Love Outlasts!
The Church of Corinth; Struggling to be in the world but not of the world • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 29:23
0 ratings
· 8 viewsFiles
Notes
Transcript
Intro:
We are now into the New Year and another holiday season has come and gone. Maybe in your preparation for that season, some of the fathers in here had to assemble a playset, doll house, or some gift that you received. It is the right of passage for many fathers to labor into the wee hours of the morning putting together those Christmas gifts so the kids can wake up on Christmas morning and go nuts over all that they received.
One of the frustrations in that process of being an Christmas assembly worker is all the parts that go into putting those gifts together. I am still haunted by the 50 page assembly instructions for these wooden kitchens for little girls. I am not putting together a vehicle here. Good grief.
Each part is labeled and each part has a place. This is screw ebf1 but you need bolt eby7. Its crazy. But if we can find any spiritual value to such a process, we can understand that each of those necessary parts does make up the whole. In and of themselves the bolts don’t make the kitchen, they are just one piece of the assembled unit.
That word part is important to our passage today, not because you are a piece of some puzzle, but because it represents incompleteness on a spiritual level. All those parts scattered on the floor of your den can represent the life of this world where the Lord is building and assembling you as a follower of Jesus Christ, until the day he returns and you are complete and spiritually assembled in Him.
This going to be Paul’s message today as we look at the final verses of chapter 13. This message is one of looking forward to the last things, the eschaton when Jesus returns. What prevails through this age, up to Jesus coming again and beyond into eternity is love, the love of God given to his people and manifested in them. Love is the theme of eternity as we will see and it outlasts all things.
Review:
Now remember back with me where we have been in chapter 13. I spent 5 weeks in the descriptions of love, God’s love that is personified in Jesus Christ and that powerfully is manifested in His church through the power of the Holy Spirit.
We studied those qualities of divine love as Paul rebuked the Corinthian church for their lack of love. They instead want to praise certain spiritual gifts instead of showing godly love to one another. Paul has to remind them and all of us what it means for divine love to be displayed in those who are change by it.
His focus in these verses is that Love is supreme and it outlasts all earthly things. Love is eternal and he now directs their attention to the future so they may see that Love’s supremacy leads it to be eternal in its core. Love leads us beyond all that is earthly, including spiritual gifts and purposes of the church on this earth into eternity with Christ.
1. Eternal Love Praised
1. Eternal Love Praised
8 Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part; 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.
Notice Paul’s use of contrasting ideas here in v 8-10 that emphasize the love that last into eternity. He starts off with “love never fails.” Depending on your translation, your words read “love never ends” or “love never fails.” Both are appropriate here because Paul is speaking both in temporal and qualitative terms. Temporally he is stating that Love continues on beyond this time to when eternity begins. This of course is when Christ comes again and consummates his kingdom on earth and heaven. He wants the church to be reminded that nothing that had been given to the church (ie gifts) will outlast love. Instead these gifts that are being so highly praised end when Christ comes again.
But Paul also means love in a qualitative sense because love rooted in the character and power of God outlasts and is victorious over all earthly trials and sufferings. In the end…love wins as we might say. Why? Because Jesus brings about complete victory over evil, sin and death in his final return. He establishes his kingdom which is rooted in his redemptive love and that kingdom overcomes all conflict and suffering. In its place is loving peace, loving rest. This is what we long for and this is the message we need starting out our new year.
We need to be reminded of the power of love, as Huey Lewis and the News unknowingly sang about in the 80’s. Emotional love doesn’t last into eternity. Lustful desire doesn’t last. Divine love last because it is the foundation of the kingdom that is being established in Christ.
Paul makes the comparison of eternal love with gifts in the Corinthian church. He lists three items that will fade away contrasting them with love.
gifts of prophecy
gifts of tongues
knowledge
All three of these things are temporary to this world. They are incomplete. This is where Paul uses the GK word MEROS which translates part or portion. What God gives the church in the form of gifts are just a part of the whole. They are incomplete and they serve their desired purpose but their purpose will come to an end.
We will dive deeper into these gifts into the next chapter, chapter 14, as Paul deals with how the Corinthians were not using gifts in orderly worship. But we must see Paul’s point here, comparing what is temporary and what goes beyond the temporary to the eternal.
Why is this important argument for the church today? We can emphasize the wrong things in the church. We can elevate knowledge over loving one another. We can elevate gifts over kindness and patience. In our day, not as much in Paul’s day, we can elevate buildings, ministry goals, and personal agendas over simply just putting others interest over your own interests.
I saw this personally in previous ministry when arguments would rise up over petty issues like building maintenance or room control over thermostats. This ministry got this budget money while this one got less. These arguments got ugly and they did not display the love of Christ that is patient, kind, longsuffering.
In v 9, Paul lays out the timeline for us and the reason to look forward and keep eternal love as our focus. He states
9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part; 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.
We are living in the partial. We are living in the age where things are yet completed, when the kingdom has not yet fully come. This is Paul thinking about the end times and saying keep your eyes on the horizon when the Son rises and ushers in light for all eternity. But now, this time between his first and second coming, we must set our eyes forward and keep his second coming always on our mind.
In our current state, our knowledge is partial and prophecy is partial. It is not complete and exhaustive.
