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;^{[counts offenses] 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.

Let us be clear on this issue of agape love. It is the manifestation of the love that abides in us in Christ.

When we try to duplicate this love we are judging ourselves in respect to how agape love acts. We will often find that we fail to love like Christ loves. We are not to condemn ourselves when we fail and we are not to commend ourselves when we succeed.

Sometimes it feels like doing what we are told to do. I’d tell my mother “I don’t wanna!” Her response, “I know but do it anyway.”

We don’t want to be whiners when it comes to love but some of these things are difficult for humans to do in our own strength.

1 John 3:1-3 English Standard Version

¹ See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. ² Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears^{[love appears]} we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. ³ And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.

Here John speaks to our relationship to God and love. The world will not know God but they will know us. In order for the lost world to see Christ in us, Christ manifesting Himself, we must do one thing that allows Christ to do that. We need to stop intentional sin.

1 Corinthians 13:2 English Standard Version (ESV) 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.

Considering once again that this is the inspired word, let us find meaning in its inclusion.

Power, mysteries, knowledge and faith are all sought out by mankind. When the focus is to obtain any one of them or even all of them, we fail to focus on the one thing that makes them all have value, Christ.

Having been in a group of believers who made these their focal point I felt unloved when love was what I needed. All of us need God’s love. This is why 1 Corinthians 13 is so important. It demonstrates what love is by first telling us what love is not.

Focus on power, mysteries, knowledge and faith. What we will not see looking to them is the needs of the lost or our babes in Christ. What they seek and need is love not power, mysteries, knowledge or faith.

This is why Paul describes in the first 3 verses what love is not before stating the attributes of agape love, God’s perfect love.

³ If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,^{[that I may boast]} but have not love, I gain nothing.

Christ is the gift, Christ is the sacrifice and to place the focus on us voids the love inside us.

This is perhaps the greater message of these first three verses that we can and do often act upon these things even though the love of Christ abides in us. The focal point has to be Christ and not ourselves.

God is love and Christ is the manifestation of agape love to a lost and dying world.

We cannot imagine how to let Him love through us if we do not recognize love’s characteristics.