Gospel Prism

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

What does love look like to you? Let me give you my picture of love. Love looks like a woman who undergoes 3 months of nausea and vomiting, and then sleeping on one’s side for the next six months. There is a swelling of feet, arms, and face. And then of course, there is the actual labor and delivery of a baby. But then the love really begins because you have to deal with spit up, wailing, poopy diapers, mastitis, sleepless nights, hormonal changes, an unempathetic husband, loneliness, etc. And really, these children will give you no notable return in the near future. In fact, they will only continue to take from you your time, energy, money and resources, and probably won’t really know how to appreciate you fully until much later in life. This is love. It’s a love that is a commitment to love despite any reciprocity. But even this love eventually ends because no person ever lives forever.

But God’s love encompasses the commitment of love, but goes much further than any human love could ever match. God’s love never ends. It never falls apart. It is the only love that truly lasts forever, because God showed us this great love through the work of His Son. It’s the love that theologian Sinclair Ferguson writes about:

When we think of Christ’s dying in the cross we are shown the heights to which God’s love goes in order to win us back to Himself. We would almost think that God loved us more than He loves His son. We cannot measure His love by any other standard. He is saying to us, “I love you this much.” (Quoted in C. J. Mahaney, Living the Cross-Centered Life, 56-57)

Thus, truest love must always be seen in light of God’s Son, Jesus. Paul describes such love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.

Love Is Long-Suffering

First, truest love is long suffering.

Paul writes in verse 4: “Love is patient and kind.” The King James Version translates “patient” as “suffereth long” and that’s a good description of patient love. Patient love is ready and willing to suffer for another, and this was first exemplified by Christ. As Peter tells us in 1 Peter 2:21: “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.” God loved us so much that He suffered for us through His precious Son Jesus. Thus, how can there be a true love without long-suffering, if God who is love showed us love through such suffering? Listen to how much long-suffering, patient, kind love God has shown us in Ephesians 2:4-6:

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

Look at what God has done here. Even though we were dead to Him, we hated Him another words in our lack of love for Him, not only did God raise us up through His own Son’s substitution for us on the cross, but we are seated with Christ as co-heirs! This type of long-suffering love goes far beyond our comprehension. Such love is a love that suffers in loving enemies. And if you have ever been hurt by someone, consider loving such a person more than even your most cherished person. This is the type of long-suffering, loving kindness God has shown you and me. So we can never say, “He’s not worth my love.” I am sure that all of us have had serious conflicts and “irreconcilable differences” with certain friends, family members, perhaps even spouses in our lives. A person has gone just too far and you have run out of room to love. To run out of room to love is to love someone apart from the love of God according to this text. Paul tells us that truest love must be long-suffering or it is nothing more than a worldly love, a fleeting, empty love.

Let me give you another example of such fleeting love. When a couple marries, there is so much celebration in their love. They are “madly in love” with one another. The bride is beautifully made up, wearing a dress that accentuates her beauty. The groom is ‘well-groomed,’ dressed handsomely, on his best behavior, smiling for all to see. And the people gathered are standing around gawking at the couple’s obvious true love. But let’s fast forward 10 years. Skin and hair have aged. Children have limited the couple’s obvious common interests. Waterskiing and camping are non-existent with 3 young kids. Life is busy driving a child from activity to activity. Work is pressured and piling up. And the kindness that was expressed in the dating relationship has slipped into short fuses and subtle indifference, which often can lead to outright antagonism. Divorce seems no longer out of the question.

What has happened to this once radiant couple? Why are people so shocked to hear about marital strife between the ‘perfect couple’? What has happened is a false assumption about love. Truest love cannot be understood by a wedding. Truest love is not founded on a couple’s special chemistry. It is not made by common interests. The reality is that every beautiful person will become not so beautiful, at least from the world’s perspective. Proverbs 31:30 tells the woman, “Beauty is vain,” but this holds true for men as well. So if your love is dependent on what you are feeling, or what you are looking at, or what you are experiencing together right now, you will find your love eventually melt away.

Contrast that love to the love story of Dr. Robertson McQuilkin, formerly president of Columbia Theological Seminary. His wife Muriel was diagnosed in 1981 with Alzheimer’s. By 1990, Robertson needed to decide whether to leave his job or neglect his wife because the disease had taken over her life. In his resignation letter to Columbia, he wrote:

…recently it has become apparent that Muriel is contented most of the time she is with me and almost none of the time I am away from her. It is not just “discontent.” She is filled with fear—even terror—that she has lost me and always goes in search of me when I leave home. So it is clear to me that she needs me now, full-time… The decision was made, in a way, 42 years ago when I promised to care for Muriel “in sickness and in health…till death do us part.” So, as I told the students and faculty, as a man of my word, integrity has something to do with it. But so does fairness. She has cared for me fully and sacrificially all these years; if I cared for her for the next 40 years I would not be out of her debt. Duty, however, can be grim and stoic. But there is more: I love Muriel. She is a delight to me—her childlike dependence and confidence in me, her warm love, occasional flashes of that wit I used to relish so, her happy spirit and tough resilience in the face of her continual distressing frustration. I don’t have to care for her. I get to! It is a high honor to care for so wonderful a person.

