“The Way of Love”
When Natalie was pregnant with Benjamin, someone gave us a wonderful gift of a Fisher Price clock toy. You probably had this clock if you had kids somewhere between 1970 and the present day. I say that because in my parent’s house before Mom moved there was an almost identical Fisher Price clock. It played the exact same tune, had the exact same graphics on the clock. To the untrained eye, the two looked almost identical. There were some differences, to be sure. For one thing, the one bought for us for Benjamin was made out of plastic, the one nestled in Mom’s attic was made entirely of wood. Also, there was the matter of dimensions. Mom’s Fisher Price clock was about 25% larger, let’s say. Because of the wood and the size, it felt more substantial. And you know what also makes them different? The one bought in the 2000s broke after just a few plays. Mom’s clock? You guessed it, still running despite being over 50 years old now and dozens of kids have played with the thing from my sister and I to our children to, perhaps one day, our children’s children.
All that to say, things change over time. And, in the case of the Fisher Price wooden clock, I think you’d have to say that things get cheaper over time if you were a jaded person. It sure is the case with Hallmark Christmas movies. Seems like the older ones are better, but I could be wrong, might just be getting old. But one thing is for sure after reading 1st Corinthians 13, our understandings of love have gotten cheaper, more self-focused.
In the modern context where everything is about me, myself and I, it’s only an anticipated consequent that love becomes something cheaper, less durable, less good, right?
Although it’s cooled down a bit, thanks to the pandemic largely, the divorce rate in America is a pretty good indicator of how durable we think love is. After all, at the altar, we promise to love our mates through plenty and want, sickness and health but for a great many of us, that love becomes disposable as it intersects with self-interest. Because for nearly half of us still in this country, those vows will end on a judge’s desk as parties file for divorce. The death, supposedly, of love.
You see, ever since Kant upended the world with his rather ludicrous philosophies, we’ve been on a collision course with total self-centeredness. You see, prior to Kant, we thought we lived in and shared, objective universe. One in which there was a God who defined right and wrong for us. Kant rewired our minds, literally made us think the world revolved around us and so our sense of entitlement has only been getting worse since the 18th century but that’s a sermon for another day.
The long and short of it is, is that American society often places the wrong emphasis on love, rendering it into something more of a feeling than anything else. But that’s a far cry from the way love is pictured in our Scripture. There, love isn’t so much a feeling as it is an action. A verb.
1st Corinthians 13 gives us a much, much more robust understanding of what love is, doesn’t it? This passage, most often heard at weddings or in Hallmark cards, shows us that amazing durability of love. Love isn’t some fleeting thing, some passing emotion. Love is instead eternal and effective. What do I mean by eternal? Did you hear what Paul just said. Prophecies will pass away, tongues will pass away, spiritual gifts will end but love will never end.
Why is that? Because real love is made flesh for us in Jesus Christ.
According to Galatians 4:4-7 – “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
So, you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”
What Paul is telling us is that Jesus Christ chose to become one of us to redeem us from our transgressions. Our sins had us locked into a cycle of misery leading to our enteral death. So, in His eternal love for us, Jesus Christ came to make it possible for us to have enteral life. John 3:16-17 – “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.”
In this one verse we get a distillation of the Gospel message. Salvation has arrived in the person of Jesus Christ. Our salvation is enterally linked to Him through our faith in Him which is itself the gift of God as we are reminded in Ephesians so that “no one may boast.”