Love Never Ends

Text: 1 Corinthians 13

Focus: Love

Function: to see the spiritual attributes of charity

¹If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ²And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ⁷It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. ⁹For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; ¹⁰but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. ¹¹When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. ¹²For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. ¹³And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

You know, I first became aware of this passage by reading it from The Living Bible at a wedding when I was a youth. It really hit me the poetry of it and the simple way that it spells out what it means for us to love one another, and I am going to include, from the heart.

Even though we have heard it read at countless weddings, I am not sure that I have ever preached a sermon on the passage.

I can divide the categories into three parts, Intentions of of the heart, verses 1-3, the Spirit of love on the inside, verses 4-7, and Love never ends, verses 8-13.

So, let us look at them:

Intentions of the heart, verses 1-3. In context, Brother Paul is addressing the division in the church because, as we mentioned last week, they were proud of their individual gifts. One can almost break it down to the fact that they were proud of what they could do, they were motivated in the Christian faith by the power that the Spirit of God gives a person. In the book of Acts, we see a new convert, not understanding that the Spirit of God is a gift, try to purchase the power of the Spirit with money.

When I was a new Christian, I too, was motivated by the power of the Spirit in the life of the believer. It was at the beginning of the Charismatic movement and I was a full blown Charismatic, praying in tongues, prophesying, casting out demons and laying hands on the sick and actually seeing them recover. I had a lot of faith and power and it lead me to the same pride that the Corinthian church had.

Paul tells them that they may be powerful Christians working miracles, but without a loving heart, the right motives, a changed by the Spirit of Christ inside of us attitude, the works are meaningless. Everything is meaningless without a loving heart.

He even tells them that there are people who give great gifts, but do it for power or show, without actually caring for the person, humanizing them, then it is a meaningless gesture.

I was reading Isaiah 58 at the end of the year last year and got convicted about giving to the homeless on the street corners.

So, instead of ignoring them, like I did, I reserve my tip money in the little cubbyhole of the dash and give.

But that isn’t enough. I realized that I was insincere. I called them bums instead of homeless. So I changed my language and my attitude and now I take a moment to listen to them bless me for the money, and they always give you a blessing, and look them in the eye and acknowledge their humanity.

Paul says, it comes from the heart and I believe we have to overcome the societal pressures against loving them that we have listened to.

Then we switch to the characteristics of love, verses 4-7:

⁴Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ⁷It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Again, all of that is self explanatory except, I would like to dwell on verse 7:

• Bears all things. It is very forgiving, just as God is toward us. Without forgiveness, love is impossible.

• Believes all things. I had a parishioner once who claimed to have a discerning spirit. In my opinion, the person was just critical of others, probably raised with a ton of shame themselves.

  • But Love believes the best about someone else.

  • It is not critical.

  • It gives the benefit of the doubt toward someone.

  • It recognizes that although their actions may have been wrong, their heart may have been reacting to hurt, deluded or some other reason, but their humanity is still intact.

  • And except for some people with sociopathic behavior, most people, even the guys I meet in the prison still have a decent and basic spark of God’s love burning inside of them.

• Hopes all things. He ends the chapter with the three tenets of the Christianity, faith, hope and love, It is almost impossible to love and have faith without hope.

• Endures all things.

  • This takes faith in the God who promises to to judge the earth in fairness, equity and love.

  • How do we endure suffering? Partly by remembering that our reward is in heaven.

And finally the title of the message, Love never ends, verses 8-13.

He speaks of what is happening in our present age, it seems as if prophecies and miracles, tongues and etc have ceased to be common manifestations of the Holy Spirit.

But we sense the Spirit’s presence in worship and in service.

Loving others moves the Spirit of God inside of us.

I spoke of humanizing the homeless so that I can stop resisting the urge of the Spirit to care for the least of these.

I remember taking the youth group to serve at the homeless kitchen in downtown Indianapolis.

I asked the youth to look each patron in the eye, call them ma’am or sir and ask them if they would like to have what I am serving them instead of laughing it up with my friends, dumping the food on their plate and hoping for the ordeal to get over with.

The youth were all filled with the Holy Spirit when they did that. You could see it in their faces and afterwards they described this warm feeling inside of them, like their hearts were burning. It reminded me of the description of the road to Emmaus when the disciples said “were not our hearts burning inside of us?”

Hope is important, it allows us to have faith. Faith is important, it allows us to love unconditionally. Faith moves mountains. But both of those pale to the importance of Love.

It is the primary motivator for the moving of the Spirit in our lives.

I pray hard for this Church. And more than anything, I pray that the Spirit of God keeps moving in our presence more and more. I see it in the love you have for others. Let it increase, it is divine.