Loving the Way Jesus Loves E-Book

Philip Graham Ryken

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 339

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Most people are familiar with the "love chapter" of the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, yet Phil Ryken has something fresh to say. Drawing on the life and ministry of Jesus to illustrate what love is and isn't, Ryken brings a unique perspective to this commonly quoted passage.  Loving the Way Jesus Loves successfully integrates biblical teaching, photography, chapter study guides, and a popular-level writing style–all of which will help you understand the profound love of Christ more deeply and, in turn, learn to love more deeply in response. 

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“As usual, Phil Ryken hides his deep scholarship behind readable prose. But the footnotes reveal that he draws on some of the most penetrating scholarly treatments of St. Paul’s text. He combines all that with pastoral experience and insight. The result is a masterful, accessible exposition of this great chapter.”

Tim Keller, Pastor, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City; bestselling author, The Reason for God

“It would be hard to think of a single topic more talked about, sung about, and celebrated than love. Yet—partly because of its familiarity—love is typically taken for granted and often misconstrued by the very people who talk about it most. And let’s face it: that is true even in the church. We are indebted to Phil Ryken for this wonderfully fresh, biblical analysis of what genuine love is like when we see it in perfect Christ-like purity. At once both simple and profound, this book will almost certainly challenge your presuppositions about love and help you see authentic love in a whole new light.”

John MacArthur, Pastor-Teacher, Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, California

“Through his unique design for this book, Ryken explicates Paul’s Love Chapter through snapshots of Jesus and the disciples. He thereby immerses us in the luxuriant love of Jesus and heartens us to pass it on. Let this book envelop you altogether in the fullness of the triune God’s exuberant love!”

Marva J. Dawn, Teaching Fellow in Spiritual Theology, Regent College; author, Truly the Community

“Phil Ryken is not only a scholar; he is a magnificent expositor of God’s Word. We already benefit from his massive commentaries on so many books of the Bible, and now he turns his attention, both as scholar and as pastor, to the message of 1 Corinthians 13. This is a gift to the entire church.”

R. Albert Mohler Jr., President, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“So much of following Jesus is a matter of being reminded of what we once knew. I knew that he loved me first and that his loving lay at the heart of my small ability to love others. I knew once that when my love ran out, his remained and would refill to overflowing. I knew these things, but had largely forgotten them. I will always be grateful to Phil Ryken for this profound reminder.”

Michael Card, musician; Bible teacher; author, A Better Freedom

“Jesus said, ‘By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’ But what does it mean to love others? By looking at the love of Jesus in the light of 1 Corinthians 13, Phil Ryken gives us the biblical answer. Loving the Way Jesus Loves is surely one of the most heart-searching books I have ever read. This book is a must read for all who want to grow in Christian love.”

Jerry Bridges, author, The Pursuit of Holiness

“Based on careful study, steeped in Scripture, and very aware of the world we live in and of the experiences people go through, Ryken shows how we can love with the kind of love that God demonstrated to us. These qualities have made Ryken a favorite author of mine and of my wife.”

Ajith Fernando, Teaching Director, Youth for Christ, Sri Lanka

“Phil Ryken majors on what is truly major when he focuses on the central attribute that is supposed to distinguish those who follow Jesus—that we love one another. And the definition of love he sets forth doesn’t float abstractly in thin air but is solidly embodied by Jesus himself. I can’t think of a more timely book than this one or a message the church needs more desperately than the call to love as Jesus loved. Phil has done us all a favor by shepherding us to pursue the centerpiece of our call to be like Jesus.”

Carolyn Custis James, President, Synergy Women’s Network; author, When Life and Beliefs Collide

“Another outstanding contribution by Phil Ryken that challenges me to the core of my being as a follower of Christ. If indeed it is all about love—God’s love for a lost and hurting world—then the question is, as a Christ follower, how well am I imitating that love? This insightful look at the Love Chapter will make us think again if we dare to think, I am loving like Christ.”

Emery Lindsay, Senior Bishop, Chairman of the Board, Church of Christ (Holiness) USA

“There are many expositions of 1 Corinthians 13, but few show how God’s love in Christ Jesus is the very best exposition and truest embodiment of love. Unpacking the Love Chapter through this prism, Ryken lends great clarity to Paul’s meditation on love and shows how such love drives us back to renewed adoration of Christ. Reflecting on how Christ, by his life and death, makes 1 Corinthians 13 leap from the page, drives home the frequent lovelessness of our own lives, strips bare all notions of love that are little more than sentimental twaddle, and provides a concrete robustness to love that is part and parcel of trusting and following Christ.”

