The Love of God with R. C. Sproul, “Modeling God’s Love,” 10

The Purpose of 1 Corinthians 13 in a Study of God’s Love

As we come near the end of our study of the love of God, I said that we would take some time to look at 1 Corinthians 13, and you may wonder why I would direct our attention to that, because in 1 Corinthians 13 we have the apostolic exhortation and admonition with respect to how we ought to behave, how we ought to exercise the love that we've defined as agape.

And so how is that going to tell us anything about the character of God and of His love? Well, again, we understand that love, agape love, is rooted and grounded in the character of God, and the love that we are called to manifest to each other is the love that comes from God, and a love that mirrors and reflects His character.

So when we look carefully at these admonitions about how we are to demonstrate love, we learn at least by way of analogy something about how God exercises His love toward us. And so with that in mind, I want to look for a few moments at 1 Corinthians 13.

Before I do that, there's one other thing I want to say. I don't know how many books I've read in my life, but I know it's certainly numbered in the thousands, and yet if you were to ask me what are the top ten books that I've ever read in terms of impact on my own thinking, it would be difficult for me to name precisely which are those top ten.

But certainly I would include in that list this little book that is not all that well known by Jonathan Edwards called Charity and Its Fruits. Now, I mean, we've heard of Edwards' religious affections, and we've heard of his freedom of the will, and of his sermons, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, but this book is an exposition of 1 Corinthians 13, and it's far and away the best exposition of that book that I've ever seen.

This book, Charity and Its Fruits, is put out by Banner of Truth Trust, and also we carry them in stock here at Ligonier Ministries. But I strongly recommend that Christians who want to deepen their understanding of what it means to exercise the fruit of the Spirit of love and the gift of love, that this is the best source I know in commenting on it.

And let me just summarize very briefly at the beginning the seven ways in which Edwards says that 1 Corinthians 13 instructs us in the nature of true love. And by way of a simple summary, I'm just going to spell these out briefly, these seven.

The Seven Ways 1 Corinthians 13 Describes True Love

Number one, love reveals what the right Christian spirit is. What kind of spirit we are to display as people is defined by love. Second of all, love reveals to those who profess faith in Christ whether their Christian experience is genuine.

Because if we have no love, we are not born of God. Remember John said those who love are born of God, and all who are born of God love in this sense of agape. And so if agape is absent from our lives, even if we make a passionate profession of faith, we don't have the faith that we are professing, because everyone who has true faith also has true love.

Third, that love reveals a friendly spirit, which spirit is the spirit of heaven itself. Four, love shows the pleasantness of the Christian life. Now we distinguish in the Bible and in theology between the virtues of love and the virtue of joy.

People who have no joy have no love. Just as love is inseparably related to faith, so love is inseparably related to joy. You can't have love and not have joy at the same time. Six, love reveals an urgent need to guard against envy, malice, bitterness, and other dark spirits that overthrow the work of love.

The insight there of course is that with the spirit of envy towards another person, I can't really love another person, and I can't really love another person, and I can't really love.

Envy them.

I can't feel malice to somebody whom I really love. And so bitterness, malice, envy, jealousy, these are the vices that work against the virtue of love. And finally, in his summary, he said, love calls us to love even the worst of our enemies as it tempers the spirit of the Christian and is the sum of Christianity.

The Supremacy of Love Over Gifts, Knowledge, and Sacrifice

Well looking at this as the brief overview, let's take a look now at the text itself where we read in 1 Corinthians 13 these words, though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.

Let me just stop with that first statement. Notice that the context in which the Apostle Paul gives us this magnificent exposition of the nature of love is in the midst of a broader discussion about the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

As he writes to the Corinthian church, he is aware that the church is being torn apart by rivalries over the gifts of the Spirit, and that at the heart of the controversy was the practice of glossolalia, or of the speaking in tongues.

So that in chapter 12 and in chapter 14, Paul gives his deepest discussion of this whole phenomenon of speaking in tongues, and how it ought not to disturb and destroy the love that is to be manifest in the body of Christ.

And so that's why in 1 Corinthians 13 he starts this segment, remember he didn't write this in chapters, we've added the chapter separations. And so the context is the way he introduces the idea of agape, he said, even if I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, if I have the gift of tongues, I don't have love,.

I'm just noise.

That's all that comes out of my life, and all that comes out of my mouth is static. It's not symphony, it's cacophony. And so what he's saying is if you're the most gifted, charismatic person that ever lived, but you don't have the gift of love.

You're nothing more than a sounding brass and a clanging cymbal, just clashing noise. And then he goes on, and though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I can remove mountains, but I have not love, I'm nothing.

