The bottom line for spiritual maturity is love, according to 1 Corinthians 13. But what is real love? Have you noticed that many of the songs we listen to are about love? Most movies on the big screen offers some kind of primary or secondary romantic plotline. Most TV shows portray a love interest. Most novels—thriller, mystery, or contemporary romance— weave a love story into the mix. Most Country & Western songs seem to be about a love found or lost (usually lost, along with the house, horse, boat, and dog). Our culture is infatuated with real love. Why? Because we know down deep that we need it.
As Christians, we’ve seen that the devil loves to play word games. Taking many of our key words, like love, he changes their definitions. When we let him do this, these words lose their power. I can think of all kinds of ways the enemy has done this in our culture—even in church culture. Worship has become about music that creates feelings rather than about surrender and praise to God. Leadership has become about dictatorship or politics or giving people what they want rather than what God says they need. The church has become a building rather than a body of believers. And love has become a feeling.
Typically, even in the church, when people say they love something, they mean they feel fondness for a person, place, or thing that makes them happy. They get a strong feeling of longing or excitement. They love something because there’s big perceived benefit. They love another person because that person is kind, funny, or treats them well—ultimately makes them feel good about themselves. But is that all love is? What if you love somebody and he lets you down? Or a person stops being all you hoped she would be? Or a person never lives up to your expectations? What then?
The answer from many Christians, unfortunately, does not sound much different from the answer of non-Christians. When the feelings die, they tell me something like, “I just don’t love him anymore.” Or “I love her, but I am not in love with her.” They relish telling me God wants them to be happy and love just shouldn’t be that hard, so they are moving on to find their true soul mate. Paul closes the loop on the subject of love in 1 Corinthians 13. Remember, he made it clear that maturity is more than knowing the Word, more than understanding the mysteries of faith, more than the giftings of preaching or speaking in tongues of angels or men. It’s even more than a commitment to Christ that may lead to martyrdom. Without love it all means little. But notice the direction Paul takes next. He defines love. Why? Because the definition had been stolen by the enemy. The world has corrupted love—our most important ingredient for relationship.
Paul defines and describes the real thing in 1 Corinthians 13:4–7: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Notice he tells us that love is something, and there’s no mention that love is a feeling. Now, I am not saying love does not come with feelings at times, but to limit love to a feeling is a big mistake biblically. Real love as God defines it is a choice that leads to actions described in the Corinthians passage. For the most part, we Christians have done a good job at understanding this kind of biblically defined love when we think about God’s love toward us. John 3:16 starts out, “God so loved the world that he gave.” Romans 5 talks about how God loved us even while we were enemies (vv. 6–11).
We can see that God is love and He asks us to love like He loves. Agapaō is a benevolent love—the kind of love that is filled with mercy and forgiveness. God’s love is a grace-giving love that looks past our faults when we are in Christ. I am so glad that our God continues to pour grace into our lives as I constantly struggle to be all He saved me to be. He did not give me a one-time deposit of grace but keeps pouring into my life.
At the same time, many like to use the Scriptures meant for the church context only for the marriage context, and I think this is a huge mistake. First Corinthians 13, which is read at many marriage ceremonies and may be important for marriage, is about the church according to the writer—Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit. Often we forget that relationship in the church is to be so close that it can be termed family. So many people who are deemed mature fail to have the kind of relationships described here with anyone other than their spouse and thus completely miss the intent of these passages. We are called to weave the 1 Corinthians 13 kind of love into our relationships with other believers.
Some in the faith have done a good job of teaching that we are to love others in the same way God loves us. Christian love must be agapao love—a wildly selfless, unconditional sort of love that Jesus modeled for us when He laid down His life. As an act of the will, we give other people what they need rather than what they deserve. We love people regardless of their lovability; we love people because Jesus commanded us to love people. This is good and God-honoring, and definitely part of what it means to follow Jesus.
Jesus wants us to love everyone. He also wants us to be in relationship with others. Sometimes Christians mistakenly think that if we simply love people through our actions (like being polite, kind, and generous), then we are relational people, but that’s not necessarily the case. We need to move beyond loving everyone at arm’s length, so to speak, to being people in relationship—even if that’s hard.
Our call is to “do life” with others, and as we journey the road together, we not only learn to love others, but we allow them to really know and love us too. When I say a person needs to be known, I mean they need others to know their real struggles and potential weaknesses that can be exploited by the enemy. It means they have people they can be honest with when they are struggling. We all struggle in many ways, and our inner world of the thought life is where the battle is won or lost. This battle is not to be fought alone.
The word Gospel means good news – and in the Bible it is referring to the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ. The kind of relationships God is calling us too is also good news.
The truth is, we need a group of people who can journey the real road of life with us. We need to both love these people and be in relationship with them, for this gets at the heart of love’s totality. We need to love others, and we also need to let them love us back, as God’s Word makes it clear that His answer to prayer for strength often comes through other believers. That’s what relationship is about.
When we trust others, we find that we are not the only ones who have a battle going on between our ears. When we bring our internal battle into the light, we find grace—God speaks grace into our lives through others. The gift of mercy is given to us through real friends. The gift of wisdom is given because another can see the forest for the trees when we cannot.
Chains are broken and strongholds are destroyed when we have real relationship.
The gift of mercy is given to us through real friends. The gift of wisdom is given because another can see the forest for the trees when we cannot. Chains are broken and strongholds are destroyed when we have real relationship. Share on X
You can read more on this topic in these books
The Power of Together by Jim Putman
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