Transcript
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Contents

Bible Translations Used . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11Foreword by Ravi Zacharias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

Introduction: Following the Way of Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

1. Greater Than Spectacular Gifts . . . . . . . . 27

2. Greater Than Radical Commitment . . . 33

3. Patience with Weaknesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

4. Patience with Sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

5. Patience Encountering Justice . . . . . . . . . 58

6. Concern in Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

7. Is It Worth Showing Kindness? . . . . . . . . . 74

8. Envy Versus Showing Honor . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

9. Accepting Who We Are: The Antidote to Envy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

10. Sharing without Boasting . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

11. Arrogance: A Sign of Weakness . . . . . . . . 108

12. Sensitivity to Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

13. Victory through Surrender . . . . . . . . . . . 124

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14. Anger: The Vice of the Virtuous . . . . . . . 131

15. Learning the Discipline of Not Reckoning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

16. Love Focuses on the Truth, Not on Wrong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

17. Love’s Perseverance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

18. Grace-Filled: Neither Gullible Nor Cynical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

19. It’s Worth It! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .183

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Preface

During three and a half decades of ministry in Youth for Christ and in the church to which we belong, God seems to have chosen to send our way many people who are bruised and battered from the dysfunctional environments in which they grew up. Helping nurture them to follow the Chris tian ethic of love has been a great challenge, and I have seen much failure along the way. But I have also seen some who have been transformed to become Christlike people. Moreover, we have had to live with the ravages of the civil war that engulfed our country for thirty years. So I have been grappling with the question of how we can apply the biblical teachings about love in such situations for many years.

Working with extreme situations has, I believe, yielded insights that will help all Chris tians — even those who haven’t gone through the extremely painful experiences of the people I have encountered. This is what made me decide to share the results of my grappling with a wider audience.

The one fundamental of the Chris tian faith with which I have strug-gled most is that it is possible to practice what the Word of God teaches about love and holiness. Applying this truth in my personal life and in the lives of those among whom I have ministered has been, to put it mildly, a challenge. Whenever I preach on 1 Co rin thi ans 13, I’ve had to preach first to myself.

Many of those to whom we have ministered, coming from tough back-grounds, have ended up on the staff of Youth for Christ. Trying to disciple and pastor them has been my major ministry challenge during the past few years. We have been happy to see a somewhat better rate of success with our staff.

I started teaching on 1 Co rin thi ans 13 about thirty years ago. I first began to teach it to our staff and volunteers and then to a wider spectrum of audiences both in Sri Lanka and abroad. I realized that I must put the material I was teaching into writing. I am grateful for a month I spent at

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Hollywood Presbyterian Church in 2001, where I was able to hide and write another book while preaching on 1 Co rin thi ans 13. This gave me the opportunity to start preparing a series on love afresh.

I am happy to be working with Zondervan again and benefitting from their professional expertise.

I want to express my gratitude for some of the greatest human beings through whom God’s love was modeled and mediated to my life. I thank God for the family in which I grew up. Whenever I think of my parents and siblings, it has always been with joyous gratitude. I also thank God for my pastor during my teenage years, Irish missionary the late Rev. George Good, whose life exemplified the beauty of Chris tian love. He preached a wonderful series on 1 Co rin thi ans 13 at a pastors’ conference during the early years of my ministry that alerted me to the potency of this passage.

I have often felt joyfully unworthy of receiving so much love and secu-rity from [my wife, Nelun,] our children, Nirmali and Asiri, and the family of Youth for Christ, of which I have been privileged to be a member for forty-six years. Nelun and I feel that with this privilege comes the respon-sibility and call to minister God’s love to bruised and broken people. In this process it has been a joy to observe how Nelun lives 1 Co rin thi ans 13 in practice better than I ever could. I have dedicated this book to our two children-in-law, whom we have joyfully grafted into our family and whose love we have received with much joy and gratitude.

Finally, how could I ever write on love without acknowledging the astounding display of love by God in providing for us a way of salvation, in displaying his amazing love in the life of Jesus, and in pouring out his love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit? His love is what empowers us and helps us to express radical love in a complex world.

Note: I have made slight changes in the details of some of the stories in this book so that what actually happened would be communicated without the risk of the persons described in the story being identified.

