Love
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And we're going to be here for about two months. And for those two months, what we're going to be doing is it's a little bit unique. We're going to be digging down really deep into one passage of the Bible. And it's the passage that talks about the fruit of the Spirit that is produced in the life of a Christ follower as they grow. And this is from Galatians chapter 5, verses 22 through 33. So if you're studying the Bible on your own, if you're in your life group, that passage is going to be very monumental over the next month.

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Now, of all the words we have in the English language, I would argue that love is probably the one we overuse the most.

The word that we say in such a broad context that it's really not what the word means. I can't think of any other word that we use in a broader context than the word love. When I think of that word, the word that comes to my mind or the time that comes to my mind is when Danielle and I were dating. This was 14 years ago. And I remember when we were dating and I had that feeling of being in love, right? Many of you can maybe remember that. And then I remember weeks, months later,

Thinking, oh, I think it's moving towards actually saying it. Like, I love you, right? I remember where we were. I remember just the time of day, everything. It was such a monumental moment in my life. So love can be something so meaningful. But then, almost daily, I will declare my love for things that are completely insignificant. Like, I love tacos, right? Or like, I love this weather. Or I love Horrocks. Like, Horrocks is not insignificant, right?

But really, like, we all do this, though. We all use this word love to communicate things that maybe we enjoy or that deep sense that we have of connection with another person. The word love, how we talk about it, is usually an emotional response, right? It's usually this feeling. But when we look in the Bible, when we open up the New Testament in particular, we see love as something so much more than just a feeling.

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And really, this book is comprised of many other books. It's comprised of letters and genealogies and poetry. And in the original language of the Bible, it was primarily written in two. The Old Testament, the time before Jesus came to the earth as a man, that was written in Hebrew. And then the New Testament was written primarily in Greek.

And both of those ancient languages, they were much more precise than the English language because they actually have multiple different words that they would use for different kinds of love where when we read the Bible, we just see that word love in English. And they had different words for sexual love. They had different words for friendship, different words for family love. They also had a different word for the kind of love that God has for us that we are then to love others with.

As for that sexual love we see in the Bible, there's two words. The Hebrew word was yadah, and the Greek word was the word eros. And throughout the scripture, you see ways that people are, you know, doing this in the right way, in a worshipful way, in a way that's honoring to God. But then you also see so many instances where it's not happening that way, where it's being engaged in a sinful way. We also see this word for friendship, eros.

The next word that doesn't have any sexual connotation, but it's this deep kinship, this brotherly or sisterly relationship you have with a friend, possibly a friend in Christ. The Hebrew word is ahabah, and the Greek word is the word phileo. Now, the word phileo might seem familiar because the word Philadelphia, the city of Philadelphia is the city of brotherly love. That's from the Greek of philos, which is beloved, and delphos, which is brother, right?

Okay, so this is the kind of love described in the Bible, often in the community of faith. Brothers and sisters in Christ, deep friendship of doing life together. We see this next word in the Hebrew is actually the same. It's ahabah for familial love. This is the type of affection, but the context is a little different. But the Greek word is the word storgeh.

And this is often used to describe the love between a parent and a child. Great for Mother's Day, right? But this is this affection, this deep compassion that you would have for somebody. But the last words we see, we see more often than all the other ones I just said combined. And it's the word that God has for his people. In the Old Testament, it's this word hesed. Maybe you've heard of that. But in the New Testament, it's this Greek word agape. Okay?

If you read through the Old Testament, you will see there's a theme that God's people over and over again, they fall into idolatry. They sin. They run away from God, but God never gives up on them, and it is because of his chesed.

His steadfast love, this deep loving kindness he has for those that he has chosen. This is the prominent theme of the Old Testament. If you read it, this is what you see over and over again. God's people walking away and God wooing them back with his love. In the New Testament, the Greek word is agape. And this is really demonstrated in the love that Christ showed by going to the cross for us. See, agape love, it's marked by self-sacrifice.

by commitment, by an unconditional love that you would have for another person. And not only is this how God's love is described for us, but it's also prescribed in how we are then to love one another. I mean, we see this over and over again. Over 100 times in the New Testament do you see the word agape love. Something we should recognize too is how different agape is from the love that we often think of in our culture today. It's not primarily defined by how we feel about

It's not wrapped up in our emotions, but it's wrapped up in how we act, how we live, how we meet needs, how we care for one another. You know, I read a great description of agape love this week. It said, agape love may involve emotion, but it must always involve action. This kind of love, it's volitional. It's an act of our will. It's more than just an emotion or a feeling. This is the primary type of love that we see described in the Bible.

