Sermon - Quinquagesima 2021 - 1 Cor. 13:1-13

             

            February  14th is known by us American’s as Valentine’s Day. It’s a day which celebrates romantic love through various acts of kindness, such as giving gifts or going on dates. It’s a healthy thing for husbands and wives to take a day, such as Valentine’s Day, and give thanks to God for granting to them a spouse to love and cherish.

That said, the actual man after whom this day is popularly named has nothing to do with romantic love whatsoever. Very little is known about St. Valentine, but we do know that he was a martyr who confessed Christ up until his dying breath, killed under Emperor Claudius II around 270 in Rome. According to tradition, Valentine was both a physician and a pastor, and the day he faced his martyrdom, he is said to have consoled the daughter of his jailer by writing her a note of encouragement.

Apparently, the young girl had gotten to know this godly man and was sad that he was to die. The note Valentine wrote wasn’t a romantic note, expressing his feelings for the girl, but a note proclaiming Christ’s love. Valentine wrote a note speaking of Jesus who had defeated death, so that those who die in Christ would live, including Valentine. Hence our custom of sending notes on Valentine’s Day. 

So I suppose you could say that Valentine’s Day is a day about love, however it’s a very different kind of love than what we first think. It’s a handy coincidence then that our Epistle is from 1 Corinthians 13, speaking of love. So what is love? “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

In other words, as Paul says elsewhere, “Love is the fulfilling of the Law.” To love others means to serve others. For us to learn what this really means and looks like, it’s necessary that we look to Him who loved us first. Afterall, “we love because He first loved us.” Jesus is He who fulfilled the law on our behalf. Jesus is He who loves us by serving us. 

See how God loves you in the person of Jesus! God the Father took His beloved Son and sent Him into our mire, sin, and misery and poured upon Him all of our guilt and weakness. In turn, He poured upon us all of His mercy, kindness, and love. He showered us with His great treasure of life and then He drowned our sins and filth in the sea of His goodness. He’s taken from us all of our poverty and filled us with the wealth of His righteousness! Our hearts are now filled with God’s boundless love!

Thus, your love is an outpouring of Christ’s love which dwells within you. Christian love is like a spring that wells up in your heart. “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Your love for others is founded in Christ’s love for you, which makes your love very different from the world’s love.

The world bases its love upon the attractiveness of the other.  So the young man loves the pretty girl because of her beauty. The rich man loves his money and possessions because of the pleasure of those riches. That kind of worldly love clings to its object because of the good of that object, but the love lasts only as long as the object continues to be good. Once the pretty girl loses her youth, so goes the love of the man and he finds another. Once the riches stop being pleasurable, the rich man ceases to love them and sells them for others.

But Christian love isn’t based upon the goodness and attractiveness of the object, rather Christian love springs forth from the well of God’s love which has been implanted in the heart. Christian love doesn’t love because the object is beautiful, but loves because of that fountain welling up within the heart which says “love your neighbor.” From this well love gushes forth abundantly!

This Christian love flows over both the good and the evil, both the pretty and the ugly, both the rich and the poor, both the friend and the foe! Thus the young man loves the girl not because of her youthful looks, but because of the love which dwells within his own heart. Whether she is young or old does not change the man’s love for her, because his love doesn’t come from her but from God who loves him. In fact, when the girl ages or should she become disabled, his love for her would only grow because her need for love would increase. In truth the Christian must love the foe more than the friend, because the foe is in greater need of God’s love.

The reason Christian love looks like this is because this is the way God loves us. God doesn’t love us because of our beauty and goodness, not because we’re such good friends and do so much for Him. It’s the opposite. God loves us because we’re ugly and evil, because we’re his enemies and work against Him. Because we are so poor and our sins are so great, God showers His love upon us through Christ so that we might be freed from our sins and become good like Him.

 This is the reason Christ went to Jerusalem and the cross: because He loves us. “He will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.” Jesus willingly went to Jerusalem, knowing full well the events about to unfold, out of love for us. No one took His life from Him, but He willingly laid it down for us. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”

Jesus illustrated this love for us when He healed the blind beggar. We are poor, blind, beggars with nothing to offer God in exchange for His mercy. But out of His marvelous love for us, He saves us with great expense to Himself, paying for our atonement with His own precious blood. This is God’s love for you. This love fills your hearts so that your cup overflows.

My dear friends in Christ, Christian love isn’t optional. So let us love not as the world does, with temporary self-serving acts of flattery to make us feel better. Let our love be genuine, flowing forth from God’s love. Let us love our neighbor like God loves us. Let us learn the commandments anew, and so love our neighbor anew. Indeed, love is the fulfillment of the law. When you live according to the commandments, you’re loving God and your neighbor. Not only loving in thought and word, but in deed and in truth.

This love is the simple outpouring fruit of faith, it’s the result of Christ loving us and filling us with His love. So for us to love others, let us first be filled with God’s love. Let us daily return to the font of the spring of eternal life by confessing our sins; there God’s love fills us. Let us weekly return to the altar from which we eat the feast of love. Let us always fill our hearts, minds, and ears with God’s Word, which is that greatest encouraging love note. 

May God love you, and God bless you.