7 “Can you discover the depths of God? Can you discover the limits of the Almighty? 8 “They are high as the heavens, what can you do? Deeper than Sheol, what can you know?
Prophecy is the way that the truths of God are revealed to men. But compare those words of prophets that are given to men to the day when God returns. There is no comparison! We will know as we have never known before. The gift of knowledge will not needed and the gift of prophecy will not be needed. They are abolished to a time beyond time when God reveals himself to us in new and full ways.
An Exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians Superiority of Love to All Other Gifts
The revelations granted to the prophets imparted mere glimpses of the mysteries of God; when those mysteries stand disclosed in the full light of heaven, what need then of those glimpses? A skilful teacher may by diagrams and models give us some knowledge of the mechanism of the universe; but if the eye be strengthened to take in the whole at a glance, what need then of a planetarium or of a teacher
Therefore, the “perfect” that comes can either mean a person, who is Jesus Christ, or a time, the consummation of his kingdom when Jesus ushers in an eternity of peace and perfection. I think either interpretation is acceptable.
Some interpreters want to say that “the perfect” is the completed canon of Scripture. They use this interpretation to try and solidify their argument for the cessation of spiritual gifts. While I beleive and hold to that view of gifts, twisting this interpretation to fit that view is inappropriate. Paul did not have in mind the closed canon of Scripture when he wrote about the “perfect” coming. Nor do you need to hold that interpretation of this verse to prove from Scripture that the miraculous gifts of the apostolic age have ceased. I will lay out those arguments for Cessationism in upcoming sermons.
Until then, let me just say that these verses neither speak to the issue of Cessationism or Continuationism as we understand the argument today. This is not Paul’s point.
Instead his point is Christ and his second coming to usher in a eternity where love rules!
2. Eternal Love Promised
2. Eternal Love Promised
11 When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.
Paul moves to a point of two illustrations that lead to the promise of the follower of Jesus Christ. To illustrate the comparison of the partial and the perfect, look to the life cycle of a human being. The partial time in which we live now, where knowledge is limited and gifts serve a limited purpose is compared to that time as a child when our speech, thoughts and reason are immature.
This is such a simple yet profound example because we can all understand and perhaps remember how asinine our childish thoughts and reason used to be. I told my kids the other day that as a child, I remember having a dream that I thought was so real that I ran into their room crying because I believed fully that the Hulk from the Marvel comics was outside my bedroom window.
Oh the imagination of a child. But I could not reason or logically move beyond such a thought like I can now as an adult. Now as an adult, I just wish the Hulk was real. That would be pretty cool!
Adulthood then is compared to the maturity that we will receive when Christ returns, when the perfect comes.
This is where Paul is heading in his second illustration.
12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.
Mirrors in the ancient world were not like mirrors we have today. Typically, a mirror in Paul’s day was some form of polished metal that gave a mediocre reflection of the person. Yet Paul’s second illustration leads to the promise of eternity where love is supreme. What we stand to look at in a mirror is our reflection, it is an image of the real thing. Paul’s point is that a mirror represents the age in which we live but in eternity, when Christ returns, we will put away dim reflections and we will look face to face to Christ. This emphasizes the reality of being in his presence, and dwelling with him for all eternity.
I think as human beings who suffer so much physically in this world, our thoughts always lend to imagine the perfection of our bodies that Christ will bring. Soon we will get to the glorious promises of 1 Cor 15 which speak of the glorified bodies.
50 Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53 For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54 But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory. 55 “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; 57 but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
When the perfect comes, we long for the gifts of new resurrected bodies that are fit for heaven. In those aches and pains are no more. Disease and sickness is done away with. Even mental disabilities become a thing of the past.
But what we do not long for as we should….is that we will be given a maturity and knowledge of the Lord that we struggle on this earth to understand and know. As you wrestle with the written word of God, seeking to know and gain insight into the Lord, you put forth a great effort. Its a necessary effort but one that will one day be perfected. You will know the Lord as Adam and Eve knew him. We will once again walk in a perfect fellowship with our King.
Then we will be given a full knowledge of God. “Know him Fully.” I don’t believe this means that we will know all that God knows for if that were the case, we would not be set apart from Him as his creatures. But I do believe we will have full knowledge in incomprehensible ways. We will know him in ways that we cannot even imagine in this incomplete time and world. Our knowledge of him now is incomplete, but one day all the pieces will be put together and we will come to understand him with full knowledge just not have ALL knowledge, as if we are not Omniscient.
Paul concludes this promise of the future with a solid statement about that time which is when love will reign supreme alongside the lesser faith and hope. Notice the three faith, hope and love in compared to the three, tongues, prophecy and knowledge. By stating that faith, hope and love abides, he is connecting back to those things which abide or endure beyond this world.
Faith is a trust in Christ but that faith is unique in this age. Faith now is described by the apostle Paul as faith that comes to completion when we see Christ.
Paul will tell us in 1 Cor 15:19 that hope in Christ abides beyond this world. We have hope or confidence in the lord but its an informed hope when Christ returns. In this age, our hope in Christ is a reality unseen but our confidence in the Lord only intensifies when eternity arrives as the consummation.