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MESSAGE FOR OCTOBER 9, 2005 FROM FIRST CORINTHIANS 13:1-3

This morning we pick up where we left off last time in our study of First Corinthians where we have progressed as far as chapter 13. Because this classic chapter on love is larger than just its immediate context, last time we took a few steps back from Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth and examined the broader Biblical context for Paul’s teaching on love. When Paul writes of “agape” love he is not speaking out of a vacuum but from a larger Biblical context and more importantly, from the context of Christ’s work on the cross—the ultimate expression of agape. We took this broad look in part to war against the natural impulse we all have to allow our familiarity with a frequently mentioned Biblical theme like love—to blur the radical nature of it. It’s easy for me to assume that because love is the preeminent Christian ethic and since I am a Christian, therefore I must be living in love to a large extent. I hope the truths we saw last time will shield us from making that kind of dangerous assumption. We want by God’s grace to remove the sheath of self-deception and allow the sword of God’s radical truth about love to do its life-changing work in our hearts. Let’s briefly review these broader truths about Biblical love in order to give us a launching pad for this morning’s text.

We first looked at the primacy of love as the Biblical ethic. We looked at several texts that clearly teach that love is not only the central ethic taught in the Bible, but without love there is NO Biblical ethic. We saw Jesus summarizing the vast ethical teachings of the Old Testament in Matthew 22:37-39 with two verses from Deuteronomy six and Leviticus 19. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” All Biblical ethical or moral teaching is rooted in love. Also, several times Jesus equates love with obedience to God. Paul in First Timothy 1:5 tells us the goal of his apostolic teaching is to produce in his hearers “love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” In Galatians 5:6 he makes this vast, sweeping statement, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” Love is absolutely central to ALL Biblical ethical teaching.

Second, we looked at the radical essence of Biblical love. We saw that this “agape” love we are called to have for others, particularly those in Christ’s church is precisely the kind of love God the Father has for God the Son. We know this because in John 15:9 Jesus tells his disciples, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you…” In John 13:34 he tells his disciples, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” Jesus loves his disciples the same way the Father has loved him and he calls his disciples to love one another the same way he has loved them. Therefore, we are to love each other the same way the eternal Father loves His perfect and holy Son. This love we are commanded to have for others is inter-Trinitarian in kind. In that sense it is valid to define agape love as “God-like love.” That is what we are commanded to have for each other.

We saw that the essential quality of this love is that it is self-sacrificing. Agape love is at its core sacrificial love. It requires us to give of ourselves. John gives the ultimate expression of this sacrificial love in First John 4:10. There he says, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” That moment when God took His holy, sin-hating wrath that we deserved but instead unleashed it upon his Son--the spotless Lamb, Jesus. John says THAT is the ultimate expression of love. This is what we are called to show—this radical, self-sacrificing love. Paul in Ephesians 5:2 tells the believers in Ephesus, “And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Agape love, which Paul writes about in First Corinthians 13, is essentially a self-sacrificing, costly love. Finally, we saw what is clearly self-evident to anyone who has genuinely tried to live like this and that is—in order to live in love we must be supernaturally empowered. This love is not native to us but to God. First John 4:7 tells us this. John writes, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.” It only follows that if agape is God-like love, then in order for us to love this way, it must be God who produces HIS love in us to give to others.

That was our introduction to this chapter. Now, let’s turn from the broad biblical context of agape to Paul’s peerless treatment here in chapter 13. Paul begins his treatment on love by speaking to the absolute supremacy of love. Let’s read these first three verses. The apostle writes, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ²And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” Before we dig into the details of the text, let’s first make two preliminary observations about it. First, Paul here labors to show the supreme value of love by declaring that it is THE indispensable element of everything we do in our service to God. That is—without love, everything—even the most impressive spiritual accomplishments imaginable are empty.

Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit Paul knows that the value of something is perhaps best seen by what its absence leaves you with. Think about that. Often, the best way to measure the value of someone or something is to remove it and see what you have left when it is gone. We use this kind of reasoning at times to note the value of someone or something. If a basketball player is so skillful that when he is removed from the line up, a championship team becomes the doormat of the league—that is the highest tribute he can be paid. If you want to know the value of a part or accessory to a machine, say a car, just take it away and see what you have when it is absent. If you siphon off the gasoline from a Rolls Royce what are you left with? All you have is a very small, nicely appointed sitting room with windows. You may witness the most finely tuned human body imaginable—able to leap record heights, run at phantom speed and move with the grace and agility of a cat--but if the life is removed from that body--what do you have left? This wonderful expression of human strength and athleticism not only collapses into a heap, it begins to decay and is good for nothing but to be buried or burned. The enormous value of the life in a body is most clearly seen when it is gone.

