The Greatest of These Is Love
Dr. Ritch Boerckel
May 3, 2015
Scriptural Text: 1 Corinthians 13:13, ESV
The Way of Love
1
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as
to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body
to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
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4
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own
way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears
all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge,
it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial
will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When
I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I
know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Do you consider yourself to be a loving person? Most of us do. Few people confess, “I am really not a loving person.”
Songs and sonnets profess the love of one person to another throughout every culture and every age, yet, for all of our
claims to love we see a lack of love everywhere we turn. There is a lack of love in our cities. There is a lack of love in
our schools. There is a lack of love in our work place. There is a lack of love in our neighborhoods. There is a lack of
love in our own families. There is a lack of love even in our own church.
The problem is not that there is no love in these other places, but the problem is that a lack of love is evident in so
much of what happens in all of these places. Our experiences confirms God’s judgment that love does not rule in the
heart of man. We are proud and selfish. We are often envious and unkind. We are often angry, impatient, critical,
small-minded, boastful, whisperers, and quitters when relationships become tough. Love is not natural to man.
Man can produce a counterfeit kind of love that passes for the real thing among many, but the more we learn about
love from God's Word, the more foreign we feel God’s love is to our natural heart. The world’s love starts and it
stops. It flashes and then disappears like a 4th of July firecracker. Love is a grace that easily welcomes our
admiration, yet it alludes our grasp. The more we understand about love from 1 Corinthians 13, the more we ask in
astonishment, “God, do you really ask me to love in that way? It is impossible!”
Loving others in Jesus’ church is much harder than we can possibly ever imagine. How can we possibly love one
another just as Jesus loves us? There is only one answer to that question and it is the Gospel and the power the
transformation brings into the human heart. Through the Gospel God sheds His love abroad in our heart. As God
works His love into us by His Holy Spirit God changes us from the inside out. The Holy Spirit gives to us new
capacities to imitate God and love is chief among those new capacities. Only a heart transformed by the Holy Spirit,
and one that yields to the Holy Spirit, is able to express this king of love. J.C. Ryle, one of my favorite pastor’s of old,
writes, “The love (described in) the Bible will never be found except in a heart prepared by the Holy Spirit. It is a
tender plant and it will never grow except in one’s soil. You may as well expect grapes on thorns or figs on thistles as
look for love when the heart is not right.”
After praying for my own soul, as I have studied this chapter, I have been praying that I would be transformed to love
my brothers and sisters in Christ and I have been praying for the members of the church as well. I am asking God to
give to us a driving passion to have a ministry of love in our own local church and that each one of us would grab
hold of that biblical vision. Without such a love in our local church, any Gospel proclamation we announce sounds
hollow and hypocritical. Without love, teaching the Word in our church becomes irritating like fingers screeching
down a chalk board.
The whole goal of Christian instruction and doctrine can be summed up in one profound word: love. Love is the
measure of our sanctification. It is the measure of our worship of God. Through this study of 1 Corinthians 13, God
has spoken to my heart about my many failures and it has convicted me of my need to repent of my unloving sin and
to, in faith, pursue love in my heart through His Holy Spirit. I wonder, has God spoken to you through this series? If
so, will you not also pray that God will grow you more and more in this grace of love, that this would not be a theme
to think about for a time and then move on from, but that this would be a theme of your life? Love is the center of the
Christian life and it is the power of the church and the summary of all of the Commandments. It is the greatest of all
of the graces.
We focus our attention on our text, the last verse of 1 Corinthians 13,
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So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
We consider these three necessary graces of the Christian life. In this section of his letter, the Apostle Paul is
correcting the Corinthians in the way they exalted spiritual gifts over love. They believed spiritual gifts proved their
spiritual value in the church and Paul corrects this wrong idea by teaching the supreme value of love throughout this
chapter.
Far more significant to the worship of God in the church than each person’s exercise of spiritual gifts is each person’s
exercise of love. The church that loves one another is a church that absolutely will bring glory to God. And, the
converse is true: the church that does not love one another, regardless of what ever else is happening, that church will
not bring glory to God and it is unable to worship. Because the members of the Corinthian church did not love one
another, nothing else they did, for all of their labors, mattered and nothing would accomplish anything worthy of
praise.
