Love Really THAT Important?! 1Corinthians 13:13

Christians all over the world speak, preach, teach and extol the virtues of love. However, sometimes I wonder if our gonging sounds are just that. It is sort of like when my children were young and wanted that new, must have at all costs, toy. I would hear their summoning beckon like a fire engine roaring toward a possible doom; that plaything (that video game for my son or that Barbie doll for my daughter) had to be gotten and gotten soon. My paternal love was being weighed in the balance. Then with fatherly fanaticism I feverishly found it, favored it and dished it out with parental “love”, and I was rewarded with offspring affections of clanging sounds of appreciation! Or, at least that was the sound thereof. I was their champion for the day; I was the loving father of the moment, king for the day. However, today a scurry through the closet and that prize jewel of yesterday is yard sale fodder if I’ve ever seen any!

1 Corinthians 13:13 (KJV) (13) And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity (LOVE).

What we call love is not at all what the Apostle Paul meant in 1 Corinthians 13. Real love is not with us one day and gone tomorrow, like that video game purchased for my son. Much of our talk of love is not that at all. Like children, we are just playing with our new toy. To hear us speak a spectator might say, “Look how much she loves the church, or the poor, or the next door neighbor, or the people of differing colors on the other side of the rail.” It is so easy to talk the talk; it is effortless for us mask our emotions and play church, pretend at being loving neighbors. We forever muse at being something we are not. Paul says we are being childish!

"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me." -1 Corinthians 13:11 (TNIV)

There is something natural about being a child. This is the way you are born; this is the starting point of life. There is something natural about getting older. This the maturing point of our life. What is less than natural is when an adult fails to put away childish thinking and behavior. I have pastored 60 and 70 year olds who act like kids and fight over carpet colors in the church; I have seen some storm out of business meetings, skirt from church appointments where they were asked to lead, or refuse to sing because somebody made them mad! (I am glad that Paul did not stop preaching when he was stoned and left for dead!)

Many Christians age in the LORD but do not mature. They become “brats” in the faith who take their balls, gloves and bats home when they do not get their way in the game of life! They should be coaching others, but they coddle themselves. No wonder “sinners” don’t follow them to church. The sound of a real ballgame in the real world is more joyful than their clanging of false love in the church.

1 Corinthians 13:5-7 (Amplified Bible) (5 It (LOVE) is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride); it is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly. Love (God's love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong]. (6) It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail. (7) Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening].

Paul draws a precise picture of real love in these verses. He makes the point that to pursue spirituality and not pursue real love is childishness at its worse.

Childish thinking includes:

• conceit (arrogant and inflated with pride)

• rudeness (unmannerly)

• insisting on your own rights or your own way

• self-seeking;

• touchy or fretful or resentful;

• keeping account of evil or suffered wrong

• rejoicing in injustice

• not bearing up

Paul says that real love is the opposite of childishness! Real love abides forever!

Is it time to put away childish thinking? Is it time for us to grow up?

Is Love Really That Important?

John 13:35 (35) By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.