That is even the gift of prophecy, the gift of knowledge, all these endowments that God the Holy Spirit bestows upon his people are worthless if there is no love with it. One of the things I want to say in terms of drawing this to our contemporary situation, we have this idea in our culture that talent covers a multitude of sins.

If somebody is a successful movie actress or movie actor, it doesn't matter how many affairs of adultery they are involved in. If a person is an outstanding athlete, it doesn't matter how many illegitimate children they have, because we don't look to our leaders to be role models.

If they're talented, if they're able, that's all that count. Even a person can be the President of the United States. And when we went through the Monica Lewinsky controversy in this country, commentator after commentator after commentator said, it doesn't matter about the President's personal morality.

We want somebody who can lead us effectively in economics and all the rest. And the same is true in the church. If a person is educated and is knowledgeable and is sophisticated as a professor or as a theologian, he's above criticism in many ways.

Or if a person's a golden-voiced orator, great preacher, doesn't matter. We will still exalt these heroes despite their behavior. That's not what the Apostle was saying. What the Apostle was saying, I don't care how gifted you are, I don't care how accomplished you are, I don't care how celebrated you are, if you don't have agape, you are nothing in the sight of God.

This brings to mind, of course, the dreadful warning that Jesus gave at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, when he said, many will come to me in the last day saying, Lord, Lord, didn't we do this in your name, didn't we do that in your name, and so on, and Jesus looks at them and says, depart from me, I never knew you.

And there are still people who are resting their hope and their confidence on their performance to get them into the kingdom of God. When Jesus said, if you are workers of iniquity, I don't know who you are, please leave.

I mean, and that's scary.

That's particularly scary for somebody who's involved, as I am, in what we call full-time Christian service, and I often wonder that. I remember one time walking down the hall and just absolutely by the side of my vision I saw a reflection of myself in the mirror, and I turned around and looked at myself in the mirror, and I said, what if I'm looking at the face of a man who's on his way to hell?

And I thought, oh, but I preach and I teach and I do all these things. That's why I said I can't understand why people love this 1 Corinthians 13 so much, because when we see the standard of what true love is, by divine revelation, it whips up.

On me.

It devastates me, because I see how far short of this standard my life has come. And it's scary when Paul says, I don't care if you have prophecy, if you understand all these mysteries, and you have all these knowledge, and if you have enough faith to move mountains, you don't have love, you're nothing.

And then listen to what he says, and even if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. If I divest myself of all my personal property, if I give everything to the poor, if I sacrifice every possession I have, even the possession of my own life, but have not love, the bottom line is red ink.

I have no profit. There are no assets.

I am nothing.

Now, what Paul is doing here is making a case to demonstrate the supreme importance of love over all of these other things, because this is that which defines the essence of the Christian.

Life.

And so, he spends all this time in introducing the subject in that opening paragraph, which we could study for many, many days, before he even gets to his topic and takes the time to describe and define what this love is.

But before he defines what love is, he first establishes its importance, more important than tongues, more important than prophecy, more important than love, more important than faith, more important than sacrifice, more important than mercy ministry, more important than martyrdom, is this love about which he speaks.

Long-Suffering and Kindness as the First Marks of Love

Well, now let's look then at the content and nature of agape. He begins by saying, love suffers long and is kind. Love suffers long and is kind. Have we seen those words in other places in Scripture? How many times does the Bible describe the character of God as being long-suffering, long-suffering?

I was in the medical center the other day for an MRI on my shoulder, and as I was in the waiting room, an elderly man brought an elderly woman into the room. In the waiting room, in a wheelchair. And when I saw her come in, I could see that she was in distress.

And as she sat there in the wheelchair, waiting to be called to go into the medical office, she began to weep softly. I was sitting there reading a magazine, reading Sports Illustrated, and I kept looking up and looking over, because her distress became more and more severe.

She began to weep more heavily, and so finally she said to her husband, is there some place I can lie down? I can't stand this. So he gets up and knocks on the glass window and talks to the people behind the window and said, my wife is in great pain, can she please find a place to lie down while she's waiting to go in to see the doctors?

And the lady behind, I heard her say, oh, she's going to be called in just a minute, they're coming for her now. And so he said, honey, they're coming for you now, it's okay. And so she stopped crying for just a second, and I thought, oh, I'm so glad that she doesn't have to endure any more of this.

But a minute passed, five minutes passed, ten minutes passed, fifteen minutes passed, and now she's crying and she says, where are they?

They haven't come.

And she finally looks at her husband and she said, take me home, I can't stand any more. And he said, but honey, we just have to go back and go through this again. Let me go ask again. Well, just as he goes up to ask, they finally call her, and she is so relieved and she goes.

