1 Corinthians 16:13-14 The Message
13-14 Keep your eyes open, hold tight to your convictions, give it all you’ve got, be resolute, and love without stopping.
The Word of God for the Children of God.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
Throughout this letter to the Corinthians, there are practical admonitions and little encouragements for the saints in Corinth to live out lives that honor God.
Paul wanted all the believers there to grow in their Christian faith and to walk in the spirit of power and truth.
He tackled things that caused division within the church and exposed the foolishness of human wisdom, by contrasting it with the wisdom of God.
Throughout the letter he touched on marriage and related matters, and laid down powerful principles of godly conduct, he discussed the importance of the Lord’s Supper, and the varieties of spiritual gifts and the supremacy of love.
Paul reminds the Corinthian believers of our blessed hope in Christ and opens our understanding to the resurrection of the dead and the certainty of our own resurrection, because by the power of God, Jesus Christ had rose from the dead.
It is as he draws his letter to a close, that Paul offers his concluding exhortation, which is beneficial, eminently practical, for ALL those who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus and to grow in grace and in a knowledge of our Lord and Savior.
“Keep your eyes open,” “Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong,” he urges, “and always let EVERYTHING that you do be done in love.”
Perhaps, this last exhortation from Paul to the saints in Corinth umbrellas all his other directives and instructions, for when all that we say and do and think, is carried out in LOVE, it embraces every other lesson Paul taught.
“Let ALL that you do be done in love.”
“Love without stopping.”
It may be a simple instruction to admonish and encourage the Church but it is one of the greatest challenges with which any of us can be presented, for it is the Holy Spirit of God Who calls us to live as Christ lived, to love as Christ loved.
Such divine love is an impossibility in our own limited, human strength.
It is only as the power of the Holy Spirit is given absolute sway to carry out His work within, that this impossible command can be carried out before our eyes.
It is as we abide in Christ and He in us, that we begin to learn the lesson of love – godly love – sacrificial love.
It is as we die to self in all things and live for Christ alone that we begin to be fashioned and formed into the lovely image of Christ.
It is as we surrender to the power of God through the resurrection, permit the power of the Holy Spirit to carry out His good work in and through our lives, we can become conduits of power through whom His love can flow out unto others.
And in this final chapter of Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth, he here exhorts both believers and unbelievers in the city, “to let all be done in love.”
What a sublimely simple instruction to the Body of Christ the Church of today.
Yet too what a profound depth of truth is contained within this simply stated, uncomplicated and divine directive.
Paul’s heart aches for all the body of believers everywhere and for all time, as Jesus’ heart ached for all God’s children in His much beloved city of Jerusalem.
Matthew 23:37-39 The Message
37-39 “Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Murderer of prophets! Killer of the ones who brought you God’s news! How often I’ve ached to embrace your children, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you wouldn’t let me. And now you’re so desolate, nothing but a ghost town. What is there left to say? Only this: I’m out of here soon. The next time you see me you’ll say, ‘Oh, God has blessed him! He’s come, bringing God’s rule!’”
Perhaps it is time for the 21st century “interpretation” of the Body of Christ to embrace that unrelenting unstoppable power of the heartaches Paul and Jesus both undoubtedly felt as they uttered their words to those biblical communities.
Can anyone genuinely underestimate the highest intensity of Paul’s heartache?
1 Corinthians 13 English Standard Version
The Way of Love
13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 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,[a] but have not love, I gain nothing.
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;[b] 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.
Love is the fulfilling of the Law, and only as we truly allow the love of Christ to saturate our being, as by our baptism, we die to self to live for Christ and walk in the power of the spirit and truth, can this Christlike characteristic be executed.
This simple statement is sufficiently elementary even for the youngest child to understand, and yet so lofty that man’s combined wisdom is unable to scratch the surface of its true meaning, or plumb the depth of its wider significance.
Jeremiah 23:28-29 The Message
28-29 “You prophets who do nothing but dream—
go ahead and tell your silly dreams.
But you prophets who have a message from me—
tell it truly and faithfully.
What does straw have in common with wheat?
Nothing else is like God’s Decree.
Isn’t my Message like fire?” God’s Decree.
“Isn’t it like a sledgehammer busting a rock?
It stings hard the conscience of every man.
Sledge hammers our hearts of hardest stone which our sins have encased.
Goes straight to the marrow of our bones, convicts the attitudes of humanity.
It challenges the godliest saint and forever condemns the human race.
But this unreachable goal is the impossible command given to all believers.
It not only applies to the natural loving kinship within the inner nucleus of beloved companions and best-loved family members, but the beggar in the street, thieving politicians, the accusatorial religionist, the enemy at the gate, scoffers of our faith, and those that despise, reject, hate, persecute, and kill us.
Every action and every attitude,
every word and every work,
each thought of the heart,
each decision of the mind, even the motives that influence the choices we make,
Acts 14:14-15 The Message
14-15 When Barnabas and Paul finally realized what was going on, they stopped them. Waving their arms, they interrupted the parade, calling out, “What do you think you’re doing! We’re not gods! We are men just like you, and we’re here to bring you the Message, to persuade you to abandon these silly god-superstitions and embrace God himself, the living God. We don’t make God; he makes us, and all of this—sky, earth, sea, and everything in them.
needs to be bathed in the powerful purifying gaze of the Holy Spirit, washed in the fountain of God’s divine love and covered with the unconditional grace of Christ, Who for His unstoppable love of His church went to the cross willingly – so that like Him, everything which we do, may be done through HIM – in LOVE.
In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,
Let us Pray,
Loving Father, Author of my Life, Caretaker of my Soul, I confess that in my own strength, it is impossible for me to carry out all that I say and do in love, but I know that it is possible in the strength and power of the Spirit of love. You have promised to pour Your love through me to others, so that I may love others as Christ loved me. Use me to be a vessel of love in the lives of all I meet today, knowing that it is Christ that loves through me and not me myself. In Jesus’ name I pray, AMEN.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
Loving God, Living God, Loving Hope, Living Hope, Loving Living Life His Way! "Many things are possible for the person who has hope. Even more is possible for the person who has faith. And still more is possible for the person who knows how to love. But everything is possible for the person who practices all three virtues." - Brother Lawrence (1605-1691), Practicing the Presence of God (1692). 