In 1995 Muriel spoke her last words to Dr. McQuilkin. She went to be with the Lord on 9/19/03. That is about 8 years where his wife spoke not a word to him, and yet he was to care for her all day long for that whole time. On reflecting on his wife’s life, he wrote: “For 55 years Muriel was flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. So it’s like a ripping of my flesh and deeper—my very bones,…But there is also profound gratitude. For ten years I’ve delighted in recalling happy memories. I still do. No regrets. I’m grateful.” How does one love when the other says not a word to you for 8 years? For Dr. McQuilkin, the only way to persist in such love was to know Christ’s love for Him. And the only way for us to have the same love is to understand God’s long-suffering for us shown through Jesus Christ.

Love Is Not Self-Centered, But Blesses Others

Second, truest love is not self-centered but is always looking to bless others.

Paul writes in verses 4-6: “Love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.” Truest love is other-focused. It simply cannot envy what others have for to do so would eat into any type of love because by definition, envy longs for the failure of others and the success of the self. By definition, envy is not love. The person who boasts and is arrogant is so overly concerned with himself that again, he will devise ways to make himself look good. And usually in doing so, he will devise ways to make others not look so good. By definition the boaster and arrogant person cannot be loving. The rude person is so full of self-pity and entitlement that he believes he can treat any person any way he wishes. Irritability and resentfulness flow from the person who insists on his own way. True love rejoices in truth even if that truth might inconvenience a person. The person then who is other-centered and loves as one should love is the humble person. John Stott has a good description of this humility:

Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to be saying to us, “I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.” Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross. All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousness, until we have visited a place called Calvary. It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size. (John Stott quoted from C. J. Mahaney, True Humility, 67)

When you are meditating and understanding the greatest and truest love shown to you, when you realize that you are the reason Jesus Christ had to die on a cross, it is very difficult to cling to your rights, your privileges, your hurts, your pains as if no one can understand what you have been through. Suddenly, the arrogance and rudeness that had corroded your soul is swamped over by the love Christ has shown you. It is humbling to deeply understand that you are not as correct as you think you are. Then we are ready to love others with a truest love. And then John’s words in 1 John 4:10 make complete sense: “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.”

But when your mindset is self-serving, self-centered, and selfish, you will find that your character (whether you realize it or not), speech, and perspective will be arrogant, rude, insisting on its own way, irritable, and resentful. Admittedly, I have seen this manifested mostly in my own marriage. There have been times that Shua and I will be in a conflict and I am incredibly and stubbornly self-centered. One time, we were in the midst of a major argument, and I decided to take a walk outside. If anyone encountered me on that day, they would have assumed I was insane because I was continually talking to myself, preaching to myself, and answering myself. I was reminding myself of this great and glorious Gospel, of Christ dying for me, but I was also reminding myself of my rights, my privileges, my feeling as though I ‘always’ gave in to my loving wife. Oh, how arrogant and rude false love is. Such love caves in to self-centeredness and meanness and true arrogance when circumstances change. Jonathan Edwards has some words of exhortation for those who long to love with the truest love Paul speaks of in verses 4-6:

Know God; confess your nothingness and ill-desert before Him. Distrust yourself; rely only on God; renounce all glory except from Him. Yield yourself heartily to His will and service. Avoid an aspiring, ambitious, ostentatious, assuming, arrogant, scornful, stubborn, willful, leveling, self-justifying behavior; and strive for more of the humble spirit that Christ manifested while hear on earth…Humility is a most essential and distinguishing trait in all true piety. (Jonathan Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits, 134)

We must be willing to see the depth of your own failures, flaws, and sins, or we won’t begin to comprehend the truest love shown to us by Jesus on the cross.

Love Is Tenacious

Third, truest love is tenacious.

