By Scott Brown
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Waverly
Focal Passage: I Corinthians 13:1-13
Love gives aim to our gifts and our service. Love gives not only purpose but substance to our lives. So, what does love look like?
This is a word that has been poorly defined and abundantly misused in our world today. Love is something more than affection, it is deeper than pleasure, something altogether different from infatuation.
The way Paul talks about love here describes something more than the type of love our world is perpetually pursuing in worship.
Love is characterized as more than a feeling that fades but a commitment which changes our character. It is patient and kind. That takes more than positive feelings. That requires a commitment to such actions and attitude.
Patience is pursued and practiced. Love is neither envious or boastful, it is not arrogant or rude.
Brown
Love is able to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those weeping. It replaces our need to feel loved by this world with a humble care that comes only from the security of His matchless love for us.
This love does not rejoice with wrongdoing but with the truth. This love might not always feel so loving as it compels us to forsake the poison of sin and pursue holiness.
This type of love desires holiness over passing happiness, righteousness over being right, it is able to hate sin because of love for sinners and the horrible brokenness it always brings. So, love is something far beyond acceptance or altruism.
Love, as Paul describes it, changes us and then changes the way we see others. Love wants the best for others and a right relationship with Jesus is it.
More than the characteristics and commitments of love listed here, I John 4:10 tells us what love looks like. It wasn’t that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to die for us. Love is sacrificial, it suffers pain for a purpose, it is neither reactive or coercive.
This love looks like Jesus dying for the very ones who were killing Him. While we were still in our sins, loving our poison and hating the cure, Christ died for us.
When we experience and embrace the love of God, it changes us and trains us to love the right things and in the right way.
Jesus tells us in John 13:34-35 that we are to love one another as He loved us and that all men will know we are His disciples when we do this well. When we are loving those who love God in the same way He does, it changes things.
This is more than affection or feelings but a commitment to call them to good, help them in their hurts, to suffer and sacrifice to bring them to God and bring them out from their sin.
May our love look less like the sad excuse our world offers as a poor imitation. May it instead look more like Jesus. Only this type of love is promised never to fail or fade. Lord, give us love that does not come from our hearts but from yours. This is the love we need. B&R
