“The Way of Love.”

1 Corinthians 13:1-4

The last sentence in chapter 12 states, “And I will show you a still more excellent way.”  My New English Version gives chapter 13 this title; “The Way of Love.”  Love is an amazing thing, it will lay down its life for the one loved, but one must ask what is its origin?  The apostle John who outlived all the other 11 disciples that followed Jesus has much to say about the source of love in 1 John 4:7-8, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

How many teenage boys have thought they love the girl they are dating, but love and hormones are not the same.  When I entered into marriage I believed I was in love, but how wrong I was!  It took years to learn how to love my wife, in fact, I’m still learning much about love.  I was a Baptist when we got married and later became a follower of Christ, and it has been the Spirit of Christ that has shown me how to love Jan, and He has sent men like Carroll Ray Jr. and others to show me how to love Jan and other people, and I’m still learning.

So let’s explore love, as we look there should be many questions an honest seeker of truth would ask.  Verse one: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”

Noisy gong, that sounds like the world of politics and they are much like the sixteen-year-old that tells the girl what she wants to hear to have his way with her.  In fact, so many in and out of the church are a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal, often we are overcome with the noise.

 Verse two and three make clear that love is essential to enter into a relationship: “And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”  Now if you could fulfill either verse you would have the world’s acclaim, but God has stated you would have fallen short of the prize.  Let’s return to 1 John 4:9-12, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”  We are the objects of God’s love, so should one not look deeply into love to understand if we have the political love or relationship love.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice