Third Presbyterian Sunday Morning Bible Study - July 5, 2020

Below is the Bible Study written by Jim Rudiger for his Sunday School Class which meets at Third Presbyterian Church, Norfolk, Virginia. It's based on 1 Corinthians 13:1-13.

When you were growing up, what were some of the things your parents tried to instill in you so you would grow up right?  Don’t cross the street.  I never knew what dangers awaited me on the other side of 27th street other than my best friend Tommy Lovitt.  Mind your manners.  The only problem I had was that I don’t ever remember being sat down and given a list of manners I was supposed to mind. Any speech that started with “When I was your age —" followed by claims like: “I walked to school ten miles in the snow even in August and it was uphill both ways; or ” “We were so poor we ate dirt and were glad to have it;” or my all time favorite “I collected coal by the railroad tracks so we could stay warm in the winter.” Finally there was: Children should be seen and not heard.  It’s like the story about the mom and dad sitting in the living room reading the paper and their little boys parade through stark naked.  The parents didn’t want to let the little boys know they had been shocked, so they ignored them figuring ignoring them wouldn’t encourage them to misbehave again.  The little boys went back to their bedroom and Jimmy said to Jack, “I told you my invisible cream would work.”

How did you get along with your brother or sister?  Were you close in age or was there a lot of age difference?  There are some siblings who are close all of their lives and there are some who go years without even saying a “hello.”  What drives siblings apart?  Jealousy.  Envy. Perceived slights.  You find your brother or sister really boring.

Today we study a problem that Paul saw that the Church at Corinth was having that was threatening to split the church. Christian brothers and sisters weren’t loving all members of their Christian family.  Clicks were being formed.  Some times we feel that the early church was immune to this sort of thing, but, remember there were human beings like you and I in that early church and you know what kind of people we are.  The real antidote for family or church splits is a good dose of family and brotherly love.  And that is what Paul is going to talk about right now.

So far Paul has had to deal with the Corinthians dividing themselves between Paul, Peter and Apollos.  Paul argued that these men weren’t rivals.  They were all giving us the same good news.  It was just packaged differently as each man laid it out.  Next he dealt with an attempt in the church to intellectualize Christianity. Make it a philosophy that would rival the philosophies in Athens.  He used the gift of the Spirit to speak to those who would listen - who Paul called the spiritualized person.  Last week Paul taught that man made gods cannot contaminate food because they aren’t real.  The only food that an imaginary god could contaminate would be imaginary food.

Now Paul moves to the big question.  What is love?  Why does Paul think Corinthians need a sermon on love?  For starters, what goddess listed her zip code as Corinth? Aphrodite.  Having the goddess of love living down the street made Corinthians think they were the experts on love.  Paul says, “You ain’t got a clue what true love is all about.  Get ready, ‘cause I’m going to tell ya.”  And, that’s where we pick up the letter in the 13th chapter.

1 Corinthians 13:1 If I speak in tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or clanging cymbal.  2 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 do not have love, I am nothing.  3 If 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.

These first three verses were aimed at the Corinthian elitists.  These guys thought they were the poster children for piety.  No matter how many acts of piety they may perform, unless those acts were done out of love, they weren’t worth a plugged nickel as far as Paul was concerned.  So, what does Paul say they have to have? Like the song says, “You gotta have love.”  So, what is this thing called “love”?  It can be a lot of things.  It can be: Romantic love.  Love of family.  Love of things like butter pecan ice cream.  There are a lot of things to love.  What “love” is Paul talking about?   Family love which in Greek is called “Agape” love.  Basically, “Agape” love says, “I don’t care what you think of me, whether you respond to me or not, I want only the best for you without any reward or thanks coming to me.  To that end, I will sacrifice even my life if it will help you out.  There is nothing you can say or do that will in any way reduce the affection I feel for you.”  I’ve got to admit that my brother, Jack, and I had a little problem with this definition when we were kids.

You see, love is truly a one sided.  Love that isn’t conditioned on a returned love.  If we really look at this love, isn’t it the love God gives us?  We are adopted into His family. He loves us even when we don’t show any love in return.  And God sacrificed his only son to save us.  So, you want the model for “Agape” love?  Go no further than God, himself.

What’s the first gift that Paul addresses?  Speaking in tongues.  Speaking in the tongues of angels means talking like they do up in heaven.  To be able to talk like they do in heaven would be a real special gift to have.  Don’t worry.  It isn’t a lot of “thees,” “thines” and “thous.”  What do you think is the language of angels?  Angels are going to talk to us in the language we know best.  I think that it is anything we can understand.  As important as that gift might be, if it isn’t practiced with love it is like what?  A noisy gong or a clanging  cymbal.  Is Paul saying that these musical sounds are annoying?  Here is the back ground for Paul making this comparison.

Corinth was known all over the world for making bronze vessels.  The gong he is talking about isn’t about using these vessels as a musical instrument by striking the side with a drum stick.  The gong he is talking about is a bronze vessels that was used in stage shows to amplify the actor’s voice.  Kind of like a megaphone.  The actor spoke into the vessel and his voice was amplified so the people in the last row could hear him.  So, the reason for using the vessel was to improve the actors voice and at the same time let you know who is speaking - the guy with a vessel covering his face like the masks we have to wear today.  Your attention was drawn to him.  The point Paul is making is If somebody used speaking in tongues just to bring attention to himself then he was just like one of those actors - he was playing a part.  It wasn’t done to glorify God but to make the guy look better than he deserves to be.  If the person spoke in tongues to improve someone’s faith, then it was done because of the love that person has for the one needing his faith boosted.

What’s the second gift?  Speaking in prophesy.  Remember, prophesy isn’t about telling the future.  It is telling people what God wants them to hear.  If we really look at preaching, it has the same goal.  So preaching is a form of prophesy.  There are two kinds of preachers.  The first kind is the gentle preacher who wants to save the souls of people by re-affirming that they are loved by God and to prove it, God gave his son to save them even while they were still living in sin.  It is preaching based on love for the unsaved.  Then there is the fire and damnation preacher who wants to scare you into being saved.  Instead of showing a God who loves them, he shows them a God who is just waiting for them to make a mistake so He can toss them into the fires of hell.  Paul says that if you aren’t preaching love then you aren’t saving a single soul.

What is the third gift?  Knowing all mysteries. What is a mystery?  Something unknown to most people.  In the real world - our world - what kind of guy thinks he knows all the mysteries - knows it all?  The intellectual.  The biggest danger of being an intellectual is intellectual snobbery.  Ever have somebody look down their nose at you because they don’t think you are smart enough to breath same air as they do?  The point that Paul is underscoring is that Christians can act like snobs too because they know the big mystery - God’s plan - or they believe they belong to the only truly devout  denomination.  But if they aren’t loving people enough to share this mystery, then the knowledge is wasted on them.

1 Corinthians 13:4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not enviuos or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude.  It does not insist on it’s own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7  It bears all things, believes all things, hope all things, endures all things.

Paul goes on to list fifteen characteristics of Christian love.  What are they?  As we list the characteristics, I want you to take a sheet of paper and for each characteristic of love that you have embraced in your life, write it down.

☐ Love is patient.  The word used here refers to people not events.  We aren’t talking about being impatient waiting for my dish of butter pecan ice cream.  The word used is one to describe somebody who does something bad to another person and the other person has the opportunity to have his revenge but refuses to react by exercising patience and giving the guy a chance correct what he did.  What we are called to do is to give others the same patience that God gives us.

☐ Love is kind.  What does it mean to be kind?  One smart guy defined “kind” as being sweet to everybody. It’s easy to be kind to a nice guy.  The hard part is being kind to somebody who rubs us the wrong way.  Being kind is wanting the best for the other person.  It may be difficult to be kind to a tax collector, but, Jesus did.  It may be difficult to be kind to a prostitute, but Jesus did.  It may be difficult to be kind to a thief or even a murderer, but Jesus did on the cross.  Jesus is our model for kindness.

☐ Love isn’t jealous.  To be jealous is to envy somebody.  In practical terms what is envy or jealousy?  Wanting something that belongs to somebody.  You can end up wanting it so much that you wish something bad to happen to somebody just because he has something you don’t have.  Sometimes it isn’t that you want it. It is that you don’t want him to enjoy it.

☐ Love doesn’t brag.  When you brag, what are you doing?  You are saying that you are so impressed with who you are or what you have accumulated that you want to rub the other person’s nose in it.  You see, love is more impressed with the other person than with yourself.  Some people give their love like they are doing the other person a big favor.  The true lover is the one who sees wonder in the fact that he is loved at all.

☐ Love isn’t arrogant.  Well two out four means I’m batting 500.  What is being arrogant?  Being inflated with your own importance.  It was once suggested that a business should get rid of the guy who thinks the business can’t run without him.  Take that guy and have him put is hand in a bucket of water.  When he pulls his hand out, the bucket is still there.  The water is still there.  But, there is nothing to show that his hand was ever there.

☐ Love isn’t rude.  How are people rude?  They act as if your feelings don’t count.  In other words they aren’t gracious.  In Greek the word for grace is the same as the one for charm.  Nobody can be charming and rude at the same time.  God knows I’ve tried.  There is graciousness in Christian love that never forgets that courtesy and tact and politeness is possible even when you are confronting a jerk.

☐ Love doesn’t seek it’s own advantage.  Another way of putting this is that love doesn’t seek it’s own rights.  In today’s world it seems like people are divided into two camps - those seeking their privileges and those seeking their responsibilities.  Whenever we are wrapped in our own rights and privileges and don’t recognize our responsibilities, we are drifting away from Christian love.

☐ Love isn’t irritable.  What can happen if you’re irritable?  You get mad and fly off the handle.  Some times people just get under your skin.  That’s when Christian love pops up and urges you to cut the guy a lille slack because you don’t know what he might be going through.

☐ Love isn’t resentful.  What is Paul getting at?  This is written in accountant’s language.  An account lists things in a ledger so they wont be forgotten - bills, invoices, due dates.  Paul says hanging on to grievances until they grow a white beard is blocking the joy that love brings.

☐ Love doesn’t rejoice in wrongdoings.  That’s the “he deserved it” attitude.  It isn’t about you doing something bad.  It’s about taking pleasure in hearing something bad has happened to someone.  It doesn’t mean that he might have deserved it.  It is just in feeling happy that somebody has finally had his comeuppance.  It is unfortunate that a lot of times, people enjoy hearing about bad things happening to somebody more than that they won the lottery.

☐ Love is happy with the truth.  That’s not as easy as it sounds.  Remember Jack Nickolson saying, “The truth!  You can’t handle the truth.”  Sometimes the last thing we want to hear is the truth because it can hurt us.  The truth of a medical condition.  The truth of an elderly parent.  The truth of a family member serving in a war zone.  Sometimes the truth can be a big worry to you, so how can you be happy with the truth?  It is more about being brave with the truth.  Love gives you the courage to face the truth, but can’t help you if the truth is hidden.

☐ Love puts up with all things.  This might mean that love can cover anything in the sense that love will never drag into the light of day the mistakes and faults of others.  It would rather help in fixing those things rather than getting everybody in an anger snit with the lost of Christian brotherhood being the by-product.

☐ Love trusts all things.  Christian love trusts in two ways.  It trusts God to do what he says that he will.  That when God starts a promise with “whoever”, that means me.  And, Christians have a relationship with others that always trusts the best in people.

☐ Love hopes for all things.  Christians never lose hope because Jesus didn’t see us as hopeless.  That means that when we look on others we don’t see a hopeless life.  We see the potential for goodness and that is our hope.

