love

We've looked at 1 Corinthians 13 a couple of times in the last week at various groups at church, by chance and in different contexts.

It's the most famous passage in the Bible about love, hands down [see below to read it].

It seems to me that it gets used and referred to so often at, for example, weddings, that we tend to link it only with romantic love [particularly verses 4-8a]. Like it's describing the kind of love we should have for our other half.

Obviously that is completely true.

But it's not just talking about a romantic love. The word for this kind of love that was used in the Greek, was agape. It is the same word agape that is used in John 3:16-

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.

It's the same love we refer to when we read that "God is love." [1 John 4:8]

There are a lot of complex historic, semantic and theological issues that go behind all of this, but just as a surface observation, it was refreshing, enlightening and in a good sense challenging (the Bible does tend to be so) to read the passage again without a rom-com scenario playing out in my head.

Enjoy.

1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 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. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.