I love red cars!  I love this fried chicken; no wonder it’s called, “marry me chicken”!  I love how you make your kitchen shine!  I love this place on the beach!  I love those clothes you’re wearing today!  I love you—could you help me with this?! 

How many times a day do we use this word called “love” without realizing the shallowness of our way of using it?  No wonder our relationships become shallow based on the way the world perceives love.

The church at Corinth were fighting and arguing over the trivial things of life.  They were competing for importance by putting down others doing their part given by God as His gift to each one.  Instead of being who God wanted them to be, they sought to be who others were.  Envy, jealousy, followed by bitterness and arguments became the norm.  This “unwholesome talk” and subsequent behaviors were destroying loving relationships.  Led by God’s Holy Spirit, Paul writes to the people with God’s love in his heart.  It grieves Paul’s heart, like it does God’s heart, for people to be unloving and rude to each other.  If we will remember, Paul’s words at the end of chapter 12 were, “But now I want to lay out a far better way for you.”  This far better way is a lesson on love—God’s love.

Dubbed the “love chapter” and used as a reading over the years in weddings.  But 1 Corinthians 13 is for all who believe Jesus, repent in His name with a surrendered heart and who want to love like Jesus loves us.  This is how to love in the most excellent way…

1 Corinthians 13, The Message

The Way of Love

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

² If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.

^3-7 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

^8-10 Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

¹¹ When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

¹² We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

¹³ But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

These words surely convict our hearts for we can always do better in loving God by loving each other daily in all circumstances of life.

To love extravagantly means to hold nothing back with no limits.  Do we love like that?  Can we trust in the love of God in us to love in ways they challenge and stretch our faith? 

Pause to prayerfully consider the word of this chapter.  Read it again. Read it daily, meditating on the words.  This “far better way” to live is how we develop our loving, intimate relationship with God and each other and is the pathway to growing the characteristics of God in us!  It’s not just for weddings!  These words of love for Life!

Love . . . is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. —1 Corinthians 13:4–5

We are all guilty and in need of forgiveness for making lists—all the things people have done to us or said about us—it’s all there on the list!  God says to stop making lists, in fact, get rid of all the lists mentally, emotionally, and physically with God helping us, because it is affecting and infecting our spiritual health.

Max Lucado, “Encouraging Word Bible” writes—

“Couldn’t we all make such a list? You’ve already learned, haven’t you, that friends aren’t always friendly? Neighbors aren’t always neighborly? Some workers never work, and some bosses are always bossy?

You’ve already learned, haven’t you, that a promise made is not always a promise kept? Just because someone is called your dad, that doesn’t mean he will act like your dad. Even though they said “yes” on the altar, they may say “no” in the marriage.

You’ve already learned, haven’t you, that we tend to fight back? To bite back? To keep lists and snarl lips and growl at people we don’t like?

God wants your list. He inspired one servant to write, “Love does not count up wrongs that have been done” (1Co 13:5 NCV). He wants us to leave the list at the cross.

Not easy.

“Just look what they did to me!” we defy and point to our hurts.

“Just look what I did for you,” he reminds and points to the cross.

Paul said it this way: “If someone does wrong to you, forgive that person because the Lord forgave you” (Col 3:13 NCV).

You and I are commanded—not urged, commanded—to keep no list of wrongs.

Besides, do you really want to keep one? Do you really want to catalog all your mistreatments? Do you really want to growl and snap your way through life? God doesn’t want you to either. Give up your sins before they infect you and your bitterness before it incites you, and give God your anxiety before it inhibits you. Give God your anxious moments.”

Lord,

Cleanse our hearts, renew our minds, refresh our souls with your new mercies for today, remove our mental lists that infect our love.  Restore the joy and peace of your salvation at work within us to produce your love flowing through us.

In Jesus Name, Amen