Agape Love - Part 4
1 Corinthians 13v13
15th July 2022
We finish our study of agape love with the famous words of the last verse of 1 Corinthians Chapter 13:
1 Corinthians 13v13
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
When all that is unimportant has been stripped away, when a Christian is in a prison or a hospital bed, or friendless or destitute, as Paul sometimes was, what's left? What does a Christian still have? If the musical instruments, and the central heating, and the coffee, and our cars and even our bank accounts and our homes were taken away, what would we still have?
I'm not saying any of that is going to happen, although we will probably be in hospital at some time. I'm saying there are some things that no-one can take away from us, and those things are the fundamentals of who we now are. We will always have faith, hope and love. And compared to these, nothing else matters.
Some Christians more-or-less forget about these things, and try to live like non-Christians, but we're not very good at it. Because God's saved and adopted us, the Holy Spirit lives in us, something inside us will always love Jesus, no matter how much we try to turn our back on Him. That's who we are now.
We Christians are people of faith
God has given us – as a free gift – the ability to understand and believe that Jesus Christ is God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, that Jesus came to earth, lived a sinless life, was crucified to pay for our wrongdoing, and rose from the dead. God has given us faith that He is good, that the Bible is true, that we're forgiven, that we'll live with Him for ever, first on earth and then in heaven. God has given us faith that His ways are better than the world's ways, His ethics are the right ethics. God has given us faith that He is faithful, and will keep His promises, that His wisdom and His power are available to us now, on earth.
This is your gift from God. This faith will always be with you.
We are people of hope
God has given us hope – a sure and certain conviction that He'll never stop loving us, 100% confidence that life after death is not only certain but that, for we who believe in Jesus, it will be infinitely better than life on earth.
He's also given us hope that we can be better people, that the Holy Spirit will continue to work in us to help us to put our sin to death, and to grow in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
He's given us hope that our lives on earth can be better than they are today, that He can heal our emotional wounds, and set us free to be the people He made us to be. He can heal our relationships. He can heal our bodies. Many of us have experienced this healing, and God will continue to heal us, body, soul and spirit, until the day He chooses to take us home to heaven to be with Him. Heaven, not earth, is our real home.
He's given us hope that our churches can prosper and grow, as we reach out into the community around us with the wonderful Gospel of Peace through faith in Jesus's redeeming sacrifice. He enables us to believe that, small and weak as we are, we can rely on God's Holy Spirit for all the power we need to tell people about Jesus and see them born again into His wonderful kingdom.
He's given us hope that our loved ones, who perhaps don't yet know Jesus, can come to the realisation that Jesus really is alive, really is Lord and Saviour, really does love them, really is ready and willing to forgive them.
This is your gift from God. This hope will always be with you.
We are people of agape love
All people, from the nicest to the most evil, have some love in them. But agape love comes from God, and is only given to Christian people. This isn't an arrogant statement. We never earned the gift of agape love. We often neglect it, or cover it up with selfishness and sin. We're not proud to have agape love in our hearts. We're aware (I hope) of the responsibility that comes with it. We're called to love God the way He loves us, to love each other the way God loves us, and to love the people around us so much that we make huge sacrifices of time and money to try to help them understand who Jesus is and what He's done for them.
Before I met Jesus, I loved my parents. I loved my friends (though not very much). I loved football and music. But I never knew unselfish love, the love that was willing to sacrifice myself for others. When I understood that Jesus has given everything for me, laying down His very life, when I gave my life to God and accepted the forgiveness that Jesus had won for me on the cross, when God baptised me in the Holy Spirit, I found agape love beginning to grow in my heart. This is not to my credit at all. It's the gift of God. But it means that obedience to God, and salvation for the people around me, are the most important things in my life. God did that.
This is your gift from God. This agape love will always be with you.
Faith will come to an end. One day we'll see Jesus for ourselves, face to face. We won't need to believe the teaching about Him. We'll see for ourselves. One day, we'll see the marks in His hands and side, that He willingly suffered to save us from ourselves.
Hope will come to an end. All that God has ordained for the church on earth will come to pass. You and I, and every person who was ever saved through faith in the broken body and blood of Christ, will stand before His throne on the Day of Judgement. And we'll be invited to enter God's new kingdom, to live there in bliss for ever and ever. It's not too good to be true. It is true!
One day, faith and hope will no longer be necessary. Right now, they're very necessary. And agape love will never end but will be ours for eternity.