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1 Co rin thi ans 12:31 – 13:13English Standard Version

12:31But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.

13:1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

4Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arro-gant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resent-ful; 6it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

13So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

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INTRODUCTION

Following the Way of Love1 CO RIN THI ANS 12:31

If you have ever been in the midst of a deeply focused conver-sation on a particular topic, only to have it abruptly ended when someone brings up something new for discussion, you know how frustrating it feels to be interrupted. At other times, however, we are more than happy to be inter-rupted. When someone interrupts our work to share good news, announc-ing an engagement or the birth of a baby, we are excited to hear what they have to share. In my homeland of Sri Lanka, for example, no one minds in the least if you break into a conversation with a cricket score (though that might not be true elsewhere in the world). First Corinthians 13 falls into that category of interruption.

First Corinthians 12 and 14 address issues that had arisen in the church of Corinth about the use of the gifts of the Spirit. There is an abrupt change in the middle of that discussion with the insertion of the famous love chapter. The Corinthian Chris tians seem to have placed so much value in exercising gifts that displayed the power of God in their life that they did so selfishly and failed to display the character of God. Paul wants these Chris tians to get their priorities straight. First they needed to be godly people. Only then they could be agents of his power.

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God Provides the Love — We ObeyPaul founded the church in Corinth around the midpoint of the first cen-tury, during his second missionary journey. A few years later he received some disturbing reports about doctrinal confusion and disturbing prac-tices and sins in that church (1 Cor. 5:1; 11:18). The Corinthian Chris tians also wrote him a letter seeking clarification on certain doctrinal and prac-tical matters (cf. 7:1). The first letter to the Corinthians is Paul’s response to these reports and to the letter the church in Corinth had sent. Among the issues in their letter were questions about the use of the gifts of the Spirit in the church (12:1). This issue seems to have triggered some con-flicts in the church. Paul’s answer to these questions covers 1 Co rin thi ans 12 to 14. Chapters 12 and 14 deal with practical issues regarding the use of gifts. In chapter 13 Paul inserts into his exposition something far more important than gifts that the Corinthians should be focusing their atten-tion on: love.

Believers in the church at Corinth seem to have had a hierarchy of gifts, depending on the usefulness of each gift to the church. Paul’s major theme in chapter 14 is that while tongues builds up the individual believer, prophecy builds up the church. Therefore for use in the church, prophesy is a more useful gift to exercise when the church meets. That debate seems to serve as the background of the statement in 12:31: “But earnestly desire the higher gifts” (1Cor. 12:31a). Since some gifts are more helpful to the body, desire those gifts, says Paul.

Earlier he had referred to the “Spirit, who apportions to each one indi-vidually as he wills” (1 Cor. 12:11). We can desire the more helpful gifts, but it is God who decides who gets which gift. While we can ask God for a certain gift, we have no guarantee that we will receive that gift. Now he presents something about which there is no such uncertainty. He says, “And I will show you a still more excellent way” (12:31). This is not an optional desire; this is the “way” Chris tians live. Chapter 13 shows us that he is talking about love. In 14:1 he forcefully presents the implications of the fact that love is a way to follow by saying, “Pursue” or “Follow the way of love” (niv). An older translation renders this, “Make love your aim” (rsv). Now our ambition in life is to love.

We cannot say, “God did not give me the ability to love.” In every situation, whether we like it or not, we follow the way of love. When our neighbor is sick in the hospital, we cannot say, “But I do not like going to the hospital.” When a little boy calls his father to play a game with him, he cannot say, “But I prefer to watch television at this time.” When a woman is

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faced with the need to forgive the man who insulted her husband, she can-not say, “That is too hurtful a thing for me to forgive.” Later in this book we will look at some of the processes that go on in the mind before we are ready to forgive. But the command to love our enemy remains unchanged.

When our commander says, “Forward march,” we cannot say, “Let me first have a cup of tea.” Love is the way we follow; it is not an option.

So for the Chris tian, love is a priority; it is an act of obedience. Look-ing at the way Chris tian love is described in the Bible, we realize that it is not a case of loving the lovable. Rather, it includes loving our enemies, blessing those who persecute us, being patient with people who are dif-ficult to tolerate, visiting prisoners, and the like. These are actions that do not automatically happen, like falling in love. Chris tian love is decisive; we must make it happen.

