Love Is Forever
Notes
Transcript
Introduction - [1 Corinthians 13:1-13]
Introduction - [1 Corinthians 13:1-13]
The story is told of when Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a young man. He lived at home with his father, Leopold (himself a fine musician) in Vienna. And every once in a while, it is said that he liked to play a little trick on on his father!
The young Wolfgang Mozart would come home late into the night from an evening with his friends. His father would already be asleep in bed. And Wolfgang go to the piano and would play a rising scale of notes.
And as he would he would go up that scale, he would get slower and louder as the approached the top of the scale. But then he would stop…just one note short of the full scaled. Them he would stop and go to bed!
The story goes that this unresolved scale would cause old Leopold to toss and turn in bed. The unresolved scale would enter into his dreams. Until finally, Leopold would get out of bed, stagger down to the piano, and play the last note to resolve the tension!
Now that’s a great story but it’s also a great illustration of the feel that we should have from our passage today! There is a tension that that Apostle Paul wanted us to feel in this life. Life—even life as a Christian—in many respects feels like an unresolved scale. There will be a tension between the “already” and the “not yet” of our salvation!
The reason Paul reminds them of this tension is that the Corinthians seem to not feel it. Just the opposite… they have a very high view of their maturity. They feel like they are already so mature in their spiritual lives. And in some ways, they even see their spirituality as being more advanced than Paul’s!
So Paul is helping them back to reality! He does so by helping them to see that they’ve been measuring their maturity with the wrong measuring stick! It’s as if they’ve been using the metric system all this time rather than inches and feet. So their estimation of their own spiritual stature has been way off!
The question that we are going to ask today is: What is the right metric by which to measure spiritual maturity? That’s what we will end on today. But before we get there, first let’s see what the false metrics are that this passage warns us against!
TS: So what are the false metrics by which to measure one’s spiritual maturity? Paul uses three metaphors to show these false metrics.
I. The False Metrics in Three Metaphors
I. The False Metrics in Three Metaphors
A. Mistaking Spiritual Giftedness for Spiritual Maturity.
A. Mistaking Spiritual Giftedness for Spiritual Maturity.
9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
Paul is not saying that they should stop using their spiritual gifts! He’s not saying, “Just put away these wonderful toys because you acting like an immature bunch of brats!” Far from it! Paul actually really praises the Corinthians’ giftedness. At the very beginning of the letter in 1 Cor 1:7 he praised them: “...you are not lacking in any gift as you wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ!”
(Isn’t that amazing? Here Paul is still rejoicing with the good things that are going on in Corinth in spite of all the mess! I think that this is a good reminder for us as well to be encouragers of the good even when we see a mess!)
But I do believe that Paul would agree that the ways in which the Corinthians are using their giftedness is a bit on the immature side. If you read chapters 12-14 together, you quickly get the drift that they are elevating the revelatory kinds of gifts—tongues and utterances of knowledge that emphasize a very special revelation from the Lord—over the more edifying gifts—i.e. prophecy.
As we suggested in the first week of this series, they may have even thought that their tongues speaking—these unlearned languages given to them by the Spirit—may have been the language of the angels in heaven. That’s just how heavenly-minded they are! They even now speak the language of heaven!
But Paul warns them not to think that giftedness is the same thing as maturity in Christ.
In other realms we know that they aren’t the same… Some kids are uniquely gifted with abilities and intelligence. Once in a while, you even get a kid genius. They graduate from college at 16-years-old or something. They have a Ph.D. at 23 or something. Those kids are very gifted but we all know that even an child genius needs lots of parental guidance. Why? Because their emotional maturity isn’t at the same level as their intellectual giftedness!
Likewise, you can have a very spiritually gifted person with lots of giftedness from the Spirit. But that doesn’t automatically mean that they are spiritually mature. They may even be very spiritually immature in many respects.
That giftedness is wonderful, but it isn’t the right metric for measuring true spiritual maturity with God.
TS: Another false metric is…
B. Thinking that Spiritual Experiences Are the Signs of Spiritual Maturity.
B. Thinking that Spiritual Experiences Are the Signs of Spiritual Maturity.
12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
One of the things that Corinth was well-known for was their bronze mirrors. In biblical times, glass was still very opaque and glass mirrors didn’t come into existence until after biblical times. So mirrors of the biblical times were made out of polished metal. You can imagine that the image you got could be good but nothing like we have.
Likewise even when Christians are walking with God and using their spiritual gifts very powerfully, it’s all a dim reflection of our future redemption! The intimacy with God that we feel now is all a dim reflection of the face-to-face interaction with God in the New Heavens and New Earth!
However, the Corinthians were people who boasted about their closeness with God. That’s why back in 1 Corinthians 4 Paul says sarcastically to them…
8 You think you already have everything you need. You think you are already rich. You have begun to reign in God’s kingdom without us! I wish you really were reigning already, for then we would be reigning with you.
While God is gracious to give each of his children experiences of incredible intimacy and closeness to God, it’s easy to overemphasize the experience. It’s easy to think that since we were given this experience—a powerful working of his Spirit, a miraculous healing, an “strange” experience that can only be explained by God—that we must be closer to the Lord and more mature than others.
Why else would we have this experience and others not have it? It can become almost a spiritual class system—and sometimes a spiritual-class warfare—within Christ’s body!
But this reminds us that no matter what incredible experience with God that we have had (and we’ve probably had some of them), it’s just a dim reflection compared to what every believer will experience when our redemption is complete and we see Jesus face to face.
