1 Corinthians 13:1-13 Love and Spiritual Gifts - part 1

Okay. Well, I apologize. I only have six pages of notes for 1 Corinthians 13, 1-7. And while that sounds a little excessive, the reality is I felt like there was still the potential for more to be said. That always seems to be the case. Just like last week, when I was teaching through the end of chapter 12, I had seven pages of notes, and I still, after the fact, in having conversations with people, thought of other things I didn't say in the handout and verbally. It's pretty awesome that each time we get to come to God's Word, He teaches us, He shows us things, and we get to grow and learn in our walk with Him.

Alright, so 1 Corinthians 13, 1-7. Everybody knows 1 Corinthians 13 is the love chapter, right? You've been to a million weddings where somebody gets up and reads 1 Corinthians 13. They always skip the first couple verses, right? Because nobody wants to talk about the clinging gongs and cymbals. But once they get to verse 4, they read 4-8 or so. And then you know it's a good wedding, right? They played Canon in D, the Bride's March, And they've read 1 Corinthians 13, 4 through 8. And then it's a good wedding and the marriage is going to be successful and everything is good.

But as I was looking at this, I wanted to put aside any of my preconceived previous studying notions and really come at this and look at what's Paul doing as he's carried us through difficulties and division and devious behavior. Those are all D words, sorry for the alliteration.

The nature of this is really being built off of the end of 12. So at the end of 12, he's talked to us about spiritual gifts. We obviously covered that last week. But at the end of 12, there's this sentence fragment the latter half of 31 where he says, and I show you still a more excellent way. So you've got the gifts, you've got these things operating inside the body, hopefully, but I show you a more excellent way. And so what's the more excellent way? Well, it's going to be love. You're not shocked by that because you already know that 13 is about love. Let's dive in here with one key observation. How many of you have King James? Anybody have King James? I know Bob has King James. If you will read in King James verse 4. We're going to skip ahead for just a second because I want you to read verse 4 in King James.

Patty, go ahead for it. Charity suffers long and is kind. Charity envies not. Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. All right. So you'll notice that the King James uses the word charity. And I remember as a younger person, charity, it's love. The word is love. I use the word charity because I was young and I knew everything. Now I'm older and I know how wrong that is, right? It gets worse. The older you get, the more wrong you know you were.

Charity is actually probably a really solid translation for that. So we're going to define love when we see love in the modern translations that use that word. It's agape, and it's benevolent, caring love. Okay, so charity is actually a really good word in that context, and so I want to call that out ahead of time because I think that since the word is going to show up so many times, it's good for us to have that up at the forefront of what we're looking at. The other thing to say is that love is an act of the will. That's really important because especially in our culture today, there's a whole lot of garbage going on around love being an emotional thing.

I feel loved and feelings and love is feelings and it's a hormonal influx or whatever it is, but love is an act of the will. It's a word that gets its definition in God. We didn't define it after the fact and then attribute it to God. Love itself gets its definition from God. Okay, so all that being said, let's dive in.

Paul is still concerned about the spiritual gifts, so the believers that are there in Corinth have been arguing over who is greater because of the spiritual gifts. They've been divided in the body because of the spiritual gifts, and Paul's going to show them a better way than this argumentative, divisive thing that they've got going on. And he says in 13.1, if I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have agape love, benevolent love, I've become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. Now, what we see here is Paul in the next three verses is building up an argument of contrast. We might even reword, if I were to try to tersely summarize these next three verses, Paul's going to ask the question, can you walk in the flesh and not manifest the life of Christ, but still manifest the gifts of the Spirit and have people see Christ? And the answer is no. I would even go so far as to say that you cannot also manifest the the gifts of the Spirit, because you're not walking in the Spirit.

So Paul's calling them out with very strong, exaggerative language as we go through this. This is kind of a strange way for us to read Paul writing, but he's not mincing any words. He wants to make sure these people don't walk away from reading this letter with this idea that carnality belongs anywhere inside of the church, especially when it comes to the gifts.