That is one side of the story. The other side is that the love with which we love is God’s love in us. John said, “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Paul explains that this is done by the Holy Spirit. Love is the first aspect of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22). The apostle says in Romans 5:5: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5). The word translated “poured” has the idea of abundance. J. B. Phillips renders it as “flooding.”1 The great British commentator C. E. B. Cranfield writes that this word “may well have been chosen in order to express the idea of unstinting lavishness.”2 God’s love is an inexhaustible resource coming from his eternal reservoir. And that is not all. This “love of Christ compels us” (2 Cor. 5:14a niv). The word translated “compels” has the idea of applying pressure.

The idea we get from these verses is that God’s love enters us and then pushes us to act in love. Our part is to obey. Obedience is the key that opens the floodgates of God’s love, so that we will be supplied with the strength to love in the way the Bible asks us to. So while the Holy Spirit gives us love as his fruit (Gal. 5:22), our job is to “keep step with the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25 niv), through obedience. If we do not love when we should, we “quench” (or “stifle,” nlt) the Holy Spirit (1 Thess. 5:19).

Corrie ten Boom was imprisoned along with her two sisters, Betsie and Nollie, her brother Willem, and her father for having hidden Jews in their home during the Second World War. Her father died ten days after their arrest, and Nollie and Willem were released from prison shortly after their arrest. Betsie died much later after she and Corrie had spent some time in a concentration camp. Corrie was finally released because of a clerical error. Two years after the war ended, Corrie had just finished

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speaking at a meeting in Munich when she saw one of the terrible guards from her concentration camp standing in a line to meet her. Immediately, her mind flashed back to an image of her sister Betsie walking past this man, stripped of all her clothes and dignity. Now, that same guard was standing in front of Corrie with his hand thrust out.

“A fine message, Fräulein!” he said. “How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea.”

Corrie had just spoken on the topic of forgiveness. But rather than tak-ing the man’s hand, she fumbled with her pocketbook. The guard informed her that he had been a guard at Ravensbrück and added, “But since that time I have become a Chris tian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there. But I would like to hear it from your lips as well.”

Again, his hand came out, “Fräulein, will you forgive me?”Corrie writes, “I stood there — I whose sins had every day to be for-

given — and I could not. Betsie had died in that place. Could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?”

As Corrie stood there, she pondered a difficult choice. She knew, in her heart, that there was no question of not forgiving, for she understood that “the message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us.” In fact, she had just spoken of the necessity of forgive-ness, of the need to forgive as God has forgiven us in Christ. Corrie also knew that, after the war, “those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed bitterness remained invalids.”

“And still,” says Corrie, “I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart.” Emotionally frozen, Corrie reasoned that “forgiveness is not an emotion.” Instead, she reminded herself that forgiveness “is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.” She silently prayed, “ Jesus help me! I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling. . . . And so woodenly, mechanically, I stretched my hand to the one stretched out to me.”

Just at that time something amazing happened. “The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.”

Corrie cried out, “I forgive you, brother! With all my heart!”Corrie then writes about the incident: “For a long moment we grasped

each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I have never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.”3

We wrongly assume that we must feel something before we can do it.

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We conclude that loving emotions must always precede loving actions. But psychologists tell us that while it is true that our emotions affect our actions, it is equally true that our actions affect our emotions. “We are not to sit and wait for loving feelings to come for some brother or sister; we are to do some loving action for them and the feelings will follow.”4 So Chris tian love is decisive love. And that often means loving when you don’t feel like doing so.

Can you see the three steps in the process of God’s love being activated and used in Corrie’s life? First, God’s love applied pressure on Corrie to forgive. Second, Corrie decided to obey God’s command, even though she did not feel like doing so. Third, God supplied the strength to follow through with the decision to lovingly obey.

I counted fifty-one commands to love in the New Testament. I think the Bible commands us to love so often because loving is often contrary to our natural inclination. When someone has hurt us, we simply do not feel like responding to that person in love. If you are angry about being unfairly overlooked for a certain responsibility, you do not feel like responding positively when the leader asks you again because the person who was first offered the responsibility refused it. You want to express your displeasure by refusing to take the job on. But despite your natural inclination, you know you must take it on because the Bible commands you to love in such situations. I can assure you that you will not regret it. God will honor your decision to love by providing you the divine strength you need to do the job.