Spiritual experiences of intimacy with God can be good and personally edifying, but they are not the right metric to measure spiritual maturity.
TS: And a last false metric is…
C. Assuming Our Spiritual Knowledge Means Spiritual Maturity.
C. Assuming Our Spiritual Knowledge Means Spiritual Maturity.
12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
Isn’t that remarkable that Paul says that even he knows only in part?
Few could match for the intellectual depth of the Apostle Paul. He was a rising star within in the Jewish religion before he was saved. He knew the Old Testament like the back of his hand. So when he got saved, he could make all those incredible connections to Christ! The Apostle Paul was the one who met the risen Christ on the road to Damascus and was personally commissioned to become an apostle! The Apostle Paul was the man who was caught up in the third heaven and saw all sorts of mysterious things of which he could not even speak!
And yet he was also the man who said, now he “knows in part”! If Paul knows spiritual things only “in part,” we ought to be humble enough to say that we certainly “know in part.”
Yet it’s easy to let our growing spiritual knowledge to fool us into thinking that we are more mature in Christ than we are. If we have the Bible knowledge to answer the questions at a Bible Study, people often assume that your depth of life must match your breadth of knowledge.
But every Bible college or seminary graduate who is honest with themselves before God knows just how much of a lie that can actually be!
One of the most important books that I think every pastor, missionary, and ministry leader should read on a regular basis other than the Bible is a book by Paul Tripp called, Dangerous Calling.
He talks about his own journey to true maturity in Christ after he became a pastor. He admits that he was a very angry man in his early years of ministry. His wife would gently try to confront his anger and he always responded by wrapping his self-righteous robes around himself. His anger nearly destroying his marriage and his wife was even planning on a plan for separation until he would deal with his anger. He told his wife that “9 out of 10 women would love to be married to him.” To which she informed him that she was apparently the 1 in 10 women!
Eventually, God ripped the walls of his sin down and he experienced deep repentance and transformation!
But do you know what the most distributing thing about that book? The endorsements. Three of the five endorsements on the back of the book are from highly published and sought-after Bible teachers and pastors who were known for the depth of knowledge and insight into biblical truths. Yet they later fell into grievous sin, toxic domineering behaviors, or even the outright denial of the faith! They fell in this dangerous calling!
It’s one thing to have lots of knowledge and insight—even on spiritual matters as taught in the Bible. But that doesn’t equal spiritual maturity.
See Paul has been trying to show these incredibly gifted Corinthians again and again that they are using the wrong metric to measure their spiritual maturity. They are using the metric system when it needs to be measured with inches and feet.
TS: So if your giftedness, your spiritual experiences with God, and your knowledge are not the right metric for measuring your true spiritual maturity, what is? You guessed it…
II. The True Metric of Spiritual Maturity is Love
II. The True Metric of Spiritual Maturity is Love
In these verses Paul reminds the Corinthians and us that we are living between the “now” and the “not yet” of our salvation. We know in part. We prophecy in part. We experience the reality of God in part.
But a day is coming when all those spiritual gifts…those that he mentions—prophecy, tongues, and utterances of knowledge—and those he doesn’t mention…will no longer be in use at all. Those gifts are only necessary before the Second Coming of Christ.
He already told them that in 1 Corinthians 1:7
7 Now you have every spiritual gift you need as you eagerly wait for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But when Jesus comes back, there will be no need because we will be face to face with Jesus and know even as we are fully known. And if that’s the case, doesn’t it seem a little foolish for the Corinthians to put all their efforts and emphasis on these gifts that won’t last into eternity?
But there is something that we can and should pursue now that will last eternally which is love. When Jesus comes back, there will still be love among God’s redeemed people. When Jesus returns, we will experience God’s love in glorious perfection!
When we grow in our ability to express and live in love today, we are doing something that will last for eternity!
What Paul says in v. 13 is that love is the greatest of all Christian virtues.
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Why is love the greatest of these three cardinal Christian virtues?
Calvin thought because love is the only completely selfless thing of the three. Faith hopes for a salvation for ourselves from sin. Hope longs for a completion of our salvation in Christ. But love selflessly pours itself out for the good of others.
Or love is the glue that holds people together.
14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
Or love is what allows you to restore a relationship that sin has damaged.
8 Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.
But perhaps love is the greatest of all Christian virtues because it is so directly connected to God’s character. The Bible doesn’t say that God is faith. Nor does it say that God is hope. But the Bible does say that God is love.
8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
And at the New Creation, faith will one day give way to sight. Hope will blossom into the experience of eternal glory. But the love that we experience as a child of God and show to one another in heaven will never end!
Now I’m not much of an investor. But I do know enough about investing to know that you should put your money in something that will last! Very few things transfer from this life to the next. But those things that are done for God’s glory in love will have an impact for eternity!
Conclusion
Conclusion
So how are you doing on making an eternal investment? How are you doing on living and showing genuine self-sacrificing, other-centered love done in the name of Jesus?
To help you think through that, try putting your name in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 and see if it has the ring of reality to it.
Matt is patient and kind; Matt does not envy or boast; Matt is not arrogant or rude. Matt does not insist on his own way; Matt is not irritable or resentful; Matt does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Matt bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
I admit that many of those statements sounds like they are a struggle to sound right. That shows me that I’ve got a lot more maturing in Christ to do. I don’t think I’m alone!
So in the words of 1 Corinthians 14:1, I exhort you, Purse love! and in the words of 1 Corinthians 16:14 Let all that you do be done in love. Don’t just ignore this central call of God’s disciples in Christ. Learn to love today so you can continue in that love for all eternity.