So what are the tongues of men? When we say tongues, because the translation here, unfortunately, is not our modern vocabulary. Oh, it's defined, if we go back as far as Acts, it's languages. Yep. So tongues, you've heard people use the word tongues because it's in your Bible translations almost across the board. Every translation uses the word tongues. It means language. We went over that in past lessons, but I just want to make sure that everybody's got that. So he says, if I speak the tongues, plural, of men and of angels. Now, who are angels? Heavenly beings. They were messengers, right? The angels were messengers from God.

Now, how many of you, because Paul is exaggerating here, so we're going to have to explore the exaggeration a little bit. With the angels in the Old Testament, or even when we get to the New Testament, when we have the angel, for example, shows up to Mary, what language were the angels speaking? Language of the day. They were speaking the language of the person who was listening, right? We don't even know. So Paul's exaggerating, but we don't even know what the angelic language was.

We just know that when the angels came and showed up, they spoke whatever the language was. If an angel showed up today and spoke to us, it would be in English. When they showed up to Mary, it was probably uh oh, Aramaic, right? Or maybe Hebrew. But the angel shows up and they speak.

So Paul says, with extreme exaggeration, if I speak either of those languages, but I do not love, I become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. Now I'm a drummer, I'm a percussionist, the idea of gongs and cymbals doesn't offend me, but they are not a clear sound that he's talking about here. So he's saying, if I could speak these things but I'm missing love, I'm an obnoxious sound. With what he's got going on here, let's remind ourselves briefly of the culture.

The culture of the day. Did the Greeks love a good orator? Did the Greeks love to hear somebody who was a convincing speaker? The Greeks loved that. Here this person, in this case Paul, he's using himself for this exaggeration, he's saying, I have this communication gift with the angels and mankind, but if I have not loved this thing that you would prize, that you would lift up and say this is the gift of gifts, culturally, it's wasted. it's garbage. So a clanging symbol obviously is a problem. Now I'm going to take a little rabbit trail on this one and this is coming from my experiences when I was younger in the Charismatic Church.

How many of you have heard someone teach you this and say that this tongues of angels was a prayer language? Anybody hear somebody say that before? I've heard that lots of times so for me it's normal but for you it may not be. and they might say it's a prayer language, and they might even go so far as to say that because of this verse, everybody has a prayer language. Because everybody can speak in the tongues of men, but you just need to get this prayer language figured out.

So I've actually made some very long-winded notes, but I want to go over them because if you run into this, you need to be able to answer it. We've got six points from one verse. This is probably a personal record. Six points as to why that is an illogical, irrational deduction.

The first thing is that the reference to the tongues of angels is used for exaggeration. So if I speak in the tongues of angels, it's an exaggeration. The angels don't need me to speak their language. They can speak whatever language I am speaking if God sends them as messengers.

So that's the first thing. The second thing is that Greek word translated tongues means languages here, and that's why he uses men as the baseline comparison. So it's languages. It's not a prayer language that you don't know and don't understand. It's a language. It's a known language. In this case, even if we say it's the angel's language, it's still their language.

And you don't have any use for it. So it's probably not a good idea to be running around using it. Third, and this is really important, how many times are we called to pray to angels? Zero times. I would say the evidence for angels having any role in our lives at all is near zero. It's not a New Testament concept. We don't have an interaction with the angels. We don't have a relationship with angels.

They watch us in awe and they learn from us. We find that elsewhere. But the interaction isn't there. Paul's focus is on the love, not the language. If you walk away from this and you're focused on the language, you missed Paul's focus. He's talking about love. The whole chapter is about love. It's not about the language. Paul already said in 1230 that not everyone speaks in tongues. So not everybody has a prayer language that is a nonsense language in earthly terms.

And lastly, we find in other verses after this one and elsewhere that tongues is used for evangelism. If you go and we cross-reference Acts 2, 4-6, what happens? In the founding of the church, the Holy Spirit descends in flames of fire, which is pretty rad, pretty bazing, and then they speak in languages they don't know, and other people hear the gospel. not a gospel, not some religious content. It says they hear the gospel in their own tongue. So those are six points.