D. A. Carson, Research Professor of New Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

“Loving the Way Jesus Loves is deeply instructive of the nature of true Christian love, the extent of Jesus’s own expressions of that love, and the ways in which we, his followers, are to show forth his love from our lives. This study honors Christ in two ways: by putting him on display as the great lover that he is, and by calling us to emulate our Lord in living increasingly the life of love that he expressed. Meditation on the love of Christ and on loving like Jesus—that’s what this book encourages with great insight and depth.”

Bruce Ware, Professor of Christian Theology, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“Love is a word that many tend to use in a way that makes it lose its potency. It is heightened, though, when Jesus—the ultimate lover of God and man—is reductionistically and impotently presented as a nonconfrontational, passive lover. However, peering into this work by Dr. Ryken we find the multifaceted love of Jesus displayed as the background for 1 Corinthians 13. It is also gloriously displayed most clearly in Jesus’s finished work on the cross. The love of God as presented in this book will challenge and enliven all who read it to display it in ways that supersede the stereotypes of love that pervade our world.”

Eric Mason, Lead Pastor, Epiphany Fellowship, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

“There are two books that have indelibly impacted and changed the course of my life. The first book came to me in college, as I was searching for the answers to life. Basic Christianity by John Stott helped me to know Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Now Loving the Way Jesus Loves is teaching me how to live a victorious Christian life until, by the grace of God, I am called home. It is not only about knowing the love of God in Christ but about living the love of God. It is the most magnificent exposition on the love of God I have ever read. Read it yourself to see and to engage in the struggle to live by the grace of God. I believe it will change the world around us.”

I. Henry Koh, Coordinator of Korean Ministries, Mission to North America, Presbyterian Church in America

“First Corinthians 13 is surely one of the most familiar yet widely misunderstood chapters in the entire Bible. Earnestly voiced at countless weddings, we nod along appreciatively without considering how Paul’s words might have far deeper purpose than simply matrimonial blessing. And that is exactly what Ryken has given the church—a fresh look at this challenging passage, freed from marital constraint, and laid out dramatically alongside the life of Christ. He reveals surprisingly deep insights for every believer, not simply those in rented tuxes and white gowns.”

Phil Vischer, creator, VeggieTales and What’s in the Bible?; author, Me, Myself & Bob

“Hereis a book I will be urging all our church’s small groups to study in the near future. We know that Jesus gave us the mandate to make disciples of all nations, and we say that means we must learn from Jesus so that we might become like him. But how do we do that? Dr. Ryken has taken the Bible’s great chapter on love and shown us what love looks like practically in the life of Jesus. The book is biblical and practical, convicting and encouraging. I recommend it highly to all who long to become complete in Christ.”

Greg Waybright, Senior Pastor, Lake Avenue Church, Pasadena, California

OTHER CROSSWAY BOOKS BY PHIL RYKEN:

King Solomon: The Temptations of Money, Sex, and Power (2011)

Ecclesiastes: Why Everything Matters, Preaching the Word Commentary (2010)

The Prayer of Our Lord (2007)

Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory, Preaching the Word Commentary (2005)

Loving the Way Jesus Loves

Copyright © 2012 by Philip Graham Ryken

Published by Crossway

1300 Crescent Street

Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Josh Dennis

Cover image: Faceout Studio

First printing 2012

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture references marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-2479-0 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-2480-6 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-2481-3 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-2484-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ryken, Philip Graham, 1966–

L oving the way Jesus loves / Phil Ryken.

p. cm.

I ncludes bibliographical references and index.

I SBN 978-1-4335-2479-0 (tp)

1 . Love—Religious aspects—Christianity—Biblical teaching. 2. Bible.

N.T. Corinthians, 1st, XIII—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title.

