Sermon Info
Summary
For many people, love is an exchange. The idea of a love bank is not a bad understanding of healthy relationships. For the marriage or the friendship or the neighborly relationship to thrive and be healthy, both persons have to give. Although it will never likely be fully equitable, there is give and take. It’s the essence of compromise when two sinful people care for and serve one another, but also receive blessings from each other. As it’s practiced, these debits and deposits are not a bad understanding of love. But, they are an incomplete one. The love we’re called to in Christ goes beyond that. Unconditional and sacrificial moves us past the idea of merely transactional. The question of happily ever after may not be finding someone who will love us, but in knowing we have already found the ONE who loves us and invites us to love all others (sometimes including a special someone) with HIS kind of love.
Content
“Lord, You said there would be milk & honey, but I’m not seeing it yet.” - my friend Jamesetta Cleveland, wandering through Israel, 2019
When it’s easy to miss and hard to find, there is a better way.
And yet I will show you the most excellent way. 1 Corinthians 12:31
You can put your stock in just about anything, but without love…
- Life will be too much of the wrong thing. (1 Corinthians 13:1)
- Ultimately you’ll amount to nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:2)
- You will forfeit having anything of value. (1 Corinthians 13:3)
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8
Love - agape, meaning affection, good will, love, benevolence; understood as God’s unconditional love
God’s love is even when our love isn’t.
Do everything in love. 1 Corinthians 16:14
It’s this kind of love that we are to:
- love our enemies (Matthew 5:44)
- love our neighbors (Matthew 22:39)
- love our wives (Ephesians 5:25)
- love one another (1 John 3:11)
If real love needs to be equitable, it is not real love.
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 1 John 3:16
The better way is often the odder way, certainly the harder way, and ultimately the more costly way.
Tertullian (North African Theologian from Carthage ca. 160-2200) remarked, “Look . . . how they love one another; and how they are ready to die for each other,” and gave us the consideration, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”