If we probably spent more time, we could come up with some even more items to list on this, but it's not a prayer language and the angel's tongue is used for exaggeration. I'm just belaboring that a little bit, but I just want to make sure because what we should walk away from this is an understanding that love is Paul's focus. It's not, it cannot be translated, it's not first class condition, it's third class condition. I looked it up, I was curious. And actually what that's telling me is, you may speak in tongues, and you may not, which goes along with, it's subjunctive, maybe yes, maybe no, it goes along with verse 30, that some can speak God by his grace, some will speak in a language, for evangelism and some will not. So actually the condition of the if statement actually reinforces the fact that tongues are not for everyone. Yeah, thank you. So that's a seven. That's number seven. You can write that in if you need to. So everybody is walking away from this hopefully this morning with an understanding that not everybody speaks in tongues and it is not a prayer language and it is used for evangelism.

But yeah, it is a condition there that is reinforcing what Paul already said in 29. Alright, so the question I've got there, and hopefully by now you can answer this, why is love more important than the gift of languages? If people don't care, people don't listen. Okay, if people don't care, people don't listen. That's good. And if I am going and I'm engaging with somebody and I'm doing it clinically, I'm doing it technically, I'm doing it selfishly, any kind of carnal behavior, as Tom said, they're not going to listen. Why would they listen? Who cares? Who cares is the person that they're going to listen to, the person that is caring for them and loving. The benevolent, selfless love. So, verse two, 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.

Alright, so let's quickly review our definition of prophecy. What is prophecy in this New Testament context? The brand new church, what's prophecy? Is it just foretelling the future? No. The gift of prophecy has to do with the speaking forth inspired words to reveal doctrine to the church. Because remember, they don't have a New Testament. They don't have the text of the scriptures. They don't have all the collections of all the letters of what has been written to the different churches that we take for granted in our New Testament.

So Paul says, if I have this gift of revealing true doctrine, and he knows all mysteries. Now, you guys remember when my dad runs into the word mysteries, a moose goes across the screen upstairs, right? The Mousterion. The Greeks and the Romans at the time had all these mystery cults, and we talked about this last week, where they did not know or they had secrets, they had these mysteries that were part of the cults, and you did not know what somebody else's cult or mystery sect believed. And so if you don't know these things, these mysteries are what make that group isolated. They're what make that group special.

What does Paul do with mysteries in the New Testament? He shares them. He reveals them, right? But in this case, Paul is saying, OK, I have all this revelation from God, I have all spiritual truth, and all these mysteries are revealed, and I have all this knowledge. And, to go even further, I have all faith. Now, who is he describing? Who inside of his list of gifts, if we were to go back to 1228, is he describing? Who has all of these?

Christ does. but in his list of gifts, the Apostles. The Apostles have been given much of this, not all, that's an exaggeration to say they have this, but they have been given these mysteries, they've been given prophecy, they've been given knowledge, and they have obviously a very powerful faith, that's why they're going out and Paul's risking his life and doing these things.

If we have this exaggerated, extremely intense believer, but they don't have love, he says, I am nothing. Now, Bob? So, Ryan, I'm just going to ask the conditional nature of those two also. I'm going to be honest, I didn't look at that, but it's the same structure. I may not actually have them, but even if I did, it's the same. I believe all the ifs in one through three are all third class.

I was also wondering, Randy, can we also be talking about, because Christ was loved, could it also be an analogy in some way to, if I don't understand Christ, if I'm not in Christ, as well as the word love? Because in other places that's... Well, he's assuming that they're a believer, so they're in Christ.

But the thing is that the situation in the church in Corinth is that they're all pretty much babes in Christ. There's no maturity, there's no understanding of their position. Their condition is very screwed up. But he's using this exaggeration to contrast their deep misunderstanding of the body and their intimacy that they're supposed to have with one another. We can each ask ourselves, how are we doing on this putting on all love? How are you doing? Are you working at that? How's that working out in you? We're going to get into that. Tom, you were going to say something, no?

All the rest of the Rogues have their chance. But Paul says, assuming he's got all these things, which again is that third class conditional, he says, I am nothing. And so I am nothing is maybe not as clear a translation as we could have here. The idea with I am nothing is the idea that I have no value as a person. I have no value as a man. Now here's the Corinthians. These are the people that are constantly trying to build themselves up and elevate themselves one over the other. And he says, if I've done these things, I am nothing. I have no value that I bring to the table.

