I Corinthians 13:7-8
Archeologists in Italy have unearthed what some are calling the ultimate picture of love: an ancient farmer and his wife who were buried together, holding hands. The wife’s head is turned, as if looking upon her husband. When they were unearthed, they had been holding hands there together for over 1500 years – a touching picture of unending love. While we may never really know all of that couple’s circumstances, in our passage for today we find the ultimate description of genuine triumphant love, which comes from God Himself, in I Corinthians 13:7-8.
This is the 10th week of our study of “The Real Thing” – God’s agape love as defined in this great chapter. We are coming off of a couple of weeks’ break for Thanksgiving, so let’s take just a moment to recap our study. We have seen that the kind of love that Paul is writing about in I Corinthians 13 is “A Different Kind of Love”. Agape love is God’s kind of love; it is not just a fondness, or an attraction, or a feeling. It is a commitment to do what is best for the beloved. And it is described by 15 verbs in verses 4-8 of this chapter. These verbs tell us that love is not just an emotion; it ACTS, hence the expression, “love is a verb.” When it acts, then, what does it do? We have seen that love is patient: it “has a long fuse. Love is kind: that is, it actively DOES something good on behalf of the one it loves. It is not proud; it is not rude; it is not selfish. Before the Thanksgiving break we saw that love it is not like “a glob of gelatin” but it has boundaries of truth and righteousness. Sometimes it says and does hard things because they are for the ultimate good of the one who is loved. Today we come to our last message in this series, where we find a final, climactic string of terms: “love … bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things; love never fails.” This last great description tells us that love is “triumphant” – it never fails! Let’s read this great chapter again one more time, and then we will come back and look at what these last terms mean, and what they mean for us today:
I. Love Triumphant Described
Let’s look at these 5 terms, and how they describe triumphant love. (The meaning of the first and fourth, and the second and third pairs of words here are similar, so we’ll put them together.)
A. “Bears all things”
The Greek Bible word for “bears” (stego) comes from a word which means “roof”. In fact, it is the same word used in Mark 2, of the roof the friends took off the house to lower their paralyzed friend down to Jesus. So this word, coming from the word “roof”, means to “cover” or to “bear”, as a roof would bear a load.
Paul uses this word earlier in I Corinthians, in 9:12. He is speaking in that passage about how the church should provide materially for those who are ministering to them spiritually. He says that is the right and privilege of the minister. But at Corinth, Paul said he specifically chose NOT to take advantage of that right, because he thought it would be an important witness there. And he said in :12, “We will ENDURE all things, so that we will cause no hindrance to the gospel of Christ.” That word “endure” there in :12 is the same as here in I Cor. 13:7, “bear all things.” He is saying, we will endure any trial, any inconvenience; we will “cover it up” in a sense; we will bear it – for the sake of the gospel. I Peter 4:8 says: “love covers a multitude of sins”. That is a pretty good description of what this phrase means.
B. Similarly, the text goes on to say that agape love “endures all things”. The Greek Bible word for “endures” is “hupo-mene”; literally “under – to abide” – abiding under some great pressure or suffering – very similar in meaning to “bearing all things.” We’ll look at some implications of this for love shortly.
C. “Believes all things”
This is one of those phrases which is easily misunderstood. To “believe all things” does NOT mean that you are to believe anything that someone you love tells you! It does NOT mean that we are to throw away our wisdom, and suspend our better judgment and just naively accept any story that someone tries to pawn off on you. The Bible is not commanding us here to be gullible!
