A Critical Mistake
Back in the 1990s, I had a friend who was an amateur photographer. One day, a close relative of his said, “I’m getting married. We can’t afford a professional wedding photographer. Could you do it?”
My friend was really chuffed. In the weeks leading up to the wedding, he put a lot of thought and planning into it. And on the day itself, he put all of those plans into action. He got some great shots.
After the service, he went to put a new roll of film into his camera. He turned his camera around and opened the flap on the back. The camera film chamber was empty.
Every single photo he’d taken, every click, every moment, every precious, never-to-be-repeated moment, had not been captured. He had no photos of their wedding. There was nothing there.
Is it possible that we could have that experience, not with taking photos, but with gospel ministry? Is it possible that we could train for ministry, plan for it, pour our lives into it, become really skilled in interpreting the Bible, preaching, and evangelism; that we could do this for years, sacrificing much along the way, only to get to the end and discover that what we did amounted to nothing because we lacked something crucial, something foundational, the “film in the camera” of ministry?
According to Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, the answer is yes. And that crucial, foundational thing is love.
The Root Problem
The problem Paul is addressing in 1 Corinthians is that some people in the Corinthian church are using their gifts to prop up their own standing and reputation. In chapter 13, he addresses this by tackling the root cause of the problem: the lack of something needed for the use of any gift – love. He introduces love as “the most excellent way” (12:31). But why is love the most excellent way? Paul gives three reasons.
Why love is the most excellent way:
- Without it, Our Ministry is Nothing
“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.” (1 Corinthians 13:1)
The Corinthians are measuring their spirituality by the impressiveness of the gifts they have. They’re comparing gifts, they’re competing. Yet Paul says that even if we have the most impressive gifts, if we do not have love, we are nothing (1 Corinthians 13:2).
He doesn’t say it just renders our actions a nothing, but that it renders us nothing. Love is the crucial, foundational element. It’s the film in the camera. It’s the thing that we can’t do ministry without. It’s the thing that, if we lack it, nullifies everything else.
We could be the most gifted preacher, or the most skilled disciple maker. We could go to the ends of the earth for the gospel, and yet it would all amount to nothing if we lack love.
If love’s not driving us, what else might be? For the Corinthians, it was reputation. They were chasing after the spectacular gifts because they wanted the respect that came with doing something public and impressive. What about for you? When you exercise a gift, are you doing it to win the approval of your Christian community? Or if you exercise a gift and no one notices or no one appreciates it, do you find yourself questioning if it was worth it? What about other drivers? Are you, at some, maybe even below conscious level, working hard in ministry to work off your guilt for sin? Or are you driven by a sense of obligation rather than love?
What’s driving you? If it’s something other than love, our gifts and our ministry are nothing.
- It Directs Our Gaze to Others
The problem with the alternative motivations – whether reputation, guilt or obligation – is that they’re focused on us, the gift user. And if those things are driving us, we are using the people we are meant to be serving for our own ends. The more that you think about that, the more troubling it becomes! What’s going to save us from using our gifts like that? The answer is love.
Love directs our gaze away from us and on to others. Notice the way that love shifts our focus so that we can see others built up:
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, does not boast, it’s not proud. It does not dishonour others, it’s not self-seeking, it’s not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-5)
When we love, we’re liberated from self-focus. I’m freed from worrying about me getting ahead because my focus is now on others. I’m not competing with others, I want them to flourish. I’m not inwardly assessing my own performance and how others are evaluating it, I’m assessing whether what I’m doing is leading to them flourishing.
To say that love is the most excellent way, is different from saying it is the easiest way. The way of love is not always easy. It is easy to love the lovely. When a guy falls for a girl and comes to her with flowers and chocolates and says, “I love you,” what he’s really saying is, “I find you lovely.” But what about the “unlovely” people who irritate us or wrong us?
The kind of love that Paul’s talking about here doesn’t rely on a feeling of love because it is a decision to seek the good of others. A decision to act towards them in a way that builds them up. A decision to use our gifts for their spiritual flourishing.
Is there someone that you’re finding hard to love? That you’re impatient with or unkind towards? Someone that you’re angered by? Someone whose wrongs you’re keeping a record of? Can you make a decision now, even if the feelings aren’t there yet, to love them? To use your gifts for their good?
- It’s Our Future
“Love never fails.” (1 Corinthians 13:8)
The word “fails” here doesn’t mean love never lets you down, although that’s true. It means love is permanent. Love lasts forever, into eternity. Whereas gifts, by contrast, don’t.
“Where there are prophecies, they will cease. Where there are tongues, they will be stilled. Where there is knowledge, it will pass away.” (1 Corinthians 13:8)
Where there is preaching and evangelism, church planting and church strategies, where there is giving and offerings and church rosters, all of that will pass away. But love will not.
The best gifts are only partial windows into the glories of God. When Jesus comes, we will experience a perfect, unhindered relationship with God and his people, and there won’t be any need for the gifts. Just as you no longer need to rely on a blurry mirror once you can see someone face-to-face, a time is coming when we will no longer need those glimpses that the gifts provide because perfection has arrived (13:12).
“I’ve got something much better for you,” says Paul. Something that will last, something of far greater worth, something which is going to be the distinctive marker of our life in heaven together. Something which is our future, our destiny. And that is love.
In the coming age, what will remain will be faith, hope, and love (1 Corinthians 13:13). Not the actions of preaching and prophesying and self-sacrifice. They’re all going to disappear, but the driving forces behind those actions will remain. Faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of them will be love.
So if in the end you did all those actions but did not have love, what of your life and ministry will persist into that age? Nothing.
If love is the greatest, if love is our future, if love lasts forever, let’s value it and let’s live by it now.
The Lifelong Battle
What do you see when you hold your ministry up to this 1 Corinthians 13 mirror? We can know that love is the most excellent way in our heads, and still find our hearts driven by something else. The battle to follow the way of love is lifelong.
I have a time set aside each morning to reflect and pray on the ministry tasks coming up in the day. If I notice I’m anxious, I ask myself why. It could be because I want my ministry to have its desired loving effect. But often it’s because I’m worried about what people will think of me. If so, I’m in danger of repeating the Corinthian mistake of using my gifts to secure my standing.
What I need to do at that moment is re-persuade myself that love is the most excellent way. I need to remind myself that Jesus, who loved the unlovely me all the way to the cross, has already secured the standing I’m chasing after. I don’t need to use my gifts to win anyone’s approval. I’m free to love. I’m free to focus on what others need, and on how my gifts can promote their spiritual growth.
Our lifelong battle is to keep following the way of love in our daily tasks. And when we do, we’ll experience that it really is the most excellent, most liberating, most joyous, most heavenly way. And we’ll rejoice that at the end of the day, it’s going to be what remains.
