How do you know if someone is really a Christian? What evidence that proves it?
If you asked 10 different people, you might get 10 different answers.
Some might say, “You know someone’s a real Christian if they
pray for someone and actually heal them or prophecy about the future and have
it come true. That’s a real Christian.”
Others might say, “A real Christian reads their Bible and
knows what it all means. They can explain
how Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins. They are a real Christian
because they know Christian doctrine.”
Another person might argue, “No. It all comes down to faith. It is only by faith that a person is a real Christian.”
Yet another person might retort, “Yeah, but what about good works? People must do good and give to the poor and
help the needy. That shows they’re a
real Christian.”
Someone else would say, “Yeah but what about the martyrs? Someone who dies for their faith, surely that’s
undisputable evidence they are a real Christian—the best Christian of all.”
The members of the 1st Church of Corinth were arguing
about these things. In fact, some
were saying, “I’m a better Christian than you, because I can do this or I’ve done
that…”
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
1 If I could speak all the languages of
earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy
gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of
prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all
knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love
others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have
to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I
didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
So Paul says it’s not supernatural power, it’s not knowledge
of the Bible, it’s not doing good or being good, it’s not even dying as a martyr
for your faith that proves you’re a Christian. Paul says, it all comes down to love. Love is what proves you are truly a
Christian. When the love of God lives in
you and you love others, that’s proof you are a Christian.
But the kind of love we’re talking about is not necessarily the type of love the world talks about. So Paul goes on to explain what God’s love is like—the kind of love we are to have and show. And today, I want to finish our series on Paul’s words about love from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. Today, we learn that love endures forever.
4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
One of my church members, Kate Roberts, achieved a personal record at her cross country race this weekend in South Carolina. Cross country racing is an endurance sport. The runners push themselves to their physical limits racing long distances, competing as a team. They train their bodies everyday to endure the pain and strain of physical exhaustion from running 3 to 6 miles as fast as they can. I think Kate was able to run 3.1 miles in less than 20 minutes this weekend.
Endurance is the ability to withstand hardship or adversity. How in the world does endurance belong in a definition of love? If you are young and "in love" you tend to focus on all the ways the person you "love" makes you feel good. When you've been married a long time, you understand much better about the "endurance" element of love.
Of course, I hope by now in this series, you understand that real love (God’s love) is not about how someone makes us feel. Love is not a mere emotion or a pleasure we derive because we like being around someone. Love is a gift we give to others regardless of whether we get anything at all in return. And sometimes love—real love—has to endure many things we don’t like about others.
As a parent, I
can tell you I didn’t enjoy it at all the time I took my young kids to see a movie
and one of them got sick and threw up on me.
And I had to take one kid to the bathroom and get her cleaned up. I had a change of clothes for her in the diaper bag, but not for me! So I had to wear that filth all the way home
while trying to comfort a sick child.
Yeah, that was not fun and I didn’t like it at all. But I loved my child and cared for her. I “endured” the disgust and discomfort of “wearing”
vomit soaked clothing until I could gather up my kids and get them home,
cleaned up, and then clean myself up.
But that was just
a hour or so of endurance. I think about
my own Mom’s enduring love over the years with me and my siblings. I know we have all done many things to disappoint her and even break her heart at times. Yet she has endured. Now, as my mother is growing older and her health is declining, we are taking loving care of her more and more (especially my older brother and younger sister, because they live closest to her).
As I have told you in previous blogs, 1 Corinthians 13 wasn’t originally written about the romantic love between a husband and wife. Yet this passage is often read at weddings, because it is such relevant advice for newlyweds.
Our society is
infatuated with the concept of romantic love.
Unfortunately, popular culture—through movies and music—has degraded the idea of romantic
love to be all about how a person makes us feel. We have taken the greatest godly virtue of
all and turned it upside down. Love in
the world is not about selfless sacrifice, but about deriving pleasure at the
expense of the person we “love”.
It is no wonder
that so many people experience broken relationships, broken marriages, and are
extremely confused and scarred when it comes to romantic love. Our culture has created an idealized fantasy
about love that does not exist, and when people fail to achieve or maintain
the “feeling” of love, they feel cheated, become disillusioned, are broken-hearted, and wonder “why can’t I just find true love like everyone else?”
Can you imagine how
it would revolutionize the world and our romantic relationships if the
prevailing notion of love became the biblical view of love? If it wasn’t about how another person made you
feel, but about how we gave ourselves to one another sacrificially?
Ironically, you
are more likely to find “feelings” of love more often when you stop chasing
them. When you give yourself to your
spouse sacrificially, you are more likely to have romantic feelings. And when the husband and wife are both
loving each other sacrificially, they will both likely feel more intense
attraction to each other.
Now I want you to consider the never-ending, enduring eternal love of God for the world.
God created the universe and everything in it—the stars in the sky, the land and the sea, the plants and animals and us. In sacrificial love, God gave us life.
When humanity
broke God’s heart by turning against Him, He didn't give up; God continues to love us because His love endures forever.. God made ways to protect us—even protecting us the best He could from our own
sin, while still allowing us the freedom to choose how we live. People often get frustrated or angry with God because bad things happen to them or God. God didn't cause those bad things. We cause them by our sin (or they were caused because humanity has been wrecking God's perfect creation for thousands of years). It is a miracle of God's love that we are still here and haven't completely destroyed ourselves and that God has still preserved our freedom to choose how we live. Unfortunately, our choices cause a lot of hurt and suffering, but God still preserves us through HIs enduring love.
4,000 years ago, God
chose a man of faith named Abraham to begin the process of saving the world—even
saving you. 4,000 years ago. Think about how long ago that is. The American Revolution was 245 years ago. That seems like a long time to a lot of us, but it is only a blip on the timeline of God's love story told in the Bible. 4,000 years ago, God was thinking about you and
working to save you when He called Abraham to begin the rescue mission for humanity.
Even when Abraham’s
descendants were slaves in Egypt 600 years after Abraham, God's love endured and
He kept working through the Israelites to save the world. God used Moses to deliver the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.
3,000 years ago,
God made David the king of Israel and said, “I will raise up one of your descendants…
I will secure his royal throne forever.” (2 Samuel 7:12-13) God was talking about Jesus, who is David's great great great... grandson.
Jesus was born
2,000 years ago. He lived as the perfect
lamb of God, without sin or blemish. He
gave his life sacrificially to atone for our sin (showing God’s perfect,
unconditional love for you and me).
Through all of
these thousands of years, God’s love endures. We've given God a million reasons to give up on us, but He hasn't and He won't. God is hoping beyond hope that people will finally hear Him calling and
turn from their sins, receive His love, and be saved.
And God is hoping beyond hope that we will all start to love God and love our neighbor just as Jesus did and that our love will endure in every circumstance because real love endures forever.
My
mission, the reason I’ve devoted my life to work as a pastor, is so that more
and more people will turn to God and receive His love and in turn love others
the way God loves us.
1 Corinthians 13:8 says, “Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever!”
All the things in this
world we think are so important now will pass away.
It won’t matter what kind of clothes we wear, or the car we drive, or which house
we lived in.
It won’t matter which flag we saluted or whether we were democrat or
republican.
It won’t even matter if the Braves won the world series in 2021.
