1 Corinthians 13
Get Right with Love!
1 Corinthians 13
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Friday, October 2.
Paul teaches us about love in 1 Corinthians 13. He starts in verses 1-3 in a surprising way:
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 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. 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.
Paul starts the love chapter by taking some of the most sensational and miraculous experiences of God’s activity in a person’s life and reduces those gifts to being worth nothing when they are not done with the right motives of love. It’s scandalous when you think about it!
Over the years, I have often said to people, “Don’t be right and wrong at the same time!”
What do I mean by this? I mean the same thing Paul did…
You may have a strong word of truth about a doctrine or social issue or perspective on culture, but if you don’t conduct yourself with grace and speak that truth in love, then you are as wrong as wrong gets, no matter how right you think you are.
No amount of having the truth ever gives you permission to be unloving! At this point, the common response I get from self-righteous Christians is that Jesus turned the tables in the temple. And I say, “Yes, He did! But He didn’t sin when He did it!”
Without love, you are sinning! Don’t let the plank in your eye blind you to this truth…
Seize the moment and do all things with the same love that God first loved you!