TOPIC:‌“There's a Christian Way to Love People”

                  by Rev. Dr. Reg Dunlap

 

TEXT:‌I Corinthians 13:1-13

 

‌“Follow, then, the way of love” (I Corinthians 13:1, Phillips)

 

 

‌Dr. Alan Redpath, in his commentary on I Corinthians, writes the following statement: “I believe the trouble with many of us is that although we will fight and die for our faith, we reject altogether the principle of living in the spirit of love.” Dr. Redpath goes on to write: “I am quite certain there is nothing we need more than a refreshing of the love of God in our lives.” Dr. Redpath was right in his analysis of the situation. The average Christian is far more inclined to battle another believer than settle the matter in love.

 

‌It was this spirit of love which needed to refresh and revive the Christians at Corinth. For you see, the gifts that God had so graciously bestowed upon them had scandalously led to flattery and failure. In seeking after the gifts, they had neglected the greatest thing of all - which is love. How Paul rebukes and reproves them for tragically being deficient in this one grace. He then proceeds to give us this absolutely sublime chapter on love. And notice, this “more excellent way” (I Corinthians 12:31) as Paul calls it, comes right between the endowment of the gifts in chapter 12 and the exercising of the gifts in chapter 14.

 

‌Paul is encouraging these Christians at Corinth to permit God's love to abound in their lives. He wants them to let love pervade their souls, control their actions, and sanctify their ambitions. For as Henry Drummond stated: “It is better not to live than not to love.” Let us “Follow, then, the way of love.”

 

I.

 

‌We have, to begin with, in the first part of this immortal chapter in verses 1 through 3 the ABSENCE of love. We get this idea in the repeated phrase “and have not love” (vs. 1, 2, 3). The picture here is that of a brilliant life, but without love. Paul goes on in the following verses to show that a life absent of love is a mighty nothing. It is empty and worthless.

 

‌For instance, take a life gifted in LANGUAGE. This fabulous faculty by which man communicates one with another. Of it Paul declared: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love; I am become as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal” (v. 1). What Paul discovered long ago about speech we must discover today. The heavenly eloquence of a silver tongue is empty and worthless unless it is prompted by love.

 

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