Feb '22
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Scripture
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If 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 do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Devotional
Before I met my husband, I didn’t believe in love… at least not the kind that led to marriage. I saw how friends could care for each other, I saw how siblings always had insanely weird ways of showing their love for one another, and I saw the sacrificial love my mother had for her daughters. What I never saw, was a man treasuring a woman like she was the most precious thing he had next to God.
I grew up with an earthly father who didn't want anything to do with me because I was born a girl…and one who looked like my mother at that. I saw a father who acknowledged the child he liked, and hurt the one he was disappointed in. And I saw a father who walked away, to the point of risking jail, over paying child support to help lift the burden off a mother’s shoulders.
As I got older, I saw endless men come into my family’s life under a cloak of goodness. It was always too late by the time we realized that evil had once again tricked its way through our door. I became the master of midnight prayers as we begged God to let the bedroom door withstand its poundings. I prayed to God that he would protect us as vial men threatened our lives, or worse, to separate our family.
It doesn’t take a scholar to figure out why I had no faith in the concept of “love”. But it did take an act of God for me to realize how pain had blinded me to one of God’s greatest gifts.
The day I met my husband, I was infatuated with him. He was kind, funny, and seemed genuine. I knew he was special when he asked me out on a date and, for the first time, I actually wanted to go. I was no stranger to being asked out, I had even said yes on a few occasions, but without fail, I always panicked and canceled at the last minute. There was just something about this man that prompted God to wrap his Holy Spirit around me and encourage me to take a leap of faith.
Even after we started dating, I felt a reservation to experiencing or believing in love. There was an undeniable pull in my soul to know this incredible, godly man…and yet...I was still bound by the ties of my past. I felt consumed by this feeling that I had been lying to him by not telling him my story.
And so one night, in the middle of doing our University homework together, and plagued with an overwhelming feeling that I cared too much for him to walk away now, I told him my testimony. I don’t know how long we talked that night. But I do remember sitting in the dark, bearing the ugly depths of my past between sobs, and just praying to God that I would survive the pain when he too inevitably walked away. I felt so broken in that moment, so unworthy, so ugly from the scars of my past, that I couldn’t look at him, let alone believe he’d still want me.
That was the night he told me he loved me. Amidst the ugly, dirty, horrifying truths of my very being, he was in love with me.
That same night, as I sobbed into the stale pillow on my dorm mattress, I realized how much my God truly loved me. It was as though having his son accept me as I was, opened my eyes to how much more my God accepted and treasured me.
That was over six years ago, and I’m still in awe of how much I have learned about God by simply allowing myself to experience love. I’ve gone through the hard pains of not only learning how to love but learning how to be loved.
In the month we tend to characterize as the month of ‘love’ because of Valentine’s Day, I want to talk about a different kind of love. Instead of focusing on flowers, chocolate, and romantic dinners, I want to focus on a Gospel kind of love. The kind of love that opens your eyes to how much you are adored by our Lord.
Hosea 3:1-3
Hosea’s Reconciliation With His Wife
The LORD said to me, “Go show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.”
So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley. Then I told her, “You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will behave the same way toward you.”
One of my all-time favorite books of the Bible is Hosea because God uses Hosea’s marriage and children as a physical symbol for how He cares about His nation. Hosea portrays this intense and beautiful sacrificial love for his wife that has been gifted to him by God.
The woman that Hosea married, Gomer, was a prostitute when God told Hosea to marry her. Throughout the story, we see Gomer time and time again, being disobedient to her husband and engaging in sexual relations with other men. As often as Gomer sins, Hosea embraces her with love and invites her back into their marriage. Near the end of the story, as heard in the verses shared above, Hosea gives everything he has to buy his wife back after she continued to be an adulteress.
There is no way you could listen to this story and not realize the strength and unconditional love that God gave Hosea for his wife. Hosea chose Gomer in her sin, the same God chooses us to be his beloved within our sin. Hosea gave away everything he had to secure his wife in his household, the same way our God sacrificed his only Son to secure our eternity in his Heavenly Kingdom.
Hosea was so in love with God and was so obedient to the life God calls us to, that his passion for God translated into his passion for his wife. It was because Hosea knew God’s love, that he was able to show sacrificial love to his wife. And it was because Hosea was able to show that sacrificial love to another, that he began to grow a deeper understanding of how much God cared for him.
When we choose to love another person in the way that God modeled for us through his Son, we begin to experience the deep sorrow, the heartbroken rage, and the gift of hope that it requires. By freely giving unconditional love to another being, we gain a unique perspective on what God experiences when he chooses us despite our sin. It is a gift that opens up our eyes to the intensity by which our God loves us.
This concept of unconditional love, that we see God and Jesus modeling for us throughout the Bible, is coined under the term ‘agape’. Martin Luther King, Jr. left us with a beautiful quote that describes what the word ‘agape’ means.
“Agape is something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love; it’s what theologians would call the love of God working in the lives of men. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likeable, but because God loves them.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
Unconditional love, in the most simplistic of terms, is freely giving love to another being. There are no conditions when it comes to agape. It doesn’t matter who the other person is, what they have done, or what they have said…we offer them our love because God offers us His love within our own sin. You don’t have to particularly like someone, but you do have to engage with them out of a place of love. If we determine that someone is unworthy of our love because of their sin, we are in turn saying that we are more just and more worthy of God’s love than them. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are able to offer love to one another, free from judgment or condemnation, because we have experienced a God who died for us while we were still sinners.
