Love Never Fails

Summer of Love 5 Love Never Fails.  The permanence of Love

Well it’s been fifty years.  Fifty years ago in Canada we celebrated our Centennial.  Fifty years ago the Beatles released “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band”.  Fifty years ago Interracial Marriage was declared constitutional by The United States Supreme Court.  Fifty years ago Elvis married Priscilla.  Fifty years ago was the last time the Leafs won the Stanley cup and fifty years ago San Francisco experienced the Summer of Love.

The Summer of Love was the name given to the influx of over 100,000 young people, so called hippies and flower children, in the Haigh Asbury district of San Francisco during the summer of 1967.

Many saw this event as a turning point in American culture, and which way American culture  turned depends on your perspective.

This summer at Cornerstone we have decided to celebrate the Summer of Love by focusing on 1 Corinthians 13, which as been called the Love Chapter of the Bible.  And through the summer we’ve been taking the opportunity to read all 13 verses together.  This morning we are going to read it in unison.  Please stand with me as we take the opportunity to read God’s word.

1 Corinthians 13:1-13  If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing.  If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.  Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud  or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.  It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.  Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.  Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever!  Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture!  But when full understanding comes, these partial things will become useless.  When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.  Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.  Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

Thank you, you may be seated.

Over the past several weeks we have looked at the positive attributes of love, culminating last week with the statement that Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.  And that is often easier said than it is lived out in our daily lives when sometimes things get tough. 

This week things change and we are moving from the attributes of love to the permanence  of Love.  

1 Corinthians 13:8-10  Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever!  Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture!  But when full understanding comes, these partial things will become useless.

It would appear that the believers in Corinth had been ranking each other based on their spiritual gifts.  Those who had the gift of knowledge or prophecy or speaking in tongues were seen by some as being further up the spiritual food chain, so to speak.  I’m so glad that doesn’t happen today. 

And Paul lets them know that those things won’t last. 

That there would come a day that all the prophecies would have been fulfilled.   And there would be no need for the gift of prophecy.

That there would come a day when there would be no need to speak in or be able to understand unknown languages because we would all be speaking the language of heaven.   And there would be no need for the gift of tongues.

And that there would come a day when we would know all things, that no one person or one group would be able to claim a corner on knowledge.  And there would be no need for the gift of knowledge.

But Paul tells us that even when all that happens, and it doesn’t matter if you think the fulfilment will come at your point of death or at the return of Christ, that there is one thing that won’t change and that is the love that God shows us and that is the love that God expects us to show others.  

The New Living Translation of the Bible has been our translation of choice at Cornerstone for the past fifteen years or so but there are some passages where that I think some of the other translations do a little better job.  Not with accuracy so much as with style.  And verse 8 is one of those times.

Remember the NLT says 1 Corinthians 13:8 Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever!  

However the New International Version and the New King James Translation begin with these word. 1 Corinthians 13:8  Love never fails.   Which technically means the same as Love will last forever, but somehow seems more powerful. 

But what does that mean?  Does it mean that you will never fall out of love?  Does it mean that you will never doubt your love?  Does it mean that you will never hurt or offend the ones you claim to love?

If that is the case then we’re in trouble.  Because people do fall out of love, we sometimes doubt our love and there are times that we offend and even hurt the ones we love.  Intentionally or unintentionally. 

So how do we reconcile the scriptural promise of “Love Never Fails” with the life reality of the fact that “Love sometimes does Fail”?

Two things to keep in mind.  The first is we need to understand the Love that Paul is talking about.  He’s not talking about the love you feel for your parents or children, or he would have used the Greek word Storge which is translated “love”.  He’s not talking about the love you feel for your BFF or he would have used the Greek word Philia which is translated “love”. 

And he’s not even talking about the love you feel for your spouse, even though 1 Corinthians 13 is read at weddings all time, if he had of been talking about that romantic love he would have used the Greek word Eros which is translated “love”.

Instead the word that Paul uses in the original language was the Greek word Agape which is translated “love”.  But you knew that.   

And that type of love isn’t the type of love that you fall into it’s the type of love that you choose to demonstrate and act on.  It is an act of the mind as much as it’s an act of the heart. 

That’s the type of love that for thousands of years was exhibited in arranged marriages, where people decided that they would love each other.

It’s the love that you have when you adopt a child.  That love will not doubt become the love that you would have for your natural child, but you begin by choosing to love the little stranger you have invited into your home.

It’s the love that you demonstrate to your child when they rebel against you and reject your values. 

That also may have changed from the love that your felt for your child when they weren’t in rebellion, when you held them in your arms and your heart melted.  They were easy to love then, now you have to make the decision to love them, it becomes a choice you have to make.

And that is the word that John used in 1 John 4:8 when he tells us that “God is Love” and the word that Jesus used when he told Nicodemus in John 3:16  “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

And the second thing we need to understand is that Paul writes that “Love never fails.”  We may fail love but love will never fail us. 

And so, for a little while this morning I want to look at a story from the life of Jesus.

It is the night before Jesus would be arrested, at the event that we now call “The Last Supper” and listen to how the story begins:   John 13:1  Before the Passover celebration, Jesus knew that his hour had come to leave this world and return to his Father. He had loved his disciples during his ministry on earth, and now he loved them to the very end.

Did you catch the last line?  He had loved his disciples during his ministry on earth, and now he loved them to the very end.  He didn’t love them until the end of the evening, he loved them to the very end.

Before the evening was over, Jesus would predict that Judas would betray him and that Peter would deny that he ever knew him and that the other ten would scatter and desert him.  But he loved them to the very end.