BS2675.6.L6R96      2012

241'.677—dc23                                                  2011025565

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

To Lisa Maxwell

my one, first, and only true love

and

To Jesus Christ

CONTENTS

Preface

A Note about the Photographs

1

Nothing without Love

2

Love That Is Better than Life

3

Love Is Not Irritable

4

Love’s Holy Joy

5

Love Waits

6

Love’s Full Extent

7

Love Hopes

8

Love Is Not Self-Seeking

9

Love Bears All Things

10

Love Trusts

11

Love Forgives

12

Love Never Fails

Study Guide

Notes

PREFACE

“To write on the love of God is the Christian theologian’s supreme privilege and supreme responsibility.” Thus says Kevin Vanhoozer, who teaches theology at Wheaton College. In addition to a privilege and a responsibility, to write on the love of God is also this: a theologian’s supreme humiliation.

Presumably, only a lover is able to write about love. Yet if there is one area of my life where I know that I fall short of the character of Christ, it is having true love for God and my neighbor. Nevertheless, my sometimes loveless heart is compelled to testify to the truth of God’s love in Jesus Christ.

This book started with nearly the last sermon series that I preached at Philadelphia’s Tenth Presbyterian Church. The heartfelt, Christlike love of that congregation helped sustain my ministry there for fifteen years. Yet for all the love that we shared as a church family, we still found that we had seemingly infinite room to grow in the love of God. Studying 1 Corinthians 13 in a Christ-centered way helped us—as I hope it will help you—to learn how to love the way Jesus loves.

As a demonstration of their love, several friends and colleagues helped to improve this book as it made its way to publication. Lynn Cohick, David Collins, Lois Denier, Tom Schwanda, and LaTonya Taylor all read the manuscript, making needed corrections and suggesting numerous ways to strengthen the exposition and application of the biblical text. Robert Polen checked facts and offered administrative assistance. Nancy Ryken Taylor prepared the study questions. Marilee Melvin entered the final revisions. Lydia Brownback and other friends at Crossway edited the book and shepherded it to the press. These labors of love will help you see the love of Jesus more clearly in the pages of this book.

As I was studying 1 Corinthians 13, I read a testimony from World Harvest Mission that expressed my own need for more of the love of Jesus. A missionary wrote:

Upon returning home from a day of relief supply distribution, I joined my three-year-old daughter in the kitchen. She was drawing a picture of our family. I noticed what appeared to be me standing somewhat at a distance from the rest of the family wearing what was clearly a frown. “Is that Daddy?” I asked. “Yes,” came the sheepish reply. “Why am I frowning?” She said, “Daddy, you never smile anymore.”

The man proceeded to ask for help. “Pray for me,” he wrote. “I want to apply this message of God’s love to this cold, hard heart.” The missionary’s prayer is my prayer, too, and I hope you will make it your prayer as you read this book: “Lord Jesus, apply the gospel of your love to my cold, hard heart.”

Phil Ryken

Wheaton College

A NOTE ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHS

In the spring of 2010, Gene Schmidt brought an exciting art installation to the streets of Philadelphia. Entitled “Lovetown PA” (http://www.lovetownpa.com), the project involved setting up wooden stencils in various settings around the city, including Love Park, the home of Robert Indiana’s iconic “Love” sculpture. These stencils spelled out the complete text of 1 Corinthians 13 in the New International Version.

Before coming to Philadelphia, Gene had undertaken another ambitious project called “Manhattan Measure.” Like some biblical prophet, Gene had measured the length and the breadth of Manhattan with nearly thirty thousand bright red yardsticks, laid out end to end and then collected again. Each individually numbered yardstick was used only once. When they were stacked together and displayed in a gallery, the yardsticks formed a large, three-dimensional, blood-red cross.

I was preaching at Philadelphia’s Tenth Presbyterian Church when Gene brought his wooden stencils to the City of Brotherly Love. I had recently finished a series of sermons on 1 Corinthians 13—the messages that form the basis for this book. Naturally, I was interested to learn that an artist was bringing the full text of “The Love Chapter” to life on the streets of our city, just as I had been praying that it would come to life in the hearts of our congregation.

Somewhere along the way, as I began to prepare Loving the Way Jesus Loves for publication, it occurred to me that we might have an opportunity to collaborate. I knew that Gene’s artwork had been documented by another talented New York artist, Alicia Hansen. So I began to dream that some of these beautiful images could appear on the cover of this book, and maybe on the pages inside.

Alicia’s beautiful photographs of “Lovetown PA” provide permanent documentation of a temporary art installation. In showing Gene Schmitt quietly going about his work, they situate the artist in urban landscapes that display the splendor and misery of a great city. They also give fresh power to the words of the biblical text by placing them in juxtaposition with the world that we live in today.

