SERMON: The Greatest of These is Love

THE GREATEST OF THESE IS LOVE

19 April 2009

 

I. Introduction

    -- turn in Bibles to 1 Corinthians 13

 

13. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

 

    -- right before Easter, we finished up our 40-day study [40 DAYS OF LOVE -- FIREPROOF] -- this 40-day study focused on relationships -- and we primarily looked at our relationships with each other and with our spouse and how building a strong foundation on God's word and His image of love would lead us to experience greater and deeper levels of intimacy in all our relationships

    -- but, if that was all that we got out of this chapter then we would have missed the greater point of the Apostle Paul's words here for the Church at Corinth and for us -- while Paul's words do provide us with a tangible foundation for our earthly relationships, Paul's focus -- first and foremost -- was on our relationship with the Father and how God's love permeates our lives and is the sole reason for our existence and our experience with Him

    -- we have just celebrated Palm Sunday and Easter as a church family -- we have seen and experienced the glory of Jesus' coming to Jerusalem and His death on the cross of Calvary as payment for our sins -- and we are left with the question, "Why? -- Why would God do that for us?" -- as we talked about last week and as we read in John 3:16, it was simply because of love -- because of God's overpowering, unconditional, agape love for us that He sent His Son to die in our place on the cross

    -- "For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life"

    -- and that brings us squarely back to Paul's final words in this chapter -- our relationship with God is ultimately sustained only through His love -- everything else fails -- everything else passes away -- the one constant in all of the universe -- the one constant in all of eternity -- is love

    -- love -- not faith -- should be the concern of the church

    -- love -- not hope -- should be our driving focus

    -- love -- and only love -- should be the reason for our existence and the binding force behind all that we do

    -- so, this morning, I want to take the lessons of our 40-day study on love and relationships and shine the light of Calvary and the resurrection on it and take a few moments to consider what Paul means when he says here that love is the greatest of all

 

II. Faith, Hope, and Love

    -- before I read this verse again, let me remind you of the context -- the Christians at Corinth had been confused over spiritual gifts -- they were competing amongst themselves over which spiritual gifts were the greatest -- which were the most desirable -- and were establishing a pecking order in the church based on these gifts -- they were thinking and living selfishly instead of for each other or for the church

    -- so, Paul wrote this epistle to correct them -- right before this chapter, Paul spent quite a bit of time talking about spiritual gifts and their purpose -- how they existed solely for the benefit of the church and how each individual member and each individual gift was given for the benefit of all -- "Your focus," he was pointing out, "needs to be on your brother and sister and not on yourself."

    -- and then he penned these words that we call, "The Love Chapter" -- in this chapter, Paul says that what the Corinthians should be striving for was love -- instead of spiritual gifts -- instead of power and prestige -- they should be focusing on developing and demonstrating love

    -- "Everything else," he told them, "passes away -- everything else fails -- prophecies will cease -- tongues will be stilled -- knowledge will pass away" -- until finally, you are left with what is important -- look back at verse 13

 

13. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

 

    -- let's look at each of those three for a moment and let's think about why Paul says that, of those three, love is the greatest

 

    -- first, let's look at faith -- what is faith? -- it's a word that we talk about a lot in the church -- "I have faith in Jesus" -- "I have faith in God" -- but what does that mean?

    -- the best definition of faith is that which we have in Hebrews 11:1 -- "faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see -- the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen"

    -- faith is belief in what we have not seen with our own eyes, but that we still trust in as truth none-the-less

    -- do you remember the story I once told you about the Great Blonden -- the famous tight-rope walker from around the turn of the 20th century? -- he was most famous for his daring walks across Niagra Falls -- 160 feet above the water walking over 1,000 feet from one side of the river to the other

    -- legend has it that one time he was preparing for a show and he was getting the crowd pumped up -- "Do you believe that I can walk this tightrope across the falls?" he asked. "We believe" replied the audience. -- "Do you believe that I can walk the tightrope across the Falls pushing a wheelbarrow?" he asked. "We believe" replied the crowd, even more enthusiastically. -- "Do you believe that I can walk the tightrope across the Falls pushing a wheelbarrow and carrying a man on my shoulders?" asked Blonden a third time. With great shouts the cries went up "We believe, we believe!"

    -- "Then, who will volunteer to climb on my shoulders and go across with me?" Blonden shouted. -- Silence. -- No one stepped forward. No one said a word, though they were all suddenly looking at one another -- finally, one man stepped forward -- Blonden's manager -- and climbed on his shoulders and Blonden went across the wire -- pushing the wheelbarrow and carrying his manager on his shoulders

    -- the only one there who had true faith was the manager -- he believed in that which he had never seen -- he had seen the evidence that Blonden could do great feats -- he had seen him cross the river before on a wire -- and based on that evidence, he believed that Blonden could do what he said -- that is faith

    -- that is what Paul means here when he uses the word, "faith" -- that is what Paul means when he writes in Ephesians 2:8, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith" -- through your trust and belief in God's redemption through Christ

    -- so, why would Paul say that love is greater than faith? -- it goes back to the definition -- faith is belief in what we have not seen -- once you have seen, then there is no need for faith

    -- remember in the Upper Room when Thomas refused to believe in Jesus' resurrection until he saw it with his own eyes? -- Jesus appeared to him and proved that He was alive and Thomas believed -- in John 20:29, Jesus responded to Thomas, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." -- Thomas did not have faith because he could not believe until he saw the risen Christ himself