Love needs to be our North Star that guides us in everything we do. It needs to be our GPS.1 The church in Corinth
was a church that lost her way because something other than love was her GPS. In the last verse in this chapter, after
contrasting the supremacy of love over spiritual gifts, Paul now contrasts the supremacy of love over other necessary
spiritual graces. He sets love beside two absolutely essential graces in the Christian life: the grace of hope and the
grace of faith. He does this to magnify the importance of love all the more. If we believe faith is important to the
Christian church, love is more so. If we believe hope is important to the Christian church, love is more so.
God often links these three graces of faith, hope, and love together as He describes our salvation. Consider these two
passages of Scripture,
Colossians 1:3
We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 since we heard
of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5a because of the hope laid up for
you in heaven.
1 Thessalonians 1:2
We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers,
remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in
our Lord Jesus Christ.
3
These three always seem to go hand-in-hand. They are all necessary. Without any one of these graces we stand
outside of God’s life, outside of the power of sanctification, outside of an eternal inheritance. Yet, of these three
necessary graces, Paul wants us to know which one is the greatest and the greatest of these is love. If we are going to
have to choose which to focus upon, love is the one to focus upon every time.
1
Global Positioning System
Let us consider each of these three graces separately so that we might seek to understand the relationship of one with
another. The first necessary graces of the Christian life is faith. God tells to us what faith is and then He shows to
us what faith is in Hebrews 11. Just as 1 Corinthians 13 is considered the love chapter, Hebrews 11 is considered the
faith chapter. No consideration of biblical faith is complete without some reference to the beginning of the faith
chapter,
1
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Our physical eyesight gives to us confidence to believe in the reality of things in this physical world. Someone may
see a contortionist fold themselves into a tiny box and they say, “I would not have believed that had I not seen it.”
Faith produces the same confidence about the invisible realities related to God and His spiritual realm. It is, as the text
tells us, “confidence in things hoped for, conviction of things not seen.” It is confident trust. It is certain assurance of
wonderful things in our future, things hoped for, and in invisible things we cannot see right now.
What are these joyful things hoped for and these invisible things not seen by our physical eyes. I believe the answer is
found just a few verses further, in Hebrews 11,
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And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he
exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
These are the things hoped for and the things that are not seen. The things hoped for and the things not seen are God’s
person and God’s treasures. Faith looks at this physical, temporary world and as faith sees it, it sees more than what
we can physically see, feel, touch, taste, and smell. It sees reality and it is those realities that are just as certain as the
realities we can place our hands upon. It perceives an Eternal Creator who stands behind His creation, powerfully
speaking it into existence. Faith refuses to live in this present world as though this present world is all there is. Faith is
confident that God is. God is eternal. God is sovereign. God is all-powerful. God is true.
And, more than that, faith is absolutely certain that God’s treasures are real and that they are valuable beyond all
measure. Faith confidently and joyfully rests in the truth that God exists and that He faithfully rewards those who seek
Him. Faith believes following after God, and submitting our life to God, will yield greater joy and greater treasure
than anything this world offers because it sees those realities. It refuses to see only the present circumstance and the
present opportunity we have in front of us, but faith helps us to live and view a future treasure that awaits everyone
who commits their way to the Lord and who connect to Him through trust.
This is the definition of faith which I believe flows out of Hebrews 11: faith is the certain confidence God secures, a
joyful future, and provides every present need for those who humbly trust in Him. God secures a joyful future which
is ours if we trust in Him. And, He provides every present need as we trust in Him. So, faith seizes all God is and all
God promises. It is a rest of one’s whole life in God and in the fulfillment of His promise.
Faith is not superficial nor is it a shallow grace. It involves our whole person: our mind, our heart, and our will. It is
not merely a mental ascent to some doctrine. It is not merely an accurate understanding of spiritual truths. This is not
what faith is and many confuse faith as having an understanding of the Bible. That is not true. Faith includes that but
it is much more than that.