Agape: The Favorite Chris tian Word for LoveThere are different Greek words for love in the New Testament, but we should be careful about making too much of the differences between those words. Words take on meanings according to the context in which they appear. The commonest words for love in the New Testament are the noun agape (116 times) and the verb agapao (143 times). While the verb agapao was common in the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint), the noun agape appeared there only 20 times. In the litera-ture outside the New Testament the noun philia was more common than agape , but it appears only once in the New Testament. The corresponding verb phileo appears 25 times in the New Testament. Without making too much of distinction between these and other words for love, we cannot help

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noticing the unusual popularity of the relatively uncommon words agape and agapao rather than the more common words philia and phileo .

Many scholars think that the reason for the popularity of agape in the New Testament was the desire of the early Chris tians to affirm that Chris-tian love was unique. The commoner words would possibly be associated with sub-Chris tian understandings of love. This may be the reason why the Italian scholar Jerome (who lived from around ad 345 to around ad 419) used the word [caritas] rather than the more common amor to des-ignate Chris tian love in his influential translation of the Bible into Latin called the Vulgate.5 That seems to have been closer to the idea of Chris tian love being a decisive action. This undoubtedly influenced the translators of the King James Version to use often the English word “charity” for Chris tian love in the Bible.

Love Is an End in ItselfImplied in Paul’s description of love as the “more excellent way” (12:31) is the idea that love is more than a means to an end; it is an end in itself. This is more explicit in the admonition to “pursue love” (14:1), or as the rsv renders it, “make love your aim.” Elsewhere Paul says, “The aim of our charge is love” (1 Tim. 1:5). Love is one of our key goals in life even though it is difficult to measure.

Measurable goals are important. In today’s rushed and competitive world, it is not enough to say, “I worked hard.” If we work hard without any goals and with no results to show, we can easily get left behind, espe-cially in our workplace. We must find the best way to achieve the most in the shortest possible time and with the use of the least resources. So we are always looking for new and effective methods. These things are necessary for progress and productivity in today’s world.

But this is not all that there is to life. There is a deeper and more basic aspect of life that determines our highest ambitions. Being made in the image of the God who is love (1 John 4:8), humans achieve their full humanity only when they live lives of love. Sometimes we love people with a measurable goal in view. So love makes us help a student with her studies so that she will do well at her exams. Love makes us train a young athlete so that he will win a gold medal at an athletic meet. These are good examples of love expressed with specific goals in mind.

Sometimes, however, we love people even though there does not seem to be a measurable goal that is achievable through our acts of love. Mother

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Theresa’s Sisters of Charity achieved fame and esteem by caring for help-less dying paupers, washing their soiled clothes and helping them die with dignity. Some parents wonder whether their decision to adopt a child was the right decision because the child rebelled and brought much pain to the parents. That does not negate the value of what they did for this child. He was given a chance to thrive in life. The fact that he did not turn out the way they hoped does not negate the value of what they did. This child may turn to God so that these anguished parents’ prayers are answered, perhaps after they die. But even if he does not, what they did was good and fruitful.

A few minutes before writing these words, I was mourning the fact that I had helped someone at considerable cost and he had not turned out the way I hoped. The thought came to me that I had wasted my time and energy and suffered unnecessarily. Writing the earlier paragraph minis-tered to me! When we love, we are achieving the basic goal in the life of a Chris tian. Love is not only a means to an end; it is an end in itself.

In the late 1980s, I grew to appreciate the writings of Robertson McQuilkin, president of Columbia International University. In 1990, I was surprised to learn that McQuilkin had decided to resign from his position at the school. At the time, McQuilkin was in his prime, enjoy-ing worldwide influence as an internationally respected Chris tian leader. I later learned that McQuilkin had resigned in order to care full-time for his wife, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. After grappling for some time with a need to care for his wife in her deteriorating condition, he had finally decided that his primary responsibility at that stage of his life was caring for her, the woman who had stood by him and cared for him for over four decades.

