A Celebration of Love
And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.
(1 Corinthians 13:13)
It’s February. Many of us are still wondering what happened to Christmas, but here we are, entering the season of Valentine’s Day. As always, this means that we’re going to hear a lot about love over the next few weeks. That’s not a bad thing. While we acknowledge the value of romantic love in our lives, we also know that love means so much more than this, especially from a Christian perspective.
Love is the action at the core of the Great Commandment, “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and “love your neighbor as yourself.” Love is also at the heart of the new commandment Jesus taught, “love one another as I have loved you.”Understanding these teachings is one thing. Living a life that genuinely flows from the love of others is another.
It’s popular to use the description in 1 Corinthians 13, which is widely known as the “love chapter” of the Bible, to understand what love looks like. It reads:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8a)
This passage is a beautiful and powerful testament to what love is. It’s usually not a problem to think of our spouses this way. We don’t have a problem seeing our children, parents, and other loved ones through this lens (at least not on most days). Jesus challenges us to bring this to all of God’s children. That’s the meaning of loving your neighbor as yourself. We do all things as disciples, but are those things born of the love of God and neighbor? This month, I wonder if we might remember the lesson from the verses that precede the ones above:
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)
This February, as we see hearts everywhere, let’s make it a priority to bring more love to everything we do. Love is who our God is. Love is what God commands us to do. Let us live in such a way that we make the words of the popular hymn real; they’ll know we are Christians by our love.
Pastor Scott
P.S. Fish fries are coming soon! We will need as many people as possible to help make these work well. Please consider offering some of your time to make this critical outreach ministry of the church a success. For more specifics, go here.