The love that they had had, the love that they had professed, the love that they had demonstrated that love would fail Jesus. 

When Judas accepted 30 pieces of silver to betray Jesus to those who wanted to kill him, Judas’ love had failed Jesus.

When Peter denied knowing Jesus not once not twice but three times, at the time when Jesus needed Peter’s friendship more than ever, Peter’s love had failed Jesus.

When the other ten scattered and deserted him, their love had failed Jesus.  

I am sure that at various points over the previous three years that all twelve of the apostles  would have expressed their love for Christ either verbally or at least they had the thought “Hey, I really love this guy.”

And yet. . . one betrays him and one denies him and ten desert him.  Love never fails?

So we need to realize that Our Love For God May Fail 

There may be times that you will disappoint God, there may be times you will choose to disobey God, there may be times that you choose to rebel against God. 

Jesus told the twelve in John 14:23  Jesus replied, “All who love me will do what I say.”  And if obedience is the litmus test for our love for Christ then we have to acknowledge that there are times that just like the twelve blew it that we will probably blow it.

But ultimately, the story wasn’t over when the 12 each failed Jesus.  We have to believe that Jesus was thinking of Peter and Judas when he looked down from the cross that he was nailed to and said, “Father forgive them.”  That he was saying Father forgive Peter and Father forgive Judas and Father forgive James Father forgive Andrew and Nathaniel and Thomas

And that goes back to the words He had loved his disciples during his ministry on earth, and now he loved them to the very end.

Even knowing that one would deny him and one would betray him and the rest would desert him, Jesus loved them to the very end. 

And even after his prediction was fulfilled and even after Peter denied him and even after Judas betrayed him and even after the rest deserted him, even then he still loved them.

You cannot stop the love of God.  You can choose to ignore the love of God and you can choose to not accept the love of God, or can choose to walk away from the love of God but that doesn’t negate the love of God.

When it’s raining, you can stay dry under an umbrella, you have rejected the rain.  But you haven’t stopped the rain.  It’s still raining. 

You can reject the love of God. That’s what we call “free will”,  but you can’t stop the love of God.  And it is because of that Love that God won’t force you to accept his love.

Paul asks the question in, Romans 8:35  Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?

Maybe you have wondered the same thing.  Maybe you’ve uttered those words “If God really loved the world, if God really love my family, if God really loved me. . . Then this wouldn’t be happening.”

And it’s all right to question at times when life seems unfair.  And even though we may feel unloved that doesn’t negate God’s love for us.  It was  C.S. Lewis who wrote “Though our feelings come and go, God’s love for us does not.”   

And after Paul asks the question about being separated from the love of Christ he goes on to answer that very question in Romans 8:37  No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.

At the end of the day, Christ’s love is still there and at the end of our lives Christ’s love is still there.  William Barclay wrote,  “That is one of the great reasons for believing in immortality. When love is entered into, there comes into life a relationship against which the assaults of time are helpless and which transcends death.”

You see, Jesus loves us to the very end, not the very end of our lives but to the very end of time.

Which leads us to acknowledge the promise that even though our love for God may fail,  God’s Love for Us Will Never Fail 

Paul goes one to tell us in Romans 8:38-39  And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.  No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Nothing can separate us from the love of God.  No-thing can separate us from the love of God.   His love is with us from the moment he breathed life into our being until we close the chapter on the story of our life.

Kind of sounds like “Love never fails.”

And we can choose to accept the love of God or we can choose to reject the love of God, but understand it is our choice. 

God’s love was there from the very beginning when God created the first man and the first woman.  And it was because of that love that God’s heart was broken when they chose to rebel against him.

I may feel bad when you’re dealing with your rebellious teen, but my heart was broken when I was dealing with my rebellious teen. 

We see God’s love recorded throughout the Old Testament where the word of God uses phrases like “God’s unfailing love” and “God’s lavish love”.  As a matter of fact over 200 times in the bible God’s love is called “unfailing love.”

Kind of sounds like “Love never fails.”

And that love isn’t dependent on who we are or how good we are or how deserving or undeserving we are. 

Brennan Manning wrote in his book “The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus”, “God's love is based on nothing, and the fact that it is based on nothing makes us secure. Were it based on anything we do, and that 'anything' were to collapse, then God's love would crumble as well. But with the God of Jesus no such thing can possibly happen. People who realize this can live freely and to the full.”

That sounds like Grace, you know the unmerited love of God.  And there is nothing we can do to earn that Grace and in the same way there is nothing we can do to earn God’s love.  Which is why Martin Luther warns us  “The sin underneath all our sins is to trust the lie of the serpent that we cannot trust the love and grace of Christ and must take matters into our own hands”

That was the lie that the Devil told Adam and Eve, he told them “You can’t trust God’s love” and it’s the lie that the Devil told Judas and Peter and the others and it’s the lie that he wants us to fall for as well. 

But the reality is that we must trust in God’s love and God’s grace, Paul reminds us in Romans 5:8  But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.  Even when we were the least deserving of his love, while we were still sinners, God loved us enough to send his Son to die for us. 

Billy Graham once said “God proved His love on the Cross. When Christ hung, and bled, and died, it was God saying to the world, ‘I love you.’”

 Kind of sounds like “Love never fails.”

And Peter and Judas both proved that our love for God sometimes fails, but God’s love for us will never fail.  And at the end of the day we need to realize that if we are going to trust in God’s grace, then we need to trust in God’s love for us and not our love for God. 

And so I leave you with the words of Augustine who wrote  “God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.”  And he will love you to the very end, and that love will never fail.