The Church in the Mirror

Nobody wants to be thought of as a noisy nuisance, but scripture tells us that without Christlike love, that's exactly what we are. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg explains how God's people benefit when love prevails, in a message titled The Church in the Mirror. It's part of a new series called Love in the Local Church. We've come to probably the one chapter in the whole of 1 Corinthians that, if you like, the average churchgoer may be familiar with. Indeed, even people who are unfamiliar with church or who regard themselves as distinctly unfamiliar with the Bible may in actuality know something of it and may be able to quote from 1 Corinthians 13 without actually knowing just where they're quoting from. Because this chapter is one of the best known and arguably one of the most loved passages in the whole of the New Testament. It is a passage of singular beauty and of power. It comprises a quite magnificent song of Christian love.

In reading about it this past week, I discovered that one individual wanted to argue that it was probably the greatest, strongest, deepest thing that Paul ever wrote. Now, to the degree that that is true, or even isn't true, it perhaps explains why 1 Corinthians 13 pops up everywhere. It pops up on calendars, on plaques, on little tracts that are given out of memorial services. You can find it on paper towels.

You can find it on the front of wedding bulletins. You can just about find 1 Corinthians 13 anywhere at all. I think that that is where most of us have encountered 1 Corinthians 13.

Some of us are even guilty of employing it in that way. And it is very, very important that to whatever degree that is our thinking on the subject, you disengage it and put a clean disk in, so that you can reformat on the basis of our study here this evening. In order to apply 1 Corinthians 13 to Cleveland, you have first to go to Corinth. This was written to Corinth. It was written to an express situation in Corinth. And we cannot simply apply it to Cleveland in any old way we choose—not if we're seeking to do it correctly— without first understanding why it was written to Corinth.

And why was it written to Corinth? Well, those of us who've been studying along will know that it is set firmly within the framework of two things—two factors more than any other. Factor number one, division.

Factor number two, confusion. It's within the framework of a local church that faces the potential of being splintered on the basis of all kinds of allegiances and all kinds of expressions of spiritual giftedness, and it is a church that is marked by confusion in so many different realms. And Paul, as he's been answering question after question that has come to him from the environment of Corinth, reaches a point where he sets this magnificent chapter in between all that he's said in 12 and all that he's about to say in 14. So when once we begin to look at it through the eyes of the local church, we realize that it becomes dynamite. Because what it does is it uncovers all of our weaknesses. It shows up all of my gaps, it shows up all of our failures, it shows up all of our sins in the Christian community. It may at first surprise us that it would be in this chapter that we've used so often to make us feel good about ourselves and discover that it actually confronts us, cuts us down to size, humbles us, and begins to show us what really matters to God.

Now, since it's all about love, let's make sure that we define our terms. The word which is used here is not the word eros, nor is it the word phileo, nor is it the word storge, but it is actually the word agape. Some of you know this well.

Others, it's news. Therefore, be patient when you know it, and be kind to those around you. The word agape is rare in Greek literature. It's common in the Scriptures. In actual fact, the New Testament writers imported it because none of the other words that were existent in Greek for love adequately conveyed the nature of the love of God for men and women and therefore their love for one another. And so the writers, recognizing that God's love transcends all human ideas, all other expressions of love, employ this word agape to make sure that nobody confuses it with anything else at all. For certainly, love is one of the most devalued words of the English language, and it was a word that was represented in confused terms in the Greek language. This love of God, let me quote from Leon Morris, is a love for the utterly unworthy. It is a love which proceeds from a God who is himself love. It is a love lavished on others without a thought of whether they're worthy to receive it or not.

It proceeds, rather, from the nature of the lover than from any merit in the beloved. And it is this agape love which is basic to Christian character and therefore essential for the Christian community. The problem which existed in Corinth, and with this we're able to identify, lay in the fact that there was an absence of this kind of love.

What Paul was reemphasizing was what Jesus had made perfectly clear. John chapter 13, he gathers his disciples and he says to them, "'A new commandment I give you, love one another as I have loved you. So you must love one another. All men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.'" Now, in Corinth, it was to be the discovery and display of this kind of Christian love that would be the antidote to the selfishness which was being expressed. Because you'll remember, back in 1 Corinthians 12, there were a group of people with a superiority complex, those who were saying, I don't need anybody else around here.

And there were those with an inferiority complex saying, because I'm not him or because I'm not her, I don't matter around here. What is going to address that in human personality? What will make sure that there is cohesion and harmony and forward progress amongst the people of God? Well, says Paul, it is this. It is the nature of Christian love. Now, it's very, very important for us to realize—and I think I'm quoting John Stott in this phrase.

I've used it so many times, I wish it were my own. You've heard it before, but let me say it again. When we come to the love expressed here in 1 Corinthians 13, this love is a servant of the will, not a victim of the emotion. So, Don, let's get all messed up here. What Paul is writing about is not coziness, affection, predisposition on the basis of attraction. He is writing about a spiritual discipline. The very fact that that strikes as strange is one of the further indicators of the fact that we're not talking about what we are often talking about when we talk about love. The love that he is expressing here is vibrant, it is strong, it is not the capitulation to the lowest common denominator, it is not a lot of foulderall and silly talk and cuddling and coziness and assuming that as long as that is there, we have genuine Christian love in our fellowship.

