“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”
Now, if we want to understand this passage of Scripture in its correct context, it is very helpful if we can look at the Greek word for love, which is agape, and see what this love is all about. For this is not human love which is based in our emotions or that is based in the one we are loving, but this is love which comes from God and which prefers what God prefers, which is all that is holy, righteous, godly, upright, morally pure, honest, faithful, and obedient to our Lord and to his commandments under the New Covenant.
For this love engages doing for others what God prefers that we do whether or not our emotions feel the love. For we can even love those who hate us and who mistreat us and who do evil against us. We can do for them and to them what is loving and kind and godly even if our emotions are hurting from how they treated us. For this love centers in moral preference and it comes from God and so it will love like God loves us. For even when we were the Lord’s enemies, Jesus Christ died for us on that cross.
Now there are people who are misinterpreting this passage of Scripture because they are interpreting “love” with human understanding and not with biblical understanding. So they might end up condemning those who are living righteously and who are loving biblically because they are thinking humanly and not biblically. For they want the kind of love that just makes other people feel good about themselves, even if it requires lying to them and withholding the truth from them in order to make them feel good.
But in reality, a lot of that kind of “love” is selfish, and so it only says to others what makes them feel good because they want others to like them and to not turn against them. So they are not really loving like God loves, thinking about what is truly best for us, for what we need, but it is a very fleshly “love” that is often more about pleasing self than acting in true biblical love towards others. And so some of these people will condemn those who are loving biblically if that requires speaking the truth in love.
So, we need to understand this love from a biblical and godly perspective and realize that this isn’t all just about making other people feel good. Now are we to be encouragers? Absolutely! Are we to be those who make it a point to thank others and to acknowledge them and their accomplishments and who do acts of kindness towards others? Absolutely! But we are not to neglect agape love which considers other people’s true needs and which reaches out to meet those needs, even if it engages confronting sin.
So this agape love is not all about making everyone feel good about themselves all the time. There has to be a balance. For when God loves us, sometimes he encourages us in ways that bring us joy and happiness and that feel good to our emotions. And other times he encourages us more in a way of exhortation or urging where he may even have to correct us and warn us and convict us of wrongdoing in order to get us to turn about, to turn away from what is evil, and to follow the ways of righteousness.
So, my point here is that if someone is truly exercising spiritual gifts of the Spirit of God in biblical ways, then this is going to involve the kind of love which feels good to our emotions but also the kind of love that may not feel good, at the moment, but what is needed, and what is necessary, and what is truly loving and kind. For it is thinking about what the other person truly needs and not just about how it is going to make them feel at the moment. And this involves laying our lives down for others for their ultimate good.
But there is a balance to be required here. We can be overly harsh, and that is not good, and we can be overly soft, and that is not good. Jesus is a wonderful example for us in how he dealt with other people and in the words that he spoke to them and in the things that he did for them. He had the right balance, but then he is God. But he was still man, too, when he walked this earth. So just because someone is called of God to speak the truth of the Scriptures, in love, that is not to be taken as being unloving or unkind.
For, again, agape love prefers what God prefers which is all that is honest, faithful, upright, and morally pure, etc. And so agape love is not going to compromise the truth of the gospel and the teachings of the Scriptures in order to make people feel good. For we can encourage other humans in ways that do not compromise truth and righteousness and godliness and still be loving and kind. Again, balance! But balance is not compromise when it comes to biblical truth and righteousness and obedience to our Lord.
Yet it is true that if we have spiritual gifts, but we do not exercise them in agape love, then we have gained nothing. And this doesn’t require that everyone else see that what we are doing is “love,” but that we are truly doing for others what is in preference to what God prefers, which is all that is righteous, godly, morally pure, and honest, etc. and which does not compromise truth and righteousness just to make people feel good so that they will like us and not think evil of us. Again, Jesus is our example.
You Loved Me
An Original Work / December 3, 2019
A song based off the poem by the same name
When I was lonely and afflicted,
You were there to pick me up.
You took me in Your arms,
And You held me tenderly.
Your love embraced me.
Your grace sustained me.
When my heart cried out to You
In my fear and my despair,
You never turned away,
But You let me know You loved me.
Your grace forgave me.
You did not shame me.
Then, when I answered the call,
“Here, Lord, send me.”
You sent me to where I must be.
Your mercy held me, did not fail me.
All this, You had planned, to use me.
And, when all trials and scorn
Came to test me.
You gave me all that I would need.
You strengthened me so I’d not fail You.
Your kindness blessed me, it touched me.
And, when I needed the church
To lift up me,
To hearten me so I’d not fail,
You blessed me with folks who would love me.
Their presence with me, Your praise hailed!
And, when I walked through the valley
Of the shadow of the death,
And tears flowed from my eyes,
Still Your kindness was there for me.
Your touch, it healed me.
For I believed You.
When now I think about the ways,
Of the many, many ways
That You in Your great love
Show me that You’ll always care for me,
My heart, it thanks You,
And gladness fills me, fills me.
https://vimeo.com/377807796
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