☐ Love endures all things.  Love is going to see it through to the end and will triumph.  You see, this isn’t about sitting in a chair resigned to our fate.  This is the macho side of love.  It endures by casting off everything that is thrown at you and standing fast.  Love won’t let you get beat down to the ground.  With love you can conquer fear.

How did you do?  If you got 5 out of 15, you’re batting 333 which is a good batting average in baseball, but nothing to brag about when it comes to loving.  You might say, “Oh, nobody can do all of those things.  I mean you are telling me that somebody would take a bullet for me and die just to save my life.  If they did, then I’d have to admit that’s real love.”  OK, I’ll go you one better. You’ve been told that there is no greater love than laying down your life for a friend.  That’s big time love all right.  But, there is even a greater love.  What if I told you that there was someone who will put his child in front of you to take a bullet to save your life?  How big a love is that?  Oh you want to know the name of the person who put his child in the path of that bullet.  It was God and his son took our bullet as he hung on the cross.

1 Corinthians 13:8 Love never ends.  But as for prophesies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.  9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to and end.  11 When 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.  12 For 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.  13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

How long does love last?  For eternity.  That’s the key to everything that Paul has said so far and it’s really simple.  Love lasts.  It not only lasts, but in the end, it will triumph. What about prophesy?  What about speaking in tongues and knowledge and all of the other spiritual gifts?  Prophesy and all spiritual gifts will eventually run their course.  They are gifts we use here on earth, but we are destined to leave this world.  As far as speaking in the tongues of angels, this will end, too, because we will be in heaven speaking with angels everyday and without out having to buy the Rosetta Stone language program.  When we get to heaven, the only spiritual gift we will have left will be love.  Prophesy and knowledge won’t be necessary because we will be standing before God and hearing what he has to say to us in person.  That’s what Paul is getting at when he says we now know in part, but when the complete comes the partial things aren’t necessary because we will finally get the full complete message.  That complete coming is when we come before the Lord.  No more second hand messages from God then.

To illustrate what he is saying, Paul calls our attention to the difference between a child and an adult. Did you notice that Paul gets personal and uses himself as the example?  As a child what did Paul do?  Spoke as a child.  Thought as a child.  Reasoned like a child. My great granddaughter used to come over and squeal and blurt out sounds as she tried to communicate with us.  Slowly she stumbled onto words that told us what she wanted.  But, she needed our feed back to know that this particular sound got the response she was looking for.  Paul and all of us went through the same thing.  But, Paul matured and what happened?  He stopped acting and thinking like a child.  We have all gone through this process.  We learn new things and give up old things.  We learn to drive cars and give up balancing on a bike.  We discover girls and give up on baseball gloves.  We stop saying “cool” and start saying “good.”  If those changes hadn’t have happened, I would still be wearing knickers and reading Batman comic books.

Paul brings up the enemy of growing old - mirrors.  Back in his day, mirrors weren’t as truthful as they are today.  Then, people looked into a piece of rippled glass or polished bronze.  It was like looking at yourself in the curvy mirror in the fun house.  Things were dim and distorted.  Paul tells us that is the way we see God now.  But, the day is coming when we will see God face to face.  The incomplete picture we got from our distorted mirrors will become crystal clear to us.  For the first time as we stand there, we will look on the face of God’s love.

Paul sums up everything he has been trying to impress on us by saying that there are three foundations for our relationship with God.  What are they?  Faith, hope and love.  If we understand Paul’s arguments in these verses we will see that faith and hope both depend on love.  Therefore, of all three, love is the greatest.

Love.  That’s a four letter word that has real power - staying power.  As Christians this is the love we have for our brothers and sisters in the faith.  But, that love is only as strong and enduring as we let it be.  So, what’s it going to be?  The victory of love or the despair of a loveless eternity.

Prayer: Father, burn into our hearts this love so that our lives can be lifted and we can lift others.  Amen.