And we see it very clearly in a chapter in the letter of 1 Corinthians. If you have a Bible, you can open up to 1 Corinthians chapter 13. This is a very common passage. Maybe you've heard it at weddings and things like that. But we're going to take time to dive into the context because the context of 1 Corinthians is not a wedding.

It is much, much different because the apostle Paul, he was the writer of this letter. He wrote it into this church in the city of Corinth. Corinth was a first century Greek city. It was under Roman rule and it was one of the largest and most prominent cities around. It was the city, it was a port city. So there's a lot of people, there's a lot of culture, a lot of religious diversity, but like many other Roman cities, it was highly immoral.

You know, when I think of Corinth today, the city that comes to my mind is something like a New York city. You know, just a city where a lot of people are. And what was interesting was Paul had traveled to Corinth really on mission doing what he did. He would preach the gospel. People would come to faith, and then he would plant the church. He would raise up pastors, and then he would leave. But the letter we have is his response to what he had heard was happening really in the first year or two of this church in Corinth. And

The only word I can really use to describe what was happening in the church is just dysfunction. I mean, we did a series on 1 Corinthians years ago at Riv, and it was called Corinthian Chaos.

Because this church was messy. I mean, Eugene Peterson, he paraphrased the Bible into the message. He's quoted in saying, the Corinthian Christians gave their founding pastor, Paul, more trouble than any of the other churches combined. Great thing to be said about your church, right? But when you read 1 Corinthians, you see why. Paul over and over again is like, I've been hearing that this is happening. I can't believe that.

And the things that he hears are divisions among Christians, lawsuits among Christians. Christians are suing each other, going to court. People are getting drunk during communion.

Not a joke that was happening. There was sexual sin within families, within the church. There was issues about marriage and singleness. There was all this food in the culture that had been sacrificed to idols that Christians weren't sure what to do with. And then there was this abuse of spiritual gifts. There were gifts that God had given people in the church to build up one another that were being used to build up themselves.

So this was not the most encouraging letter for Paul to write. But smack dab in the middle of this letter, in the middle of all the correction, he's got 13 verses where he describes agape love. He says love over and over again.

And it's in this chapter we see it's in the middle of a section where he's offering more correction. He's correcting them about their use of spiritual gifts, but he's very clear at what love looks like in the life of a follower of Jesus. So that's where we're going to be. 1 Corinthians chapter 13, starting in verse 1. He says,

If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give away all my possessions, and if I give over my body in order to boast, but I do not have love, I gain nothing.

Okay, we're going to stop there because we see really clearly here in these three verses what Paul is trying to do. He's trying to communicate to these Corinthian Christians that over everything else, their pursuit of love should be primary. And he does so in a pretty dramatic way. I think Paul was kind of a dramatic person in general from how we see his writings in the New Testament. But he's using hyperbole here. He's being very hyperbolic in these exaggerated statements of if I had these amazing things without love, who would I be?

And he makes three in particular. First, he says, if I speak human or angelic tongues, but do not have love, I'm a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And then look at what he says next. If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, imagine understanding everything. And if I have all the faith so that I can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

Now remember the context in which these verses were being shared. This is a part of the letter where Paul is saying to them, this is not how you use your spiritual gifts. Because in the Corinthian church, God had enabled men and women with these amazing gifts in order for the work of the gospel to go out very powerfully. One of those gifts was the gift of tongues. The gift of tongues is having the ability to know other languages so that you can communicate the gospel to new groups of people without having known it before.

The gift of prophecy is having God's revelation given directly to you, other than the word, God speaking to you so that you can speak to other people. Men and women in Corinth had these gifts, and they had them to build up the family of faith, but they were using them to puff themselves up. Look at me, look what I can do. So they would have seen themselves in kind of this indictment here in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. First, Paul talks about tongues.