I am deeply grateful to both Gene Schmidt and Alicia Hansen for sharing their work, allowing it to grace these pages. I am equally grateful to Crossway for sharing our vision to illustrate the written Word with visual images. My hope is that Alicia’s photographs of Gene’s artwork will capture the imagination of everyone who reads this book and open windows to a fresh experience of the love of God.

1 NOTHING WITHOUT LOVE

If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

1 CORINTHIANS 13:3

And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

MARK 10:21

There is nothing I need more in my life than more of the love of Jesus. I need more of his love for my wife—the woman God has called me to serve until death. I need more of his love for my children and the rest of my extended family. I need more of his love for the church, including the spiritual brothers and sisters it is sometimes hard for me to love. I need more of his love for my neighbors who still need to hear the gospel, and for all the lost and the lonely people who are close to the heart of God even when they are far from my thoughts.

Everywhere I go, and in every relationship I have in life, I need more of the love of Jesus. The place where I need it the most is in my relationship with God himself, the Lover of my soul. What about you? Are you loving the way Jesus loves? Or do you need more of his love in your life—more love for God and for other people?

THE LOVE CHAPTER

One of the first places people look for love in the Bible is 1 Corinthians 13. It is one of the most famous passages in Scripture, mainly because it is read so often at weddings. Some people call it “the Love Chapter,” which is appropriate because it mentions love (agape) explicitly and implicitly more than a dozen times.

First Corinthians 13 is the Bible’s most complete portrait of love. A literature professor would call it an encomium, which is “a formal or high-flown expression of praise.”1 The Love Chapter is a love song for love, in which the apostle Paul establishes the necessity of love (vv. 1–3), sketches the character of love (vv. 4–7), and celebrates the permanence of love (vv. 8–13) as the greatest of all God’s gifts.

As familiar as it is, this chapter is not understood nearly as well as it ought to be. For one thing, people usually read it out of context. Admittedly, they do sometimes begin reading at the end of 1 Corin-thians 12:31, where Paul says, “I will show you a still more excellent way.” This is a good place to begin, because chapter 13 is “the more excellent way” that the apostle had in mind. But there is a wider context to consider—a context that many readers miss. As Gordon Fee writes in his commentary, “The love affair with this love chapter has also allowed it to be read regularly apart from its context, which does not make it less true but causes one to miss too much.”2

One way to make sure we do not miss what God has for us in 1 Corinthians 13 is to remember who the Corinthians were and what God said to them in this letter. If there was one thing the Corinthians needed, it was more of the love of Jesus. The church was sharply divided over theology, practice, social class, and spiritual gifts. Some said they followed Paul. Others followed Peter or Apollos—“my apostle is better than your apostle!” Then there were those—and this was the ultimate form of spiritual one-upmanship—who claimed to follow Christ. There were similar conflicts about ministry, with various Corinthians claiming that their charismatic gifts were the be-all and end-all of Christianity—“my ministry is more important than your ministry!” This was the issue in chapter 12, where the apostle reminded them that although the church is made of many parts, we all belong to one body.

So when Paul wrote about love in chapter 13, he was not trying to give people something nice to read at weddings. After all, the love he writes about here is not eros (the romantic love of desire), but agape (the selfless love of brothers and sisters in Christ). Instead of preparing people for marriage, then, the apostle was trying desperately to show a church full of self-centered Christians that there is a better way to live—not just on your wedding day but every day for the rest of your life. The Love Chapter is not for lovers, primarily, but for all the loveless people in the church who think that their way of talking about God, or worshiping God, or serving God, or giving to God is better than everyone else’s.

Here is another mistake that many people make: we tend to read 1 Corinthians 13 as an encouraging, feel-good Bible passage full of happy thoughts about love. Instead, I find the passage to be almost terrifying, because it sets a standard for love I know I could never meet.

None of us lives with this kind of love, and there is an easy way to prove it: start reading with verse 4 and insert your own name into the passage every time you see the word “love.” For example: “Phil is patient and kind; Phil does not envy or boast; he is not arrogant or rude. He does not insist on his own way; he is not irritable or resentful; he does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Phil bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Phil never fails.” Do the same thing for yourself and you will know how I feel: not very loving at all.

