Persistent Love

Raise your hand if you know what tomorrow is. If you know what the significance of February 14th is, put your hand up. Gentlemen, if your hand is not up and you are in a relationship - you might be in some trouble. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and I gotta be totally honest with you, that doesn’t really impact my life very much. Chris and I aren’t really big Valentine’s Day people. But, I have absolutely no problem leveraging things I don’t care about to talk about things I do, so here we go. Valentine’s day in combination with the text we just read from 1 Corinthians gives us a pretty cool opportunity to compare popular love, what many of us think about love, with Biblical love. And we’re going to look at three parts of love: what it is, what it does, and what it isn’t.

And I want to start, believe it or not, with thinking about what part of speech we’d call love. On the one hand, the popular view of love would call it a noun and define it as a feeling you have toward someone or something.

The Biblical understanding of love on the other hand, love is primarily a verb. Love isn’t a feeling as much as it is a commitment to be faithful, to actively treat someone else as God has called you to treat them. As I was studying this text and preparing for this sermon, I came across someone who wrote that “Christian love expresses itself in outgoing, self-forgetful activity.” This Biblical understanding of love is an active commitment to putting someone else before yourself and committing to seeking out the best for them.

The Method Matters

So that’s the first point of comparison, that love is an action more than it’s a feeling. The next point of comparison, interestingly enough, is one place where our popular view of love aligns pretty well with the Biblical view of love. I’m sure you’ve heard at some point in your life something to the effect of “no one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” Paul has a very similar message here, the readings says even if you can speak in the tongues of men and of angels, have prophetic powers, understand everything, have incredible faith, or give away everything but don’t do so with love - the whole lot of it isn’t worth anything. And this is something that we understand very well, just take this example.

If you’re in a relationship with someone, sometimes they might tell you some difficult things to hear. Take the example of a husband and wife. Maybe the wife tells her husband that his favorite shirt, the one he wears all the time, makes him look like a slob. It has grease stains and holes all over it because of all the times he’s worn it. Or maybe a husband tells his wife that the new recipe she tried taste absolutely terrible. If a random person were to say either of these things, it would be considered incredibly rude and they might not act on it at all. But since this information is someone they know cares for them, they take it seriously. Maybe he retires that shirt and maybe she throws away that recipe card.

Because doing the right things with love is just as important as doing the right things.

Love isn’t . . .

So that’s one point of comparison where our popular view of love and it’s place in the things we do and say aligns well with the Biblical understanding, but this next point is a place where it differs radically. And that is what love isn’t.

And I really think the popular view of what love isn’t can be distilled down to one and only one thing. Are you ready? Love can be everything and can do anything except this one thing, in the popular view. Love doesn’t make you feel bad. And you might be sitting there thinking, “that seems overly simplistic,” but if you think about it there’s a lot of truth to it. Even when we’re asking why we don’t do other things, the answer to ‘why not’ is often “well how would it make you feel.” And you’re right, we could draw that out and get a lot more specific. Love doesn’t cheat because that would make you feel bad. Love doesn’t steal from you because that would make you feel bad. Love doesn’t talk about you behind your because that would make you feel bad. And those things we nod our heads and say, “that’s not so bad.” But love doesn’t tell you you’re wrong because that would make you feel bad. Love doesn’t correct you because that would make you feel bad. Love doesn’t call you out because that would make you feel bad. And if you feel bad, if someone tells you you’re wrong, then it must not be love, because love doesn’t make you feel bad.

But the Biblical understanding of love, this commitment to acting for the benefit of others, has a different view of what love isn’t. Love isn’t envious or boastful or arrogant, love isn’t rude, love isn’t selfish or irritable or resentful, and love does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Biblical love does call us to be humble and kind and selfless, but Biblical love also calls us to say something when someone we love is doing something they shouldn’t be doing. Not to be right or to feel superior, but because we genuinely care for this person and genuinely believe that God’s will for them is the best thing for them. And when you shine a light on someone’s sin, they’re probably going to feel bad - but Biblical love, real love is willing to have that bad feeling, to risk some resentment for the sake of the other person. If I love you, even if it means you feel bad or don’t like me anymore, I’m going to try and bring you to God’s will for your life.

Perfect Love

And our reading reminds us that love will persist. Prophecies, once they happen, don’t really matter any more. Tongues become less important, knowledge becomes obsolete. But love never ends.

And our popular view of love hears that and it sounds ridiculous. When a husband and wife say “we just don’t love each other any more” and get a divorce, the popular version of love doesn’t bat an eye. The idea that love fades is more the experience than that love never ends.

But we heard today that “love never ends.” And that’s not our experience, but that’s the Biblical view of love. And Paul explains that what we see is like a dim reflection in the mirror. All these things we talked about, God loves us with a perfect version of the Biblical view of love. He acts on His love for us, He doesn’t just feel it sometimes. His love is behind everything He does. And His love genuinely seeks out what is best for us, even if we don’t want to hear it. The love that never ends, that’s the love of God for us. That’s the love that drove Jesus to the cross and brought Him back from the dead. That’s the love that we’re promised for eternity with God in a perfect new creation. Amen

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