January 19 Sermon – “It’s All About Love”
I Corinthians 13
Our scripture reading is from I Corinthians,
chapter 13, which is also known as the love chapter. The Apostle Paul wrote
this letter to the church at Corinth because some of them had been bragging
that they had more important spiritual gifts than others in the church. In our
scripture reading for today, Paul reminds them that loving others is more
important than any spiritual gift God may have given them.
This scripture is often used at weddings to celebrate the
love of husband and wife and yet this passage has nothing to do with marriage
in a specific way. The reason Paul defines love is because of a problem that
had been developing in the church at Corinth.
Paul is addressing the topic of spiritual gifts. The
Corinthian Christians were bragging about having certain spiritual gifts which
they deemed to be more special than other spiritual gifts. Even though “love”
is not technically one of the twenty or so “spiritual gifts” that we find in
the scriptures, in a creative and prophetic way, Paul chastises the Corinthians
by saying that the most important gift is love.
Three parts of this passage on love:
Part I – VV. 1-3 Love is the most vital thing making
everything else we can have secondary.
Part II – VV. 4-7 Love is described.
Part III – VV. 8-13 Love will be one of the things that will
continue in God’s new world.
V. 10 – Mirrors were being made in Corinth at the time of
Paul’s writing which is why he uses it as a metaphor in describing love. Mirrors are good but they don’t give a
perfect reflection. This is what the present time is like for us as we focus on
our faith. In God’s new world (heaven and earth coming together) we will see
face to face which is better than using a mirror!
[Note: The resources used for these scripture reading commentaries are based on the Everyone series by NT Wright, The Wesley Study Bible, and the “Montreal-Anglican”lectionary commentaries.]
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