Faith is not merely a zealous emotion that is spurred on by a mystical experience. Faith is an affirmation and an
understanding of the truth and of the Good News about God followed by an affection of one’s heart that says, “Yes, I
see God now as wonderful and I love Him.” It is an affirmation followed by an affection and then it is bound together
by a commitment by one’s will to follow God, to believe Him, and to obey Him. Faith knows, delights in, and
surrenders to the God who reveals Himself in the Gospel.
God tells us what faith is, but then God shows to us what faith is by reminding us of the lives of over a dozen people
in Hebrews 11. Let’s consider one, Moses, for a moment, as we read about what faith does and what it looks like,
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By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, 25 choosing
rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26 He considered the
reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.
There is a denial faith makes about this world. All the promises this world offers to us, we recognize, that is not where
life is and that is not where joy is. Faith does not merely say, “God exists and He is sovereign in His authority so He
has a right to command. I will do whatever He does even though I do not want to do it.” That is not faith. Faith says,
“God is and He rewards those who seek Him. I will never, ever be ashamed or disappointed if I wait on God to
provide His treasures for me. If I wait on this world to provide their treasures for me I will be disappointed every
time.” This is the reason why many to consider Moses to be so obedient, but that was not the case. He saw, by faith, a
treasure and he knew that was where his joy was and that was where his life was, “Why would I enjoy these pleasures
of Egypt, the food, the entertainment, and the parties when all of that is going to pass away when I can have a reward
more complete, more pleasurable, more delightful, and last forever. Why would I make that choice. I am not going to.
I would rather be mistreated with the people of God because I am looking toward the reward.” That is what faith does.
Do we have faith? Faith is an absolutely necessary virtue.
Notice, again, in Hebrews 11:6, we read, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” We cannot inherit His
blessings, we cannot be in right relationship with Him, we cannot benefit from His grace and His love toward us
without faith. It is impossible to receive joy in Him without faith. Faith is the instrument God uses to unite our heart to
Jesus so that we benefit from all Jesus has done, His work on the cross, His burial, His resurrection, so that we can
partake of His Divine Nature and that we can share in His inheritance. Without faith we cannot be rescued from the
penalty of our sin. That is how essential faith is.
In Hebrews 11, we see another illustration of this,
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By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for
the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that
comes by faith.
What would have happened if Noah chose not to believe God about the judgment that was coming, chose not to
believe God about a ship he could build that would rescue him from that judgment? What would have happened to
Noah? He would have died with everyone else. How necessary is that faith? It is life and death. This means we must
ask this question: Do we really have biblical faith, because if we do not have biblical faith we are not connected to the
pleasure and treasure of God.
This week’s memory verse is from Ephesians 2,
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For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a
result of works, so that no one may boast.
Without faith we cannot enter into the Christian life and without faith we cannot live out the Christian life. Three
times Habakkuk is quoted in the New Testament,
2:4b
“…but the righteous shall live by his faith.” 2
If we do not believe God’s treasures are greater than this world’s treasures, we will not live a life of obedience, for in
all of our willingness, “Okay, I am going to submit even though I do not believe in the bargain, because God is God
and that is what I should do,” we will not be able to live an obedient life as long as that kind of corrupted faith resides
in our soul. We will always choose the path that leads to the greatest joy. That is why Satan works so hard to convince
us that the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life will give to us the greatest and the most
lasting joy and pleasure.
2
Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, Hebrews 10:38
In 1626, Peter Minuit bought Manhattan Island from local Indians for a load of clothes, beads, hatchets, and trinkets.
Thinks of that! Who got the “good deal”? At that time, these local Indians thought this trade to be very valuable.
Today this would be about $200.00 worth of “stuff” for Manhattan. We can look back at history and decide the
Indians got a raw deal. But, when we choose sin and we choose away from God, we are getting a really raw deal, also.
There will be a day when we wake up, look back, and say, “What was I thinking? I sold Manhattan for some beads!
That looks like a brilliant deal compared to the person who chooses sin over God.”
We are not praising Moses because we believe he did such a great thing, but what Moses did, He by God’s grace
perceived he was pursuing His greatest treasure. There is no value in that other than the grace of God awakening us to
something that is amazing. It is not that Moses toughed it out, but it is that he saw, by faith, where treasure really is
and he pursued it. That is all glory to God.