Paul writes in v. 7: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” What type of love can overcome ALL things? When you think about the worst things that can happen to you in your life, you wonder how anything can overcome such things. What happens when the child you have come to love is suddenly struck with debilitating disease that could end her life? Can your love bear and endure and hope above all things? What if your 17 year old son came to you and told you that he was having attractions for other boys? Could your love bear and endure such a thing? What if your 15 year old daughter came home one day weeping because she had just made the worst mistake of her life, she found out she was pregnant? Or what if your loved one (spouse, parent, child, sibling) was killed in a car crash? Could your love bear and endure and hope in such a thing? I don’t believe there is enough love in me to endure such things. But this is every reason why verse 7 exists. And this is why Paul tells the Philippian church in Phil 1:6 that He who began a good work in you will carry it completion until the day of Christ Jesus. There is no way to bear such pressure based on my own limited love. I don’t have enough love to love my children when they fail. I don’t have enough love for God when my life is shattered in utter grief over a terrible tragedy. Oh, but we have a far greater love that allows us to bear, believe, hope, and endure all things. Paul tells us about this love in Gal. 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Christ bears us up when He lifted us up at the cross and bore our sins so that He lives in us. Because He suffered, He’s able to help us during such times. It is His tenacious love for us that helps us to love Him and others as He has loved us.

This past week, John Piper’s granddaughter died in his daughter-in-law’s womb 1 week before birth. Of course, his son and daughter-in-law were devastated. His whole family has been grieving all week. He preached at her funeral and reflected not only on his granddaughter’s death, but also his father who recently passed away this year: “I believe Felicity and her grandfather met each other early Sunday morning in the presence of Christ. And my father said, perhaps, “Hello, Felicity. I’m your great grandfather Piper. Come, there is somebody I want you to meet. His name is Jesus. He’s the reason you’re here. You don’t need to be afraid. Your Savior has led you all the way. And Jesus does all things well.” You cannot have such perspective without understanding God’s tenacious love for us. But when you know the love of Christ, you have a love that bears, hopes, believes, & endures ALL things, even death.

Love Is Permanent

Lastly, truest love is permanent.

Verse 8 tells us, “Lover never ends.” The NIV translates this verse as “love never fails,” but I don’t think that phrase does the Greek justice. You see, it can literally be translated, “Love never falls apart.” That, is such love never, ever is broken. It never crumbles. It lasts forever. If you have ever been to the northeast during autumn, you know how spectacular the foliage is. The trees can turn the brightest of colors: pink, orange, fiery red, bright yellow. But by the time you hit November, most of the beautiful leaves have fallen to the ground. In many ways, Paul’s word here for “never ends” has this picture in mind. The love we are used to seeing is one that begins with such beauty and brilliance. Again, think of the happy wedded couple, embracing each other on the dance floor, staring into each other’s eyes as though no person matters in life save the one they are glaring at. It would seem nothing could make that moment fade away, fall apart. But as Dave Harvey titled his book on marriage, When Sinners Say I Do, sin rips apart the beauty of such love, and as sure as the leaves fall to the ground after autumn, so too a love that is not grounded on this truest love. Truest love never ends, never falls apart during times of suffering, and trial. This last phrase summarizes well, Paul’s whole perspective on truest love from verses 4-8.

In our world, love is rooted on all that is temporary: physical beauty, personality, chemistry, circumstances, financial status, romance, etc. But every one of these can be taken away. Beauty changes with age. Financial status can change with the cycles of the housing market or stock market. All the rest can change with one terrible car crash or one debilitating disease. So if your relationship is based on any of these factors as its sole foundation, then I am afraid such a relationship will always be temporary. This is why it seems absurd for men and women to wait till they are “financially secure” to marry, so they will date far too long. Such ‘security’ never secures a joyous marriage because the root is far too fleeting. Only the love of the cross lasts forever, since only this love exist in heaven as JE observes:

There, even in heaven, dwells the God from whom every stream of holy love, yea, every drop that is, or ever was, proceeds. There dwells God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit, united as one, in infinitely dear, and incomprehensible, and mutual, and eternal love. There dwells God the Father, who is the father of mercies, and so the father of love, who so loved the world as to give his only-begotten Son to die for it. There dwells Christ, the Lamb of God, the prince of peace and of love, who so loved the world that he shed his blood, and poured out his soul unto death for men. (Jonathan Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits)

This is why Paul’s truest love far outshines any love this world would have to offer. So what I want to ask you today is this in light of Paul’s understanding of truest love, “What does it mean to love another?” Does it mean that you “fall in love”? If so, doesn’t that also mean that one day you can and will “fall out love”? If love is dependent on your feelings, and your memories, and your experiences, and your external appearance, what happens when all of that is gone? What happens when you are unable to walk again because of an accident? What happens if Alzheimer’s kicks in and your memories and your brain no longer functions the same? What happens if your youth is gone and you are no longer as physically attractive to yourself or to the world? Do you fear your spouse’s eventual rejection of you because your love was built on the experience or the physical beauty?

For those not yet married, I’ll be speaking about this more during the Dinner today, but what are you looking for in your potential spouse? Is it physical looks, personality, relational chemistry? Are you more concerned about your common interests rather than your common worship of a gracious Savior? If you are dating or engaged, is your worship of Christ a nice subsidiary to your relationship or is He the very center of your lives, where all thoughts and plans flow from your understanding of what He has done for you?