So the thing that's most important to you, if you cross this line, you have now nullified your meritorious gifting that you think you have. Although we all know now that it is not meritorious. But he's using this for exaggeration. So in verse 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."

Now we have this really sacrificial love. In the first one, what was wasted? Oratory. In the second one, what is wasted is this massive amount of signs and wonders that could be there. They're just thrown away. They're wasted. And in this one, now it's all your possessions and your person. Wasted and thrown away. And so, all of that is because of this lack of benevolent love. And so now he set up for us the deep, deep need to understand what love is and to discuss the attributes of what makes biblical, godly, benevolent, charity-focused love real. How does that show up inside the body? What does it look like?

I want to just briefly call out that it is funny that the folks that say that the tongues of angels in verse one are a thing, but nobody ever goes and talks about the mysteries and the knowledge, and nobody ever talks about giving their possessions. It's like, oh, that's a spiritual gift that everybody has. So it's weird that that one gets isolated.

Verse four. Love is, and we're going to read four through seven, all in one chunk here and then we'll dig in. Love is patient. Love is kind and is not jealous. Love does not brag and is not arrogant. Does not act unbecomingly. It does not seek its own. Is not provoked. Does not take into account a wrong suffered. Does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth. bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

And Bob gets to pick up on eight next week, so it keeps going. But there it is. So, no pressure. It's just one of the most... After reading that, you can do that. You're out in space. What's amazing is that, functionally, if we're abiding and we're growing in these things, this is a thing that the Lord can do in us.

I think what Paul's doing here, too, is he's really confronting the body, the body in Christ, with the fact, positionally, you're okay. Now look at your lives. And if this isn't identification truth played out, again just what I said earlier, how are you doing at loving one another? Christ said I would have you love one another as I loved you. That's another nature. That's not of the flesh.

So if you will, rightly dividing the word of truth, there's no other way that you can accomplish these things except living above and having that life live out in you by faith. That's the only way. So it takes the pressure off. It really, really does.

Sorry. That's OK. That's OK. That's good. That's those. That's going to be my closing question. OK. I'm only sort of joking. But I worded it differently. But yeah. So the. The thing that we need to do again is put us in light of the original recipients of this letter. What was going on? Because the Corinthians were really selfish people. Culturally they were selfish. Everybody's looking after themselves and trying to build themselves up.

And so when we look at these attributes of love or these qualities of love, you can imagine that it would have stood out culturally in a big way. And I think we could say the same thing today. If we're loving this way, we're abiding in the Holy Spirit loving through us, it's going to stand out in our culture today still. We're still going to find ourselves standing out, and it would be unique. I do want to also point out, as I said in the last paragraph of page three, there's a heavy overlap here with the fruits of the Spirit. That's because we can only do this by the empowering of the Holy Spirit. It's empowered and motivated by grace. So let's take a look here as we go through this list.

I feel like I gave a relatively quick treatment to each one of these, but I still don't know if we'll get through by the end of the class. But we'll do our best. Patience. When we think about patience or perseverance, we often think about suffering and we think about our own gumption. What's my own intestinal fortitude to grunt through this situation.

But that's not what Paul's talking about. Paul's talking about the Holy Spirit empowering us to be patient in these things. And that is why we have any chance of having this executed. As Bob just pointed out, it's a thing that we could never do of our own accord.

Now I've got a cross reference here that takes a Jewish and different angle, 2 Peter 4, 1-9, and I wanted to go look at that because I think the different angle could cause some confusion if you're studying later, and I thought it was worth just running over there and taking a look. So 2 Peter 4, 1-9. I'm sorry, second Peter four, that would be wrong.

It would be impressive if you could get there. That's a typo. I'm proud of that. How about he's revealing. This is all mysteries. It's not. Oh, shoot. I've done a bad job on my reference. I know I'm a little embarrassed. Start quoting part of the verse. Well, it's talking about... Shoot. All these people in this room on your side. Well, he's talking about the process. 1, 4, 3, 9? 1, 4, 3, 9 is highly possible.

