I know this is an extremely famous passage, but as I was reading the Word of God tonight I was really struck by love and what love really is. I use the word "love" a lot and in various contexts, but for the first time ever I think I should stop using this word so often. Its meaning is diluted by daily use and I forget how amazing and how redemptive love really is. How incomprehensibly good love is. How marvelous love is.
Listen:
"And now I will show you the most excellent way.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a [woman], I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 12:31b - 13:13)
I think it really says a lot about the wonderful God we worship that He created love. Regardless of all my cynicism about the modern church and watered-down gospel and such, it is an unshakable fact that God is a God who loves. I wanted to add a modifier after "loves" like "a God who loves desperately", but God doesn't NEED our love and thus that's not quite the sentiment I was going for, except adverbs like "strongly" just doesn't cut it. As Paul implies in the latter part of the passage, love is intrinsically connected to the fact that we have hope that whatever's on this Earth isn't all that there is. We have hope that we will one day be reunited with our Heavenly Father. And the reason we have this hope is because of love. Love poured out on a cross, love that nailed our Saviour to a cross and kept Him there, love that gave Him strength to endure.
And now on a completely different note - if this is love, can you all see the power of what Paul writes in Ephesians 5:25 - 27 as part of the instructions for wives and husbands? "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless." I used to think this whole wives and husbands passage was really wishy-washy with hugely sexist overtones, but I have since resolved my issues with Biblical submission (lol) and I think I've just realized what a huge calling marriage is from a male perspective. This is no easy standard. Loving a person who will inevitably sin as Christ loves her? Isn't it fortunate, then, that love is a Fruit of the Spirit and is thus cultivated BY the Holy Spirit in us? God enables us to love. Without Him we'd never even have a hope of being able to genuinely love.
:)
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