This Greek Bible word is “pisteuo” – the same word that is used for “faith” all through the New Testament. It means you have faith – and not necessarily even in the person – because people you love can fail you. It means that you believe that God can and will do something in and through the person you love. It means that you do not give up on them; but you trust that something good is still yet to come. It is the kind of faith that we saw that George Mueller had when he prayed for his friends – he prayed for one of them for 52 years! – and he went to his grave, never giving up on praying for him to be saved. That man was indeed saved some time after Mueller’s funeral. That is what it means to “believe all things.” It doesn’t mean you believe every lie someone tells you; it means you believe that God can still work in their lives, and that all hope is not lost — which leads us to the next description:
D. “Hopes all things”.
This is very similar to “believes all things, but unfortunately, most people do not really understand what Biblical hope is. For example, I was flipping through one of Cheryl’s scrapbook magazines some time ago, and I came across a sample scrapbook page that just astounded me. The page had the signature title: “Hopes all things”. And underneath it had the picture of the person’s dad and his new wife, with the thought that “I hope this one works out”! I thought, Oh my goodness – that is NOT what this verse means!
Biblical “hope” is not “I hope so”. It’s not: “I know your last 5 marriages failed, but I ‘hope’ this one works out!” Biblical hope is not a “wish” for something that you really don’t think is probably going to happen. Biblical hope looks to the future with faith in the promises of God for the person God has commanded you to love. It is just like “believes all things”. No matter how unlikely it appears at the present; no matter how grim it may seem now; it looks to the future with hope and trust in the promises of God for what He can still do in their life. It doesn’t give up on them; it “hopes all things.”
E. Love Never Fails
The word “fails” here is literally the Greek Bible word “falls.” It is used to describe something that falls to the ground, like a flower or a leaf. When a flower or leaf falls to the ground, it does so because is dead; and so it falls and lies lifeless on the ground, and decays and is no more. But the Bible says that Love never does that. Love never falls to the ground. Love never decays. Real love never dies. It will endure beyond what most people think may be borne; it will hold on past believing; it hopes when all hope is gone. It never falls; it never fails; it never dies. You will never find a grave for true love – for true love will never die.
Song of Solomon 8:7 says, “Many waters cannot quench love, nor will rivers overflow it.” That is this love triumphant which is described here in I Corinthians 13.
II. Love Triumphant Applied
Now, this is a dramatic and striking description of love. This four-fold use of “ALL”: “bears ALL; believes ALL; hopes ALL; endures ALL — followed by this word that it “NEVER” fails, indicates the limitless nature of genuine love. Now, as we saw, love DOES have boundaries of right and wrong; love is not limitless in the sense of what it will DO; it will not compromise truth or engage in wickedness; that is not love. But within the bounds of holiness, love is not limited in its quality and depth – there is nothing righteous or good or helpful or beneficial that it will not do for the one it loves.
I hope that you have had the opportunity to read the old poem, “Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight”. It tells the story of a young soldier, Basil Underwood, who served under the Puritan general Oliver Cromwell, and who was condemned to die. The time of his death was fixed “at the ringing of the curfew” bell. This young man was soon to marry a beautiful young lady by the name of Bessie. She had undertaken every effort to avert his fate, but all in vain. In her despair, she tried to get the old sexton at the church not to ring the curfew bell, but to no avail. He said he had rung that bell faithfully for long, long years, and he must do his duty: “Curfew bell must ring tonight.” The hour for the execution drew near. The officers of the law brought forth the prisoner, and waited while the sun was setting for the curfew bell to ring. But to the wonder of everyone, curfew did not ring! Only one human being, at that moment, knew the reason. Bessie, half wild with the thought of her lover’s peril, had said to herself, “Curfew must not ring tonight!” She rushed up the winding stairs, and climbed the ladders into the belfry loft, seized the tongue of the bell, and wrapped her body around it. The old sexton down below threw his weight upon the rope, and the bell swung to and fro in the tower. But no sound issued from the bell, for Bessie took its every blow upon her own body – and she would not let go. The old sexton, who was deaf, had not noticed that the bell did not ring. When he had finished, Bessie, wounded and trembling, descended from the bell tower. She hurried from the church to the place of execution. General Cromwell himself had now arrived, and, just as he was sending to demand why the bell was silent, she saw him, and the poem says:
“At his feet she told her story, showed her hands all bruised and torn,
And her young face, still haggard with the anguish it had worn,
Touched his heart with sudden pity, lit his eyes with misty light —
‘Go; your lover lives,’ cried Cromwell; ‘Curfew shall not ring tonight.’”
