Pursue Practical Love

Pursue Practical Love
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
December 15, 2024 

As we are continuing our study in Corinthians, we saw last week that Paul addressed the function of the body and gifts of the Holy Spirit. Paul has been correcting the church in Corinth because there were so many areas of immaturity. One of those areas of immaturity had to do with an attitude of superiority or arrogance that some had because they had greater manifestation of spiritual gifts.

There is something very wrong with that picture. This is living proof that a person can receive the Holy Spirit and still be quite immature. And according to what we are seeing in chapter 12, a person can also manifest spiritual gifts and still be quite immature.

We should not be deceived into thinking that because the gifts of the Spirit are working through us, it is a sign of Spiritual maturity. The gifts have been given so the church could be edified. It has nothing to do with your maturity. God can even use a donkey to fulfill His purpose!

Spiritual maturity is seen in godly character first and foremost. After Paul corrects their use of spiritual gifts in chapter 12, he finishes that chapter by saying, “Earnestly desire the greater gifts. And I show you a still more excellent way.”

Love is that more excellent way. To have love, to give love, to be love is greater that all the spiritual gifts because it is the very nature and character of God Himself.

And so, we get to one of the most famous passages in the Bible. It is even quoted by many who do not even believe in God, because it represents that which all of us are looking for: Love.

Fact of the matter is, God is love. It is the substance of God’s make-up. and as such His heart for His children is to love.

Love is not just a feeling, it requires action. Love is a verb, especially godly love, because the godly love Jesus showed cost Him something. His love was not just based on empty words but was showed by His actions.

In this well-known scripture of 1 Corinthians 13, Paul writes the definitive passage on love and what love looks like.

He describes the nature and character of love in a way we can understand and apply to our own lives. Love is something that should be the greater part of your character. It should define you.

It becomes a mirror to our souls in which we are confronted with what our own love looks like.

I. Love Should Define Us

• In English, the word ‘love’ is often used too broadly. We use it to describe our affection for chocolate, food, the weather, and anything else we intensely like. However, the love we are called to and is described here is the godly supernatural “agape” love.

A. Love is the quality most like God

• God is love and it determines the course of His actions. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son…”
• He doesn’t just HAVE love, He IS love. Everything He does is driven by love.

Illus – Recently Mecayla and I reminisced about the things the kids did growing up…

• Even The rules God give is to protect you. It is given because of love.
• God’s love, agape love, is a sacrificing and self-denying love. It is not the watered-down definition of love selfishly describing what I ‘like’ intensely, but a love that is less focused on the self and more on the other.

1 John 4:7-11, God is love, so let us also love…

• It is the greatest evidence that God is within us; that we have been changed into His image.
• This is what we need most, to be filled up with all the fullness of God.

Ephesians 3:17-19, … and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

• This scripture alludes to a different kind of love, another dimension of love. A love that is something more than what we can define in our three-dimensional world. There is an unfathomable depth to God’s love. It surpasses earthly understanding.

B. We were made to be loved

• This is such an important concept to grasp. You were made to be loved. Not made to be kept in check. Not made to be ruled. Not made to be dominated. Made to be loved.
• That is why God does not just show up and reveal His fulness to you. His overwhelming majesty could overwhelm even your will with fear and awe.
• He could force you to serve Him, obey Him. After all, He is worthy of it because He is your creator and your sustaining force. But will it result in you loving Him by choice?
• God showed His love through Jesus Christ to woo us into relationship with Him.
• God made us with the capacity to love and be loved. We were made in His image.

Illus – Everyone has that deep longing for unconditional love and acceptance. Many of the issues people carry with them resulting in some rebellious or perverse actions have its origin in rejection and not feeling loved. It then manifests in either chasing after it and finding it in wrong places, or acting out in anger and running in the opposite direction also to destruction.

• The answer is to run to the loving God who can and wants to restore the broken hearted, pouring out His love in our hearts.
• This results in us having the capacity to love with His love being the source.
• By the way, love is more important than the sacrifice of obedience.

Hosea 6:6, I delight in faithful love rather than sacrifice, and in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

Illus – No woman will be truly fulfilled if her husband just buys her things but there is no love and affection…

• This is what God had against Israel. They were committing adultery with other gods while bringing empty sacrifices.

Illus. – A child can be obedient in two ways. He can be outwardly obedient but rebellious in his heart looking forward to the time when he doesn’t have to be obedient anymore. Or, because he loves his father and knows his father loves him, he can choose to be obedient from a loving heart.