All right, well then, let's look at this. Focusing on these first three verses, which is all that we'll have time to do tonight, we're going to discover that life in the Christian community, devoid of this love, is not just nothing, it's worse than nothing. The bottom line is this.

Let's summarize it, and then we'll discover it, and then we'll wrap it up. What Paul is saying is this. The most extravagant exercise and display of spiritual giftedness cannot compensate for the lack of love. That's a sobering thought. Especially when we have grown used to quantifying our viability and our place on the basis of our gifts.

And that's what was going on in Corinth. What gift do you have? Is your gift as good as mine? Are people as impressed with what you're able to do as with what I'm able to do? And so they were vying with one another, they were putting one another down, they were feeling a sense of isolation, and in that they were not unique. It happens in the church all the time. Let us understand that the kind of people God uses are ordinary people.

Ordinary people. That he makes extraordinary by his Spirit. Now, while the application may be difficult to accept, the instruction is not hard to understand. Paul makes three strong statements about the nature of things when love is absent. Here they are—precede, paragraphed, as it were, by myself, but I think you'll find they're here. The first one is this, Without love I am a noisy nuisance, nothing else. Without love I am a noisy nuisance. We already learned, back in chapter 8 and in verse 1, that love edifies. He said there that knowledge puffs up but that love builds up. So when we exercise spiritual gifts from a heart of love and within the framework of love, then it edifies God's people.

When love is lacking, the impact is negative. And so he says, Listen, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, all of my best show with that, he says, cannot be compared with the practice of love. Now, it seemed more than likely, given the context again, that his emphasis here is upon ecstatic speech. And very many times we've been in fellowships where a group of people who have come in, and they have made much of the fact that they, quote, speak in tongues, whatever they mean by that, and whatever that means to them in the public expression of things. As a result of that, they have introduced confusion and chaos amongst the people of God.

And the reason has been because they have not understood the necessity of love, and often, on the part of the recipients of such people, they neither have understood the necessity for love. So you have gifts minus love equals chaos. Now, not only ecstatic speech but also eloquent discourse can surely be included in this. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, you know, we may be very gifted with our tongues. We may be able to make cogent arguments. We may be able to speak helpfully to our colleagues and our neighbors about the things of Jesus.

But when love is missing, we might as well bang away on a gong or clang away on a cymbal. Now, the background to this is very straightforward. Again, you need to understand Corinth. The people in Corinth worshiped all kinds of things. You remember we spoke about the offering of sacrifices that had been offered to demons and so on. Many of them worshiped Dionysius, who was the god of nature, Cybele, the goddess of wild animals. And in their worship of these pagan deities, they used a thing called a chokos, which was a gong, a piece of copper, and a kymbalon, which was a cymbal, a single-toned instrument.

And they used to take these things in their pagan worship, and they banged on them to invoke the god or to drive away the demons or to rouse the worshippers. So, says Paul, you might as well sound out these unmelodious measures as utilized language devoid of love. Without love, you're a noisy nuisance. Secondly, without love, I am zero. I am zero. 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 have not love, I am nothing.

Zero. In the first instance, Paul addresses the significance of the absence of love within the framework of spiritual gifts. He says, when we exercise gifts without love, it is offensive to people. And so the biggest problem facing a local church, in terms of its effective witness, is not the absence of spiritual gifts.

It's always going to be the absence of love. Without love, we have evacuated our usefulness before the watching world, and we have evacuated our significance before God. Turn back just for a second to 1 Corinthians 3 and to verse 14.

Surely this is some kind of cross-reference, where he says, you know, if any man builds on this foundation, 1 Corinthians 3.12, using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hair, straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward.

If it is burned up, he will suffer loss. He himself will be saved, but only is one escaping through the flames. So everybody will have said, goodness gracious, what a wonderful fellow he was! What a lady she is! Oh, boy, they must be really heading for a big spot in the kingdom.

They must be way up there! Well, maybe. Maybe not. Because the test which God applies to our ministry, to our gifts, is the test of the motivation of our hearts. And some of us look at verse 1 and we say, Oh, well, that's good, I don't have a problem with verse 1. Therefore, I'm not a resounding gong, I'm not a clanging cymbal.

I don't have any of this ecstatic speech, or I'm not really that good at talking, and I don't like to talk very much. Well, what if you've got the gift of prophecy and you're really good at fathoming mysteries, and you don't have love? No matter how well it's received, there's nothing of real and lasting value. What about, he says, if you have insight and knowledge and ability to grasp the truth of God's Word without love, no matter how it is admired, how it is applauded?

