Good Morning MBC. Our Scripture reading today is 1 Corinthians 13.
1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 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. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Remember that at the end of chapter 12 Paul spoke of a “more excellent way” of displaying our Christianity than through spiritual gifts. All the gifts in the world that are devoid of love are absolutely useless. It’s easy to demonstrate a gift, but displaying love in a very real and concrete way is more difficult. That’s why it is more excellent.
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
These verses show us why biblical love is so much more difficult and powerful than the “love” our culture speaks of. This kind of love is Spirit-fed!
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When 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. 12 For 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.
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Of all the things we do in the church and of all the ways we display our faith, love is the thing that endures into eternity. That’s what is meant by “the perfect” in verse 10, eternity. In eternity we will see clearly and know fully, but most of all we will continue to love.
I hope you have a blessed day!
Pastor Tim
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