Love.

“If I sing but don't have love, I waste my breathe with every song, I bring, an empty voice, A hollow noise. If I speak with a silver tongue, Convince a crowd but don't have love, I leave a bitter taste, With every word I say.If I give to a needy soul, But don't have love then who is poor, It seems all the poverty, Is found in me"

So let my life be the proof, The proof of Your love, Let my love look like You, And what You're made of. How you lived, how You died, Love is sacrifice, So let my life be the proof, The proof of Your love."

These are the lyrics to a song by artist for KING & COUNTRY. If the lyrics sound familiar it’s because they are almost verbatim from 1 Corinthians 13 (specifically verses 1 through 3). Most of us are familiar with 1 Corinthians 13 – the love chapter. We often hear it at weddings and other happy occasions. And for us Nicholas Sparks fans – it was integral part of Landon and Jamie’s story in a Walk to Remember. The point being, almost all of us have heard these words at least once in our lives. I am no different. I have read 1 Corinthians 13 countless times. Usually briefly reading through verses 1-3 and getting to the “meat” of the passage. You know the “Love is patient, love is kind…” part. You know, the real part of the passage. Or so I thought.

When KLOVE recently started playing for KING & COUNTRY’s take on this passage it reminded me of when God opened my eyes to the significance of these first 3 verses and how erroneous it was of me to only consider verses 4-8 as the “important” verses of the passage.

So lets take a journey back in time, to let’s say April of 2011. At this point in my life I was heavily involved in volunteer work specifically focusing on those living in poverty. In college God developed a passion inside of me to live out his command of caring for the widows and orphans, the oppressed and the broken (James 1). He gave me my life verse of Micah 6:8 (the title of this blog): Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. So in this point of time, I was doing my best to live up to these commands.  I traveled to India to understand what it means to serve his children overseas. And then traveled twice (each time for a week) to South Side of Chicago (for you non-Chicagoans, the south side is home to some of the most marginalized and forgotten people in our society) where I served in a homeless shelter and developed a passion for domestic missions. Upon returning home from all of these trips I immersed myself in my local volunteer work with and organization that served teens living in poverty in the suburbs surrounding my home. I also was given the opportunity to serve in a student group on my campus that helped raise awareness about issues of social justice.

Social justice and serving those in poverty was my life. I talked about it, I studied it, I prayed about it, I lived it. And in the midst of all this I found 1 Corinthians 13:3 “If I give all I have to the poor but have not love, I gain nothing.” Wait a minute, I gain NOTHING?! Here I am giving my whole life to the service of God and those most forgotten and broken – the poor and he’s telling me it means nothing if I have not love?! Wow! Love must be pretty important to God then!

So what is this love? Love is a pretty misconstrued concept in our society. I was recently in a Bible study that pointed out how quickly and easily we throw around the word “love” in our society: we LOVE our moms, but we also LOVE pizza. We LOVE our new car and LOVE The Office. But is this the same love we have for our boyfriend or our pet dog? The point being: Our society has only word for love and it has a variety of meanings. 

Thankfully the Bible was written in a language that had several words for the different types of love. I won’t bore you with going deep into this but I do think it is important to disguish the four types of love. Eros – this is passionate, romantic love. Like when you see that girl for the first time or the way I get butterflies in my stomach when I see my husband for the first time after being away for a few days! Eros can be very exciting but isn’t the love God is talking about here. Philia and Storge – these are similar loves in that they are roughly translated affection and friendship. They are slightly different but for our purposes are basically the love we have for our friends and family. And there is Agape. Most of us are at least a little bit familiar with this word. Agape means unconditional love. This is the love that God feels towards us and is the word that he is specifically using in 1 Corinthians 13.

So now that I gave you a mini hermeuntics lesson (please, scholars out there, don’t be too rough on me. This blog isn’t meant to be theology or doctrine lesson) lets get down to the practicality of what this means. When God opened my eyes to this passage last year and I read that he was asking me to unconditionally love everyone around me otherwise all my volunteer work meant nothing, I was blown away. Could that be really true? All that good I had done in Christ’s name was worthless? And then it hit me. Yes, it was true. And this is why.

The whole purpose of my life (and everyone’s for that matter) is to point people to Christ. I thought the best way to do that was be serving the disadvantaged in my area. And while it was, it meant nothing if I wasn’t loving the people in my life the way that Christ loved me. For example, here I was spending countless hours pouring into my volunteer work but then I was often short-tempered with my husband (fiancé at the time) when he forgot to call me or rude to my brother when I needed to get into the shower or even ungrateful towards my parents and grandfather who had given me so much. What kind of message was I sending? I thought they would see my work with poor and point to Christ but why would they look towards Christ if I was not even being kind to them, let alone loving them. And this is when I understood what Paul meant all my work would mean nothing. A big fat zero.

Even looking at from the perspective of those I was serving, I could see how it would meaning nothing without love. If I was doing all these great things for them, like donating my time and money to help tutor their kids and buy them canned goods to eat, but never took the time to sit down and talk to them and hear their story to really show they that I cared and loved them the way Christ loved me and them, then it meant nothing. I could do all the right volunteer work in the world but if I’m not loving and pointing towards my savior – then it means nothing. 

Have you ever had a friend help you with something but you could tell they didn't really want to or didn't even seem to care? This is what it is like to serve without love, it becomes a hollow shell of what serving really should be and therefore does not serve it's purpose of pointing others towards Christ. Now one disclaimer I'd like to point out, I do think a lot of people do understand this point, but also a lot don't. I have been fortunate to have been surrounded by many godly examples of what it means to serve in love and have been blessed to follow in those footsteps. However, we must remind ourselves of this if we desire to keep growing in the way we serve God and others. 

All this very long post to say, love is important. In fact at the end of 1 Corinthians 13, Paul says: “But these three remain, Faith, Hope, and Love. But the greatest of these is Love”. Love is the most important. It was what compelled our God to send his son to save us, it is  what compels us serve him in return. It is what gives what we do meaning. LOVE never fails!

So this week, go out in the confidence that we have received the greatest love of all! And then share it! 

References:

- klove.com

- biblegateway.com

- The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis via wikipedia.com 

- Jim Ford (who taught me about philio and agape love when I was a small child)

- Dr. Cliff Williams via his Love and Friendship class

- The Holy Spirit who helps us discern all things (1 Cor. 2:12-13)