Young Bessie is the embodiment of what the Bible is speaking about here in I Corinthians 13. There was literally nothing she would not do to save her beloved – from begging every authority, to formulating that outrageous plan, the unabashed climbing of the tower, even to the crushing of her own body by the bell – she demonstrated by her life, that there was NOTHING she would not do to save the one she loved! She was literally willing to “bear all things” for him!
A. God’s love Triumphant
And do you know that this is exactly what Jesus did for us?! You and I have all sinned, the Bible says, and we are under the just condemnation of God. Judgment Day is coming, and the wrath of God will be poured out upon sin – there is nothing that can stop that wrath; the justice of God demands it. But Jesus, just like Bessie with that bell, took the blows of God’s wrath upon Himself, when He died on the cross. I Peter 2:24 says, “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross.” He literally “bore all things” – He bore our sins in His body. And He became the propitiation — the word “propitiation” means “covering”, the same word we find described here in I Corinthians 13 – He became the “covering” for our sins! Jesus did exactly what this passage says that love does: He “endured all things; He bore all things”; He “covered” our sins – believing and hoping the best for us — that if we would be willing to turn from our sins and trust Him as our Savior, then we would be saved!
Just as we have seen in every one of these 15 verbs in I Corinthians 13, Jesus is the Great Example of Love. He bore, He believed, He hoped, He endured all things. His love for us never fails. The Apostle John said of Jesus’ love for His disciples: “Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” (John 13:1)
And His love for us is not only a saving love; it is also a keeping love. It bears and believes and hopes and endures and never fails. Nothing can stop it! Romans 8 asks the question, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” And it goes on to say: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (:38-39) The Bible tells us there that if you have given your life to Jesus, NOTHING can separate you from His love! Someone might ask, “But what about my sin?” Let me ask you a question: What did you DO to deserve your salvation? NOTHING! You were saved by grace, not by anything you did. Therefore, there is nothing you can “do” that will make you lose your salvation, either. Now, this is NOT an excuse for you to presume upon the grace of God, and plan to sin – beware of such dangerous presumption! But if you are sitting here today, wondering if God can forgive you for a sin – He can; He will! NOTHING you can do can separate you from His agape love. It never fails!
God says in Jeremiah 31:3, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” There is nothing you can do as a believer to cause God not to love you. Now, if you sin, He will reprove you, and chasten you – but He does that, like any parent does, because He loves you. And He will never stop. God’s love for us is triumphant: it bears and believes and hopes and endures and never fails!
B. Our love triumphant
And when we have received that love from God, we are to turn around and share that same love with others. We live in a world in which it can be hard to love. Jesus said in Matthew 24:12 that one of the signs of the end times would be that “because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold.” We are living in days like that today. But we have the opportunity to stand in contrast to this ungodly, unloving climate, by demonstrating agape love in our relationships.
This is to be true in the church especially. Remember: I Corinthians 13 was originally written to the church at Corinth, about their relationships with each other. Tertullian said that the world looked at the way they treated each other in the early church, and exclaimed, “Behold, how they love one another!” This is just what Jesus said: “By THIS all men shall know that you are My disciples, if you love another.” Love is the ultimate sign that we belong to Christ, and our greatest witness to the world. Churches are always trying to come up with some great, “new” outreach program. You know what would really speak to the world? If they saw a group of people in church who would “bear” with each, and “believe” in each other, and “hope” for each other, “endure” with each other, and show a love that never fails, no matter what! You can have the greatest outreach program in the world, but it is not going to work if people come to church and see that you don’t really love each other! What the church needs more than any program or process or anything else is “The Real Thing” – we need agape love for each other!