His decision was not an easy one. Just three years after his decision to resign from Columbia, McQuilkin’s wife could no longer even recognize him. It would have been tempting, at this point, to hire someone else to care for her and return to his work as a Chris tian leader. Yet until her death in 2003, for over ten years, McQuilkin chose to continue to serve his wife, providing her with the daily care she needed. Some might have considered this act of loving ser vice a waste of his gifts. After all, McQuilkin could have hired a nurse or paid someone else to do this work. But Robertson McQuilkin understood that love is not the means to a greater end — it is itself the end to which God calls us.

Upon announcing his resignation from his position as the president of the university, McQuilkin spoke about the reason why he was leaving. He

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spoke of his deep and abiding love for his wife and concluded by adding, “She is such a delight to me, I don’t have to care for her. I get to.”6

So just the act of loving is an achievement. We live in a world where people have been discarded by others who should have been committed to them. The idea of long-term commitment is a culturally alien concept to people. People leave jobs, groups, friends, spouses, and parents when it is inconvenient and a hindrance to their progress in life. And what is the result? It is an insecure generation that lacks the joy of having people who are truly committed to them. In this environment, how health-giving is the experience of being loved at great cost by people who are doing so not with an ulterior motive but with an attitude that looks at loving as an achievement! Using the language of competition, Paul says, “Outdo one another in showing honor” (Rom. 12:10). The achievement here is honor-ing someone else, not gaining some earthly success for ourselves.

Chris tians who approach life in this way will be happy people. Other people may not respond to their actions in the way they hoped. But this does not leave believers disillusioned and angry — a condition that describes many people involved in humanitarian ser vice. When we have loved, we have been successful. God has seen and he will reward. So our actions have not been meaningless or foolish.

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CHAPTER 1

Greater Than Spectacular Gifts1 CO RIN THI ANS 13:1 – 2

When I was a child, I imagined myself performing amazing feats of strength. I pictured myself jumping off a high balcony and res-cuing a young girl, all without getting hurt or breaking into a sweat. I imagined that everyone would be mesmerized by my displays of heroism and power. Like any child, I wondered what it would be like to have super powers of flight and strength that would make people take notice of me.

In the church today we find many Chris tians who desire what are commonly known as “the sign gifts” — things like speaking in tongues, prophecy, and exercising miraculous powers. These gifts are the “super powers” of the New Testament. Not only are they exciting to use; they make everyone else sit up and take notice. So it’s interesting to find that in the first two verses of 1 Co rin thi ans 13, Paul gives us a sobering corrective to an overemphasis on these spectacular gifts. In essence, Paul tells us that such gifts are useless if love is absent from our lives.

Paul presents the challenging words of verses 1 – 3 in the first person (“I”). He does this elsewhere in his other letters when he talks about our battle for personal holiness (e.g., Rom. 7:7 – 25; Phil. 3:8 – 14). So why does he use the first person here in 1 Co rin thi ans 13:1 – 3? While we cannot

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know all of his reasons, I think at least one is clear: Paul understands that those who preach to others must first learn to preach to themselves.

Though I have often preached on this chapter, I find I am still challenged each and every time I speak and teach on it. It’s a wonder-ful reminder that we should bring to our reading of God’s Word a sober openness to being disturbed by God’s Spirit. Whether for personal study or for preparation for a ministry opportunity, we should always approach the Scriptures with the attitude of David when he prayed: “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Ps. 139:23 – 24).

Tongues of Men and AngelsPaul begins this chapter with these words: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cym-bal” (1 Cor. 13:1). Most of us are immediately curious: What does Paul mean by the phrase “tongues of men and of angels”? The context suggests that he is speaking of the spiritual gift of tongues, something that was apparently highly valued by the Corinthian Chris tians. But what exactly does he mean by the two types of tongues mentioned here — of men and of angels? Just a few verses earlier, in a listing of the various gifts, Paul made a reference to “various kinds of tongues” (12:28). Could it be that here he is distinguishing further between earthly and heavenly languages, the latter being “a deluxe version”1 of the gift?