THE NECESSITY OF LOVE

The problem is that love ought to be the distinguishing characteristic of our Christianity. Love is the virtue, said Jonathan Edwards, that is “more insisted on” than any other virtue in the New Testament.3 Paul certainly insists on it in 1 Corinthians 13:1–3, where he makes a logical argument proving the necessity of love. Love is so essential that we are nothing without it.

According to the canons of ancient literature, an encomium usually begins with a comparison in which the author takes what he wants to praise and compares it to something else. That is very nearly what the apostle Paul does in 1 Corinthians 13: he takes love and makes a series of conditional comparisons to show how necessary love is. Each comparison has something to do with spiritual gifts or accomplishments—things that talented and virtuous Christians either have or do. The point, according to Charles Hodge, is that “love is superior to all extraordinary gifts.”4

Paul starts with speaking in tongues, which is a gift that some Corinthians had and some Corinthians didn’t. But even if they did have the gift, they were nothing without love: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (v. 1).

To “speak in the tongues of men” is to communicate spiritual truth through the miraculous gift of utterance in a human language. To “speak in the tongues of angels” is an even greater gift, for it is to speak the very language of heaven. Paul does not minimize that gift of celestial eloquence, but he does say that it is nothing without love.

Some scholars believe that when Paul spoke about a “noisy gong” he was referring to the hollow bronze jars that were used as resonating chambers in ancient theaters—a Greek and Roman system for the amplification of sound.5 The point then would be that without love, our words produce only “an empty sound coming out of a hollow, lifeless vessel.”6 Others believe that Paul was referring to the gongs that were used to worship pagan deities, like the goddess Cybele.7 If so, then he is saying that without love we are merely pagans. The image in this verse always reminds me of The Gong Show, a television program from the 1970s on which contestants were judged on their ability to sing or dance. If the judges didn’t like a particular act, they would stand up and strike a huge gong to end the performance. Gongs can produce a lot of noise, but they do not make very much music.

Cymbals do make music, when used the right way. But if someone keeps banging a cymbal, the noise is deafening. No matter how gifted we are, this is what we become if we do not use our gifts in a loving way. No one can hear the gospel from the life of a loveless Christian. People just hear “bong, bong, bong, clang, clang, clang!” To bring the metaphor up to date, “If I network for the gospel but have not love, I am only a noisy blog or a meaningless tweet.”8

In verse 2 Paul starts listing other gifts, many of which were discussed back in chapter 12. He mentions prophecy: “if I have prophetic powers.” Someone with this gift can foretell the future, or has supernatural insight to interpret what is happening in the world from God’s point of view. Paul mentions the gift of understanding “all mysteries and all knowledge.” The word “all” is emphatic. The person who possesses this spiritual gift has a comprehensive grasp of the great mysteries of God, including his plans for the future, like the mysteries that the prophet Daniel revealed for King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. By “knowledge,” the apostle means spiritual knowledge of biblical truth—something the human mind can know only by the revelation of the Holy Spirit.

The Corinthians possessed gifts of knowledge and understanding, as Paul has said several times in this letter (e.g., 1:5; 8:1). But someone who has such gifts is nothing without love. A man may have mystical insight; a woman may know the deep mysteries of God. But these prophetic and intellectual gifts are nothing without love. So Paul says, “If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge . . . but have not love, I am nothing” (13:2). No one cares how much we know unless they also know how much we care.

Or consider the gift of absolute faith. Paul says, “If I . . . have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (v. 2). The apostle is referring here not to the saving faith by which every believer first trusts in Christ for salvation but to the extraordinary gift that some believers have to trust God for what seems to be impossible, especially in the work of his church and the growth of his kingdom. Gennadius of Constantinople claimed that “by faith, Paul does not mean the common and universal faith of believers, but the spiritual gift of faith.”9 Anthony Thiselton takes what the apostle calls “all faith” and describes it as “an especially robust, infectious, bold, trustful faith . . . that performs a special task within a community faced with seemingly insuperable problems.”10 Such faith has the power to move mountains, as Jesus told his disciples. In other words, by the grace of God, faith is able to accomplish the impossible. But even that kind of faith is nothing without love.

