It was 1967—the “Summer of Love,” where about 100,000 hippies converged on San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. It was the epicenter of the social revolution that changed the world, both for better and worse. The Beatles released their song, “All you need is love” in July of that summer. The lyrics are not complicated and expressed the notion that love is the answer for all of humanity’s ills, not a bad message.
The English word love is most often defined by its context, but the Greek language has different words for those contexts.
- agapē – sacrificial and unconditional love (God’s kind of love)
- eros – physical sensual love
- philia – friendship brotherly love
- storge – parental and sibling love
God has a lot to say about love, the agape kind of love.
- Love Is Excellent
If any city needed a revelation of the God kind of love, Corinth was a prime candidate. It was a wealthy commercial center with a reputation for depravity and debauchery, not too different from large cities all over the world today. Paul’s writing to the Corinthian church was to correct some disturbing behavior.
First Corinthians 13 begins by putting spiritual gifts into God’s perspective.
Without love, speaking in tongues (spiritual language) has no more power to be heard or received than natural language. It is mere noise. Furthermore, operating in the gifts of the Spirit in prophecy, word of knowledge, or faith, without love produces nothing in a person, and worse yet, leaves one empty.
Giving to the poor is honorable and noble. Many non-Christians support works to alleviate suffering, and I’m grateful for anyone who helps the needy. One can work for social justice to the point of being “burned out” with what people consider “good works,” even non-Christians. Yet none is profitable in the Kingdom of God without love—the selfless kind, the motive that doesn’t seek accolades and good press. Good works benefit flesh and blood, but they are devoid of God’s transformative power without love as the driving force.
Attributes of expressed love (patient, kind, gentleness, self-control, kindness, goodness) are the same as the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. It is what motivates and gives life to all the fruit. Without love, acts of “kindness” or “goodness” are self-serving, “patience” is apathy, and “self-control” is restraint. Because perfect love – selfless, sacrificial love — has no fear, it cannot fail. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love” (1 John 4:18).
Love is long-suffering and always hopes for betterment. It does not give up, but keeps pursuing righteousness and justice. It holds no grudges and offense even when forgiveness is difficult. Love is not happy with ungodly acts, revenge, or retribution. On the contrary, it keeps faith alive and motivates all other fruit of the Spirit.
- The ultimate outcome of love is always victory.
“Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away” (1 Cor. 13:8–10). Cessationists use this Scripture to say that the supernatural manifestations of the gifts of the Spirit are no longer in effect. However, this position does not take into account the context and overall message of the passage, which is to centralize the motivation of love. Paul is saying that when the “perfect comes” there will no longer be a need for any of the gifts of the Spirit to operate in the Church because all will be complete and perfect. What is the perfect to come? It has been interpreted as a reference to the second coming of Christ, who is perfect and brings completion. Others interpret Paul as saying that no single operation of a particular gift of the Spirit like prophecy has everything needed for understanding and interpretation. We each know in part and we see in part. That is why we need one another and the all of the gifts to work together for complete revelation and understanding.
Paul likens the Church age to seeing into a mirror “dimly” in that the revelation given through the gifts is not like the full presence of God. We have parts, pieces for daily living, to walk in the Spirit until the day when the Lord returns and humanity will see Him face to face. It also alludes to the next life when the gifts of the Spirit are not needed because we will continually behold His presence face to face. Finally, we need to live in faith, hope and love, but of these three, love is the greatest because God is love (1 John 4:8b) and His love expressed is the source of all gifts and fruit of the Spirit.
- Love is the bond of unity.
The context of Paul’s writing to the church at Colossae was that some in the church caused dissention by insisting that Gentile Christians follow Jewish law and tradition. It was a flourishing church founded and led by Epaphras. Paul gives the attributes of love (fruit of the Spirit) as instruction on how they were to treat one another (Col. 3:12–13). Paul makes a plea for them to “put on love” as one does clothing. It means exerting purposeful decision and effort. The outcome of their love would be the “perfect bond of unity” (Col. 3:14). He ends his plea with telling them to allow the peace of Christ to take ascendancy, to rule because they are one body, and finally, to be thankful.
The love we have for one another is a testimony of the fact of our relationship with the Father and His children. It affirms our having been transformed from orphans to children of God and joined His family (1 John 3:14).
- Love reveals Christ to the world.
The love Christians have for one another should testify of the fact that they have been transformed into followers of Christ and members of the family of God. It is not only a unifying element; it is an evangelical statement. “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).
How can we know who belongs to the kingdom of God and who does not. Those who practice evil are not of God’s kingdom. Those who claim to be Christian and who do not love one another are lumped into the same group. “By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:10).
In Mark 12: 28–31, Jesus begins his response with the “Shema” and then gives the two commandments of love, the summary of the ten. Two tablets recorded the Ten Commandments: one dealt with humanity’s relationship with God (commandments 1, 2, 3), the other tablet dealt with the relationship among one another (commandments 4 through 10). Jesus is really not giving new commandments, but rather summarizing the existing ones. The substance of the relationship is centered on love. Simply said, love God without restraint and selflessly love one another. There can be no greater commandment than that of love.
- Love never fails.
The Beatles’ song of love hit on a truth, but it was not a complete message. All you really do need is love, but it doesn’t tell of the source of that love, how that love is expressed, and how to access and receive that kind of love, or how to exercise that kind of love. That’s left to the hearer’s interpretation, but it’s a pop song made for entertainment and no pop song is ever expected to do that. We just hum along and remember the words decades later with accompanying memories.
Quite the contrary, God’s Word on love and our relationship with the Spirit give us the revelation of Himself. “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38–39). We have the complete message in Him. “. . . for God is love” (1 John 4:8b, emphasis added).
Copyright 2016 by Eva Benevento. All rights reserved.