Acts 20:27 for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.

When I did a word search for “whole counsel” I expected more than one usage. I was wrong. My expectation was that the whole counsel of God is an important issue and many things important in the scriptures are repeated more than once.

Teach and urge these things.  If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. Ref 1 Timothy 6 ESV

Just as we added Romans 8 to yesterday’s post on 1 Corinthians 13, we need to consider that all of His Words work together to explain how God’s will is to be known. Rarely does just one line of scripture stand alone. Words can inspire us to act just as Paul’s words to the elders in Ephesus in Acts 20. Without those examples we might not discover them by only reading his letter to the Ephesians.

Imagine ourselves only reading the synoptic gospels. We would miss out on some of the most precious words simply because we insist that the gospel needs to be uniform in content.

Imagine what would be missing if Theophilus kept his private letters from Luke to himself and did not share them. We would be missing out on so much if we restricted ourselves to only certain books.

We are neither Samaritans nor Sadducees that read and believe according to only the first five books of the bible. Those books are foundational, but like any good foundation what is built upon them is what is seen and used.

In the past a teacher asked his students to quote their favorite scriptures. The first five all said John 3:16 possibly because it was burnt into their memory. The sixth child answered this way; “It changes daily as my favorite scripture is the last one God spoke to me through His Word.”

I love that answer. 

1 Corinthians 12:31 But earnestly desire the higher gifts. 

(leaving this off yesterday)

And I will show you a still more excellent way.

Yes, that is the answer to what I left out yesterday.

My point yesterday is that when the flesh is satisfied with itself, it stops reading and searching for anything better. We all know what comes next don’t we? The love chapter 1 Corinthians 13.

The flesh is still the flesh, so do we know chapter 13 according to the spirit or the flesh?

As we review that chapter, listen to yourself. Do  you hear yourself saying “I can do that.”

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

English Standard Version

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;[a] 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.

Footnotes

1. 1 Corinthians 13:5 Greek irritable and does not count up wrongdoing

These 3 lines of 17 lines of verse identify how Agape love acts. The KJV does not use the word love and interprets the Greek as charity. Charity is a gift to others in need and is not selfish.

Rather than focusing on those other 14 verses for the moment allow me to list the last verse here; So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Agape is God’s love. God’s love is perfect. We are not perfect no matter how hard we try.

The biggest problem with comparing ourselves with Agape love is the condemnation by the flesh telling us we aren’t good enough. I am not patient enough or kind enough. I am envious and I do boast. As much as I hate it I can be arrogant and rude. I whine when I don’t get my own way. Irritable and resentful, let’s not even go there. While I don’t rejoice in evil doing I rejoice in seeing certain behaviors punished so I am not bearing all things. I don’t know everything and I hope for the wrong things, and I am a sufferer.  The issue isn’t about being perfect in love, it is about not allowing our flesh to interfere with God loving others through us. 

“You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he will give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” Quoted in part from Romans 8