Yeah, nope. Now I've really done it. Ah, here we go. All right, good. 2nd Peter 1. I fat fingered this really terribly. I'm proud of it. Did you flip it more than one? No, it's even worse than that. So I don't know what I was missing. 5 through 9. 2nd Peter 1. 2nd Peter 1, yeah. That's close through one five five through seven. Wow. I'm just impressed at how badly I did on that one.

So we can take notes on that. And the funny thing is that I spent time reading it and thinking about this before I put it in here. And I did a tremendous job of putting it in wrong. I'll go ahead and read this out loud now that I've caused such consternation. 2 Peter 1 starting in verse 5. Now for this reason also applying all diligence in your faith supply moral excellence and in your moral excellence knowledge and in your knowledge self-control and in your self-control perseverance and in your perseverance godliness and in your godliness brotherly kindness and in your brotherly kindness love.

Alright now that I have restored us to the right passage here. What do we do with this? This sounds like Peter's given us a to-do list. How do we handle this in light of 1 Corinthians 13? Sure, the Holy Spirit causes the growth. That's definitely important. One of the things that I think is important to recognize is that Peter was not the apostle to the Gentiles. Paul was the apostle of the Gentiles. And so Peter writes in a very Jewish way.

And there's a thing called the Semitic Totality Concept, which is, that's like a $5 theology word. You can whip that out every time you want to impress people. I'm like, oh, did you go to seminary? Yes or no. But the Semitic Totality Concept is this idea, if it is true, you do it. All of it. You do all of the law because the law is true. So the Jews, if they heard a piece of something, would then take it to its logical conclusion and then hold you responsible for the whole thing. So that's the Semitic totality concept. And here, Peter is building on these attributes, right?

And we're like, oh no. Bob said, how are you doing with that? And the answer is probably in the flesh, not doing it at all, right? This is terrible. But Peter is addressing believers. He's approaching it from a Jewish perspective. But if we look at this as the Holy Spirit, as Tom pointed out, the Holy Spirit is empowering us to do these things. We see how there is a cycle of growth, if you will, that comes from the Holy Spirit touching on these things and developing them in us through His power, through His strength. Not that we pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. But because those come from different angles, I thought it was worthwhile to kind of connect those dots.

He uses the same vocabulary. They're all attributes of love in Paul's writing. And in here, they're all attributes of love that we grow in. It's a different angle. Don't you find it's interesting that charity or love is last in this list, too? Yeah, the final outcome is the love, whereas in Paul says there's love, and these are all the outcomes of the love.

And so it's almost like a mirror approach to the perspective. Tom? Except it does appear that because of the Jews being so steeped in do-it-through-yourself effort that Peter has to take a loving response to that without trying to switch and change overnight. Yeah, you're not thinking like a Greek, so I have to write to you like a Jew, and here's how we're going to approach this so that you can understand. The funny thing is that in the United States we tend to think sort of like the Greeks more than we do the Jews. But you get some pretty strong division in the theological world because they don't understand the Semitic totality concept.

They think, see, Peter says you've got to do it, so you better get your work boots on because you've got some works to get on. And that's a problem. That's their coattails here because I think, you know, diligence is, I mean, it's not of the flesh we decide to follow our faith, but we, you know, faith, we're not like robots.

God doesn't zap us with faith, but in fact we have to attend to faith, right? So there is a sense of diligence that we as believers here in earthly bodies have before us. Love is an act of the will, right? We're aligning our will with God's will and we're abiding and we are co-willing along Him. We're under-willing, maybe would be a way to put that, where He's guiding and directing us and we're going, yeah, I agree, I believe.

So love is patient. This is benevolent love. And in this room, not everybody's married, but I think we've all had relationships that have required patience. If love is the root of the patience, that's a powerful thing. If our stick-to-itiveness, if we want to use that as a terrible phrase, If we're doing it of our own accord, that's not a good starting point. That runs out. That wears out. Alright, so love is patient. Love is kind and is not jealous. When we seek to promote ourselves, we're implicitly selfish, right? Here's these Corinthians. They're selfish. They're self-promoting.

