"The Spirit's Most Extraordinary Effect"
June 9/02 1Cor.13
The Search for Something More
Many people today are hungry for an encounter with God. They're prepared to go to great lengths to find an experience of God's power or presence; they want the real thing, they want to be "where the action is" spiritually speaking, where it's "really at". Some travel far to big-city mega-churches where they've heard reports of signs and wonders occurring -- people overwhelmed by God's power and discovering a sort of spiritual ecstasy, or miraculous healings. (I have been to the Airport and overall was edified by the event.) Other Christian groupies make at least an annual pilgrimage to giant Christian conferences or concerts. In huge stadiums they are caught up in the sound of tens of thousands of voices joining together in praise and worship. (I too was at one of these at the Silverdome in Detroit.) Others are devotees of big-name teachers that have a tremendous number of followers due to their keen spiritual insight combined with efficient use of modern technology - gurus like Chuck Swindoll, Kay Arthur, Robert Schuller. They snatch up the teaching on radio or TV, by cassette, books, and devotional guides. (I too have my share of literature and audio products by such big names, even a "Living Insights" Study Bible.) To such folks, this is "where it's at" in the spiritual realm. This is what's exciting to many about Christianity, where the Holy Spirit is really moving.
But do you know what the Spirit's most extraordinary effect is, according to the New Testament? Not signs and wonders; not mass rallies, or the most spectacular prophets of the day; not the most insightful words of knowledge by modern apostles. No, according to Scripture, love is the Spirit's most extraordinary, most sensational effect. No fireworks, no loud noises or emotional phenomena, simply love. That's what's going to most grab the attention of the unbelievers in the world and point them to Jesus. And did you know love even has a colour? -- pink! When we "think pink" it will help us spot and show love much better. But more about that in a moment.
Love is the Greatest
Right plunk in the middle of a section on supernatural spiritual phenomena - speaking in tongues, interpretation, miracles, and prophecy - the apostle Paul inserted 1 Corinthians 13, a chapter devoted to love. In verses 1-3 he sets it in context by explaining that if we speak in tongues but don't have love, we're as uplifting as a pounding brass gong. We can have the gift of prophecy, understand all mysteries including horns on beasts and coloured horses - maybe even the ultimate meaning of 666 - but without love, we're a zero. We can even give all we have to the poor (commendable in a needy world) and surrender our body like some Buddhist ascetic leaping into the flames to burn away the dross and etherealize the spirit; but without love, Paul insists, we gain nothing by such fanatic devotion.
Again, at the end of the chapter in verse 10, he reminds us that when perfection comes, the imperfect (even the most amazing prophecy) disappears. Faith, hope, love remain - but the greatest of these is love. Only love will really stand out in the long run.
Whole Bible Emphasizes Love
Before we get into Paul's description of love in the meat of the "sandwich" of this chapter, let's back up to remind ourselves how important love is in the rest of Scripture. Our Lord Jesus described the whole Old Testament as hinged on 2 commands - love God with your whole being, and love your neighbour as yourself (Mt.22:40). Paul maintained the entire law is summed up in a single command - love your neighbour as yourself (Gal.5:14). And James described this as "the royal law" (Jas.2:8).
Probably the best picture of love in the Old Testament is found in Hosea 1-3. The prophet's continuing faithfulness and patient redemption toward his adultery-prone wife is made an illustration of God's ceaseless "husbanding" and care for unfaithful, idol-prone Israel. Then in chapter 11(4) God recalls bringing Israel as a newborn nation out of Egypt with "cords of human kindness" and "ties of love". The Lord is determined not to turn away from His people even though they are "bent on turning away" from Him, and "refuse to repent" (Hos.11:5-8). His heart recoils at the thought of deserting them; His compassion "grows warm and tender" instead.
