Bible Reading for June 18 – I Corinthians 13:1-13

Today’s passage is often read at weddings, as the purest definition of Romantic affection. But let’s face it – Romantic love involves and inspires a whole range of emotions – sometimes affection, but other times impatience, frustration, jealousy, and even anger. “I can’t believe she’s late again. Why can’t he remember to put the toilet seat down? If he really loved me, he would remember our anniversary! If she really loved me, she wouldn’t say those kinds of things!”

In contrast, Paul insists that true love is always patient and never envious (v. 4), that it never insists on its own way and is not irritable (v. 5). Was he just clueless?

No, the real problem is the English language, which, courtesy of our aggressive ancestors, has several different verbs which can be used to describe the action of murder, but only one to express the giving of thanks. We also use the single word “love” to describe our relationships with our God as well as with our spouses and our friends – we even talking about “loving” pizza or sports teams.

But the Greek language, in which the New Testament was written, uses different words for different kinds of love: phileo referred to the sort of love between friends, while eros described the sort of Romantic love shared between spouses. In contrast, Paul speaks in this passage of agape – and that’s the same word used to describe God’s love for human beings throughout the New Testament. That’s the kind of love Paul urges his Corinthian readers to have for God and for one another.

That’s the kind of love without which even the mightiest miracles or most selfless acts or the deepest theological knowledge is barren (vv. 1-3). That’s the only kind of love that fits all the characteristics of verses 4-7. Because only that kind of love desires to be in relationship with the beloved and to bless the beloved regardless of the cost to one’s self. Only that kind of love is thus willing to be hung on a cross for the sake of unworthy and even unwilling rebels.

Of course, the best thing about that sort of faithful, unconditional, self-sacrificial love is that it can exist not only between God and people, but between spouses and friends as well – agape is not necessarily exclusive of phileo or eros. In fact, you might say that without agape, eros will quickly devolve into self-centered, mutually destructive lust, and phileo will become the sort of irritable insistence on one’s own way that precludes any possibility of true friendship.

That’s why Paul insists that agape is not only the most lasting of spiritual gifts, but the greatest of them all – for it is only the love of Jesus that makes all other human loves possible. May Christ fill us with this kind of true love for Him and for others today.

I Corinthians 13:1-13 (ESV)

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant
5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.