Year One, June 27

Love Never Ends1

In today’s reading the apostle Paul tells us what holy love is. This excellent grace is an absolutely essential ingredient in the Christian’s witness to the world.

  

1 Corinthians 13

1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

The greatest speaker’s words are only so much sound, unless there is love in their heart to give power to their words. Better to have a loving heart than to speak twenty languages.

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. (We may be blessed with extraordinary talent and abilities and yet still perish in our sins. Grace in the heart is the only sure evidence of salvation. A man may prophesy and be a Balaam.2 He may understand mysteries and be a Simon the Magician.3 He may have all knowledge and perish like Ahithophel.4 He may have a faith that can move mountains, and be a son of destruction like Judas. If we do not love both God and people, then we have nothing good in us.) 3If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. (People may give all their money for the poor just to show off. They may die as martyrs because they are simply down right stubborn. But if they have no love to God their suffering is actually pointless. Love is an essential grace. It is the heart of godliness. Without love true religion is just a dead body.)

4Love is patient and kind; love does not envy (It rejoices when good things happen to others.) or boast; (It never glorifies itself.) it is not arrogant (It hates flattery.) 5or rude. (Christian love behaves itself. Love to others will not allow us to act in ways that are improper for Christians or that society thinks are in bad taste.) It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; (It is not suspicious and always finding fault with others.) 6it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7Love bears all things, (Love tolerates the faults of others. As Old Master Trapp says, love “swallows down whole, many pills that would be very bitter in her mouth if she were so foolish as to chew them.”5) believes all things, (That is to say, love believes all things that would make us have a good opinion of our neighbors, even when it takes great faith to be able to do so.) hopes all things, endures all things.

8Love never ends. (It is like a beautiful flower that never withers.) As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part. (Our greatest knowledge is to know that we know nothing. We are only beginner students in Christ’s College.) 10but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Paul shows us that our best intellectual accomplishments here below, even in heavenly things, are temporary. He teaches us to place the greatest value on those superior graces of the heart that will outlast time and be made perfect in eternity.

13So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

It is not true that faith and hope will come to an end any more than love will. The three divine sisters are each immortal. We will trust the Lord all the more when we meet him face to face and we will hope all the more enthusiastically for the continued enjoyment of his glory when we enter into it. Still love is the best. May we become perfect in love.

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¹ 1 Corinthians 13:8

² Balaam was a prophet in Moab who was hired to curse Israel, but instead prophesied as the Lord directed him. His story begins in Number 22. He later gave advice to the king of Moab that, “caused the people of Israel to act treacherously against the LORD” (Number 31:16).

³ Or in Latin, Simon Magus. His story in found in Acts 8:9-24.

⁴ Ahithophel advised David’s son Absalom when he tried to overthrow his father’s throne. His story is found in 2 Samuel 15:12 - 17:23.

⁵ John Trapp (1601-1669) We swallow pills whole because they taste terrible if we chew them. Love thinks the best of others’ words and actions and does not spend time (chewing on them) trying to figure out whether their intentions were good or bad.