If I was able to speak in the tongues of men and angels, just imagine knowing all the languages and then knowing the language that the angels even speak. Imagine how many people I could reach. Imagine what I could do. But if I was not doing those things in love, do you know what I would sound like? This is what Paul says. I won't do it again. That's called the mid-sermon alarm clock.

Loud and annoying is really what Paul is saying he would be. But then he talks about prophecy, having this gift of revelation. If I'm able to understand all mysteries and all knowledge and move mountains with my faith, I would be the most sought after person. People would come to me for understanding for everything. But if I did all of that, have that understanding and then communicate it out without love, I would be nothing. Finally, Paul writes, if I give away all my possessions, I

If I give over my own life, my body, in order to boast, but I do not have love, I gain nothing. Paul here is communicating to this church in Corinth, no matter what we do, how big, how monumental, how generous, if it is not done with this heart of love, with this acceptance we have in Christ, it's really ultimately about ourselves.

In his book, Character Matters, Pastor Aaron Menikoff, he wrote this book about the fruit of the Spirit. And he highlights what he believes are the two primary enemies of love, the things that keep us from pursuing love. And they're really simple things. It's pride and self-interest. When you think about pride, when we're prideful, we're living with ourselves as truly the most important person. The filter that we live with is me.

What I want to do, my needs, everything, it's about me. And self-interest is really similar. We make decisions with self at the core and others are, and God are secondary. Both of these enemies of love reveal a life focused on us. So Paul shares these three lines, but then he goes on to describe what love is actually like. 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verse four, "'Love is patient.'"

Love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, does not keep a record of wrongs. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Love never ends."

You know, last week when we were looking at all the fruit of the Spirit, Noel hit briefly on love, and he talked about how it's the great motivator. It's really the foundation by which many of these other fruit of the Spirit exist. And you see a lot of the fruit of the Spirit in this list of love in 1 Corinthians 13, but we're just going to go through it line by line to see what Paul is saying here. First, we see that love is patient. To be patient, it's to bear with another person with an attitude of grace,

to prioritize another person and their needs over your own. Love is kind. Love chooses to benefit another person in word or deed without expecting anything in return. Love does not envy. Love chooses to celebrate the blessings and the gifts of others and not drawing the attention back on ourselves and why we don't have those things. Love is not boastful. It doesn't brag. It doesn't point the spotlight on ourselves and our accomplishments, but it does that for other people.

Love is not arrogant. It doesn't reveal this exaggerated view of self, but it reveals us as who we truly are. People with a deep need for God's grace and his mercy. Love is not rude. It doesn't put others down for the sake of building ourselves up. It's not self-seeking. Love is not narcissistic. It's not self-absorbed, but it's humble and it's others-focused. Love is not irritable. Love does not have this tendency to be easily angered or annoyed.

Love does not keep a record of wrongs, doesn't maintain a list of sins, but it strives to forgive, to live in peace with other people. Finally, love finds no joy in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth. Love does not celebrate sin. Celebrates godliness, celebrates truth. When Jesus is treasured over everything else. Over and over again in these five-ish verses,

Paul is describing the various outworking of agape love in the life of an individual Christian, but also in the midst of a church community. Remember, he's writing this to a church. When reading this, this week, I felt two ways. I felt very encouraged, but also very convicted. First, I was just encouraged by the clarity that we see of what love truly is from a biblical sense. Because again, we don't have to wonder what love looks like.

With how much we overuse the word in our culture, we can just begin to think, oh, love is this thing. But we actually see very clearly, no, this is what godly love is. How God views us, how we should love one another. And that's a great gift. But while I was encouraged by that, at the same time, I read this list and I winced. I wasn't like, this is me. I read it and thought, ugh. Because there's some things in this list that are not me.

that I struggle with. And there's two that I kind of just wish weren't there. Just going to be honest. Like, I wish they weren't there because they are not who I am in this season of my life. It's love being patient and love not being irritable. Oh, I read those and felt like I got punched. Because in this season of my life, I've noticed how I fail to prioritize the needs of other people in my life.

