October 25, 2020, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, ISSL Reflections Post 1

I.
Once again we have before us what is to many a very familiar passage of Scripture. It is familiar enough to many to make it all but impossible to to read as if for the first time. But let me ask to read it as if you were not encountering it as several paragraphs found in the “Holy Bible.” How might it be heard apart from its setting in Christian Scripture.

II.
1 Corinthians 13

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

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. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

III.
Let’s read the passage again and pay attention to how the writer describes “love.”

Pay attention to both what it says love “is” and what it says love “is not.”

What stands out to as the most obvious description of what love is, and what stands out to you as the most counter-intuitive description of what love is.

Spend some time with the passage and we’ll talk later.

charles
{ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est}


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