The second necessary grace of the Christian life is hope. Faith is the parent of hope. Hebrews connects these two
graces by telling us faith is the assurance of things hoped for. In Romans 5, we read,
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Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope
of the glory of God.
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Do we see how important faith is? Without faith, we do not have God’s salvation and His life. The hope of the glory
of God is the eager expectation of our future. The New Testament uses the word “hope” in a completely different way
from the normal way of speaking about hope. I believe this illustration is still relevant. I might say, “I hope the Cubs
win the World Series.” I am using hope as a sincere desire for some very uncertain, future thing to happen. This is not
how God uses the word hope.
Hope in the Bible is full of assurance. It is an absolute, certain confidence that God is going to fulfill every one of His
promises. Hope is an eager expectation. Hope is about the promises God has set for us that are yet in the future to be
realized and they are so certain we can enjoy an aspect of them through hope right now. Hope is the confident
expectation of a joyful future based upon God’s faithfulness to His promises.
Our faith connects us to God’s promises so that we can experience some of the joy and strength of future blessings to
day because we hope for them. We have an absolute and certain conviction they are ours. In 1 Peter 1, God tells us,
3
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to
be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is
imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God's power are being guarded
through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
Is hope necessary? Without hope we will falter in our spiritual life. This is especially true when we face trials and
hardships for our hope helps us to see through the hardships to a future day when we will be liberated from those
hardships and we enjoy God perfectly and wonderfully. That is the reason why, in Hebrews 10, God shares with us,
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Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.
Sin and Satan feed off of hopelessness. Hope removes the power of sin and Satan from driving us into darkness and
despair and it lifts us above the waves so that we can see more and we can see God and His sure future.
The third necessary grace of the Christian life is love. We have been working with this definition of love: Love is
the giving of one’s self in the diligent pursuit of God’s eternal happiness for others for the purpose of glorifying God.
Love is connect to faith and love is connected to hope. Love is about future happiness. Love is about giving of one’s
self for the purpose of glorifying God, which we realize is our greatest joy and it is our greatest pleasure.
I have taken care to call these three “graces”. I am uncomfortable with calling them virtues. Others take care to call
them graces, also, so I am not the first to say that. The choice of calling these Christian graces is purposeful. A virtue
usually reflects well upon the person who owns it. It even gives a motive or reason for kind of boasting that I am
“virtuous”. Grace reflects well upon God and gives to us motive for worship. If you and I have faith, hope, and love in
our heart, it is not because we produced these through self-determination and self-effort. If we have faith, hope, and
love in our soul it is because God graced us with these. These are not natural to us. God, in His infinite love and in His
infinite mercy, chose to place faith, hope, and love in us so that we can put them to work and move in worship toward
the Living God.
This does not mean we are passive in the pursuit and application of these graces. This is a misunderstanding of the
Christian life. God urges us to be active in all three. For instance, Philippians 2 gives to us a great teaching about the
relationship between God’s gifting and our working,
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Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in
my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you, both to
will and to work for his good pleasure.
The Apostle Paul is telling us to get active and work out the salvation given to us by God. Even the willing of faith,
hope, and love is from God. But, we need to work out this faith, hope, and love God has given to us. We need to set
them in motion.
Our study of 1 Corinthians 13 closes, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is
love.” Paul has been arguing that love is far superior to spiritual gifts, but now he is arguing that love is even superior
to necessary spiritual graces. Why is love the greatest of these three necessary, essential, wonderful graces gifts from
God?
There are four reasons why love is greater even than faith and hope. Reason Number One: love is a perfection
of God. In 1 John 4, we read,
16b
God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
No where in Scripture do we find, “God is faith”, or, “God is hope”. But, we do read, “God is love”. Faith and hope
are not qualities God needs. God is omniscient. God is sovereign. God is omnipotent. God has never needed faith or
hope. God has never expressed these. From eternity past, God expresses love in His love. God first expressed His love
to Himself in His triune nature: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, each loving one another throughout
eternity past and then God demonstrates His love toward us from the beginning of Creation to this present day.
Beloved, we are never more like God than when love dominates our heart. God is love and it is the purest form of
imitation of God.