That's partially why we got to go through, I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos, I'm of Cephas, is I'm going to follow the better teacher so that I can be a better Christian than you. Isn't that terrible? To think about, I want to be a better Christian than you? Look at the evangelist preachers on TV.

The ones that are the great orators and can expound all the scripture from memory and all of that, they have these huge congregations. They just draw them in because it's not what they're teaching, it's how they say it. It's how they present themselves. But instead of being selfish, Paul is calling these believers to be kind. So this benevolent love is challenging the selfish person to instead be kind, to reject jealousy. They're lifting themselves up, they're trying to gain wealth and possessions. So now he's gotten rid of both of those in one little phrase here, being kind.

If I'm selfish and you're in need, what happens? Acts chapter 2 Verse 45, they were selling... the church is brand new, they're like minutes old, right? And they're selling their possessions as they saw other people had need. What's the Holy Spirit doing right away?

Kindness. No jealousy. Caring for one another. There's that caring word again. So, jealousy has no place here. Love does not brag and is not arrogant. Alright, so bragging is falsely boasting about yourself and exaggerating what is true. Lifting yourself up.

So I'm going to throw myself under the bus for a second and share a side note. This is a hair anecdotal. My personality type is to get, when I see you since the last time I saw you, is to catch you up on what's happened in my life since the last time we saw one another. And if I got a new thing that I'm excited about, I might tell you about the new thing. Today I'm going to get some new parts for my guitar so that I can fix the intonation so that when I'm leading worship I don't have to retune it, right? So I'm excited about that, like, woo!

You don't need to know that. But if I'm sharing that with you, there's a big difference between bragging and sharing with you that I have that. So sometimes there's this sad false humility that I've seen happen in some churches where people won't share anything that's going on in their lives that's positive, lest it be interpreted as bragging. And that's not what Paul's talking about. If Tim is excited about his new job, and he comes and he tells us about his new job, and I'm having a stinky time and I'm not liking my job, I don't get to say, Tim's bragging. Tim's just sharing me, or with us, or with somebody, what's going on?

That's a cool thing. That's okay, that's not bragging. But it's not arrogant, right? It's that arrogance that I'm better than you, I'm lording over you, this thing that I have, this experience I'm having, That's not what Paul's talking about. So in the church, obviously when it comes to things like bragging, Paul's saying it shouldn't happen, but what do we do if somebody's bragging? When they come into the church and they're just like, I have a new Tesla and you don't. I don't know why I picked that. That seems like a pretty lofty, expensive vehicle, right?

So if somebody comes in, what's our response to that? We can be happy for them? Okay, that's good. How are we going to respond? What four letter word that starts with L and ends with of might we apply in this situation? Right? So this is a great opportunity. Even if somebody screws this up, right? Somebody comes into church, they mess up, and they're bragging about their new Tesla for whatever reason. or even the smallest thing. I got to try this new food or whatever else, but they're just cocky about it.

Well, we're going to love them anyways. Love does not act unbecomingly. And I love that word unbecomingly only because I had to look it up and really actually think about what it was, because I realized that we pretty much don't use the word unbecoming very often in modern vocabulary. So unbecoming is something that is out of appropriate behavior, outside of appropriate behavior, when they shouldn't be doing that.

Turn on the television, that. What is shocking? Let's put that in front of the people. But it's not common. For example, in a different light, we often see smear campaigns, being that we're in a political season right now, not to be political, but we see these smear campaigns where the job is to show you that this person has behaved in an unbecoming manner, and so don't vote for them. So that's an illustration, not a political statement. Ran out screaming, Randy said something political.

What does Paul prescribe for the situation when someone does act unbecomingly? And not here, he actually does it somewhere else, but I'm asking because I'd like to see who can connect the dots. Where does Paul tell us about unbecoming, unchrist-like behavior when we see it in the church? The Lord's Table? Okay. Would it be also where he's, the part where he's talking about what elders do in the church and what happens to people who, you know, what kind of judgment, correction. Yeah, there would be correction.

So what I was thinking of particularly is Galatians 6.1. Somebody's walking in sin, they're behaving in an unbecoming manner. He says, you who are spiritual, come alongside and restore them.