And that is revealed by my lack of patience because more often than not, I wake up, I go through my day with me on my mind. What I want to do, what I need to do. And then I know this is true because when needs arise from other people, I'm not joyful. I'm often like, okay. And it's this lack of patience. It's this irritability. I can become easily angered or annoyed or just checked out when things don't go Tony's way.

And as I thought about these, I realized it's those two enemies of love, pride, and self-interest. Those are the things that are fueling my impatience and fueling my irritability because when my life is focused on my needs and my wants, you know how I view other people? As a hindrance rather than a blessing. I wish that weren't true, but it is.

And it's hard to see where I'm out of step here with the Spirit and where I need to grow. But I'm also really thankful that the Bible tells me, tells us what to do in those moments. It's to confess those sins, to confess them to God, to other people, to bring them into the light, to turn from those and to pursue godliness. That is what we do. So how about you? Were there any words in 1 Corinthians 13 that you kind of wished weren't there? Ones that made you wince just a little bit?

I would encourage you, confess those to God. Don't be prideful. Don't be self-interested, but see them for what they are. It's sin. Go to the cross with those. See, I think we can often read passages like 1 Corinthians 13, and we can leave with this kind of try harder mentality or just be better. You know, I would hate for us to leave here this morning and think I'm just gonna white knuckle my way into patience. Gonna be patient. We can't, right?

That is kind of how we do it a lot of times is we come to church and we think, just tell me what I should do. And I'll come back and tell me again. I want to suggest a different way. What if we did this? What if we looked at Jesus? What if we looked at him, his life, his way? What if we let our view of the Savior be what fuels this area of our lives? Because all throughout the gospels, Jesus loved people. He healed the sick. He spent time with people.

that everyone else turned their backs on. He taught multitudes. He provided food for the hungry. He hung out with kids, and he grieved with the hurting. Jesus' life was marked by agape love, sacrifice, loving kindness, unconditional love. As Jesus prepared to go to the cross, we actually see him spend one more night with his dear friends, his disciples.

And I love John 13 verse 1, how it sets the scene for this. Because this is what it says. John chapter 13 verse 1. Before the Passover festival, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from the world to the Father, where he was about to go to the cross. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The word for love there, those two words for love, is agape in John 13 verse 1.

Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. This love that Jesus had, it was seen in his heart, his emotional heart for his people, but it was seen in what he did, the lengths he went to. Right after John 13, one for five chapters, it tells you everything that he did for his disciples that night. He washed their feet. He prepared them for what life was gonna be like without him. He shared a meal with them. He encouraged them. He prayed for them. But then finally, the next day, he went to the cross for them.

Just like we don't have to wonder what love looks like for us toward others, we don't have to wonder about God's love for us. It is seen the most clearly, the most powerfully in Jesus, in the Savior. 1 John, this is another letter that the Apostle John wrote to some churches, Christians he knew. 1 John chapter 4, starting in verse 9, God's love was revealed among us in this way.

God sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him. Love consists in this, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we must also love one another. Now, if you were counting in those three verses, love is said six times, and you can guess, same word every time, agape love.

We see in this verse how it is impossible for us to love one another if we have not experienced this amazing love given to us in Christ. This is how we know God. This is how he was made known to us. It was through the Savior. And what's so amazing about Jesus is if anyone in the world could have demanded honor, could have demanded respect, it would have been him. He could have said, serve me.

Because he was perfect. He was God in the flesh, but that is not why he came. Page after page of the gospels, he came and you see him serving. You see him loving. You see him caring. Mark 10, 45, Jesus came not to be served, but to serve, to give his life as a ransom for many. That's what it says in verse 10. Jesus came to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. The more we treasure this,

As individuals, the more we treasure and experience the love of Christ, the more that love of Christ will go out from us. It's the fruit of the Spirit. This is what grows. That's why it says in verse 11, dear friends, if God loved us in this way, let us love one another. You know, I think when we think about love, I think it's really easy for us to fall back into how we talk about it.

Culturally and in the world, you know, we can think it's just a feeling. Like I don't feel loving. You know, much like we use that word to describe how we're feeling or the joy we have in something, we can really forget that love is not just this fleeting emotion. Agape love involves faithfulness, commitment. It's an act of the very will that we have. And this is what the Spirit produces in us. It's important for us to remember that as followers of Jesus, we're not called to feel loving. We're called to be loving.

