"If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all His mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith to say to a mountain, 'Jump,' and it jumps, but don't love, I'm nothing.
If I give all I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love."
-1 Corinthians 13:1-3
The Message
God has laid this on my heart right now, and I just want to take a minute to just talk about it. If we do anything that is apart from love, we are doing nothing. That means we have to define what love is, and if we continue reading on the Bible gives us a pretty clear example of what it says that love should be.
"Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut, Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others, Isn't always 'me first,' Doesn't fly off the handle, Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end.
Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit."
-1 Corinthians 13: 4-8
That's a fairly accurate description of what everyone thinks love should be. Love is self-sacrificing, it is gentle, calm, forgetting of past wrongs, loves truth, and the most important; love is forever. Oxford describes love as: "a strong feeling of affection, a great interest and pleasure in something." That's not nearly as all encompassing as the Bible's definition, but the Urban dictionary had my two favorite descriptions of love out of them all.
"The most spectacular,indescribable, deep euphoric feeling for someone.
Love is an incredibly powerful word. When you're in love, you always want to be together, and when you're not, you're thinking about being together because you need that person and without them your life is incomplete.
This love is unconditional affection with no limits or conditions: completely loving someone. It's when you trust the other with your life and when you would do anything for each other. When you love someone you want nothing more than for them to be truly happy no matter what it takes because that's how much you care about them and because their needs come before your own. You hide nothing of yourself and can tell the other anything because you know they accept you just the way you are and vice versa.
It's when they're the last thing you think about before you go to sleep and when they're the first thing you think of when you wake up, the feeling that warms your heart and leaves you overcome by a feeling of serenity. Love involves wanting to show your affection and/or devotion to each other. It's the smile on your face you get when you're thinking about them and miss them.
Love can make you do anything and sacrifice for what will be better in the end. Love is intense,and passionate. Everything seems brighter, happier and more wonderful when you're in love. If you find it, don't let it go."
And lastly,
"Love is giving someone the power to destroy you, and trusting them not too."
The last definition sums it all up quite nicely in my opinion. So, that brings us back up to the first verse,
"If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy, but I don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate."
If we can speak in tongues, and sway the masses with a silver tongue, and we don't show that unconditional affection in the process, our actions are worthless and empty. We cannot preach an attitude, but be hollow to our own words. Our greatest witness is example, and by omitting a loving attitude we hinder any growth someone else could have through us. A lot of the times we are the only witness some people will ever see, and if we don't show them the love of Christ in the process but merely speak a pleasing message then we are ultimately missing the point of the Gospel.
We move on to the second verse,
"If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all His mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith to say to a mountain, 'Jump,' and it jumps but I don't love I'm nothing."
It doesn't matter if we have the power of Prophecy, or faith so amazing that the the earth itself will bend before you so long as we don't love. We can do these incredible deeds but they will get us nowhere in the grand scheme of things. The spiritual gifts come second to love, because they are nothing but expressions of that love. Prophecy and faith are merely in response to God. His grace/love saved us, and our prophetic dreams and visions, or faith in Him and abilities are just returning what He has already showed us. Our position with God is one of response, not of initiation. Apart from love, our spiritual gifts are nothing. There is no need for them apart from praising God, and if we do them but don't love then our gifts are dead in themselves for they are just expression.
The last verse sums it all up, and drives it all home.
"If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love."
Even if we were to give up all of our earthly belongings, or die for our faith yet we do it apart from love we have done nothing. Any act not born out of love, is a dead act. We have nothing in our faith if we can't show that love that is so central to our message.
1 John 4:19
"We love because He first loved us."
-New International Version
