In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus told His disciples of His impending death. Someone will betray Him; others will ridicule, spit on, and kill Him. And although Jesus’ words were straightforward and clear, His disciples didn’t understand them. For this world doesn’t understand true love, the love that drove Jesus to die to give us His life.
Like Jesus, when we do something good for another, we are showing love. And doing such deeds often makes us feel good about ourselves. But if our feelings become the measure of love, then we misunderstand love. Love does, whether it feels good or not.
How good did Jesus feel when others mocked Him and even crucified Him? I’m sure He didn’t feel good–but love still compelled Him to press on! In Jesus’ suffering, God most-clearly revealed His love for us. “This is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the payment for our sins” (1 John 4:10).
But what does the world know of such love? While we hear songs on the radio about love as a feeling, the world continues to deal in death, cruelty, and every imaginable evil. What can the world teach us of true love? For every love of this world, even the most selfless, falls short because of sin. Only a sinless love has no failings.
And the only source of such sinless love is God, who is both God and love (1 John 4:8). And we most-clearly see God’s love for us in Christ Jesus. And we most-clearly learn of Christ’s love for us in His suffering. And it’s in His suffering that our hatred, our lack of love, within us dies in Christ’s death, receiving His forgiveness.
[For] If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but have no love, I am a clanging gong or a clashing cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my goods to feed the poor, hand over my own body to feel good about what I have done, but do not have love, I gain nothing. [1 Corinthians 13:1-3]
When Paul contrasts love, he doesn’t pit love against something else, such as faith. He doesn’t imply that love is good, but faith is bad. On the contrary, a full faith cannot but love. Yet, even if such faith can move mountains, it falls short if it fails in love.
In the New Testament, we can read about impressive gifts that God gave. Some could speak in languages they had never learned. Others received prophetic knowledge of future events. But none of those gifts can compare with love. That’s the point.
Jesus spoke about faith. He said: “I assure you: if you have faith and do not doubt… you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done” (Matthew 21:21). So although one may have faith, Jesus expects us to grow in faith, where it becomes deep-rooted and strong, and doesn’t doubt God.
Consider the faith the Holy Spirit gives! Consider the faith the Holy Spirit strengthens in us through Word and Sacrament, bringing us the life of Jesus. But if we fall short in living out the love of Christ in our lives, our faith has faltered and means nothing.
A faith that cannot love is a deficient faith. But with true love, the love of Christ in us and lived through us, we are wealthy and have everything. Without love, especially the love of Christ in us and lived through us, we are destitute and have nothing. For nothing is as valuable as love.
What is the substance of this love?
Love is patient, love is kind. Love isn’t jealous. It doesn’t sing its own praises; it isn’t proud. It isn’t rude, it doesn’t seek its own advantage, it isn’t easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. [1 Corinthians 13:5-7]
Are you beginning to sense the essence of true love? It’s an action verb: it does and endures. Emotions or feelings, which come and go, are not the substance of love. Love does and love endures, no matter what the fallen heart may feel.
Did you notice that 1 Corinthians 13 describes love mostly by what it is not and by what it doesn’t do? It’s easy for us to understand that, for haven’t you and I experienced such lack of love? And haven’t you and I showed such lack of love toward others?
So, when we look at what love is not, what do we see? We see ourselves. We envy those who have what we want. We exalt what we’ve done and expect others to praise us for it. We look out for ourselves, and become foul when we don’t get our way.
That isn’t love. That’s sin! Turn from such sin, for love joins with whatever it must endure because it is genuinely kind, even to those who mean you harm. Love finds no joy when others suffer, even if someone had it coming because of the stupid choices he made. Love finds joy in the truth. Love is willing to let others consider him a fool if it will help another. Love always puts the best construction on what others do.
But we can’t know the value and substance of such love without knowing the One who is such Love, Jesus Christ. One of our Christmas hymns tell us that Jesus, Love incarnate, was “of the Father’s love begotten ere the worlds began to be” (LSB 384).
The Father loved the Son; the Son loved the Father; and so it was, is, and will ever be. It’s an eternal love. No time ever existed when the Father didn’t love His Son. No time ever existed when the Son didn’t love His Father. This love is eternal because God is eternal and God is love.
Even so, there was a time and place when God chose to reveal this Love to us–in Jesus Christ. Only in Him do we see the substance of true Love. In love, He confronted hatred, bitterness, and violence and endured. He responded to threats with blessings. He spoke with humility and respect, even when treated with contempt.
In so doing, Jesus fulfilled the righteous demands of God. He did all that to fulfill all righteousness (Matthew 3:15), bearing the hatred of all sin and overcoming it with His love. That’s why the Cross of Christ stands at the center of all human history.
At the cross, Love confronted hatred in the sacred body of Christ, defeating evil. And because Jesus is eternal, His love remains, even as the world continues to destroy itself because of sin. Only love remains; everything else will come to an end.
The Apostle wrote:
Love never fails. As for prophecies, they will come to an end. As for tongues, they will be stilled. As for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, then what is incomplete will come to an end…. Now we see but a blurred image in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, as I am fully known. And so these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. [1 Corinthians 13:8-10, 12-13]
Love isn’t simply a virtue among many; it’s the main one. Nothing is greater or of more value, for only love lasts forever. Just as God is eternal, and God is love, so also is His love eternal. The eternalness of love comes from the eternalness of God.
There was never a time when God didn’t exist. There will never be a time when His existence will end. But we have beginning and end. And so we need what He has to give. And when Christ’s eternal love comes to us, not just 2,000 years ago, but also in Word and Sacrament, the One who is love enfolds us in His love. The One who is Love brings the forgiveness of sins, which brings us to the resurrection of the body, and the life of the world to come, just as we confess every week in the Creed.
God’s love in Christ is all-powerful and lasts into eternity. But we must not confuse our love with God’s love. His love is perfect and complete; ours is not. But a time will come, when we will love purely, fully, and completely. A time and a place will come when our selfishness, envy, and pride will be gone–not just from us, but all creation!
What God now dimly reveals to us as through a burnished mirror, will then become reality as we see Him face to face. “He will transform our lowly bodies into the likeness of His glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). It will be as St. Job in the Old Testament tells us: “Even after my skin has been destroyed, yet I will see God in my flesh” (Job 19:26).
We will then walk by sight, for sight will then replace our faith. “Faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Then we will see all, and our hope will be fulfilled. But love will remain. Love is forever.
Even now, the saints in heaven live in faith and hope. Why? It’s because they also await the resurrection of their bodies and the life of the world to come. By faith, they still await the fulfillment of their faith, when Christ will complete all and this sinful world will be no more, and they will be the whole person that God created them to be.
Indeed, “love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 3:8), because only love will remain when all will be made right. In Christ, that becomes your reality when He finishes His job of re-creation on the Last Day. But that reality to come is so real that it even changes how you live right now. For in Christ, the One who is Love, how can we live otherwise? After all, “we love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Amen.