In love, right? Love covers the fact that somebody was behaving unbecomingly, but it also doesn't itself act unbecomingly. Another word that I would actually use in light of this from a bigger picture is love is going to show maturity. Love is going to say, hey, that's not a mature thing for you to be doing. Let's mature here together. Let's come alongside.

Love does not seek its own. Here's the selfishness principle again. The funny thing is that Paul is kind of covering the nuances of selfishness. If we look at this behavior, this unbecoming behavior is, look at me, selfishly. This idea of not seeking your own.

I want to be spiritual for my own gain. The televangelists are notorious for that, right? And while that seems like Paul might be beating a dead horse. He's emphasizing the nuances of this because you have to imagine he knows his audience. And the Corinthians needed this particular element restated so that when they walk away from reading this they're not going, I have preserved, I narrowly escaped with this form of selfishness is okay. They don't get to walk away with that. Now, my question for this one is maybe a little long-winded, but I think by now you know that that's my tendency.

If selfishness is not the role of a believer who has more possessions, what is the biblical model for handling those possessions? What's the biblical doctrine? How are we supposed to handle possessions biblically? Whose stuff is it? Why don't we ask that question? It's God's. So the biblical doctrine that we're looking for is stewardship. God has given some people many possessions. Romans 12 says you might have possessions that you're the steward of for sharing. And you should be liberal with them if you have those possessions. He's not saying you shouldn't have stuff. Stuff isn't the problem. Stuff is his. It's God's.

I'll never forget my friend Tony called me one day, he said, Randy, somebody rear-ended God's car. And my wife and kid were in it. And so they had to get a new car. But it's one of those things where when it's God's car, and Patty, her praise, there was an accident in God's car. But he took care of it. And she was grateful. So those things are are important.

This idea of being selfish is obviously a problem that we can face. That's why we have television and marketing, right? Let's promote a little bit of that selfishness so that you'll spend your money with us instead of somebody else. Love is not provoked. Now, what does to provoke mean? That's a word that I think we use a little bit more, but we often say things like, stop provoking. What does provoke mean? To provoke could be to excite or to charge up, right? When I get irritated, sometimes I will feel threatened, and my reaction in the flesh is to want to provoke that person back. And, oh yeah? And of course that never ends well. No one has ever told a story where they provoked somebody and the outcome was awesomeness. It just escalated to stupid. But love does not provoke the sort of tempered response that we are supposed to have as a sign of the Holy Spirit in our life. Not of our own flesh being crafted more sophisticated than the next person.

So just a simplistic approach to life in that regard. I mean, the flesh is reactionary. Yep. The Holy Spirit in the new life we have is responsive. Yeah, that's a good way to state that. Does everybody understand what Bob was saying? The flesh is reactionary. It tends to give an equal and opposite reaction. And quickly, I can insult you faster with more deep cutting if you poke at me.

Versus the Holy Spirit, you said it was responsive, and I think that's a good word, because responsive, we could use it as a synonym for reactionary, but I think that's not an accurate use, and that's definitely not what Bob is saying. Responsiveness is thoughtful. Responsiveness is submitting to God's direction and God's will. What's funny is, last week I mentioned briefly that I'm working on this acoustic guitar that is being built, and the top of the guitar is responsive. It responds to all of the movement and the energy that's in the guitar, and it's responsive in a positive way. Reactionary? Well, that's when something breaks, right? Then you have a problem.

Think about in our electronic world, emails that are reactionary. You get something you don't agree with or whatever, and boy, you flip off some email to somebody. Let's copy all. Not a good thing. I thought that in our society, it's tweets now. Oh, yeah. I mean, Twitter and then things going viral. I mean, yeah, the negative effect of all those things. Yeah. Never is good. And you cannot get back your tweet. Yes. It's gone. There's already a screenshot somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. Somewhere there's an angry Kardashian. Right.

So, continuing on only because Brian rang the bell with, again, great precision. Love does not keep records of wrongs. This is one of the classic problems in relationships. I've heard dozens of comedians now talk about their wife being able to remember some time they screwed up and they lost an argument because she could remember 30 years ago he did X. That's not love. It's not love for him to throw her under the bus. It's not love for her to remember things from 30 years ago. Love keeps no record of wrongs.

