2 Thess 1:3, Love Is Eternally OptimisticTuesday June 27, 2023
Paul’s hymn of love is within the context of spiritual gifts and is critical to it. Chapter 12 presents spiritual gifts in their God-given, hard-working, servant-living capacity. They are presented in their places in the body of Christ alongside the humility that is necessary for them to function in their role as servants. In Chapter 14 we read of the varied abuses of the spiritual gifts in Corinth, which abuses were the result of special interest seeking – wanting to be favored, famous, and admired.
[pic of Apollo 11 team] Three men who got extremely famous in 1969 were the Apollo 11 team of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins. What neither man ever imagined is how terrible it would be. Mike Collins flew the command module Columbia and only orbited the moon, so he had the easiest adjustment. The lives of both Armstrong and Aldrin were filled with a lot of unhappiness, divorce, and in Aldrin’s case, alcoholism (which he recovered from). People want fame, they want self-promotion and admiration, and they don’t yet know that it only takes from us and gives nothing. And there is another side we often fail to see. People want their heroes just as they like and not as they are. All those astronauts ever wanted to do was to fly, engineer cool new stuff, push the envelope, but after the moon they were not allowed to. The government wanted them for PR and the public wanted them to make speeches. The Corinthians wanted their spiritual heroes just as they wanted, and they all didn’t agree on what kind was best so they had their favorites. The lesson: Do not worship self or others. Worship God alone.
God gives and His agape love is one of His greatest gifts.
Chapter 13 begins with a somewhat sarcastic look at gifts without love.
1Co 13:1-3 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. 2 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. 3 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.
There is a repeated formula: If I do have X But I do not have love I am Y. [click for “gifts” … click for “noise, nothing, unprofitable.”]
Paul makes a grand case in this letter for us to put the temporary things, even the spiritual ones, in their proper place and to subject ourselves to the eternal things, like agape love. Temporal or temporary things range from time, money, meat (food) to the gift of apostleship. They all have their purpose and all must be used properly. All of them are useless and in some cases extremely dangerous without agape love.
Agape – others-centered concern, at times expressed at great personal cost.
The Christian is to show his Master’s love to believer and non-believer alike. The gathered congregation is to be the place where agape is to be most clearly seen. But it is precisely at this point that the ‘gifted’ Corinthian congregation failed. They exercised their gifts with themselves at the center rather than God at the center.
Paul starts out this passage with “I will show you a more excellent way,” and that way is love.
Love is not going to give you what you want. It is going to give you the Trinity.
It is here, among other places, where human eros love fails. Eros promises God and what you want. Eros makes you (on your own) valuable, necessary, and worthy. It makes you a god in some way. Agape glorifies God alone.
We think that we have to protect self. Agape frees us from that prison. Love is not provoked because self is completely out of the picture. God will give to you life as you lay it down and pick up your cross and deny self daily.
1Co 2:9
1Co 13:4-6 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
Love is patient and kind. Several times Paul connects patience and kindness as qualities of God and they are also Holy Spirit inspired qualities in believers. Then follow eight negative attitudes that love is not and each one finds itself in the heart of the Corinthians as Paul points out in the letter.
Corinthian believers: Jealous (3:3) Proud (4:7) Puffed up (8:1) Ill-mannered (14:40) Seek self (10:24) Provokable (6:1) Keeping counts of wrong (1:10-11) Rejoice in unrighteousness (6:7)
They are saints, but what they are doing is not of agape and therefore not of God.
And then Paul shows us that love can do anything needed to bear, believe, hope, and endure.
1Co 13:7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Our passage states Love never tires of support, never loses faith, never exhausts hope, and never gives up.
Support. Never tires of supporting them - agape is the strength to bear up the structure that covers them. This is broad in meaning, but so is Paul’s usage. It is up to us to discover what needs to be covered or born in any particular person, and if you persistently ask God in prayer what will support a certain person, you will have it.
Faith Never loses faith that someone may turn to God and their life turns around.
Believes: never loses faith that God is going to accomplish good through our agape love.
Our faith is that our God is a God of good intents and glorious eventual outcomes. We do not know what the outcome will be or if the person is even going to respond in any other way than negatively, but what we do know is that when God’s agape love is at work, good things are going to happen somewhere, somehow.
This means that we are going to agape love another with a faith that never wavers. They spit at us or they respond marvelously, we are going to believe that our agape is going to accomplish good. In what way, when, how, only God knows. But we’re going to believe and keep believing (present indicative) that good is going to come.
An example of this is found in David’s dealing with king Saul who, out of jealousy, sought for years to kill David. In one instance David had the chance to kill Saul (while sleeping?) and instead cut a piece of Saul’s robe and did not kill him. Saul was clearly wrong and evil. David was clearly the anointed king but who had to hide and flee like an animal in the wilderness for years. David could have ended his misery and his running right then and taken the throne, but he had faith and knew he had to do the right thing and wait on God’s timing. Love bears all things, …
1Sa 24:8-15 Now afterward David arose and went out of the cave and called after Saul, saying, "My lord the king!" And when Saul looked behind him, David bowed with his face to the ground and prostrated himself. 9 David said to Saul, "Why do you listen to the words of men, saying, 'Behold, David seeks to harm you'? 10 "Behold, this day your eyes have seen that the Lord had given you today into my hand in the cave, and some said to kill you, but my eye had pity on you; and I said, 'I will not stretch out my hand against my lord, for he is the Lord's anointed.' 11 "Now, my father, see! Indeed, see the edge of your robe in my hand! For in that I cut off the edge of your robe and did not kill you, know and perceive that there is no evil or rebellion in my hands, and I have not sinned against you, though you are lying in wait for my life to take it. 12 "May the Lord judge between you and me, and may the Lord avenge me on you; but my hand shall not be against you. 13 "As the proverb of the ancients says, 'Out of the wicked comes forth wickedness'; but my hand shall not be against you. 14 "After whom has the king of Israel come out? Whom are you pursuing? A dead dog, a single flea? 15 "The Lord therefore be judge and decide between you and me; and may He see and plead my cause and deliver me from your hand."
We can see the connection to the fact that we’ve already learned that agape does not calculate. If it did, for some people, we would quit on them.
There are cases for separation from others (1Co 5), but the one separating must be very careful to know if it is the will of God.
Our believing all things comes from our strong faith in the Lord (from fear of the Lord). |