In a Bible dictionary article, FH Palmer notes that God loved Israel "with an everlasting love" (Jer.31:3): Israel's unfaithfulness can have no effect upon it. Such love is not evoked by any intrinsic worth in its object, but rather creates that worth. Agape, the Greek word used in the Septuagint and New Testament, is the highest and noblest form of love which sees something infinitely precious in its object. Love is of the very nature of the Godhead (1 Jn.4:8); Jesus Christ, who is love incarnate and personified, is God's self-revelation. When God chooses to make Himself known (communicate what He's really like) in the person of Jesus, it's love we see. "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners" -- unlovely and essentially unlovable to a Holy God -- "Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)
Looking ahead to the time after the Bible, Jesus gave His followers a "new command" - that they love one another. This would be a distinguishing sign, a remarkable phenomena that'd really grab people's attention: "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:35) Palmer observes, "The very existence of this mutual love...is the sign par excellence to the outside world of the reality of Christian discipleship." It really is the Spirit's most extraordinary effect. Love isn't something we can manufacture ourselves; true love is a response to the blessing of Christ that's been showered on us. "We love because He first loved us." (1Jn.4:19)
Love's Colour: PINK
With that as background, let's return to Paul's octane-charged definition in 1Cor.13:4-7. Rather than try to study all the terms he uses here, I've picked four that seem to summarize love's core aspects. And d'you know they form a colour? Pink! P-I-N-K: Patience, Interests, No record, and Kindness. If we can with God's help get a handle on these four qualities, we'll be well on our way to loving, Jesus-style.
Patience
"Love is patient..." This is a hard teaching for a fast-food, "just-in-time" 21st-century Western culture. We want what we want when we want it. With the internet and fax machines, it's a burden just to send away for anything anymore. The Greek term means long-suffering, "to be a long spirit, to not lose heart; to persevere patiently and bravely in enduring misfortunes and troubles; to be patient in bearing the offenses and injuries of others." Maybe it helps to think of it as "having a long fuse". Psalm 103(8) says "The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love." Think of Jesus' patience when He was treated unfairly. Peter recalls, "When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats.Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly." (1 Peter 2:23) If we're patient, we will also not be "easily angered" but will "always persevere" (vv.5,7).
There is secret, tremendous power in patience. Edmund Burke said, "Our patience will achieve more than our force." Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist, wrote: "The two most powerful warriors are patience and time."
The Chinese plant the seed of the bamboo tree. They water and fertilize it, but the first year nothing happens. The second year they water and fertilize it, and still nothing happens. The third and fourth years they water and fertilize it, and nothing happens. (Do you detect a pattern here?) Then the fifth year they water and fertilize it, and sometime during the course of the fifth year, in a period of about six weeks, the Chinese bamboo tree grows roughly 90 feet! Impatience treats problems like they're bean seeds which spring up overnight, not bamboo trees that take much longer to grow but achieve wonderful results.
JI Packer said, "Patience does not just grin and bear things, stoic-like, but accepts them cheerfully as therapeutic workouts planned by a heavenly trainer who is resolved to get us to full fitness." Remember, when you're tempted to become impatient, it's a "therapeutic workout" from God! That's how character grows.
Some of you may be privileged to live with someone who repeatedly tries your patience. One day Samuel Wesley told his wife, "I wonder at your patience. You have told the same thing to that child 20 times." Susanna Wesley replied, "Had I satisfied myself by saying the matter only 19 times, I should have lost all my labour. You see, it was the 20th time that crowned the whole."
(Or at the other end of the age spectrum) Madeline Rockwell recalls: "My grandmother was a ball of fire, while Grandpa was slow and deliberate. One night they were awakened by a commotion in the chicken house. Grandma sprang out of bed, ran to the chicken house and found the cause of the racket, a large black snake. Having nothing to dispatch it with, she clamped her bare foot down on its head. There she stood, until Grandpa finally arrived, a good 15 minutes later. He was fully dressed, and even his pocket watch was in place. "Well," he said cheerfully to my disheveled and enraged grandma, "If I'd known you had him, I wouldn't have hurried so."
