909 - Love is the Greatest
Friends: Understanding God’s love is perhaps life’s greatest mystery and humanity’s greatest gift. The Bible tells us so. See the column below. Have a great week! Blessings, Bob
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Spirituality Column #909
April 16,
2024
Common
Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Love is
the Greatest
By Bob Walters
“And now
these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” –
1 Corinthians 13:13
This verse, 1
Cointhians 13:13, is the one that hooked me my first day in church.
Russ Blowers
was preaching – September 2, 2001 – on his 50th anniversary of tending
the flock at East 91st Street Christian Church in Indianapolis. I
was an unbeliever somehow in church (sitting in the back row), and Russ said,
approximately:
“We learn
faith from the past, we have hope in the future, but we have love in the
present.” Learning later that C.S. Lewis
wrote, “… the present is where eternity touches time” (The Screwtape Letters),
the idea, well, the reality, that God is Love, God is eternal, and God
stepped into the present in the form of his Son Jesus Christ, solved Russ’s
words and put my esteem of love’s stature in theology at the head of the line.
There are dozens
of personal, corollary stories (rabbit trails, my wife calls them) that could
stretch the above three paragraphs into days of self-reflection, but I recently
learned something new – a brilliant perspective – on all that 1 Corinthians 13
says about love with a nearly perfect blending of Paul’s “fruits of the Spirit”
in Galatians 5:22-23.
First
Corinthians 13:4-8 says “Love is patient, kind, does not envy, does not
boast, is not proud, does not dishonor others, is not self-seeking, not easily
angered, keeps no records of wrong, does not delight in evil, rejoices in
truth, and always protects, trusts, hopes, and perseveres.”
Galatians
5:22-23 says, “the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
My friend
Craig Streett, at a recent E91 Mustard Seed Bible class, shared the following handwritten
card stuffed in his Bible from a lesson long ago. Its precis was this: Love is the chief and
true fruit of the Spirit, and all other fruits flow from love.
Note: this
doesn’t divide the fruits, but we must never divide love, because God is love
and we mustn’t divide God. But what
about Father, Son, Spirit?” My advice
is to consider the math problem of the Holy Trinity – 3 in 1, 1 in 3 – as
multiplication, i.e., 1x1x1=1, that gives us a loving community of one, not a divided
crowd of three.
So, without
division, notice how these two “truth” and “fruit” passages of Paul’s sync up
pretty well when love takes the lead over all fruits of the Spirit. Here’s the
note:
“The fruit of the Spirit is love …
1.
Joy is love’s strength.
2.
Peace is love’s security.
3.
Longsuffering is love’s patience.
4.
Kindness is love’s conduct.
5.
Goodness is love’s character.
6.
Faithfulness is love’s confidence.
7.
Gentleness is love’s humility.
8.
Self-control is love’s victory.
Against such as these there is no law.”
When we see love’s
fruits in our lives, we have love’s gifts in our hearts.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) believes this list originated with BibleProject.com. And ... next week we'll review Dave Faust's new book "Not Too Old, Turning your Later Years into Greater Years." Available at Amazon and CollegePress. E91 has planned a book signing session with Dave Sunday, April 28, where books will also be available.
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