Featured Post

Introductions

I have been an Elder at the Community Bible Church in Minneapolis Kansas. For 35+ years.  During that time I have been writing these thought...

Friday, August 26, 2016

"Agape Love"


Victory Can Be Yours!

Article #38 – “Agape Love”



            In the past few weeks, we have addressed the Church, and the gifts that God has given the Church to carry out His works.  Paul concludes chapter 12 with, “But earnestly desire the greater gifts.  And I show you a still more excellent way.” (1 Cor. 12: 31)  Paul is going to describe three things that are greater than the gifts spoken of in chapter 12.

            “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.” (1 Cor. 13:1-3)  Paul is being clear in stating that you can have all of the gifts that God has available for the building up of the body of Christ but if you do not have love, it is nothing, it is empty.  The body of Christ is not built on the spiritual gifts, as important as they are, but on faith, hope, and love.  The love that Paul is writing about is the kind of love that God has for us.  And, the love we should have for one another in the body can only come from God.  In the Greek language this is agape love, represented in the Scriptures as an attribute of God and a Christian virtue.  It is the only kind of love that God has so it is, also, the only kind of love that He can give.   “We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us.  God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” (1 John 4:16)

            Paul continues by describing to his readers what love really is.  What love is: patient, kind, rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.  What love is not: not jealous, does not brag, is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly, does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, and does not rejoice in unrighteousness.  Love never fails. (1 Cor. 13:4-8a) Paul concludes the “Love Chapter” by stating that all of the spiritual gifts will be one day be done away with; “Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.  For we know in part and we prophecy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.  When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.  For now we see in a mirror dimly but then face to face; now I know in part but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.  But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Cor. 13:8-13)  Someone has said; “faith will become sight, hope will become reality, but love will never end.” (Author unknown)  Love will last throughout eternity, with God, who is love.  We should all be longing for that greatest time of all times, when hope becomes reality.



            You, too, can have victory in Jesus!  More to follow.



Lowell Parrish

No comments:

Post a Comment