Love Sermon

The Greatest Thing You Will Ever Do

There is a question that has followed human beings across every culture and every century. It shows up in poetry, in philosophy, in the quiet conversations people have at the end of their lives. The question is simply this: what does it mean to truly love someone?

We use the word love constantly. We love coffee. We love a good football game. We love our families. We love God. But when we reach for a definition, the word tends to slip through our fingers. We know it when we feel it, we say, but we struggle to say what it actually is, what it actually demands, and what it actually looks like when it walks into a room.

The apostle Paul had something to say about that. And so did Jesus.

This morning we are going to sit with two passages that together give us the clearest picture the New Testament offers of what genuine Christian love is, where it comes from, and why it matters more than almost anything else in our lives.

Open your Bible to 1 Corinthians 13, and keep a finger in John 13.

The Context We Cannot Ignore

Before we read a single verse of 1 Corinthians 13, we need to understand why Paul wrote it. The church in Corinth was not a struggling, quiet congregation. It was a church full of gifted people who were tearing themselves apart. They were arguing over which teacher to follow. They were taking each other to court. They were dividing over spiritual gifts, over who had the most impressive ones, over whose gift made them more important. They were talented, passionate, and deeply broken in their relationships with one another.

Into that situation Paul writes what many have called the greatest chapter in the New Testament. He does not begin by scolding them. He begins by showing them what they are missing.

He writes in verses one through three that a person can speak in the most eloquent tongues, can have prophetic insight, can possess mountain-moving faith, can give away everything they own, and can even surrender their body, and if they have not love, they have gained nothing. Not a little. Nothing.

That is a staggering claim. Paul is saying that spiritual gifts without love are noise. Sacrifice without love is empty. Generosity without love is hollow. The most impressive religious performance in the world, without love, amounts to nothing before God.

That is the platform on which he builds the rest of the chapter.

What Love Actually Does

Beginning in verse four, Paul does something unusual. He does not define love as a feeling. He does not describe it as an emotion or a disposition or a warm sentiment. He describes it as a series of actions and choices. He uses verbs. Love does things.

Love is patient. Love is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not boast. It is not arrogant. It does not act disgracefully. It does not seek its own interests. It is not irritable. It does not keep a record of wrongs. It finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Read that list slowly and you will notice something. Almost every item on it is a description of how love behaves toward other people when it is difficult to do so. Love is patient when patience is hard. Love is kind when kindness is not returned. Love does not keep a record of wrongs when keeping score would feel justified. Love endures when endurance is costly.

This is not the love of greeting cards. This is not the love that shows up when it is easy and disappears when it is not. This is a love that is chosen, sustained, and shaped by something deeper than feeling.

And here is where we need to make a turn in our understanding. Because if Paul is only giving us a moral checklist, then this passage is nothing more than an impossible standard that leaves us feeling guilty. But that is not what Paul is doing. He is describing a love that has a source. He is describing a love that looks exactly like someone we know.

The Love That Looks Like Jesus

Go back through that list in verse four and ask yourself: who is patient when patience is hard? Who is kind without arrogance? Who does not seek his own interests but gives himself entirely for others? Who bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things?

The answer is Jesus Christ.

Every quality Paul names in this passage is a quality that Jesus embodied in his life and fulfilled completely in his death. He was patient with disciples who kept misunderstanding him. He was kind to the people everyone else had written off. He was not arrogant, though he had every right to be. He did not seek his own comfort or his own survival. He bore the full weight of human sin. He endured the cross.

When Paul describes love in 1 Corinthians 13, he is not giving us a self-improvement program. He is giving us a portrait of Christ. And the implication is that the love God calls us to live is a love that is formed in us by Christ himself.

Now turn to John 13.

Jesus is in the upper room with his disciples on the night before his crucifixion. He has just washed their feet, the act of a servant, not a king. He has told them that one of them will betray him. He knows what is coming. And in that moment, he gives them what he calls a new commandment.

Verse 34: A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you are also to love one another.

