“1 If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 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. 3 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.
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 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. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 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. 12 For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, 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. 13 And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love” 1 Corinthians 13:1-13.
Yesterday we look at the fact that Jesus calls us to look within, into our hearts, rather than to focus on our external observance and obedience of the law, the commandments of God. WHY? Because mere outward observance of the law does not produce love. There is a reason why Jesus said, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” John 3:16.
“Imagine a couple that merely kept the Ten Commandments in their marriage, saying: “Our marriage is wonderful. We don’t steal from each other, lie to each other, or cheat on each other. And we haven’t even killed each other yet!” Would that make an ideal marriage? Of course not. God does not want spouses simply to avoid hurting one another. He wants them to grow in love. And that is what God desires for all His disciples.
Certainly, we should avoid doing things that directly hurt other people, such as killing, adultery, and lying. Obeying the moral law is a necessary minimum. But in order to live as members of God’s kingdom, we need to do more. True disciples need to cultivate the inner attitudes and dispositions that transform the heart and build up love, such as the kind of patience, meekness, purity, and mercy that Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount. This is why Jesus calls us to go beyond external conformity to the requirements of the law and imitate the perfect love of the heavenly Father, who is love himself
(Matthew 5:48; 1 John 4:8). The love to which Jesus calls us is beyond the capacity of our fallen human nature, but the gift of the Holy Spirit received through faith and through the Word of God, Baptism, Communion, Confession, Matrimony, Confirmation — all the gifts of God’s grace to us — make it possible. Jesus summons us to a heavenly way of life. And all we have to do is look around at all the beautiful, Christian people God has brought into our life who show that it is possible to live this way on earth.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner.
From the Bible:
“And Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” Matthew 22:37-39.
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” Galatians 2:20.
“Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” 1 John 4:8.
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