Bible Text: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Gesima 2022 | We know in part. There are limits to our knowledge. And this should keep us humble and at the same time excited.
I say humble because we live in the age of intellectual arrogance. The elite claim to know what they can’t possibly know. Listen, for instance, to NPR’s “Science Friday,” and you will doubtlessly hear some scientist confidently assert what happened 130 million years ago – this week it was that felines, cats, went extinct for 6 million years in North America, give or take a few million years – a statistic that can’t possibly be sustained by the actual fossil evidence and is in fact a wild conjecture not actual knowledge. We know in part. This obviously applies to the sciences, obviously applies to history, even to our interpersonal relationships – I know only in part what you’re going through in your life – but it applies in particular to theology, to what we know about God. We know in part. Our knowledge is confined, in fact, to the Bible, God’s message to His creation and the historical witness of God’s action on this earth. And so our limited knowledge humbles us, humbles us specifically under God’s Word, under the Bible, not to pretend that we know more about God than the Bible tells us, because we don’t. But it also should drive us to know at least this Bible – I know in part, but it is a big part in comparison to my small mind, a part that can occupy my thoughts all my days and all my years.
And at the same time the fact that we know only in part should excite us, exhilarate us for the future, when we will know in full, when we will know as we are known by God. St. Paul talks about this constantly. In Philippians, as he sits chained in prison, he says that he can’t decide between life and death, because to go away and be with Christ will be so much better, but to stay will be good for Christ’s church. And in 1 Corinthians he says, “Eye has not seen nor ear heard nor has entered into the mind of man, the things God has prepared for those who love Him.” What a thing to look forward to. All we know of God’s goodness, of His creation, of our forgiveness, all that we have of God’s Spirit, and all the joy and beauty He allows us to experience here on earth, and it doesn’t compare, it is only a reflection, of what we will see and know and experience in the resurrection. So John says, “Beloved, now are we sons of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when [Christ] shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” This is what it means that we know in part, but then we will know fully. We humble ourselves under what we do know: God’s Word. We learn it, we love it, we don’t go beyond it into outrageous speculations. And then we burn with excitement to see what God has prepared for us who love Him.
What kept Paul on earth was love. And love never ends. Knowledge is partial. Prophecies and speaking in different languages, these all passed away after the age of the apostles, after Christ had established His Church. But love never ends. We have it full and complete from God and so we give it full and complete to one another. The only restriction we have is our own sinful hearts and our own corrupt bodies, our own flesh. Nothing else. When it comes to love, God has held nothing back. He’s held knowledge back from us. He’s held gifts of the Spirit back, tongues and miracles. But only because of love, and that love He does not hold back in the least. This He proved forever by His own death for us, and before that by His joining our human race in the Person of His Son. He has held nothing back, not even his blood, not even his groans and tears, not even his suffering and his death. Complete love. You want to see a love that does not envy, that is not irritable, that is gentle and kind, that rejoices in the truth, that is patient unto death, that never ends, see Christ your Lord, see him say to his disciples, who knew only in part, say to them, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.” In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atonement for our sins.
Beloved, if God has so loved us, we also ought to love one another (1 John 4:10-11). So much stress about love. What about faith? St. Paul says: these three remain, faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love. It’s greater than faith. But faith saves, the Lutheran says. How can love be greater when there can be nothing greater than being saved from sin and death and hell? How does faith save? Not by doing anything, but by receiving. And what does it receive? Love. God’s love. Perfect love worked out by the Son of God, the perfect love of the Father who gave up His Son, the perfect love of the Spirit who sought us out and made us His. Faith receives God’s love. So to say faith saves is to say God’s love saves. And this puts love in its proper place. We don’t believe in Jesus in order to have a get-out-of-jail-free card. We don’t have faith in God as eternal life insurance. No, as St. Paul says, if I have faith that can move mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. And as Jesus says, “They will know you are my disciples if you have love for one another.” A new commandment I give to you, as I have loved you, so you must love one another.
And praise the Lord, the God of heaven and earth, that He defines this love for us. Definition is a rare commodity these days. Words are thrown out without anyone bothering to define them. And there is no greater victim of this war on words than the word love. So let’s get this out of the way first, the obligatory answer to the question of our day, Why are you Christians so unloving: Why, we’re asked, are you against two men loving one another? And we of course answer, no one’s against two men loving one another. Literally no one in the history of the world. Male friendship is wonderful. I value the love of male friends and brothers almost as highly as I value the love of my wife. King David speaks of this when he mourns over the death of his best friend Jonathan – your love, he says, was better than the love of women – because Jonathan displayed Christ’s love, because Jonathan was willing to lay down his life and his honor for his friend. But that is no love when men do unspeakable acts with one another. That is no love. It is rebellion against the Creator. It is rebellion against His creation, which He designed in love to create life, not death. So, my Christian friends, you are God’s own children, you are the offspring of God’s love, do not let a bunch of God-deniers define love for you or shame you by accusations of being unloving. You know the love of God in Christ Jesus. You know the love of the Creator of all things. And you are not called to humble yourself to the changing standards of a perverse and adulterous generation, but to the unchanging Rock of God’s Word, which will never fail you.