In.

Now, I don't know what was wrong with her. I have no idea what was wrong with her. But I can tell you this, I could not stand sitting there in that waiting room for a half an hour watching somebody suffer in this day and age with all of the painkillers that we have to listen to somebody so distressed for such a poor, for such a short period.

And I thought of another opportunity where I visited a woman who I was asked to go and visit her in her home who had been suffering in bed for ten years with terminal cancer. And when I went to her home and sat and talked with her, she looked at me and just one tear escaped on her cheek and she said to me, R .C., she was a Christian, she said, R .C., I just don't think I can take this anymore.

What do you say?

You see, she wasn't sick with a 24-hour flu. She didn't endure pain for a week or even for a month. It was ten years. And she had handled that as a Christian until finally she said, I can't take this anymore.

And the very next week the Lord took her home, and I was so glad to hear that. We find it very difficult to suffer for a long period of time. We want the pain to be over in a hurry. It's one thing to be short-suffering, and it's another thing to be long-suffering.

But this long-suffering is not just related to physical pain and the endurance of that kind of thing, but it also has to do with enduring hostility from other people, insults from other people, slander from other people.

Edwards, speaking about this, says this, some injure others in their good name by reproaching or speaking evil of them behind their backs. No injury is more common, no iniquity more frequent or base than this.

Other ways of injury are abundant, but the amount of injury by evil speaking of this kind is beyond account. Some injure others by making or spreading false reports about them and cruelly slandering.

Them.

Others, without saying that which is directly false, greatly misrepresent things, picturing out everything respecting their neighbors in the worst of all possible colors, exaggerating their faults, setting them forth as far greater than they really are, always speaking of them in an unfair and unjust manner.

A great deal of injury is done among neighbors by thus uncharitably judging one another and putting injurious and evil constructions on one another's words and actions. Edwards is talking about slander, one of the most difficult pains there is to endure.

And how do we endure it? Somebody accuses us falsely. Our natural instinct is to return in kind and to retaliate in kind. I talk to people all the time about this, and I said there's a way in which we are called to absorb an awful lot of sin against us, but it's also dangerous.

Vesta says that my personality is such, in trying to live with me daily, is that she said here's what you do. She said if I do something you don't like, you don't say anything about it. You act like there's nothing wrong.

And then I do it again, and I'm thinking there's no big deal, because you don't say anything. It's fine. And then I do it again, you don't think it's fine. And then somewhere down the line, after you've held this inside all your time, there's an explosion that I don't understand.

And I said that's my sin, because I say, okay, I don't like this, but I'm supposed to endure it and be patient and not be critical and all that kind of thing. But if I choose to absorb it, then I have to absorb it.

There cannot be a point where the dam breaks and all the water gushes down and floods everybody around you. So, we have different ways of dealing with insults and injuries of this kind. But what we are called to be are patient and long-suffering, not reacting in fury the first time somebody slights us.

Can't do that. And it takes grace to be able to suffer long in these things. And notice that what is connected with long-suffering here, love is long-suffering and is kind. What does that mean? To be a kind person is not to be a mean person.

To be a kind person is to be patient, to be friendly, to not be nasty and mean and bitter.

In one's spirit.

One of the great privileges of my life earlier was in the early days of the beginning of the Ministry of Prison Fellowship, I was on the board of directors, and I was in a meeting one day with Chuck Colson, and we were talking about creating a logo for the ministry.

And we talked about different images, and I finally suggested, I said, you know, the thing that comes to my mind about this ministry, and he said, what? I said, that what we're trying to do in the ministry to prison inmates is not to beat up on these people, but to bring them the grace of God.

Because Jesus said, a bruised reed would he not break. And sure, some of these people are hardened criminals. We can't look at this through rose-colored glasses. We understand that. But many of these people are just broken human beings.

And it was to those people that Jesus gave his ministry. He went out looking for the bruised reed, and he kindly, tenderly ministered to them. Chuck said, that's it. And every time I see the pin of prison fellowship to this day, which is a picture of a stalk of wheat that is bent over in half as a broken or bruised reed that is not yet quite broken off, that's become the logo for that ministry.

And that's what we're talking about here, a love that is kind. You see, kind love never, ever says, I told you so. Because when we've been given counsel and we ignore it, and then the disaster comes, the last thing we want to hear is, I told you so, because we're very much aware that we were told not to do that.

But the kind person swallows those words and does not seek to break the bruised reed. On our next lecture, we'll try to come to the end of 1 Corinthians 13 as we look at the rest of the descriptions that Paul gives.