But if “the church” is going to be that way, that means that YOU must be that way. “The church” is just made up of people – like me and you. If the church is going to have triumphant love, that means that YOU are going to have to have it – in every personal relationship you have in the church body. And THAT gets down to the nitty-gritty of love, doesn’t it?
We often think of the greatest kind of love as the kind that Bessie had for Basil Underwood – expressed in some dramatic, sacrificial manner. But the truth is, we are rarely called upon to make such sacrifices. Ephesians 5 says: “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church, and laid down his life for her.” But rarely, perhaps none of us, will ever have a chance to literally lay down our lives for our wife, or husband, or child, or family member, or neighbor, or church member. But if you live another day, you will have the opportunity to lay down your life in the everyday, very mundane – and yet very real — ways in which love shows its true character.
A few weeks ago, televangelist Pat Robertson made headlines with his infamous statement that a man would be justified if he divorced his wife who had Alzheimer’s so he could marry someone else. That is not love. The words, “For better or for worse; for richer or for poorer; in sickness and in health” come to mind. Russell Moore, the dean at our Southern Baptist seminary in Louisville, wrote in response to Robertson’s statement: “Somewhere out there right now, a man is wiping the drool from an 85 year-old woman who flinches because she thinks he’s a stranger. No television cameras are around. No politicians are seeking a meeting with them. But the Gospel is there. Jesus is there.” And I might add: agape love is there, too. Love is not a feeling; it is not an emotion; it is just not an attraction. It bears and believes and hopes and endures and never, ever dies. Love rarely involves “laying down your life” dramatically in death – but it WILL involve bearing and believing and hoping and enduring in the mundane, every day, duties of life.
It means being patient and kind, in your family and on the job – with the people you are closest to every day. It means loving that person across the aisle from you, or in the other class at church. It means:
— tolerating that laugh you can’t stand
— you endure that annoying habit
— showing forgiveness for constant offences: words that don’t come across the right way; deeds that just “seem” like they are almost purposed to offend you. But you don’t respond; you bear, and believe, and hope, and endure – in those “little things.” THAT is what it means, in the nitty-gritty of life – at home, on the job, and especially at church — to have agape love.
I am grateful that Jesus did only dramatically die for our sins on the cross in that great and historic act – but that He is also patient and kind with us every day; forgiving our sins, patiently and slowly working with us to make us what He knows that we can become. He loves YOU that way! And He wants YOU to love OTHERS that same way too! He wants you to “bear and believe and hope and endure” and let your love for those around you “never fail.”
CONCLUSION
I have to close with a reference to the very last scene of my favorite BBC mini-series, “Cranford”. Filmed in the little English village of Lacock, which we had the opportunity to visit, the story is based around a group of senior adult ladies – each of them very imperfect, with flaws and idiosyncrasies, and the story tells how they made it through a number of trials together. At one point in the sequel, “Return to Cranford”, Mr. Buxton disapproves of his son’s plan to marry a poor girl. Miss Matty, a spinster, and the central character, says to him, “But they love each other!” Mr. Buxton angrily responds: “You act as if ‘love’ were the final word!” But at the end of the show, when so much had passed, and so much had been endured, they all came together. And Mr. Buxton asked Ms. Matty: “How can a town survive so much?” And Ms. Matty replies: “Love, Mr. Buxton. It IS the final word.”
We are not perfect as a church, are we? But you know what? We can overcome anything together – if we will let love be the final word among us. No matter what our differences, our disagreements, our pet peeves and our idiosyncrasies – if we will let love be the final word of how we treat each other, then not only will we “survive” – but we will thrive – and people will see it, and God will be greatly glorified here! I Corinthians 13 is saying that God wants this is to be the final word for us: in our church, in our families — in all our relationships – we are to let His love in us bear and believe and hope and endure and never, ever fail. God’s love; agape love – “The Real Thing” – never fails. It is indeed “The Final Word.”
shawnethomas 