God is good. He is good to us so far above what we deserve. And in His goodness, He defines love for us so that we don’t go astray. First he does this by giving us the ten commandments and writing these commands on our hearts. We should commit these commandments to memory and bind them on our hearts, as David says, “O Lord, how I love your law! All day long it is my meditation. Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, for they are always before me.” Learn the ten commandments, think on them, and this Word of God will be true of you too, you will be wiser than your enemies, no matter how many academic degrees they have. Parents, recite them with your children. Teachers, teach them at school. They define what love toward one another is – honoring authority, not harming the bodies of others, guarding virginity and keeping marriage pure between one man and one woman, not stealing but working hard instead, not gossiping but speaking well of our fellow Christians and defending them instead, being content with what God gives. There is the loving and divine foundation of a good life.
But God gives us grace upon grace and defines love again so beautifully through His apostle Paul. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. As I recite what love is it’s inevitable that the pangs of conscience arise in my own heart, as I imagine they rise in yours. I have not been so patient. I have most definitely shown irritation with those I love and arrogance, which is self-centeredness, is my constant companion until I am rid of this flesh. And it is here where we have to understand that our love, true love, will always need to come from Christ, who has loved perfectly. This is our boast and our glory forever, that God has done it. And it is His love that cleanses us from our sin, that also frees us from our ignorance, and so it His love by which we learn to love.
He is patient, overlooking our sins and our faults. This is our reality. If I grow impatient with my wife or my children or others, what brings me back to patience is reflecting on my Savior’s patience toward me. He has put up with so much from me, too much to count, so how could I not put up with annoyances, how could I not be patient and kind, how could I not forgive and ask for forgiveness myself.
And Christ did not envy, because all things were His, all things were given to Him by His Father. This again is our reality. How can we envy? We belong to this Jesus. He is ours. Ours. Not just mine, but yours. Not just the husband’s but the wife’s. Not just yours, but the one’s in the pew across from you. We are Christ’s and Christ has everything. So how can you envy? Will you envy the riches of the heathen? But they don’t have Christ and so they don’t have riches. Will you envy the riches of your brother in Christ? Why would you not rather boast that Christ has given to your brother and come in and rejoice and eat the fattened calf with him?
And Love doesn’t insist on its own way, so Jesus who is Love itself didn’t insist on His own way, but on the way of the Bible – we just heard this in our Gospel – everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished – there’s an insistence, without doubt, but an insistence not on His own will, but on the will of God, on the Word of the Bible, that the Christ must suffer for us. So why, when the Son of God Himself did not insist on His own way, but submitted entirely to the Bible and the Father’s will for His life and His death, why would I insist on my own way? Why would I impose my standards on you, when I and you both know of a far greater standard, the standard to which our Savior subjected Himself, the Word of God?
And Love bears all things. Jesus bore all our things. He bore our sins, bore the mocking and the spitting and the torture and the death. He lifted so great a burden off of us. A burden that we could not remove. And so He makes our shoulders light. That’s what He’s done. All your sin, all your guilt, all your shame, it’s been lifted off of you; your Lord put it on His own shoulders. And now your shoulders are light. They’re free for others. To bear their pains, their burdens. That’s why this blind man, blind Bartimaeus outside Jericho, as soon as Jesus takes his burden away, gives him his sight, takes up his cross and follows Jesus.
This is, I think, a friendly congregation. Especially as Lutheran congregations go. And I want to encourage you in this. To be friendly with one another and to be friendly with visitors, especially. But just as there is counterfeit love out there in the world, so there is a fake kind of friendliness, fake smiles and fake enthusiasm, to make people think we like them or make people want to join our church or simply because that’s what society expects of us, but then we complain about people behind their backs and harbor grudges and judgments in our hearts. Christ calls for genuine friendliness and kindness to one another. And we do have this here and we will get more and more and more of it the more we think on Jesus’ Word and Jesus’ love. Every single person who comes through that door, God formed in the womb and Jesus died for. Every person who sits next to you in the pew God wants with Him forever in heaven. Every person you deal with, especially in your home and at your job, but literally everywhere, God loves and sets that person’s worth at the blood of His Son. This is God’s Word. And this is what opens our eyes to reality. The first thing Bartimaeus saw when his eyes were opened was Jesus, Jesus heading to the cross. The first thing faith sees and the lens through which it sees everything is Jesus heading to the cross. God’s love for us and for every single person we come across in our life. And when we know this and think on our God’s love, when we wake up in the morning, when we go to bed at night, throughout the day, we will not fail to love one another, and that love will only grow and grow and grow until in the resurrection God removes our sinful flesh from us and we love without hindrance forever. Then we will know and we will see perfectly the truth of what the Apostle says: these three remain. Faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love.