Reason Number Two: Love is the ultimate goal of the other graces. The whole reason why God gives to us faith
and hope is so that we would be filled with love, love toward Him and love toward one another. In 1 Timothy 1, Paul
writes,
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But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.3
This is the only reason why we teach God’s truth in the Gospel. It is so we would love one God and love one another.
Paul would write, in Galatians 5,
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For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”4
Faith and hope are given to us by God so that we would love God and love one another. They are the means that move
us toward the ends and the end is always greater than the mean. If one is sick and in need of medicine and the doctor
was able to give medicine, and they became well, which is greater the health or the medicine. One might say the
whole point of the medicine is to lead toward health, so, of course, health is greater than the medicine because the end
is greater than the mean.
3
4
New American Standard Bible (NASB)
Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 22:39
But, God tells us, faith, hope, and love abide, but the only reason why we have faith and hope is because they are
medicines to be applied to our soul so that we can love and that is why love is the greatest grace.
Reason Number Three: Love is eternal. There will be a day in which we will not need faith because we will see
God. All of the spiritual realities will be seen with our own eyes. There will be a day when we will not need hope
because all of God’s promises will be fully realized.
But, love? Love endures forever and ever. We will exercise love toward one another and toward God for all of
eternity. Love is eternal and love never ends.
Reason Number Four: Love does not depend upon its object for excellence. Faith, to be of value, must rest in a
worthy object. It is no virtue to walk in faith upon a weak bridge or, in faith, to fly in an unsafe plane. This would be a
bad faith and a worthless faith. Faith’s quality shines only in reference to the trustworthiness of its object.
For instance, faith has no value if we place faith in false gods. Furthermore, hope’s value, likewise, rests in the quality
of its object. Biblical hope does not connect us to empty promises, but it connects us to promises which are sure.
Hoping in sin’s promise is a worthless kind of hope. Precious hope in God, and not in our self or in other people, is
valuable.
Faith and hope depend upon the object they are directed toward for their excellence. Love, however, is totally
different. Love can rest upon a totally unworthy object and still shine with infinite value. God loves sinners. The
object is totally unmerited and totally unworthy of such love, yet, love retains its excellence. It is not dependent upon
the trustworthiness or merit of its object. In fact, it shines brighter in its brilliance. It is set upon objects that are
unworthy. Now remain these three, faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.
We read further, in 1 Corinthians 14:1, “Pursue love.” We are to chase after it and that is my prayer for us, that we
would chase after love, because if we do not chase after love nothing else we chase after, as a church or as individuals,
will matter.
Let me set before us, as I close, some of the principles we have learned about love in our study of this awesome
chapter. These are principles that have challenged me and encouraged me. First, remember the Christian life is not a
performance to earn Jesus’ love. The response of Jesus’ love for us begins with the Gospel.
Second, remember love is the sum of the Christian faith. It is the ultimate end.
Third, the first measure of any Christian’s walk with God is the measure of our love for other believers. It does not
matter how much we pray or how much we know the Bible or how often our quiet time is or how much we serve. If
we do not love the measure of our walk with God falls way short.
Fourth, bad things happen in the church when we value lesser treasures more than we value greater ones, and the
greatest of these is love.
How can we possibly attain such love? Here are four truths about love. First, love is the product of God's Spirit at
work in us, overcoming the selfish desires of our flesh. We pursue love, not by trying harder, but by humbling our self
before God, confessing our sin of a lack of love, looking to Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith to provide us
with His love and His Holy Spirit to empower us to love.
Second, love is our most powerful apologetic to convince the Gospel of Jesus is true. Beloved, we want the world to
change, do we not? Don’t we see the world as being broken? The church has the only answer for that.
What can we do? Certainly, we can proclaim the Gospel, but before that, if that will have any impact upon the church,
we must love one another. If there are brothers and sister in the local church each of us has a hard time loving, we are
“x-ing” out any possibility of this church family of the ability to proclaim the Gospel in power. If the world does not
see how much we love one another, then our proclamation of the Gospel will fall hollow and hypocritical. It will be
mocked rather than listened to.
Third, love for other church members is not the only thing that matters to God, but without love nothing else we do
matters to God.
Finally, God is glorified in a church where members open their hearts to one another regardless of past sins and past
hurts and past failures.
May God be glorified in Bethany Baptist Church this day and throughout the rest of time.