The Greatest of These is LOVE :: 1 Corinthians 13
Now faith, hope, and love remain, the three of these. But the greatest of these is love.
What is love? Why is it that all we need is love? What does love have to do with it?
Our world throws this word around in all directions. Merriam-Webster online provides 14 different meanings for this word love. It is a strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties ... It is an attraction based on sexual desire ... an affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests ... a warm attachment ... and unselfishly loyal and benevolent concern. ... It is a god (the dictionary says with a lowercase g). It is an amorous episode. ... a sexual embrace ... and a score of zero in tennis.
As a transitive verb, it means to hold dear ... to feel a love’s passion, devotion, or tenderness for. ... It is to like or desire actively. And to thrive in.
In other words, we don’t have the foggiest idea of what love really is.
The Greek world in which Saint Paul lived was in many ways like our own. But it did not have 14 different meanings for the word love. It did have at least seven different words that get translated into English as love: Eros, which is romantic love; Philia, which is brotherly love; Ludus, which is flirtatious love; Storge, which is familial love; Philautia, which is self-love; Pragma, which is sensible love; and finally, Agape ... a LOVE we just don’t understand.
The greatest of these is LOVE.
I have to tell you ... here in my manuscript ... I wrote that last word in all capital letters. How else can I write it? There is no English word that translates ἀγάπη precisely. But it is the greatest of these.
The King James Version tried to express ἀγάπη with the word charity. That might have worked for the king, but charity means something different today. Charity carries the overtones of taking Christmas baskets to the poor. Charity implies imperfect justice. Charity sometimes even means patronizing.
ἀγάπη is infinitely warmer, far more personal, and permanent.
A better definition of the greatest of these is to realize that ἀγάπη goes beyond the natural attraction of romance or friendship or family or sensibility or communion. It comes only from God. Therefore, it has no substitute. That’s what Paul is getting at in our reading from 1 Corinthians 13.
If I speak in the tongues of men and the angels but have no ἀγάπη, I am a resounding [gong] or a [clanging] cymbal. If I have prophecy, and I know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to move mountains, but I have no ἀγάπη, I am nothing. And if dole out all of my [existing property] and give up my body in order that I am burned but have no ἀγάπη, I accomplish nothing (vv 1-3).
The message is loud and clear. There is no substitute for ἀγάπη. Knowledge, zeal, orthodoxy ... even faith and hope themselves ... are all nothing without ἀγάπη. That’s because there is no substitute for the Gospel.
In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul is working toward a more precise explanation of the Gospel. First, he outlines the characteristics of ἀγάπη love.
ἀγάπη is long-suffering. ἀγάπη is being kind. ἀγάπη is not zealous. It doesn’t [boast or praise] one’s self; it isn’t being proud; it isn’t indecent; it doesn’t seek itself; it isn’t irritable; it doesn’t reckon evil; it doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness, but it rejoices with the truth. It is all enduring, all trusting, all hoping, all abiding. ἀγάπη never falls (vv 4-7).
Prophecies, tongues, and knowledge will all pass away, Paul goes on. But not ἀγάπη. Feelings are fleeting. They come. They go. They pass away. But not ἀγάπη.
Without ἀγάπη ... we know nothing. We have nothing. We are nothing. But the steadfast love ... or I should say covenantal love ... of the Lord endures forever. The God of ἀγάπη can never break his promises.
This is what Prophet Hosea was getting at in his letter to the church. Therefore, behold, YHWH says through Hosea. ... I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in covenantal love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you will know the Lord.
It is only through ἀγάπη that you come to know God, so that no one can boast. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends.
So remember first and foremost that God loved us in this way: He sent his only begotten son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to be born to die ... for you. What kind of love is this? (LSB 542) You couldn’t go to God, so God loved you in this way: He came to you. Though you deserve death for your sin, God loved you in this way: He took your sin from you. He became sin for you. He upheld his promise and destroyed your sin in his body on the cross. Your sin suffered and died with Jesus on a cross. And because God is Just and the justifier of those who have faith in Christ, he raised Jesus from the dead. The author of life cannot die again. Thus you can now have the hope that you too will have eternal life.
This is the ἀγάπη love of God. This is the greatest of these. Now we truly can see how it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never falls.
Faith and hope are by nature imperfect because they mature into knowledge when the thing believed in or hoped for is reached. Love does not turn into something else. When it’s mature, it is still love because it never ends.
There is no greater love than this (Jn 15:13).
This is where God has been leading us this Advent season. The live it God in Christ has come. He is coming.
So now keep his commandments. Why? Because he lives in you and you in him. As you continue to abide in God’s love, return to your baptism, hear his absolution, and feast on the bread of life with the cup of salvation, enjoying the fruit of God’s love in Christ.
There is no greater love.