I am on vacation for the rest of the month and therefore away from blogging. In effort to continue to provide some content I have asked the other elders at Emmaus Bible Church if I could post the notes from our weekly confession of sin on Sunday morning. It is always a rich time together as we prepare our hearts for worship by considering what God requires and what Christ has done. In these posts I will post the material from 1 Cor 13 reminds us of what the Bible says about love. It is teaching us about where we need to repent even as it teaches us how we must treasure Christ. Each day will unpack a section of the passage. May these serve you just as they served us at Emmaus!
Love never ends…Pursue love…” (1 Cor13:8a; 14:1a)
To live the Chri
stian life to the fullest we must first see:
The permanence of love 13a – “love never ends.”
The context is love in light of the spiritual gifts: They are temporary, but not so love. Love never (an indefinite negated point of time – ‘never, not ever, at no time.’)
The word “ends” could mean love never fails (NIV) or literally never falls. It is never defeated. Love persists against all opposition. But it has the meaning of never ending.
The context implies when other gifts are no longer necessary, love remains, it will still be there. It is permanent. Some suggest both are implied. Since love is an attribute of God’s character, it can never be defeated or overcome; it remains no matter what. But God is also eternal. Just as love cannot fail or fall, it is also forever. As one says: “Love survives everything,” (Robertson) even after all else has ended.
Since love cannot be destroyed and love will continue through eternity Paul exhorts us to pursue love.
The need to pursue love:
The word pursue is very strong. It means to do something with intensity of effort; to run after; to chase after; to do something not only with intense effort but also with definite purpose or goal. It is often translated persecute. As we follow ISIS and other terrorist groups we see the intensity with which they pursue their goal. It is tenacious, relentless, unflinching!
Young romantic love helps illustrate both the permanent nature of love and the intense pursuit of love. Consider the Song of Solomon – 5:8 I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him I am sick with love. 8:6, 7… for love is strong as death…Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.
This is very practical. We pursue love when we set our hearts earnestly to practice love, (Lenski). Love is the Christian’s trump card. It is the winning card no matter what the circumstance may be. We should all be asking ourselves, “if love never fails and lasts forever?” How am I doing at pursuing love? Do I love others like that? My wife? My husband? My Children? My neighbors? Members of Emmaus – do we love one another in this way? Or visitors who come into our midst? Children should be asking themselves – Do I love my parents, my brothers and sisters, my friends or my classmates like this? And then we ask, what of my love for Christ? What other distracting pleasures in life receive our hot pursuit more than Jesus? By now we know that Paul was striking a nerve against the Corinthians.
This section was a severe rebuke to them. But who among us can escape the same reproof? Surely as we examine ourselves we can easily see how far short we fall. Love is to never fade; it has a permanence that lives on through eternity. Meanwhile we are to pursue it with all our might. As we confess our sins, there should be no doubt in our minds as to how much we need a pardoning Savior.
Prayer of Confession:
Dear heavenly Father – love is something we hear a lot about, but there are times we fail so miserably. We are commanded to love our family; we are commanded to love our neighbors; we our commanded to love our church family; we are even commanded to love our enemies; we are especially commanded to love our Lord Jesus. Oh Lord, how we need your help. We confess our weakness. We confess our hardness of heart. We confess our unwillingness and lethargy and apathy. We seek your pardon as we pray in Jesus name. Amen!
Assurance of Pardon:
We fall short of God’s glory in so many ways. But loving the way Jesus loves us puts it all into perspective. He left heaven’s glory and fellowship with the Father and the Spirit to pursue us with his love. He loved us before time; he loves in time; and he will love us for all time – because God is love and set his love upon us, his love will never fail us.
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