Notice the standard he sets. Not love one another as you love yourselves. Not love one another as well as you can manage. Love one another as I have loved you. The measure of Christian love is the love of Jesus Christ himself. His love is not the ceiling we aspire to. It is the pattern we are called to follow.

And then verse 35: By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

Jesus is saying that love is the identifying mark of his people. Not our theological precision, though theology matters. Not our worship style, though worship matters. Not our programs or our buildings or our social media presence. The thing that tells the watching world that we belong to Jesus is the way we love each other.

That is a serious claim. And it raises an honest question for every congregation and every believer: is that what people see when they look at us?

The Love That Does Not Fail

Back in 1 Corinthians 13, Paul makes one more sweeping statement in verse eight. Love never fails.

Prophecies will end. Tongues will cease. Knowledge will pass away. But love never fails. It is the one thing that outlasts everything else. Paul goes on to say that faith and hope and love remain, but the greatest of these is love.

Why is love the greatest? Because faith will one day give way to sight. Hope will one day give way to fulfillment. But love will not give way to anything, because love is the very nature of God himself. When we arrive at the fullness of eternity, we will not need faith in the same way because we will see. We will not need hope in the same way because we will have. But we will love, because love is what God is, and love is what we were made for.

This is not a sentimental point. It is a deeply theological one. Love is not one virtue among many. It is the foundation on which all other virtues rest. It is the atmosphere in which the Christian life breathes.

What This Means For How We Live

So what does this mean for Monday morning? What does it mean for the relationship that is strained, the person who has wronged you, the community that is divided?

It means, first, that love is a decision before it is a feeling. The love Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13 is not waiting for the right emotional conditions. It chooses patience. It chooses kindness. It refuses to keep score. You do not wait until you feel like forgiving someone. You choose to forgive because Christ-shaped love acts before the feelings arrive.

It means, second, that love is honest. Paul says love does not rejoice in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. Real love does not flatter people or look the other way when something is wrong. It tells the truth, but it tells the truth with kindness. It does not wound for the sake of wounding. It speaks truth in love, as Paul says elsewhere, because it wants what is best for the other person.

It means, third, that love is costly. Jesus did not love his disciples from a safe distance. He washed their feet. He bore their failures. He died for them. The love he calls us to is not a love that protects itself from inconvenience. It is a love that is willing to be spent for the sake of another.

And it means, finally, that this kind of love is not something we manufacture on our own. We love because he first loved us, as John writes in his first letter. The love of Christ is not just our model. It is our source. We are not trying to imitate love from the outside. We are being transformed from the inside by a Savior who is himself love.

A Word For Every Person Here

If you are a believer this morning, this passage is both a comfort and a challenge. The comfort is that you are loved with a love that never fails, a love that bore all things for you, a love that endured the cross so that you would not have to face God's judgment alone. That love is yours. Rest in it.

The challenge is that you are called to carry that love into every relationship, every conversation, every moment of tension or difficulty in your life. Not perfectly. Not without struggle. But genuinely, and with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in you.

If you are here today and you are not yet a follower of Jesus, I want you to hear this. The love described in this passage is not a standard you must meet before God will accept you. It is a love that God has already shown you in Christ. The cross is the proof. Jesus bore what you deserved so that you could receive what he deserved. That is the gospel. And the invitation is open to you today to receive it, not by earning it, but by trusting the One who already paid for it.

Go and love one another. Not because it is easy. Not because it always feels good. But because you have been loved first, and that love is the greatest thing in the world.

Sources Consulted

Thiselton, Anthony C. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. New International Greek Testament Commentary. Eerdmans, 2000.

Carson, D. A. The Gospel According to John. Pillar New Testament Commentary. Eerdmans, 1991.

Fee, Gordon D. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Eerdmans, 1987.

Morris, Leon. 1 Corinthians. Tyndale New Testament Commentaries. InterVarsity Press, 1985.

Keener, Craig S. The Gospel of John: A Commentary. Volume 2. Baker Academic, 2003.