Though we don’t know the exact meaning behind this phrase, we do know that those who exercised this gift would have looked very spiri-tual to those who lacked the gift of speaking in tongues. Yet surprisingly, Paul does not emphasize the superior spirituality of those who speak in tongues. Instead, he says that those who speak in tongues of men — even tongues of angels — but who lack love are like a “noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”

The phrase “noisy gong” literally means “echoing bronze.” The Greek city of Corinth, where the recipients of this letter lived, was famous for producing a special bronze alloy, and we know that cymbals were fre-quently used in their pagan worship. So Paul may be alluding to the god-less, pagan worship of the city when he speaks of gifts exercised without love. In essence, he is telling the Corinthians that though speaking in tongues may appear spectacular and spiritual, without love it is no better

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than the practice of worshiping idols. There is plenty of noise and it looks impressive, but it’s really just a waste of time!2

Paul is implying, at the beginning of this chapter, that it is possible for people with prominent gifts of the Spirit to become void of Christlikeness. As he puts it, what matters are not the gifts themselves, but the love that guides their use. Paul assures the Corinthian Chris tians that apart from love, “I am nothing.” It is all too easy for highly gifted people to find their identity and significance in their spiritual gifts and in the process lose the fruit of the Spirit, love.

A man or woman may have a burning desire to please God. So they begin to use their gifts in ministry and accomplish God’s work in signifi-cant ways. Soon, however, their thirst for God is tragically replaced by a thirst for something else: recognition and success. Though they began working for God’s glory, they have fallen into the trap of idolatry and have started seeking their own glory instead.

In the process, they become unloving.At Christmastime in Sri Lanka, churches often put on various dramas

and musical performances. Though the intent of this season is to honor Christ and celebrate his birth, many churches run into problems when they hand out parts in the dramas and musicals to the children. Parents grow angry when their child is not selected for a particular role or given an opportunity to sing. Their bitter reaction turns a time of celebration into a sour experience for other believers. I find it ironic that the celebration of an event marking the self-sacrificial love of Jesus is often marked by angry battles among his followers — bitter that they have not received something they wanted, something they felt they deserved!

Giftedness comes with many traps. When our gifts are not recognized by others, we can fall prey to temptation by growing angry and taking on the attitude of a victim. We begin to hustle for position and prominence, trying to draw attention to ourselves rather than using our God-given gifts to serve others.

Albert Orsborn (1886 – 1967) served for many years as the head of the Salvation Army and was its most famous hymn writer. As a young and successful officer in the Salvation Army, he grew angry over the decision of the leaders to split the region under his control into two separate sec-tions. Orsborn found himself battling, not for the kingdom of God, but for his own position in the kingdom. Shortly after this happened, however, Orsborn was in an accident and found himself in the hospital for a lengthy season of recovery, a season that God used to powerfully bring him to

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repentance for his selfishness and back to Spirit-anointed usefulness.3 In one of his hymns, he reflects on the lessons he learned during this time:

Savior, if my feet have falteredOn the pathway of the cross,If my purposes have alteredOr my gold be mixed with dross,O forbid me not thy ser vice,Keep me yet in thy employ,Pass me through a sterner cleansingIf I may but give thee joy.4

Orsborn learned that the goal of his life, as a follower of Christ, was not satisfying his own personal ambition. Instead, God used his humilia-tion through weakness to help him grow into his true ambition in life — becoming more like Christ. Those who want to follow Christ must learn to be grateful for things that others consider setbacks, because the hum-bling of God helps us achieve our true ambition — loving ser vice of others in the name of Christ.

Prophecy, Knowledge and FaithNext Paul writes, “And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove moun-tains, but have not love, I am nothing” (13:2). The gift of tongues was generally for personal edification, unless someone in the worship ser vice translated a message given in tongues. Prophecy, by contrast, has a clear ministry to the church. So Paul says it is desirable to have people exercising it in the church (14:4 – 19). The context of verse 2 suggests that one who understands “all mysteries and all knowledge” has been given this ability as a gift of the Spirit.

The people described here can speak specifically to an individual’s life, saying things that were not immediately evident to others. Some might use the gift to offer specific, divinely inspired direction to individuals or groups. Some would prophesy about the future. In 1 Co rin thi ans 14 Paul clearly says that these gifts are desirable because they edify the church. Yet if the one who exercises these gifts does not have love, that person is “nothing.”