Kindness
"Love is patient, love is kind" - the "K" of PINK. It's hard to conceive of love apart from kindness. The Greek term means "useful, gracious, kind; to show oneself mild, pleasant (as opposed to harsh, hard, sharp, or bitter". Robertson terms it "gentle in behaviour". The person who's kind at the same time can't be rude, or behave indecently (v.5).
What a blessing it is to be on the receiving end of an act of kindness! William Penn said, "I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow-being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again." And Albert Schweitzer held that "Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate."
Allan Emery recalls taking an extended train trip as a youngster. One morning in the dining car, he heard his father, an important businessman, comment that the porter seemed to be in pain and walked with a limp. The poor man, it turned out, was suffering from an infected ingrown toenail. Later in the morning, Allan was surprised to see the porter coming from his parent's sleeping car. There was a distressed look on his face, and as he passed by, big tears fell from his eyes and cascaded down his cheeks. Going into the men's lounge, the man put his hands over his face and cried. Allan sat down on the bench beside him and after a while asked, "Are you crying because your toe hurts?"
"No," said the man, "it was because of your daddy." With great concern Allan pressed for the story. His parents had returned from breakfast and immediately approached the porter, asking about his toe. Mr.Emery explained that he wasn't a doctor, but he might be able to help him. He removed the man's shoe and sock, and carefully lanced the infected toe, cleaned it, and carefully bandaged it. "It doesn't hurt at all now," said the porter through his tears."It feels fine."
"Then why are you crying?" "Well, while he was dressing my toe, your daddy asked me if I loved the Lord Jesus. I told him my mother did but that I did not believe as she did. Then he told me that Jesus loved me and had died for me. As I saw your daddy carefully bandaging my foot, I saw a love that was Jesus' love and I knew I could believe it. We got down on our knees and we prayed and, now, I know that I am important to Jesus and that he loves me."
With that, the porter burst into tears again. When his sobs subsided, he looked over at Allan and said, "You know, boy, kindness can make you cry."
I and My Own Interests
The "I" in PINK stands for "I and My Own Interests". In verse 5 Paul says love "is not self-seeking"; NRSV translates this "does not insist on its own way". Love is unselfish, disinterested, not out for its own advantage. Love's primary approach is not to ask, "What's in it for me?" Elsewhere Paul counsels, "Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; honour one another above yourselves." (Rom.12:10) "Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others...I am not seeking my own good, but the good of the many, that they may be saved." (1Cor.10:24,33) Love gets me out beyond myself, where I can be more concerned about others not fixated on "me"; so unselfish love is also able to protect, and not boast or be proud (vv.4,7).
Achh - now we're touching the quick! It's so normal to be selfish...so unnatural to not be self-seeking, looking out for my own interests. This aspect of love is closely linked to Jesus' lordship. How do we get that little letter "I" out of the driver's seat? Only as a result of the death to self that's part of conversion, yielding one's life to Christ. Gal.2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ; and it's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.And the life I live, I live by faith (trusting, giving-over commitment) in the Son of God, who loved me and delivered Himself up for me." When my soul opens the door and invites Jesus in, His self-sacrificing Spirit starts to beget the same other-centredness in me. Christ died to reconcile us to God so we might "no longer live for ourselves, but for Him who died for us and was raised again" (2Cor.5:15). If Christ is in us, our body is dead to sin but our spirit becomes alive to righteousness (Rom.8:10). We don't live to our self alone; whether we live or die, we are the Lord's, under new ownership (Rom.14:7,8). Paul says bluntly to the Corinthians, "You are not your own; you were bought at a price." (1Cor.6:19,20) Lots of prayer and soaking in God's word needed on this one! Allow the Holy Spirit to help you constantly picture yourself in Christ, bought back by Him, sold out to Jesus as His bond-servant. You're carrying His plates now, you're His vehicle.
We can rest in these facts because we also have His promise and assurance that God will supply all our needs through His riches in glory in Christ (Phil.4:19). This frees us from approaching life selfishly; instead we can be constantly checking to see what God wants (that's what the first few lines of the Lord's Prayer are all about - Thy Kingdom, Thy will). Love frees us to be more concerned with giving than getting.