It just is a zero. You see, the Corinthians clearly thought—this is a fundamental mistake made then and made now—that the possessors of certain gifts must inevitably be extremely important persons. But, says Paul, without love, not only are they unimportant, they amount to nothing. You see, when we look at ourselves in the mirror of comparison, whereby we look at the way that God has gifted us amongst one another, irrespective of which rung we believe ourselves to be on the ladder, there will be one or two below us and one or two above us, but we will be able to retain some measure of self-esteem and validity on the strength of our gifts. But what if our gifts don't mean anything?

What if they mean nothing? You see, God, as it were, is not driving up and down Aurora Road looking for churches with spires. He's not impressed with the numbers in the building.

He's not impressed with any of the considerations that we tend to focus on that give us validity and context in our world. He is judging it all, as he judged the Corinthian context, on the basis of one criterion—namely, the expression, the reality, the possession of genuine Christian love. Okay, you with me? Without love, I'm nothing more than a noisy nuisance. Without love, I am zero.

Thirdly and finally, without love, I can't make it. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Is Paul going up in these three verses?

He starts down here with tongues, he then goes on to mysteries and moving mountains and everything else, and then he hits the high spot and he says, Now for those of you who are into self-sacrifice, let me tell you what's going on. If with one great sweeping gesture you were to give away everything… Now, can you imagine that? We've read of it in Christian biography. We haven't done it. We may have approximated to it at some points in our lives, but most of us have never done it. And so says Paul, Imagine that for a moment you decided, As of this evening, we're going to empty all the accounts, we're going to sell all that we have, we're going to go somewhere, and we're going to give it all the way to the poor. Now, you would be headlines in the newspaper, you would be on talk shows if you played your cards correctly, and people would say, Now there is somebody—there's a real genuine Christian.

Because that's what people tell us. They say, Well, you know, a genuine Christian is somebody who doesn't have anything and who gives it all away, and since you're not giving away and since you've got it, you can't be a genuine Christian. Well, if we were to fall foul of that notion, and in one sweeping gesture give it all away, then we would have hit the bull's-eye, wouldn't we?

No, says Paul. Without love being the motive, it may be nothing more than an act of pomposity, an act of bravado, or even the response of a guilty conscience. Because on the basis of feeling guilty about what we've got, we could decide that the only way we could deal with the guilt is to give it all away. And so on the basis of guilt, we give it all away, and people have said, Goodness me, there's a wonderful person!

And God looks from him and says, That doesn't matter, a hill of beans. Because the motivation in the action was not love. It didn't prevail with God. It wouldn't avail us anything. Well then, what if we were to endure a martyr's death?

What if we were to die for our faith? Well, such activity could be nothing more than an expression of foolishness. It may even be an expression of selfishness, if it was not marked by love. One thing is needful, and nothing can make up for its lack. Well, what of us tonight? Some of us are cozying up to our gifts as a source of our significance and our security. We make a big noise. But we might be no use. Others of us find our worth and our value in our knowledge and in our influence. We ought to be careful. Others of us are relying on our sense of self-sacrifice. And yet we may be driven by pride or by fear, and we have a zero balance.

I have nothing else to say. Those are the first three verses. Three of the most challenging verses that I have read for some time. Applying it personally, one has to say that one may be well spoken of, abused, considered highly, given positions of opportunity and of influence, and in the eternal reckoning, get to heaven like a shipwrecked sailor.

Some pastors will end in heaven just like that. No matter that people were impressed, no matter that people got saved, no matter that gifts were effective, if there isn't love. And for a congregation upon whose ministry God has kept his hand, we need to remember that it is here by this great quantifier that he assesses the significance of all our giftedness. And if any of us say that we love God while at the same time hating our brothers or our sisters, then we make ourselves out to be less than truthful, and we diminish the ongoing development of God's plan and purpose in our lives.

Are my actions rooted in love? That's a question you and I have to continually ask ourselves as we seek to apply today's message for our lives. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. If you are a regular Truth for Life listener, you know we take our role to teach the Bible with clarity and relevance very seriously. And as a supplement to Alistair's studies on this program, we carefully and prayerfully recommend two resources each month that are designed to help you dive deeper into a topic and to grow in your faith.

When you support the mission of Truth for Life by becoming one of our monthly truth partners, both of these monthly resources are yours by request as our way of saying thank you for your ongoing financial partnership. The book we're recommending today is a book called An Ocean of Grace. This is a six-week devotional designed to help us focus our hearts on Jesus' death and resurrection as we prepare for Easter. In this book, An Ocean of Grace, we'll learn from short daily reflections that explore key elements of Jesus' redeeming work. The book draws from Scripture and from prayers and writings from well-known historical Christian authors. You'll find that these insights from believers from past generations will renew the way you think about the saving power of the cross. We'd love to send you a copy of the book An Ocean of Grace when you become a monthly truth partner. Your regular gift will help bring Truth for Life to listeners all around the world without any cost to hear or to share any of Alistair's messages. So you can sign up today and request your copy of An Ocean of Grace or request the devotional when you make a one-time donation. Visit truthforlife.org slash donate or you can also give us a call at 888-588-7884. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening. Hope you can join us again tomorrow as we continue our new series titled Love in the Local Church by studying the characteristics of Christian love. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.