But the Greatest of These is Love
Pastor Rollan Fisher
Focus: When attempting to walk with God, if we are not walking in love, we are not reflecting Jesus or his gospel.
Mission
Motivation
Maker
Mission
The mission of God is to be compelled by the love of God.
Whether in the home, amongst friends, in the community, in the church or at work, loving over a long period of time can be difficult if we miss the focus of God’s word.
2 Corinthians 5:10-11 ESV
“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience.”
Love and truth go hand in hand.
2 Corinthians 5:14-21 ESV
“For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Through the cross we have reconciliation with God, but that reconciliation was produced by the love of God.
“Because God made us for Himself, our hearts are restless until they rest in him.”
-Saint Augustine
John 3:16-18 ESV
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
Those who have come to Christ are now ambassadors for Christ to take that love that has transformed them to the world that others might be reconciled to God through that same good news.
However, if that mission is not done in love, we are missing it.
Love and truth are not synonymous - they are designed by God to work hand in hand.
The apostle Paul spoke repeatedly about not only the gifts of the Holy Spirit that should be operating in and through Christ’s church, but also their motivation.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3 ESV
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 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.”
Motivation
I need to do a daily heart check to test my motivations to make sure that I am walking in love.
What does love actually look like?
“To love is to will the good of the other.”
-Saint Thomas Aquinas
1 Corinthians 13:4-13 ESV
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
Love is the glue that keeps marriages, families, churches, God-given relationships and nations together and growing, even during challenging times.
Whereas the devil tries to isolate and separate (Psalm 2; Matthew 12:25), God’s love binds together as we congregate.
Love is only played out in my relationships with others - real people with real differences, challenges, struggles and needs.
It is in real relationships, with real joys and pains, that I get to experience and reflect the love of God.
It is in the joys that I get to clearly see the benefits of God’s love.
It’s in the pains that God’s love keeps me.
Only after the fact, as he’s helped me to endure in love, do I see what God has done in me.
Relating with Jesus must be my foundation - sitting at his feet as at a well, drinking of the living waters that flow from the Holy Spirit.
“He who is filled with love is filled with God himself.“
-Saint Augustine
Maker
Because God is love, everything that we do to honor Jesus should reflect his love.
1 John 4:7-12 ESV
“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. 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.”
Because of the evil in the world and the disappointments of our own experience with others, it is easy for the love of God to grow cold in our hearts.
In this state, we can begin to gravitate towards self-righteousness as our confidence, forgetting our own sins while wanting to point out the failings of others.
We drift from the cross and forget the gospel that has saved us and others.
We forget to love.
Jesus said this very clearly about the last days:
Matthew 24:12-13 ESV
“And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”
You were drawn by God’s love and will be kept by his love for you.
What if I find that I am lacking in the love that the Bible describes?
“It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you. Strong faith in a weak branch is fatally inferior to weak faith in a strong branch.”
--Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
May we all repent of our lack of love and once again look to Jesus and his cross to be found in God’s righteousness alone.
As you look to Jesus and his word day by day, let love be your target as
the Holy Spirit of God will both heal you and transform you by his great love.
Second City Church