As Ghandi stepped aboard a train one day, one of his shoes slipped off and landed on the track. He was unable to retrieve it as the train was moving. To the amazement of his companions, Gandhi calmly took off his other shoe and threw it back along the track to land close to the first. Asked by a fellow passenger why he did so, Gandhi smiled and said, "The poor man who finds the shoe lying on the track will now have a pair he can use."
No Record of Wrongs
We're ready to finish spelling love's colour: p-i-N-k -- Paul says love keeps "No record of wrongs". Anything showing on your "grudge gauge"? The NRSV says love is not resentful; another translates, "love takes no account of evil". The Greek term means to reckon or count as in a ledger or notebook; keeping track, maintaining a tally. With regard to wrongs, love DOESN'T. Like our Heavenly Father, who in Isaiah 43(25) says, "I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more." God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting our sins against us (2Cor.5:19). This aspect of God-like love is what empowers us to truly forgive others, even to love our enemies. And that's gotta be supernatural: it's not "normal" to love your enemies, it goes against our human grain.
When with the Lord's help we "let go" of our grudges and really forgive others, not keeping a record of wrongs, we discover freedom for ourselves as a bonus. The ink of keeping account, of harbouring bitterness, is an acid that eats away at the register of our own souls. Researchers in Michigan measured heart rates, sweat rates, and other responses of subjects when asked to remember past slights. Professor Charlotte van Oyen Witvliet reports, "The blood pressure increases, their heart rate increases, and the muscle tensions are also higher" - which suggests their stress responses are greater during their unforgiving than forgiving conditions. According to Doctors Frank Minirth and Paul Meier, resentment is far more responsible for burnout than overwork. They say, "In our counseling ministries, we have seen literally hundreds of examples that verify a close connection between bitterness and resentment and the experience of symptoms that we call burnout...Bitterness leads to burnout...and freedom from bitterness is necessary for effective recovery from burnout."
Someone said, "He that doesn't forgive burns the bridge over which he himself must needs pass." Right in the Lord's Prayer, Jesus tied together our forgiveness of others with God's forgiveness of us. Robertson McQuilkin writes, "The sin of unforgiveness is a cancer that destroys relationships, eats away at one's own psyche, and - worst of all - shuts us off from God's grace." Are you holding something against someone? Settle it quickly - let go of it as God through the cross has wiped your slate clean - before the jailor of resentment hauls you off to the prison of bitterness, far from the open fields of God's grace.
Methodist pastor Charles Allen wrote that, when he was in the fourth grade, the superintendent of the school mistreated him. There was no doubt about it. It was a deliberate wrong which the man committed because he had fallen out with Charles' father. The Allens moved from that town, and the years passed. One day during Charles' first pastorate, he heard that his old antagonist was seeking a job with the schools in the area. Charles knew that as soon as he told his friends on the school board about the man, they would not hire him.
He recalls: "I went out to get in my car to go see some of the board members and suddenly it came over me what I had done. Here I was out trying to represent Him who was nailed to the Cross and me carrying a grudge. That realization was a humiliating experience. I went back into my house, knelt by my bedside, and said, 'Lord, if you will forgive me of this, I will never be guilty any more.' That experience and that promise are among the best things that ever happened in my life."
It's not just pastors like Charles Allen who are representing Jesus: you are too, if you call yourself a Christian. Are you feeling convicted for things you've been holding against others? (This whole chapter is very convicting, as the Holy Spirit uses it to expose the un-love still left in my life and that of others.) If you are convicted, don't resist it or grovel in it but deal with it like Pastor Allen did: forgive the other person, and get right with God. It may be humiliating, yes, but that's how we come to experience God's wonderful grace - accepted and loved at our worst. Love "is not a superficial virtue, for it involves a fundamental response of the heart to the prior love of God, and an acceptance of the Spirit's work in the depths of a man's being." Let the Master Painter take up the crimson-stained paintbrush and colour you pink today!