There is however at least one profound difference between all those examples, where the absence of a key component is intensely and immediately noticeable—and believers who live without agape love. That is—it is possible for us to do things and relate to people and minister in the church without an ounce of genuine biblical, self sacrificing love and be deceived into thinking we are actually accomplishing something of eternal value when Paul in this text makes it clear we are not. We do things all the time without love as our motive and yet we are not even sensitive to that absence much of the time and if we are, most of us aren’t all that troubled by it. We see the ultimate consequence of this kind of self-deception in Matthew 7:21-23. Jesus is speaking of the judgment and says, “Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²²On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' ²³And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'”

Here we see the final and ultimate self deception and its eternally bitter fruit. Here are people who have clearly functioned in some manifestly supernatural ways—prophecy, delivering people from demons and performing miracles—all in the name of Jesus—thinking they were doing it for Jesus. Yet, in the end Jesus tears back this veil of self-deception to reveal that these people who were doing all these miraculous things were not even known by Jesus—they weren’t in relationship with Him at all. They were workers of lawlessness or iniquity. One wonders what laws they were violating as they did their impressive ministries. In light of chapter 13 we can say that at the very least they weren’t motivated by agape love for others and for God. The truth is--they didn’t even KNOW God within the context of a personal relationship. Balaam functioned in miraculous gifts. So did King Saul and Judas Iscariot but don’t expect to see them in heaven.

A second preliminary observation is---Paul is writing on two levels—human and divine. What I mean by that is this—when he speaks of the impressiveness of tongues or other spiritual gift or an act of sacrifice, its clear that these things are impressive to humans, not to God. God will never be impressed by anything we do—our very best offering will never be acceptable to God except through the blood of His Son. Even though we are redeemed, we are still fallen and therefore even our best work is fallen and not good enough for God on its own merits. What we do for God is acceptable to Him NOT on the basis of the intrinsic merit of the act itself, but only because it is offered by someone He has washed in the blood of His Son and declared righteous by imputing to us the righteousness of his Son. We will never impress God but we can at times be impressive to other people in their assessment of us. We can impress people but the ONLY way God will look upon our works as having any spiritual value is if we are by His grace living and ministering in love. So when Paul says without love we are nothing he is saying that we are nothing to God even though we may be quite SOMETHING in the eyes of other people.

And that is what makes self-deception such a huge trap for us in this area of love. It’s very difficult to understand how several believers could be telling you your life or ministry is clearly pleasing to God when in fact God says it is nothing because it lacks love, but this text implies that can easily happen. People will shout of and write of and openly declare their admiration for your gifts, abilities and sacrifices but God whispers his sometimes very different assessment. We must consistently work very hard NOT to allow the din of the praise of man to obscure the whisper of God who may be saying to us, “Because you are doing this without love for others it is nothing in my eyes.” One of my deepest fears is that I will spend my life confidently assuming I am accruing eternal rewards of grace from God only to stand before Him in the judgment and tragically realize in the blazing light of divine truth that all I have really been doing is piling up bales of wood, hay and stubble.

Now let’s move to the text. The main point of these verses could be stated without love, all our gifts, abilities and outwardly noble deeds are utterly worthless to God. Verse one says, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” There are several things here to note. First, don’t miss that Paul begins with the gift of tongues because as we have seen before this was the main area of abuse. Paul was writing to people, some of whom were feeling enormously spiritual because they spoke in tongues. They foolishly believed that because they had an outwardly impressive spiritual gift--that gave them an exalted spiritual standing. Paul addresses the gift of tongues first and says that according to God’s math (and his math is the only math that matters) tongues minus love equals nothing. This gift that these Corinthians believed spoke volumes about their elite level of spirituality was instead--when offered without love--a testimony to futility.

Also, notice Paul speaks here in the first person and throughout this section of the chapter. He does that to empathize with the Corinthians—not even Paul performed his entire ministry with a heart of love and these truths applied to him as well as the Corinthians. Beyond that, Paul functioned in all the spiritual gifts mentioned in this section. For instance, he says in 14:18, “I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you.” In this Corinthian context of highly touted tongues speakers Paul outdoes all of them. As a massively spiritually gifted person it was important for even him to remember that spiritual gifts without love added up to a spiritual goose egg.

When Paul speaks of “tongues of angels” what does he mean? There is some dispute about that. Three of the most widely respected Corinthians scholars says that Paul is either definitely referring to tongues as angelic speech or it is possible he equates the gift of tongues with angelic speech. We know he had been to the third heaven from Second Corinthians chapter 12. It is perhaps not too much of a stretch to believe he had heard angelic speech. If he is indeed being literal here about the speech of angels that meant the Corinthians believed the gift of tongues was angelic speech and we certainly can see why this arrogant group would take pride in speaking with allegedly angelic languages. If he is not being literal, he is simply using a metaphor here to make his point. His point is the same in either case. That is—if you speak in a language that is so exalted it transcends fallen human language and you communicate using words spoken by sinless angels—if you do it without love you are nothing more than a spiritual noise-maker.