And that's a great gift because if we wait to feel a certain way before we do something, we ain't doing it. Our emotions are fleeting all the time, but it's when we choose to love that person, to meet that need, to provide the care necessary, you know what happens? The feelings of love follow. We begin to love that person emotionally. We begin to see that person as who they truly are, an image bearer of God like us,

a child of God like us. You know, last week, Noel was talking about the fruit of the Spirit and that analogy of agriculture and how that's so helpful for us and how things grow in seasons. They grow over time, but they grow in the right environment. So the question I've been wrestling with is, how does this love grow in us? What type of environment will this fruit of the Spirit just yield more and more in our lives? I thought of three things, three environmental factors that could help us here.

The first thing that we can do is we confess our sins to God. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth. Combat your pride. Combat your self-interest. Confess your sins to God. Confess your sins to brothers and sisters in Christ. Ask God to help you grow in love. Instead of that posture of you first, have a posture of humility. But then after you confess your sins, look at Jesus. Romans 5.8 says,

tells us this, God proves his own love for us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Jesus endured the cross because of his love, the love he has for you and for me. The more we treasure him, the more we will reflect him in how we love. Take a moment to thank God that your sin has been paid for. Treasure that. Don't miss the weight of that truth. Look at Jesus. And then finally,

Live in community. Live with other Christians. Know one another. Be known. This is where love is seen. I mean, when we worship on Sunday mornings, we are doing this together. This is an exercise in community. Our voices are being raised together. We're praying together. We're hearing the scripture together. This is a gift. Continue pursuing that outside of Sunday mornings. Because living in community, that's where the needs are. When you're living with believers, but also in your neighborhoods.

When you're seeing, you can love that person in that way by meeting that need. This is the environment where love grows, when we are confessing our sins to God, when we're looking at Jesus, and when we're living life in community. And we're actually going to do all three of those things in just a moment when we take communion together. Because communion, or the Lord's Supper, as we see in the scripture, that's one of the things Jesus did after John 13, verse 1, where it said he loved them to the end. Jesus took a loaf of bread...

and he took wine, and he told his disciples, this bread I'm breaking, that's gonna be like my body breaking for you. And this wine that you're gonna drink, that's gonna be like the blood that I shed for you for your sins. So when we take communion this morning, this is what we're remembering. We're looking at Jesus, at his life, his death, and his resurrection. And I would encourage us to take communion today with those three things in mind, confession of sin,

Looking at Jesus and living in community. After I pray, we're gonna take communion. But before you do that, I would encourage you just to be quiet for 30 seconds or so and confess your sins to God. Any ways that maybe you were out of step, that you're seeing that, you know what? My life's about me in this area. Confess those sins to God. Drop your pride. Confess them to him. But then right after that, take communion. Remember Jesus.

Remember the grace offered to you by his work on the cross. Your sin has been paid for. Treasure Jesus today as you take communion. And then after you do that, I would encourage you to stand and to raise your voices in worship with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Sing the truth of who God is together.

Because community is a great gift that we have. And it's in community that we see this fruit of the Spirit not only grow in us as individuals, but in our church family together. So I'm going to pray. We'll take communion. And then we'll sing a little bit more. Let's pray. God, I do thank you that your love was seen so clearly in Jesus. God, that when we think about 1 Corinthians 13, when we think about

what it looks like to love, to be loved. God, that we can recognize that we often miss the mark, but thanks be to you, God, that you sent us a savior, that we can just be free and open with those sins, with who we are, with how we're being, and we can come to the cross for grace. God, I thank you for communion, this simple act of eating a cracker and drinking juice, but it just symbolizes cavalry,

It symbolizes sin being paid for. The ultimate love shown to us by a God who cherishes us more than anything else in the world. God, we thank you for Jesus. We thank you for his body and his blood that was broken for us, shed for us. And we treasure that today as we hear more and more about just how much you love us and how we are called to have that love for you, but also for others.

It's in Jesus' name that we pray, amen.