Can't Get Away from Love

“So now faith, hope and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13

As I look at the life and preaching of Jesus and consider its echoes in the rest of the New Testament, the prominence of LOVE is absolutely striking. You just can’t get away from it.

For Jesus, it is the way to fulfill all the Law and the Prophets (i.e. the entire Old Testament). By loving God and loving your neighbor, every other commandment just falls into line. It is the very core of living the way God desires!

John’s Gospel mentions love more than the other three Gospels combined. One of his relatively brief writings, a letter we refer to as First John, does too. (These two writings mention love 103 times combined)

Love plays a central theme in the writings of the Apostle Paul as well. The book of Romans – Paul’s magnum opus – mentions love sixteen times. The first ten chapters or so refer repeatedly to the love of God toward us, while the remaining chapters mention love even more. This time it is all about how those who love God are to love others – the way God loved them.

Many of Paul’s other mentions of love are familiar to us. The fruit of the Spirit is love (Gal 5:22). Jesus’ sacrificial love for us is the example of how a husband should love his wife (Eph 5:25). More than that, Christ is to be the example of every aspect of a Christ follower’s love (Eph 5:2).

As one of my professors put it recently, love is the apex of Paul’s writing in First Corinthians. Without it, we are just a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal (1Cor 13). Let those images sink in for a moment. The passage is so familiar to many of us, that we tend to pass right over the images. A noisy gong. A clanging cymbal. These things are loud, right? But not just loud… violently loud – to the point of causing people to flee from their presence. At the very least, they cause anyone close by to want to cover their ears.

Do you hear what Paul is saying here? He is saying that all of our efforts to represent Christ and the Gospel will come off as a clanging cymbal if love is not the foundation. It will drive people away from us instead of towards Jesus. Because love is the foundation of Jesus. And if the love of Jesus isn’t our foundation, something else is. Pride. Rivalry. Empty glory. Self-interest. Self-righteousness. Self-something.

Let love be the hallmark and the very tone of all you do. Then and only then will you be a true Christ follower and not just a clanging cymbal.

In the words of Peter, “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, for love covers a multitude of sins.” (1Pet 4:8)