Romans 5:8
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
John 3:16
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Ephesians 5:1-2
Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
God modeled the greatest unconditional love there ever was by sacrificing his Son so that our eternity by his side may be secured. If our God can willingly sacrifice himself, and conquer death, to ensure our place in the Kingdom of Heaven, we can learn to treat one another from a place of love.
Considering what love is according to the Gospel isn’t just for married couples or those in a serious relationship, it’s for all of mankind - from the sleeping babe, to the single man, to the married woman.
1 Cor 7: 32-38
I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs - how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world - how he can please his wife - and his interests are divided.
An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world - how she can please her husband.
I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way with undivided devotion to the Lord.
If anyone is worried that he might not be acting honorably toward the virgin he is engaged to, and if his passions are too strong and he feels he ought to marry, he should do as he wants. He is not sinning. They should get married.
But the man who has settled the matter in his own mind, who is under no compulsion but has control over his own will, and who has made up his mind not to marry the virgin - this man also does the right thing.
So then, he who marries the virgin does right, but he who does not marry her does better.
It is a gift from God to fall in love and get married. It is a gift from God for a woman and a man to come together as one in their pursuit of the Kingdom. It is also a gift from God for a single man or woman to full-heartedly pursue the Gospel outside of marriage.
Both marriage and singleness come from God - and both teach us a unique perspective on what it means to love God and his creation. When you are single, as mentioned in 1 Corinthians 7, you are free to pursue God and God alone. You can freely move to where God calls you while spreading the good news of the Gospel. You can easily sacrifice your time and energy because no one else requires it from you. In singleness, you are given the beautiful gift of practicing agape for all of God’s creation.
In marriage, you have the unique opportunity to become one with another being, as a model of Christ and his church becoming one. You get to experience pursuing the Gospel with your best friend, and you want salvation for your spouse more than you want it for yourself. Marriage creates a beautiful window where you get to experience God’s love more deeply by seeing the sacrificial love your spouse constantly portrays to you. And yet, marriage can hold us back from the Gospel because we can easily choose to turn towards our spouse instead of God. It can hold us back because when God calls us towards his mission, we hesitate and consider our family first.
I always thought I was meant to be single. I loved the idea of singleness as a gift. There were years of jokes built up in my family about how I would be the perfect nun because of my lack of belief in love between man and wife. God will always give us what we need, not what we want. For me, that meant God using marriage as a tool to pull me closer to himself. He revealed himself to me on a new, and intimate, level by removing my desire for singleness and replacing it with marriage.
My friend, if God has blessed you with a relationship, as a tool to see his love for you shine through, rejoice! And my dear friend, if God has blessed you with singleness that you might portray his unconditional love to all the nations, rejoice!
So, what then is love according to the Gospel? It is unconditional, selfless, sacrificial, for the continuation of the Kingdom, and for all of God’s creation.
Love is laying down your life for the sinner because God laid down his for you.
Application
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Throughout the Bible, how does God consistently show his love for his people? Find a few Bible verses that help you see his truth and realize the depth to which He loves you. Once you find them, write them down on sticky notes and place them near your workspace for the month as a reminder.
If you want an extra challenge, try memorizing one of these verses so that you can more easily recall what love is according to the Gospel.
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One concept we lightly touched on is that you don’t have to like someone, but you do have to respond to them from a place of love.
After engaging with this devotional, what do you believe is the difference between “like” and “love”.
What are ways you can treat someone you dislike with love? Brainstorm a few of them now to help you feel better prepared next time you find yourself in this position.
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Do you find it easier to show love to people you know or to strangers? What situations have you noticed you have a hard time acting out of love within?
What is one way you can practice agape today?
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Prayer
Heavenly Father,
Out of love you created the world. Out of love you made man in your own image and removed a rib from Adam’s side so that he might experience oneness with another. Out of love you have guided your children throughout the generations. You’ve spoken to them through dreams and burning bushes. You’ve given them your power to part the seas and defeat their enemies. You’ve provided food in the wilderness and sought the 99.
Father, out of love, you sent your Son to dwell among your creation, that he might willingly sacrifice himself for us. Through your sacrificial love, you have secured our place in your Kingdom. We don’t have to do everything right, we don’t have to be perfect, we just have to choose You.
I pray that we will remember that you made us, beautifully and uniquely, out of love. I pray that we will remember how Jesus modeled love on this Earth so that we might model a Gospel love to one another in return.
Give us the patience, the strength, the wisdom, and the faith that sharing unconditional love requires. May we see the circumstances you have allowed in our life as an opportunity to share you with your people. May we see each moment and each person worthy of love, because of the love you have shown us.
Father, we crave to receive love, just as much as we want to give love. I pray that we will be generous, kind, and selfless through You.
Thank you for the opportunities to learn and practice agape both within singleness and marriage. May we keep these gifts holy according to your word.
In your powerful name we pray,
Amen.
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