In fact, if I'm talking with somebody and that sort of thing happens, I know where that relationship stands. That's not love. That's not a benevolent, caring behavior. I've got it as a question, it's a rhetorical question, but it's worth thinking about later on. How could we possibly describe loving someone and keeping track of reasons not to love them?

So, love does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in truth. Unrighteousness is that sin, but instead the restorative quality of truth comes up. When we're talking with one another, if we're talking about things that are unrighteous, as believers, I'm going to guess that the Holy Spirit is going to be pulling on our thoughts, saying, hey, let's restore fellowship, let's get back to abiding, let's get back to truth.

Just like love gets its definition in God, so does truth. Truth gets its definition. Its very existence is in Him. Man did not contrive truth and later on attribute its quality to God. It was in God from the beginning and we learned about it from Him. Love bears all things.

And this word bears here, I'm just going to say, I don't think it's a great translation for here. The idea for that word is like a rooftop. The idea is that the love actually covers those things. And one possible translation, I'm going to be careful with this because I don't want you to get the wrong impression, the one possible translation is the idea that it actually keeps things secret. And the idea with the rooftop bearing, if you're going to look at it from the top, it's going to endure, right?

It's going to be patient. But the idea is you're not keeping any records of wrong. You're bearing, oh that's fine, that's fine. Well, we're going to deal with that. And I'm not going to go around telling other people, oh, this person screwed up and did this thing. Don't be their friend, right? Or don't love them, or don't care for them. That's not the outcome.

Love believes all things. Now, we're concerned about truth, right? So, if love is rejoicing in truth, we're not going to believe all things willy-nilly, like blindly. That's not what he's talking about. But the idea is that the love is not suspicious. The love is carrying with it this idea of trust between two parties inside the body.

We're going to believe the things. So, we're almost done with our list and we're definitely out of time, but I'm going to keep going just so that when Bob starts next week, he's got a clean slate. He's ready to go. Love hopes all things. Hope, the way I like to define it, is faith applied to future things that are coming.

We walk in this faith of things that are there in the light of sin Hope is the believer that is spiritual, that comes alongside and says, you know what? You're going to get out of the ditch. You're going to get out of the sin. I know who you are in Christ. I'm hoping along with you to our heavenly position. Knowing that God is sovereign, God is capable, and God is changing you.

Last on this list here, hope endures all things. If patience wasn't enough, Patience isn't enough. Hope endures. Love's endurance is not based on merit, but grace. If love is patient and it bears all things, then it abides or endures. It stays put and it waits for the outcome that it is hoping for. They hope all things and that hope leads to endurance. So, we're out of time.

But I'm going to ask one, this is the second to last question, I guess. Does endurance mean taking all abuse in silence? Let's ask that just because it's got to be, it's probably safe to say that. This could be used in an incorrect way and say, you know, maybe I'm not going to hit you again until next time, right? Well, love endures all things. No, that's a different problem, right? We're looking for corrective change and truth as a focus. So the last one, and Bob asked this differently, but I'm going to tie it to Bob's question.

What does Holly Hill's Bible Church look like if these characteristics of love are manifested within it? How do we put tennis shoes on these principles? How are you going to deliver on this? It's your job to deliver, right? Or is it? It's abiding. But I want to connect abiding to one other principle.

If you have not been taught something, you may not know that it's part of the life that is the life that Christ has lived out. So now we have an understanding of love. Just in case you haven't been taught 1 Corinthians 13 before. Now you have an understanding. You're not accountable for it in the flesh, right? That's not what we're asking with this question.

But now we know and we can look for opportunities that the Holy Spirit has brought in front of us to live and empower us that later on He's going to reward us for. All by His strength. All by His doing and all His empowering. Alright, any other thoughts or questions? Even though I've gone long? No? Alright, let's close in prayer.

Heavenly Father, thank you for your love. Thank you for sending Christ as the ultimate sign of your love for us and the ultimate act of love for us. We pray for your love to be lived out through us in a deep and rich and meaningful way as we abide. And we thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.