In verse 3 Paul moves from the gifts we have to the good works we perform. Here his argument comes to its climax: “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” Both of these examples are exceptional. Not many people sell all their earthly possessions and give 100 percent of the proceeds to the poor. Not many people suffer martyrdom through a killing act of self-sacrifice. These are two of the greatest things anyone could ever do for Christ. Surely people who do them deserve some sort of reward! Yet even the greatest good works can be done without love. Instead, they may be done to feed our spiritual pride or to get something from God. Yet not even the terrible pains of a flaming martyrdom are enough. Unless we are motivated by genuine love for God, it all counts for nothing. His love is the only thing that matters.

Understand that when Paul gives us this list of things that are nothing without love, he is really including all of our spiritual gifts and so-called accomplishments. No matter what God has given us and no matter what we have done for God, it means nothing without love. God may grant us the gift of helping or hospitality, of teaching or administration. It may be our privilege to hold a position of spiritual leadership, serving as an elder or a deacon in the church. God may allow us to serve as a missionary or evangelist or servant to the poor. And yet, shockingly, it is possible to use our gifts for ministry without having love in our hearts for anyone except ourselves. We are so selfish that it is even possible for us to do something that looks like it is for someone else when it is really for us—to enhance our own reputation or feed our satisfaction with ourselves.

Paul is not denying the value of spiritual gifts or downplaying the importance of ministry in the church. Praise God for prophets and martyrs! But he is saying that every spiritual gift must be used in a loving way. What matters most is not how gifted we are but how loving we are. As Jonathan Edwards said, “Whatever is done or suffered, yet if the heart is withheld from God, there is nothing really given to him.”11

Understand that this message is for people in the church. It is not for unbelievers primarily, but for gifted Christians who are actively serving in ministry. Rather than congratulating ourselves for all the things we do for God, or looking down on people who don’t serve God the way we do, or thinking that we have it right and everyone else has it wrong, God is calling us to do everything for love. Otherwise, it is all for nothing.

THE MAN WHO THOUGHT HE KNEW HOW TO LOVE

As I read the opening verses of 1 Corinthians 13, I have to wonder what hope there is for me. I have not conversed with angels, as far as I know, or moved any mountains, or suffered unto death. I have done much less—very little, actually—and even what I did was done with a lot less love than I should have done it.

Yet I know there is hope for loveless sinners in the gospel. One good place to see this hope is in a story that Mark told about Jesus. Whenever we talk about love, we always have to go back to Jesus. The love in the Love Chapter is really his love. So as we study each phrase in each verse of 1 Corinthians 13, we will turn again and again to the story of Jesus and his love. We will never learn how to love by working it up from our own hearts but only by having more of Jesus in our lives. The Scripture says, “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Since this is true, the only way for us to become more loving is to have more of the love of Jesus, as we meet him in the gospel.

Mark 10 tells the story of a man Jesus met on the road to Jerusalem. People usually call him “the rich young man,” or “the rich young ruler,” but for reasons that will become clear in a moment, we could also call him “the man who thought he knew how to love.”

Whatever we call him, the man was interested in eternal life and assumed there was something he could do to gain it. So he ran up to Jesus, knelt before him, and asked this question: “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (v. 17). With these words, the man was raising the most important of all spiritual issues: eternal life. We are all destined to die, so if there is such a thing as eternal life, it is worth every effort to gain it. The problem, though, is that the man was making a faulty assumption. He assumed that salvation comes by doing rather than by believing. So he asked Jesus what he had to do to get eternal life.

This assumption is faulty because none of us is good enough to be saved by the good things we do. We have all done too many of the wrong things and not enough of the right things. Furthermore, even the right things we have done were done to some degree in the wrong way or for the wrong reason. So Jesus said to the man, “No one is good except God alone” (v. 18). No one is good: not the young man who was talking to Jesus, not you, not me, not anyone. Only God is perfectly good.

To prove this, Jesus rehearsed the standard of God’s righteousness. “You know the commandments,” he said to the man: “Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother” (v. 19). If these commandments sound familiar, it is because they come from the Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses on the mountain—his eternal law.

I want to consider these commandments from a slightly different perspective, however. These are not just the laws of God; they also display the love that God demands. Each commandment requires us to love our neighbor. When God says, “Do not murder,” he is telling us to love our neighbors by protecting their lives. When he says, “Do not commit adultery,” he is telling us to love people by safeguarding their sexual purity. And so forth. Preserving property, honoring someone’s reputation or position in life—these are all ways to show love. We could take all the commandments that Jesus mentions and summarize them like this: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” In fact, this is exactly the way that Jesus did summarize them in the Gospel of Matthew, when he said that the first great commandment is to love God with all your heart and the second great commandment is to love your neighbor.