The literal translation of the second half of verse one is, “then I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” Speaking in tongues without love not only has the same spiritual value as an irritating noise, it has as D.A. Carson says, “transformed me into something I should not be.” Speaking in tongues without love not only doesn't glorify God; it causes a person to become something not pleasing to God. The words “noisy gong or clanging cymbal” have been understood a bit differently by different interpreters but the basic meaning of the words is the same. That is, speaking in tongues without love--no matter how impressive that may sound to the ears of man--is to God nothing more than an irritating or obnoxious noise. Again we see the vast chasm that separates these two perspectives—to the Corinthians this was exalted speech but to God it was an irritant and the difference between exalted speech and an irritant is the presence of absence of love. That’s how profoundly important it is that we practice our spiritual gifts with love—that’s the kind of essential, categorical difference it makes to God.

Verse two says, “And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” Next, Paul singles out the gifts of prophecy and faith—two other outwardly impressive gifts. His point is simply to say that if my prophetic powers are the highest imaginable in their capacity to bless other people, if I offer them with a motive other than love, I am nothing. Earlier in chapter 12:9 Paul links faith with miraculous powers so he is hearkening back to that when he mentions removing mountains. This is faith of the highest order—this faith changes landscapes, it alters topography. This is nuclear faith—faith of the highest magnitude imaginable. But as magnificently impressive as it is to people, if a person does it without love, they are nothing in God’s sight. Notice he doesn’t say, “If I prophecy or exhibit miraculous faith but have not love I accomplish nothing.” He says, “I AM nothing.” His point is to show the dramatic, breath-taking impact life and ministry without love has on us personally--it reduces us to nothing. This is sobering.

In verse three Paul makes the most dramatic statement in this text. He says, “³If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” Some translations have this verse, “and if I deliver up my body so that I may boast, but have not love, I gain nothing.” The phases “to be burned” and “that I may boast” are translated from Greek words that are very similar—there is only one letter that is different between the two Greek words and as many of the ancient manuscripts have one word as have the other. I think the ESV and many other translations have it right when they say, “and if I deliver up my body to be burned” because it fits the context better. Whatever the case, here Paul moves away from the area of spiritual gifts to sacrificial acts. If I give away all that I have (and the original suggests) to the poor and I willingly sacrifice my body to the most painful death imaginable—death by burning—but don’t do it out of love, I gain nothing. If ever a person might feel justified that they have earned a heavenly reward it would be if they were martyred by burning. Paul says they have gained nothing if it was done without love.

This verse pokes a giant hole through a very popular myth in the church today. That is, you can love someone without necessarily having empathy or affection for them. We’ve all heard it said, “I love him but I don’t like him very well.” That is, “I love him or her with agape but I have no real heart affection for him/her.” People who say that contend that as long as you do “loving things” for people, THAT is agape and you really don’t need to diligently strive to have any real affection for them—just do “loving” things for them. That’s simply not true according to this verse. Paul implies that you can do the ultimate “loving” things—give away everything you own and become a human torch for a person and still NOT love them. There is sacrifice, there is a “noble gesture” but that doesn’t necessarily equate to love in Paul’s book. The implication is that we must never stop at simply doing “loving” things for people we don’t like all that well and call that love because God says it isn’t.

Some may say, “But how can you develop genuine affection for someone who drives you up the wall?” We said last time that this wasn’t possible for us to do apart from God. This kind of love is FROM GOD. God loves all sorts of people who get under my skin and he has deep and perfect affection for them. If God loves them and love is from God then the solution is to pray that God would give you HIS love for that person. That is what we must do, but we must not believe the lie that it is possible to truly have agape for a person for whom we have no affection. It must be granted that our personalities will naturally hit it off more with some people than with others but God can give us the capacity to have agape for all sorts of people—even those who drive us crazy on a surface level. THAT’S the standard. Christianity, unlike every other faith is a religion of the heart. When a person becomes a believer they do not simply outwardly reform—they get a new heart that beats in unison with God’s heart. It only follows that God-like love should be from the heart and not only an external set of behaviors.

These three verses were written to Corinth so Paul chooses gifts and acts that would be meaningful to them but the principle is not limited to tongues and prophecy and faith and fiery martyrdom. It would be just as accurate to say, “If I can preach or teach like Charles Spurgeon but have not love, I am nothing—an irritant to God.” “If I can pull more truth out of the Bible than the apostle Paul, but have not love,” “if I can sing like a nightingale or make music that causes the angels to swoon,” “if I can reason or debate like Socrates,” “if I cook and entertain like Martha Stewart but have not love, I am nothing.” Paul’s point is that whatever we do—whatever gifts we have—if they are not done with hearts filled with love then they are nothing. We who live in task-oriented North America must never forget that WHAT we do is not nearly as important to God as WHY and HOW we do it. As we said last time, the Pharisees did many good works but they were spiritual zeros because they did them for themselves to be seen of men and not from love.

May God give us the grace to be increasingly more aware of those areas of our lives where we are living and ministering with anything other than a love motivation and may we see the dire peril of living a life without costly, Biblical agape or conducting a loveless ministry that in God’s eyes reduces us to nothing.

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