“Nothing Without Love”
Quinquagesima
February 22, AD 2008
I Corinthians XIII: 1-13
Proverbs 15, verse 17 reads, “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fatted ox and hatred with it.” I wonder if St. Paul had that proverb in mind at some point when he was writing his first epistle to the Corinthian church. The Corinthians were a fractious bunch who were not far removed from their recent pagan past as they sought to practice their new faith in Jesus Christ. Many were prideful of their spiritual gifts and contemptuous of those who were not so gifted. Speaking in tongues was the spiritual gift that many at that time saw as evidence of true religious fervor. People with this gift basked in the attention and status it gave them. So St. Paul has to patiently remind the Corinthians in Chapter 12 that there are a variety of spiritual gifts and that they all come from God and all are given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. In addition to speaking in tongues, other gifts include interpretation of tongues, wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracle working, prophecy, and discernment of spirits. He presents that great image of the body of Christ in which all members are inextricably linked to one another, even though God has appointed different roles for different members. If one member suffers, all suffer. If one is honored, all rejoice together. Then he introduces that famous passage on love in Chapter 13 with these words, “And I will show you a still more excellent way.”
I Corinthians 13 is justly beloved of many young couples planning their weddings. However, we won’t get the full import of St. Paul’s message without knowing the context and the type of love he is speaking about, which isn’t sentimental or romantic love. The word St. Paul uses for love, or “charity” in the King James Bible, is the Greek word “agape”. This word is relatively rare in Greek and it is used in the New Testament to describe love that is totally selfless. Agape love is a love that is bestowed on the beloved regardless of merit, and without any consideration or expectation of getting something in return. In its highest usage, it refers to the unmerited love of God for mankind in sending His Son to suffer and die as redemption for our sins that we might ultimately be with Him for all eternity. This kind of love is the greatest of spiritual gifts, St. Paul is telling us. Even above faith and hope.
St. Paul uses both negative and positive assertions to illustrate the dimensions of agape love. Without this kind of love, even the most sublime utterances of tongues will be just so much noise – sounding brass or clanging cymbals. These instruments were used in pagan liturgy, and the Corinthians would certainly have caught the allusion, and winced at that zinger. St. Paul was, in effect, calling them pagans if their speaking in tongues was not done in love. And to those who can prophecy or proclaim the revelation of God, to those with great minds who can understand things hidden to lesser mortals, to those with great faith that can move mountains and do other miracles – all these are nothing without love, says St. Paul. Nothing. What about the do-gooders? St. Paul doesn’t spare them either. Giving away all one’s goods to feed the poor, if it is done to feed one’s ego or social standing, contributes nothing to the soul’s benefit. Even martyrdom by burning, if perversely motivated by pride or self-interest, is worth nothing. Nothing without love.
Next, St. Paul elaborates on some of the attributes of agape love – long suffering or patient, kind, rejoicing in the truth. These attributes are the opposite of what is going on with many in the Corinthian church who have behaved with envy, pride, self-interest, and evil doing. Agape love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Is St. Paul being naïve here? Is he really thinking that love should turn a blind eye to wrongs? Of course not. He has just enumerated several wrongs that he has witnessed in the behavior of the Corinthians. He has just stated that love doesn’t rejoice in wrong but in right – the truth of righteous living. So what is this bearing, believing, hoping and enduring all things about? It is the direct opposite of nothing. It is God, in whom all things have their beginning and end. It is Jesus, who took all sin onto himself to redeem our souls, and suffered insult and death that we might live. It is the Holy Spirit, that opens our hearts and allows us to really hear these words of Jesus from St. John’s gospel: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” [St. John 15: 12-13] With such agape love as this, we can take a long view of history because we know that what St. Paul writes elsewhere in his epistle to the Ephesians is true: “For he [God] has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” [Ephesians 1: 9-10] With such love, we are freed to love in kind, without fear of things unfavorable or painful to us, for we know all things are possible with God.
This love is the ultimate spiritual gift because it is of God’s very essence as manifested in Jesus Christ, and it never fails. In contrast, as St. Paul goes on to say, the other spiritual gifts, such as prophecies and tongues and earthly knowledge, will vanish and really no longer be needed when “that which is perfect will come.” This alludes to the Second Coming of Christ when things known in part will be done away with and all things will be consummated in complete knowledge and love in God’s heavenly kingdom. The figure that St. Paul uses next contrasts his speaking, understanding, and thinking as a child with the maturity of manhood and his putting away of childish things. This is perhaps an allusion to St. Paul’s earlier persecution of the church under the law and his subsequent conversion. It might also be a reiteration of his earlier admonishment of the Corinthians in Chapter 3 that they are spiritually immature babes in Christ who are not ready to be fed with solid food. But who among us can claim complete maturity in Christ this side of glory? As St. Paul states, the image of God we see reflected in our own images staring at us from our mirrors is a dim shadow of the glory of the Lord that awaits those who love Him. St. Paul knows that we only know partially now but when the Lord comes, we will see God face to face, as it were, and know Him fully, as God already knows us. It is because God knows and loves us that we are able to love also. “We love, because he first loved us,” writes St. John in his first epistle general. [I John 4:19]
St. Paul concludes by citing the importance of faith and hope while again asserting that love is preeminent. Faith and hope were certainly vital spiritual gifts for St. Paul, as he makes clear throughout all his writings. For example, you recall the famous dictum of St. Paul’s in Romans 3:28: “For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law.” And in Galatians 5: 5, St. Paul writes, “For through the Spirit, by faith, we wait for the hope of righteousness.” Then there is the image of the breastplate of faith and love, and a helmet of the hope of salvation in Jesus Christ that St. Paul urges us to put on in I Thessalonians 5: 8. Yet love is greater because as St. Chrysostom says, “Faith and hope will cease when the things believed in and hoped for appear. But love then becomes even greater and more ardent.” St. Paul knows this. That’s why his message is starkly clear in I Corinthians 13. Without love we are nothing. Nothing that will last. With love, the promises of God will come to fruition for all time. Who wouldn’t such a divine gift? If we do want it, then let’s pursue it. That is St. Paul’s advice in the very next line of his epistle. “Pursue love and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy,” he says. [I Corinthians 14: 1] Here “prophesy” isn’t strictly limited to preaching, but to any words of edification, exhortation, and comfort that members of the church speak to build up each other in loving service to our Lord.
As we approach the Lenten season, let us do so with a diligent and joyful spirit that we might search our hearts and find new ways to be open to God’s love shown to us in Jesus Christ. May our prayer be that the spiritual and most holy gift of agape love be found stirring within us through the power of the Holy Ghost. Then share that gift with friend and foe alike to the greater glory of God. To quote St. Paul one more time from Ephesians: “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” [Ephesians 5:1-2] Such love is the best medicine, and it will never fail.
And now unto God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, be ascribed all might, majesty, honor, and dominion, as is most justly due this day, both now and forever, Amen.