    -- think about it like this -- faith had a beginning and it will have an end -- faith has not always existed -- before man -- when God created the heavens and all the spiritual beings -- the angels and the cherubim and the seraphim and all the others -- faith did not exist

    -- from the moment the angels were created, they saw the face of God -- because of this, they had no concept of faith -- they cannot understand or accept faith as the evidence of things not seen because they have seen and witnessed God from the beginning -- there was no place for faith before the foundation of the world

    -- faith did not even exist on earth prior to the Fall in the Garden of Eden -- Adam and Eve lived on sight and not faith -- they had no need of faith because they walked with God -- they knew Him -- they saw Him -- and they believed because they saw

    -- it was only after the Fall -- after the separation -- that faith came into being -- faith was born in the Garden of Eden -- as John Wesley put it, "it was only when love was lost by sin that faith was added" -- faith was designed to re-establish the law of love and to point to God's redeeming love through Christ

    -- and, at some point in our future, faith will cease to exist -- when we are taken to heaven to live with God, we will no longer live on faith -- on the evidence of things unseen -- because we will see and know God and His love in a real and personal way

    -- it will be like we sing in the great hymn, "It is well with my soul" -- the last verse says, "And, Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight" -- when faith becomes sight it, it is no longer faith

    -- this is why Paul says that here that love is greater than faith

 

    -- Hope is similar to faith -- hope is the substance that faith longs for -- hope is the thing that we don't see, but that we believe, through faith, exists -- in other words, hope is the tangible part of faith -- it is the reality that we haven't seen but that we believe is there -- for the Christian, our ultimate hope is in God -- our ultimate hope is in Jesus and His redeeming blood -- as the hymn says, "Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness" -- our hope is based on the truth that we believe in

    -- but, just like faith -- hope has a beginning and an end -- hope is tied to a point in time -- let me show you what I mean

    -- let's say you've got a birthday coming up -- and there's a present that you want -- you tell your family about it -- you drop hints -- you remind them over and over again that you really want this gift -- and you hope they give it to you -- your hope is tied to the tangible presence of that gift and to a specific time -- your birthday -- and, once your birthday occurs, your hope is over -- either you received the gift and you've got it -- or you didn't get the gift, and your hope that you would get it for your birthday is over

    -- hope has a definite beginning and end -- our hope is based on Jesus' promise that He will never leave us or forsake us -- our hope is based on the fact that Jesus said that when we die, we will be with Him -- so, our hope is tied to our death -- once we are dead, hope is over -- either you will have received the gift of eternal life through Jesus or you will not -- but, the opportunity to hope has ended

    -- that's why Paul said that love is greater than both faith and hope -- because both of them will come to an end -- both of them will cease to exist at some point in the future

 

    -- so, what about love? -- why is it the greatest?

    -- well, for one thing, love does not have a beginning and an end -- John tells us in 1 John 4:8 that God is love -- and since God does not have a beginning or an end, love does not have a beginning or an end -- love has always existed in God and it will always exist in God

    -- and, so, from the moment that God created time -- from the moment that God started creating the heavens and the earth -- the spiritual and the human -- love existed -- love had a place in all of the children of God, from the moment of their creation -- from the moment God created beings, they existed knowing and experiencing His love

    -- even though faith and hope didn't exist in heaven -- even though the angels could not experience faith and hope -- they did know and experience love

    -- even though sin entered the world and faith and hope sprang into being after the Fall of man in the Garden of Eden -- even though there was a beginning point for faith and hope -- the same wasn't true of love -- love existed in the Garden before God created Adam -- and love continued to exist even after man rejected God and turned from Him in disobedience

    -- even now, we exist in a great ocean of love poured out on us through Christ Jesus -- every relationship that we have is a reflection of the love that is God and that never ends

    -- and, eventually, when we die and go to heaven -- when our faith has become sight -- when our hope has been realized -- love will not cease -- love will continue on -- love without end -- because we will be drinking from the source of the fountain of love -- we will be basking in God's love for eternity

    -- that's why Paul writes here in 1 Corinthians 13:8 that "Love never fails" -- love never ends -- and, for that reason, love is greater than both faith and hope

 

    -- why is love greater than faith and hope?

    -- because this love that Paul writes of is the one thing that binds us and unites us as one -- one body -- one faith -- one hope -- one baptism -- one Spirit -- one church

    -- it doesn't matter what individual gifts we have -- it doesn't matter what individual talents we have -- because, as Christians, we should be giving our gifts and talents to the church through love

    -- love should be our driving force -- it should be the reason we exist as a church and it should give focus to our purposes

    -- that is why Jesus said that the greatest commandments were to love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul strength and to love your neighbor as yourself

    -- if your focus is on loving God and neighbor, then you are fulfilling God's call and His holy law

    -- everything that we do in the church -- whether it's the worship -- the singing -- the fellowship -- the prayers -- or the proclamation of the word -- everything that we do -- should be done in love and because of love

    -- everything that we do outside the church -- our ministries -- our service to others -- our evangelism -- everything -- should be done in love and because of love

    -- any other reason will result in failure because everything else will fail -- only love never fails -- only love will remain -- and that is why the greatest of these is love

 

    -- let us pray