“All faith, so as to remove mountains” probably refers to the gift of faith that is given to a few remarkable individuals (1 Cor. 12:9) rather than to saving faith, which is something that all Chris tians exercise. This is the faith

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that Peter had when he told the lame man, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” (Acts 3:6). I often pray for the sick, believing that God can heal them. But I have never had the boldness to say something like what Peter and John said. I would say, “O Lord, heal this person.” But Peter knew that God would miraculously raise up this lame man, and he told him to “rise up and walk.”

Working on this plane, however, is strenuous. Sometimes people come up for prayer after a ser vice, and I have the privilege of praying for them. After asking what it was that prompted them to come forward, I desper-ately ask God to give me the right words to pray, so that the prayer will align itself to God’s will. At the end of such prayer sessions I sometimes find I am emotionally more exhausted than after I have preached. How much more would the strain be for those with a miraculous gift of discern-ing and applying God’s will to situations. When a woman touched the hem of Jesus garment and was healed, Jesus inquired who had done this, “perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him” (Mark 5:30). So acting as a direct representative of God can be emotionally tiring. When we are emotionally exhausted, we can become irritable with our colleagues and family. Sadly, some public figures are not pleasant company to those who are intimate with them.

The miraculous gift of faith can also be seen in the faith of daring pio-neers who believe God for the impossible. These are men and women who dream great dreams, build organizations, and develop programs that serve those in need. James Hudson Taylor had a daring vision that led him to start China Inland Mission (now called OMF International). As a young man I recall reading an inspiring book, A Passion for the Impossible, that described the history of this movement.5 Thankfully, Hudson Taylor was not an impa-tient man and was willing to pursue his vision for the sake of love rather than for immediate results.

Sadly, however, many of today’s visionaries have great faith in God, but they are impatient with and sometimes unkind to colleagues. On the day of a huge program they organized, you may find them speaking harshly to a person who made a mistake or was responsible for something that went wrong. Humanly speaking the program was a great success. Can we describe the chief organizer of that program as “nothing”? After all, this program was his vision; he carried it to a successful completion through his amazing faith. How can you call a person like that “nothing”? Yet from the perspective of Paul, even though the program was a roaring success, the director of the program was an absolute failure (“nothing”).

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The person whom Paul calls “nothing” in this passage is the one who “understands all mysteries and all knowledge” and has “all faith.” Three times he uses the word “all” to indicate how advanced and seemingly mature this person is in the life of ser vice. Most likely, this person is a prominent leader with significant gifts, someone who is ministering pub-licly and seeing visible results. But here, we learn that they are nothing!

This helps us to reformulate our definition of success. Far too often, gifted but ungodly people are given positions of influence in the church. When their character is revealed and the fruit of selfishness and sin becomes apparent, it can bring great shame to the church. Sadly, the his-tory of the church is ridden with stories of abuse, war, revenge, brutality, injustice, internal strife, and division because gifted people did not have the corresponding character of Christ.

We are inclined to ignore problems that we might see in the personal life of a prominent person. We may notice that they tend to neglect their relationship with their family or wife, but we see great results in their public ministry. It’s easy to ignore such problems when that ministry is “successful” and people are coming to know Christ. We overlook those issues because we know that if that person were to step down from public ministry in order to straighten out his personal life, the church or the orga-nization would suffer. We fear that attendance would drop and donations to the ministry would decrease.

We are all vulnerable here. Few people see into our private lives, nor are they aware of the intimate details of our walk with God. Sometimes our family members will know the truth of the matter, but they will not generally betray us in public. As followers of Christ, we must reject the temptation to allow our public image and actions to compromise our inner life. If we must sacrifice our prominence, a promotion, our earthly sig-nificance, or worldly opportunities to use our gifts, let us gladly make the sacrifice!

But when it comes to our relationship with God, it is better to be safe and deprive ourselves of an apparent blessing than to be sorry that we went down the wrong path. We must remember that it is, in fact, no sacrifice at all to deprive ourselves of an earthly honor for the sake of God’s love. A life rooted in the love of God is a happy life. The source of happiness is something that the world cannot touch. So we can be deprived but happy. What greater wealth is there in the world than happiness — the joy of knowing the love and approval of God!

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