These words of the Apostle Paul, often referred to as “the love passage”, are trotted out most often these days at weddings. With a reader, dressed in their best tearing up to the point that they trip over every fifth word, followed by a pastor spending 10 minutes on a homily explaining the depths to which this passage will impact the happy couple as they begin this new chapter in their lives together. It is a beautiful usage of the passage to be sure but it is also taking it rather far out of context. You can really get a feeling for this when looking at the chapters surrounding it.

To begin, in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul spends the chapter painting a particularly unflattering picture of marriage. To his understanding, Jesus was going to return any day so why bother getting married, divorced or anything else that would change your life status. Surely that would just distract you from the work you should be doing to build the Kingdom of Heaven. As such, unless not making these changes in your life would cause you to fall into the clutches of sin, then it is better to instead keep your eye on the prize. This understanding does change as Paul grows older and other writers come onto the scene who realize that the church should make ready for the long haul, but 1 Corinthians is a rather early letter so this apocalyptic understanding of Paul is still very much so front and center in it. So from this passage alone, we can take away that “the love chapter” was not written by Paul for the benefit of newlyweds. It is not that they shouldn’t benefit from it, but instead just that it was not written for them.

So then, who was it written for? We can begin to answer that by next turning to the second half of 1 Corinthians 11. This is a passage that most Christians have heard on more than one occasion. At MEMC, we read verses 23-26 every time we have communion, a practice common in many denominations and traditions. But these verses are themselves only a part of a larger section that seeks to spell out and solve a problem that the Corinthian church was having with the Lord’s Supper. In those days, Communion was observed as a whole meal where believers of the church ate together. The problem was that some people were showing up to the meal early and hogging the food, leaving little for those who came later. Those who were not on time were most likely to be those who had little control over how they spent their day, that is people who were more likely to be from the lower rungs of society. In this passage, Paul confronts this problem among the church by essentially telling the early eaters to ‘cut that out.’

1 Corinthians 12 is also a famous passage in its own right. From it, we learn about the gifts of the Spirit for the benefit of the church. Some are gifted by the Spirit to be leaders. Some to be administrators. Some to speak in tongues and others to prophesy. The list found here is by no means meant to be thought of as exhaustive but as the passage goes on we begin to get the feeling that Paul is writing this to address yet another issue the church seems to be having; that of some people’s heads getting a bit too big for their shoulders due to their receiving what they would think of as the “premium gifts”. We get this feeling because the second half of the passage is spent making sure everyone reading the letter knows that no matter which giftings you may have, all are equally important to the life and mission of the church. None make for their recipients to be above or below anyone else.

Finally, let’s look at 1 Corinthians 14. There, after all the eloquence found in the love chapter, the topic of Spiritual Gifts once again arises, particularly that of tongues and prophesying. It would seem that in the church of Corinth, there were people who had these gifts that chose to use them in such a way as to railroad the gatherings that the church was holding, Making themselves the focal point of the service, by talking over anyone else who tried to get a word in edgewise. To these people, Paul lays out the purpose of the charismatic gifts: they should not be for the benefit of oneself, but instead the benefit of the Church as a whole. Either to edify those inside or to change the hearts and minds of those outside of the doors.

So what do these three passages tell us about the Love Chapter? Well, what they together paint for us is a picture of a church that has a real problem with its congregants doing seemingly “Christian things” in a way that, a) benefits themselves before others, b) causes them to think of themselves as more important than those around them, and c) makes them the focal point of the church instead of being an equal member of it working together to spread the good news of Christ to the world. This is the picture Paul paints for us, only to put the Love Chapter right in the centre of it.

So look at 1 Corinthians 13 again. What does it have to say that addresses this mess? Note how it begins. “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. 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. 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.” The three problems we noted in the chapters surrounding 1 Corinthians 13; the solution to all of them is right here.

Do you act selfishly, taking for yourself, and in doing so hurting those worse off than you? Do you think of your own giftings and abilities as making you more important than those around you? Do you make yourself the centre of attention at the expense of the church as a whole and its mission to the world?

If this is you, then you need to learn how to love others. How to live for others with all that you are. Because until you do, to those around you and to Christ himself, you will have nothing. You will be only a clanging cymbal; a loudly pious, but ultimately selfish hypocrite.

What 1 Corinthians 13 is about, first and foremost, is learning how to act as Christians. All of us are important members of the body of Christ, and we are all gifted in our own ways. What the love passage is about is teaching us how we are to live out those giftings - live out our lives - for the benefit of the church. How do you know you are living as you should as a Christian? Well, you are using your gifts, no matter what they may be, in a way that shows love for those around you. Forget to do that, forget to love, and you aren’t living for the benefit of the Church anymore, you are acting for your own good. You are falling into the same sinful trap as the Corinthians. Do not do this. There is nothing down this path for you.

Instead, live in this way. If you are gifted as a leader, lead in patience and kindness. If you are gifted as an administrator, do not be envious. If you are an evangelist do not be boastful. If you are gifted with tongues do not be proud or seek to dishonour others. If you are wise, then do not be self-seeking or easily angered. If you are a teacher, keep no record of wrongs. And if you are a healer, do not delight in evil but rejoice with the truth. As a Christian, no matter who you are, you are to live in a way that always protects, always trusts, always hopes and always perseveres. Why? Because you are to live above all things in a way that shows that you care for those around you as Christ cares for you, even when it is painfully hard to do so. “You Christians,” Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13, “are to live a life of love.”

Following the pandemic, I daresay we may feel that we are living in an era in which the Church as a whole has some serious problems when it comes to showing love. All too often we hear stories on the news and from around us in which either the Church as a whole or individual congregations and Christians who claim to stand representative act in ways in which they take for themselves first while others go without, place themselves above those around them, or make themselves the focal point instead of the God of Love, Jesus Christ, that we have been called to act on behalf of. I wonder, would the Apostle Paul were he alive today, write to us with the same advice as he did the church in Corinth? Would he see our problem as being the same? That we have forgotten to care. Forgotten to love?

The time has come to change this. To repent as we need to and encourage other believers around us, no matter who they may be, to do the same. The time has come to work to be known for our ability to care for others both in and outside of the Church as Christ cares for us, again. We clammer for renewal and revival, but until we take this step as the Spirit leads us, it will not find us. The time has come to work to love others both inside and outside of the Church, as the Apostle Paul teaches in the Love Chapter, again.