• God doesn’t want to force us to do anything. He wants us to have a heart after God and the things of God.
• Then actions are driven by love, and will show in much fruit, which also includes obedience.
• God is love and He has poured out love within our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

Romans 5:5, “and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”

• This is the work of God. It is because God is changing us so that we become like Him.

Illus. – Do you sometimes feel that you are pushed past your human capacity to love? I believe God sometimes allow this to show us that we cannot be self-righteous about being loving. We need His godly love.

• It is not natural for the sinful nature of man to have a self-sacrificing love. Godly love is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. He cultivates it in us as we surrender to Him.
• When you read the list of the qualities of love, it is easy to see that we can’t do it.

Illus. – If we were to put our name in place of the word love in chapter 13, we could see how much we fall short. But if Jesus’ name is placed there, it fits perfectly.

C. Love makes us something

• Paul says that without love, I am nothing.
• I could even do amazing, incredible, wonderful things, but if I do not have love, I am nothing.
• Why is this so? Because love is something that I give away and I become greater because of it. The more love I give away, the greater I become in spiritual things.
• We have heard that it is better to give than to receive. Doing something for other people feeds the soul.
• The natural inclination is to be lazy, wanting to live a self-gratifying, being-served life. When you do things just for yourself, it might seem like it is gratifying you, but actually your soul becomes empty. In our culture we call people like that an oxygen – thief. It is like being a parasite on society.

Illus – The grinch of Christmas…

App – Try Love-as-a-verb for a week. Choose to do the things around the house that one might normally complain about. Make coffee first. Wash the dishes first. Do something nice for someone else. Not begrudgingly, but choosing to do it cheerfully. Serve somewhere, give of yourself.

• Paul understood this secret. It makes you feel alive.

2 Corinthians 12:15, I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls.

• Even the gifts should flow from love. I do not pray for healing for someone so I can be seen as a powerful instrument of God, but because I am moved with compassion for the hurt of the person.
• There are degrees of love, there is a maturity in love as we grow in the capacity to love. Someone who has no love in his heart whatsoever, is empty. Soulless. Love is what makes us something.
• That is why a robot cannot really love. It doesn’t have the spark of love from the creator that gives life.

II. We Love because…

• When we hear these words that describe love, we have to ask, “Why would I choose to love the way God asks me to love?”
• Love is a choice. It’s not an emotion, although emotion may come as a result of love. That’s why Paul tells them to ‘pursue’ love.
• So why should we choose to love? Because…

A. Otherwise, we’ll become an angry, bitter person

• This is the danger Many people think the goal of life is to be loved, this is not quite right. We are already loved beyond all we could ask or even imagine. We are loved by our creator, designer our source of life and love.
• The goal of life should be to love, to choose to love.

Illus. – Some people choose to be bitter; start with anger, grows to resentment and frustration, after a while solidifies into bitterness. They don’t have to choose it anymore; they have become it – they have become bitter. It now defines them. This is a choice that each of us has to make. I can’t always choose my circumstances, but I can choose my reaction. I can choose my own character.

• The contrary is true. If I choose to start loving, choose to start serving, choose to start being available to be used by God, I will become a loving person.

Galatians 6:7, Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for that which a man sows, he will also reap.

2 Corinthians 9:6, Now this I say, he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

• If you want to reap love from others, you need to sow love towards others.
• And even if you don’t reap love, you receive all the love from God needed to sustain you.

B. God told us to love

• God has made it abundantly clear that the quality of love is the most important quality He desires in our lives.
• It is the greatest of all commandments and the sum of the entire Old and New Testaments.

Matthew 22:36-40, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” And He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

• Jesus also said that He gives a new commandment – to love…

John 13:34, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

C. Love profits me greatly

• Paul wrote in verse 3, that if I do all these things without love it profits me nothing, therefore, to do these things with love, it profits me greatly.
• If I love others, it is a great blessing to me. When we give love to others, we are loved in return.

Illus – I have heard people say, nobody loves me. The secret to being loved is to start to love . A woman who must have been one of the most loved people, were mother Theresa. Why? She was loved because she loved.

• Don’t wait for others to love you; love simply because God asked you to love and know that He is the One who will bless you in return.
• When you have great love in your heart, it is great blessing to others and also to you yourself.
• It transforms you, and it transforms others.
• The “most excellent way” is love. It is that which makes us something, because without it, we are nothing. And the greatest way to grow in love is to grow in our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
• All else will fade away: prophecy, tongues, and knowledge. The message Paul is making clear is that all the other things people chase after and see as a treasure will fade away. Love and what we do from a godly ‘agape’ love will stand for eternity.
• We need to surrender to God’s Spirit to work in us His godly agape love.