So this was the answer Jesus gave the rich young man when he asked what he had to do to inherit eternal life. “I’ll tell you what you have to do,” Jesus said. “If you want to be saved by doing, all you have to do is love your neighbor.”

“Well, that’s easy enough!” the man thought to himself. “I’ve never killed anyone, or slept with another man’s wife, or committed grand theft chariot.” What he said out loud was this: “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth” (Mark 10:20). If all it takes to gain eternal life is to avoid breaking the big commandments, the young man thought that he had done all of that. Jesus wasn’t telling him anything that he didn’t know already. He had learned it all in Sabbath school!

But understand what the man was really saying. If these laws show the love that God demands, then he was claiming that he knew how to love, that he had enough love in his heart already.

Is this what you would claim? Would you stand before God and say, “I’ve been loving people all my life”? We would never come right out and say it, of course, at least not in so many words, yet that is the way many of us operate. Most of the time, most of us tend to believe that we do a pretty good job of loving other people. So we rarely repent of our loveless hearts. We fail to make learning to love like Jesus one of our highest priorities. We forget to pray that the Holy Spirit would make us better lovers.

This was all true of the rich young man. Jesus showed him that he was not the lover he thought he was, and he did so by giving him a simple, straightforward test. “You lack one thing,” Jesus said, conceding for the moment that the man really did keep God’s commandments: “Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (v. 21).

This was the generosity test for love. The man claimed that he had never defrauded anyone. Now Jesus was calling his bluff: “You’ve never defrauded anyone? Really? Let’s put that to the test. What about the poor? As fellow human beings, as people made in the very image of God, they have a claim on your charity. Now, do you love them enough to give away what you have so that they can have what they need?” In demanding charity for the poor, Jesus was testing the man’s love for his neighbor. At the same time, he was also testing the man’s love for God. Was he still claiming his right to be the lord of his own life? Or would he relinquish all of his own resources and trust Jesus only?

Sadly, the man failed this test. The Gospel of Mark tells us that he was “disheartened by the saying” and “went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions” (v. 22). “Disheartened” is not an exact translation (the Greek word stugnasas indicates shock or dismay), but it tells the spiritual truth. This man’s heart was on display. Although he thought he knew how to love, it turned out that he loved money more than he loved Jesus and more than he loved other people.

THE LOVING SAVIOR

My purpose in telling this story is partly to convince us that we do not love much more than this man did. In fact, if Jesus gave us the same demand—to give everything we have to the poor—most of us would quickly come up with a long list of reasons why we shouldn’t. Not everyone is called to sell all their possessions, we would say. This man may have been told to get rid of everything he had, but his calling is not our calling. We have to provide for our families and take care of our own basic needs, not to mention give our money to support other kinds of kingdom work—not just feeding the poor.

All of these objections are reasonable enough, but the real issue for most of us is that we always want to place limits on our love. We are ready to give, but only when we have something left over. We are willing to care as long as it isn’t too inconvenient. We are able to love provided that people love us back.

Really, we ought to admit that we do not love the way Jesus loves. We may be nothing without love, but unfortunately we are nothing like the lovers God wants us to be. The apostle Paul was willing to admit this. Notice that in 1 Corinthians 13 he uses the first person singular. Rather than saying to the Corinthians, “If you speak in the tongues of men and angels, and have prophetic powers, and so forth,” he says, “If I do these things without love, I am nothing.” The apostle is not simply scolding here but including himself and bearing witness to what he had learned about his own sinful heart. Paul had all of these spiritual gifts: tongues, prophecy, knowledge, and faith. He had given away his possessions and offered his own body unto death. Yet he knew it was all nothing and that he himself was nothing without love.

Sadly, unlike Paul the rich young man in the Gospel of Mark was not ready to confess the lovelessness of his sinful heart. This brings us to what may be the most remarkable detail in this passage. In verse 20 the rich young man boasted that he had kept all of God’s laws for loving his neighbor. The Bible says that when the man said this, Jesus looked at him and “loved him” (v. 21).