The Love Chapter

1 Corinthians 13:4-5, 1 John 4:10

First Corinthians chapter 13 has been called the love chapter of the Bible because its beautiful and thorough description of love. In fact it has been so cherished that many brides and grooms will choose this text to be read at their wedding day when they devote themselves to each other.

However, if you read through that chapter closely you’ll quickly discover that what it describes there is far more than merely a romantic feeling. Rather it says this:

Love is patient. Love is kind. Love does not envy. It does not brag. It is not arrogant. It does not behave indecently. It is not selfish. It is not irritable. It does not keep a record wrongs. (1 Corinthians 13:4-5)

Truly a beautiful description of selfless and self sacrificing love. Who wouldn’t want to be loved in that way? I wonder if sometimes when we read through that chapter we maybe think of the ways that others in our lives have failed to love us.

We maybe wish that they would take some advice from the words in that chapter there. “See this is how you’re supposed to love me and you’re not doing it.”

Really those words aren’t just spoken for everyone else but, they’re spoken for us too. When we read through them we see our arrogance. We see our own selfishness, our own holding of grudges our own anger and lack of love.

Thanks be to God that he doesn’t love us in the same way that we so often fail to love other people. Rather in first John Chapter 4 verse 10 it says this:

This is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:10)

You see God has loved in the perfect way described in first Corinthians chapter 13. He has loved in a selfless self sacrificing way in giving his Son for us and for our sin. Yes it is a excellent chapter 13th Chapter of First Corinthians. May that chapter remind us of our own lack of love. Most importantly the perfect love of God to our Savior Jesus Christ amen.

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