The character of love
by Sara Wooten Corinth Missionary Baptist church
We have come to a subject that I have written about quite a few times over the last few years in this article. It is a subject that the Bible covers thoroughly. In fact, the entire chapter of 1 Corinthians 13 is about this subject. Have you guessed the subject yet? Yes! It is love. But how do you define love?
John tells us that God is love, which means that love is one of the essential qualities of God.
It also means that all the fullness of love is found in God.
In fact, love cannot be understood apart from God, since God is love.
But we have grown up in a world that always defines things for itself, and it has certainly done so with love.
The world likes to say things like “love is this” or “love is that.” But a mature Christian knows well that the world’s definitions always stand contrary to the Bible’s definition of terms.
In the Bible, love is first and foremost an action.
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16, NASB 1995).
Genuine love was demonstrated when God gave His Son for sinners.
It is true that love contains feelings or emotions; it is certainly not void of those things.
But that is only a fraction of the greater attributes of love.
Genuine love works similar to how James describes faith.
“What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works?
Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,’ and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?
Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself” (James 2:14-17, NASB 1995). In a similar way, love without selfless service is void of the true nature of love.
But love also possesses a character, and it is that character that is thoroughly described in 1 Corinthians 13.
But before we get into love’s character, I think it is incredibly important to understand the context of 1 Corinthians 13.
If you remember from what Sarah wrote last week, 1 Corinthians 12 is about spiritual gifts and using those gifts in the church.
1 Corinthians 14 is also about spiritual gifts and their use in the church. So this chapter on love, sits in the middle of those two chapters, and so it must be understood that the context is in the local church.
Therefore, ministry being accomplished through our God-given spiritual gifts are expressions of love toward those within that church.
The Corinthians got it horribly wrong and were using their spiritual gifts to exalt themselves.
But genuine love “does not seek its own” (1 Cor. 13:5, NASB 1995).
Therefore, their spiritual gifts were useless because they were failing to understand the very purpose of those gifts – an expression of genuine love and service to those around them.
Rather than reading 1 Cor. 13 at weddings, maybe we should consider reading it at the beginning of every worship service so that we would remember how we are to treat one another. Next week, we will look at the genuine character of love.
