperbole, because I’m kind of a fan of sarcasm, as long as it’s not directed at me. But I’m sure the Corinthians felt the sting of his irony in verses one through three, as he says, If I speak with the tongues of men and angel, but have not agape love. I’m only a resounding gong or clanging cymbal.

Unless you think that’s a good thing, the Message Bible version says, a creaking, rusty gate. The Apostle Paul continues, And if I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith that can move mountains, but have not agape love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not agape love, I gain nothing. It’s as though the Apostle Paul is saying, Hey guys, you are really pretty good at showing off your gifts or comparing your gifts, but where is the agape love, which should be the heartbeat of your church? Because I don’t care how great your gifts are. Even the best gifts are nothing, nunca nada, without agape love.

God’s gifts are not to be stored up or held up. God’s gifts are not to be admired or bragged about, because hoarding or lording over is not helpful, but hurtful. That is haughty, not humble, and it is certainly not loving. Jesus was all about and is all about love. Once when Jesus was pushed to rank the commandments, he responded with, All the laws and the prophets hang on two things: love God and love others. It is a pretty simple plan, but obviously very hard to execute.

And again, this is where our dear Corinthians were sorely lacking. I would say it is still a challenge to do this very well within the church body. Recently, a church secretary stopped me in the hallway saying, See that guy? I do not like that man at all. She was gesturing towards a fellow who was just leaving the building. My response was, Well, actually, you don’t have to like him.

You’re not called to like everyone. She looked visibly relieved until I added, You’re called to love him. She gasped, Ugh, that’s even worse. I can’t love him. And you know what? She’s right.

We cannot agape love on our own. Agape love is the evidence that God’s Spirit indwells us. He loves through us, and we cannot conjure that kind of love up on our own. We must rely on the Holy Spirit to agape love through us. Now, I would be remiss if I did not cover the most famous portion of this chapter, some call the wedding passage, to which I referred earlier, and that’s verses 4 through 8. It seems as though the Apostle Paul switches gears or topics, but in truth, he is still making the same point.

He’s just using a different tactic by personifying agape love. For our purposes today, I’m going to read this passage and use agape love as intended by the author. Agape love is patient. Agape love is kind. Agape love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Agape love does not keep a record of wrong.

Agape love does not rejoice when there’s injustice. But whenever truth wins out, agape love never gives up, never loses faith. Agape love is always hopeful, and agape love endures through every circumstance. That, my friends, is a tall order, as we say in Texas. And I’ve heard pastors and teachers challenge the congregation or the students to insert their own name in place of the word love in these verses. Now, I think I understand what they’re going for, which is to show how far we fall from that goal.

But the truth is, there’s only one name that can go in these verses, and it is not yours and it is not mine. It’s the name of Jesus. For only Jesus is always patient and kind. Jesus is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Jesus does not demand his own way. Jesus is not irritable.

Jesus keeps no record of being wronged. Jesus does not rejoice about injustice, but he rejoices whenever truth wins out. Jesus never gives up. Jesus never loses faith. Jesus is always hopeful. Jesus endures through every circumstance.

Jesus is the definition of agape love. It’s his supernatural love that should be used and infused with the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit. I want to share a true love story with you that took place in 1944. It’s a story about a boy and a girl and an apple. The boy was Herman Rosenblatt, a teenager who was in a concentration camp in Nazi-controlled Schlieben, Poland. The girl, Roma Rizitsky, who was a bit younger, living in the village where her family posed as Christians to avoid arrest.

Their eyes met one day through a barbed wire fence, and she wondered what she might do to help this poor young man. At the time, she was carrying an apple, and she bravely decided to throw it over the fence, risking her life with the only gift she had to offer. He caught the apple and ran towards the barracks, and so it began. Day after day for months, this routine continued. Never speaking, she would throw, he would catch, and they would both run away. Then one day, the boy did not show up.

You see, he had been shipped off to another camp. One year later, Herman was freed by the Russians, and soon thereafter left for London to learn to be an electrician. After the war ended, Roma went to Israel and learned to be a nurse. Eventually, they both ended up in New York City, where they were set up on a blind date in 1957. The evening was going well, the conversation flowed, and eventually they began to share about their wartime experiences. Herman began to recite the litany of camps that he had been subject to, and Roma’s ears perked up when he listed Schlieben, as she had been there too.

She began to speak of a boy that she would visit almost every day and bring him apples, until one day she realized that he had been sent away. The words Herman spoke next would change their lives forever. That boy, Roma. was me. Soon thereafter, in 1958, the two married. It was more than just an apple. It was a gift, given selflessly, sacrificially in love.

Agape love makes all the difference. It always does, because love is the heart of the matter. This is Share the Word. I’m Margie, and thanks for listening. Thanks, Margie. Love is so important, and as followers, we should try to emulate love just as Jesus did by using our gifts while serving and loving others.

But in this world, love is so often reduced to a triviality, a physical act, an emotional feeling instead of the truth, the truth that love is God and God is love. Please take a moment to thank all of those like Margie and Paul who sit behind this mic and demonstrate their love for God and His Word to bring you the truth. But it’s always wrapped in God’s love. You can email them at info at sharetheword.org, or you can send a message simply by going onto the website at sharetheword.org. And while you’re there, take a moment to check out some of the other podcasts. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.