You Can't Give What You Don't Have

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Everyone is familar with the "great love chapter," 1 Corinthians 13. Paul uses poetic language to drive home the fact that without love, even the most noble of feats is nothing. I was thinking about this passage, and I always read it from a performance oriented view; i.e., I took it to say that if I am not loving people, I am in dutch with God. The emphasis was always on my failure to love. This morning however, I realized that the emphasis is on what we possess-what we "have" or have not. This brought me to the realization that if I don't possess God's love for me personally, I can't love others; moreover, if God is love, we can easily replace the word love with God...see how this plays out in the opening verses: 1If I speak in the tongues[a] of men and of angels, but have not God, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not God, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,[b] but have not God, I gain nothing. You see, we can not separate the two. There is not love in the world without God. If God would cease to love us, He would no longer be God. If we do not have the love of God as our very own possession, we can not possibly love others. If God's commandment is that we love one another, how could it be that He would not love us unconditionally, eternally and consistently. I always get a kick out of legalists who give the idea that God will knock us into tomorrow if we misbehave, but demand that a wife stay with an abusive husband and love him "no matter what." This discrepancy comes from not understanding the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It presumes that somehow we can whip up love within ourselves-humanistic love is conditional, temporal, shortsuffering, and self-centered. God's love is unconditional, eternal, longsuffering, sacraficial and intelligent. We can have God..all of Him.God and His love are received, accepted and taken hold by faith, and it is expressed through us as God works in us.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Gosh William, you are becoming quite the expositor. I might become inspired to read the scriptures again. Or should I say ...Gosh God, using your conduit known as William, I am becoming inspired to see You in me and me in You.
April 11, 2008 at 10:40 AM
Anonymous said…
Funny thing, I was thinking about the same passage this week while having a bit of a conflict within. I was realizing that while I always have God's love I don't always remember or should I say know at the moment that I am secure in his love. When I don't remember who I am and how secure I am in his love, my motive is not to love others but to get love, I am totally selfish. When I remember who he has made me to be, what he has done for me that I couldn't do for myself, then and only then am I secure in knowing I'm loved. When I know that I'm loved then I can love others with that same God Love that he loved me with. The old selfishly motivated fake love only brings personal death and never satisfies that God given need for real love.
April 11, 2008 at 11:18 AM
Harriet said…
Oh, Bill, this is so fab as usual!! Just finished reading THE SHACK and you are SOOOO on target!!!! L&P, h.
April 11, 2008 at 5:14 PM
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