Defining Love - Himalayan Heights – July 14 Readings: 1 Corinthians 13:4-6 – Living Love

1 Corinthians 13: God's Love inUs

All Scripture is God-breathed and useful, but there are some Scriptures that we can consider the Himalayan mountaintops of the Bible. In the next few months, we will be looking at a series of great texts that inspire and move us - the "Himalayan Heights" of God's Word.

Today's Reading:  1 Corinthians 13:4-6 

We all need love. We all want love. It is a basic human desire. Paul took a little-used word - agape - and infused it with new meaning. It signifies the love of God, a love that initiates, that seeks, and that acts for the good of the other.

We will spend 7 days focusing on 13 short verses this week, but if you will learn and inculcate this into your life, it will revolutionize how you live. Learn what God's love is all about and how to live in God's love in a sinful world.

If I speak human or angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give away all my possessions, and if I give over my body in order to boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, 5 is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs. 6 Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put aside childish things. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, as I am fully known. 13 Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love—but the greatest of these is love.

Through the Bible Readings: Ezra 9-10, Acts 13:13–34, Psalm 82, Proverbs 17:14–16

If you wish to read through the Bible in a year, follow these readings. 

Devotional:   Defining Love  

What is love? Ask 20 people and you will get 25 answers. Most of them will have to do with a feeling you get about someone else, how someone makes you feel. If you analyze those 25 definitions of love, you will likely find that most of them are self-focused. How I feel. What he or she does to me. Our views of love are sotted with self.

God's love is something completely different. You've probably heard someone talk about three kinds of love based on three biblical words for love in the Greek. Unfortunately, that is just not supported in the Greek. There is one word, though, that is used commonly to describe the love of God that should dominate the lives of believers - agape. It was an uncommon Greek word which the NT writers gave a completely new meaning.

God is love, John tells us, and his actions toward us are the ultimate definition of love. He gave his Son to die for our sins. Think about that. God sacrificed his Son for us. What love. Jesus came to earth willingly and lived for us, died for us, and rose to give us new life. He came to seek and to save what was lost. The love of God and the love of Jesus Christ serves to define biblical love.

R.C.H. Lenski said, "Cure selfishness and you have just replanted the Garden of Eden." The opposite of love is not hate, but selfishness. Love is denying self, sacrificing self, giving up one's rights to seek the spiritual or physical good of another person.

In the verses 4-8, we will find the definition of agape love. Each of these words is a verb, an action. Love is what you do, a choice you make to act a certain way, regardless of how to you fell. I can be angry, and act in love. I can be hurt, and act in love. Whatever my feelings, I can choose to act in love. In these verses, we will see two things love is (patient and kind), and then 8 things that love is not (to summarize, love is not selfish, mean, or hurtful).  We will look at those tomorrow. Then in verse 7-8, we will see four things love always does (bears, believes, hopes, endures) and one thing love never does (fail).

These qualities, these actions, are basically a description of the life of Christ. He defined love and we must live in love. As we look at these items, we must ask ourselves, do we reflect the love of Christ or are we living selfish lives?

Father, may my life reflect the love that you demonstrated to us in Christ. 

Think and Pray:

What is your definition of love?
Think through your life and relationships - are they marked by love or selfishness?
Do you choose what is right and loving or live by your feelings?