As Christians, we often underestimate the importance of “love” in our Christian walk. We focus on faith, on serving others, on being kind to others, on leading lives of integrity, but rarely do we stop to consider the amount of “love” in our lives.
I won’t spend too much time considering why this is the case, but it could be because we’re saturated and overwhelmed with messages about “love” from just about everywhere— regardless of the extent to which they reflect true love.
When Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment, he replied that it was a commandment about love… to love God, and to love others as yourself (Luke 10:27). When Jesus was telling His disciples to reflect Him, He told them to love one another; people would know that we are His disciples when we love one another (John 13:35)! This gives me the impression that this is such a rare occurrence! When we truly love one another, the world will know what we are His disciples! Doesn’t this infer, that apart from Him, we do not have the capacity for such love?
So on this topic of love, with the world getting ready to celebrate the big love day, I’d like to share a few thoughts from the “love chapter” in the New Testament, from the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth.
After addressing the topic of spiritual gifts in 1Corinthians 12, Paul closes off chapter 12 with the words, “and I will show you a still more excellent way” and then he starts off chapter 13 by explaining what he meant by the “the more excellent way.” He says that while all these gifts that I’ve written to you about are great, if I have them all but don’t have love, I am nothing; the Greek word for nothing is οὐδείς (oudeis) which means absolutely nothing at all. Even if I have the gift of prophecy (which includes preaching), knowledge, and faith—and not just any faith—but a faith that moves mountains, but don’t have love, I am absolutely nothing! If I gave up all the money I have, if I even gave up myself—which I thought I could boast about—all this, accounts to nothing!
Let’s let this sink in for a moment… do we realize what the apostle Paul is doing here? He is shattering all the foundations that could give us pride in our Christian walk… nothing matters if I don’t have love. And love is one of those things that can’t be faked! I shared the following on social media this morning:
We were initially taught that love is a feeling.
Then we were taught that love is an action.
The Bible teaches that love is a state of being.
This is the kind of love that never fails.
Love is not just something we feel. Love is not just something we do. Love is something we have to become. The word for “become” is the Greek γίνομαι (ginomai) which the Apostle Paul uses a couple of chapters earlier when he writes, “Be (ginomia) imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” (1 Cor. 11:1) We have to become—grow into— imitating Paul and in turn Christ. As much as we’d like it to happen instantaneously because we’ve been conditioned by our instant-everything world, growing in Christ can never happen instantaneously. Love is a state of being that we have to grow into; to become.
So what does this love-state-of-being look like? Paul goes on to describe it using the following words (my rephrase based on the original Greek phrases): love is a state of being patient and perseverant; a state of being kind; of not being envious; of not showing off or being puffed up; of not being rude or seeking things for oneself; of not being easily provoked to anger; of not falsely charging a person with wrongs; of not being glad about or saluting injustice, but rejoicing with the truth (which is reality); of concealing and bearing with the other’s weaknesses; of having genuine faith, and of actively waiting in genuine hope for the fulfillment of God’s promises.
This, my friends, is the love-state-of-being that never falls or fails! This is the kind of state of being that we must live so that “all people will know that (we) are (His) disciples” (John 13:35).
If you are like me, you feel overwhelmed at this point. How can I possibly achieve such a state of being?! It IS absolutely overwhelming… IF we’re bearing it alone. But that’s why the Apostle Paul ends his list with “endures all things” which, by going back to the Greek word for “endure” ὑπομένω (hupomenó), we learn that it means “to endure the load of life with God’s power.”
The Lord has not raised the bar and left us to climb it on our own. It would be an impossible task. Christ raised the bar by enduring the pain for us and before us, so that in Him, we can endure all hardships.
And when we do, our eyes will be opened and we will realize that what we see now, we see only “dimly” and what we know now, we only “know in part,” but we will spend an eternity of seeing Him “face to face” and “knowing fully!”
Paul writes, “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” (verse 12). Mirrors at the time Paul was writing were made of a pure metal, not glass as they are today. The metal revealed an indistinct image that needed to be viewed from different angles to constitute a full image. This is the type of clarity with which we can see God today. It takes effort, wrestling, and deep study of the Word of God in His presence, asking Him to reveal His living word to us and enable us to not be just hearers of the Word but doers (James 1:22).
The second part of the verse talks about knowing; “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” The Greek word for “knowing fully” is ἐπιγινώσκω (epignóskó) which means “to fully and experientially know through direct relationship.” The Greek word for “even as” is καθώς (kathōs) which means “to the extent.” So what Paul is saying here is that we will fully and experientially know God in eternity to the extent that we allow God to fully and experientially know us while on Earth!!
My friends, I can think of nothing else that is worthier of our time, effort, and attention! Let us live in a love-state-of-being and let us be transparent enough with God to allow ourselves to be fully and experientially known to Him so that we can spend eternity in full experiential knowledge of Him!
May the cry of our heart be, “For I have decided to know nothing… except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). Indeed may we count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord (Philippians 3:8).
Happy Valentine’s Day 🙂