Unchanging Love - Himalayan Heights – July 19 Readings: 1 Corinthians 13:13 – The Greatest Is 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 13:13 

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: Nehemiah 9-10, Acts 16:1–24, Psalm 84:8–12, Proverbs17:27–28

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

Devotional: Unchanging Love     

We live in a world that is transitory and temporary. We do not expect anything to last. But God is faithful and he is the same yesterday, today and forever. He does not change and he produces qualities in our lives that are enduring and faithful.

This week, we have examined 1 Corinthians 13, which speaks of the life of love. Biblical love is about sacrificing ourselves for others, about putting the needs of others ahead of our own, about kindness and gentleness all sorts of wonderful qualities. Paul ends this treatise with a summary verse, one that reminds us of the truth that began the chapter - love is essential to everything we do.

In verse 13, he mentions three great Christian virtues, eternal values that should drive our lives. Faith is an absolute trust in God for everything, living in dependence on him. We are not to be independent or self-driven, but to trust and obey our Lord. Hope is living with an eye to the future, keeping our minds and hearts focused on the blessings of glory that await us after we get through this difficult world. It is time-travel, if you will, living today on the basis of blessings that will be yours eternally. Love is God's primary characteristic - thinking of others ahead of yourself, seeking to be a blessing before demanding that others bless you.

All of these are great, eternal, and important. But as Paul told us in verses 1-3 that everything we do without love is meaningless and worthless, he reminds us here that of all the virtues, this is the greatest. It is who God is and who we must strive to be.

The greatest of these is love, and this must be our greatest aspiration - to live daily in the love of Christ.

Father, help me to live out your love daily, to banish selfishness and pride and all those works of my flesh. 

Think and Pray:

Consider again all that we've learned about love this week.
Are you living in love - which is the greatest of these - or are you living in the flesh?