Counter-Cultural Love-The Game Changer: 1 Corinthians 13:13

1 Corinthians 13:13- "And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love."

This series of devotions presents love as the unprecedented, counter-cultural force that enables us to love our families, friends,  communities, and world just as God has loved us. My goal is for us to dig deep into our lives to love like Jesus demonstrated love. He changed the world by His love. He loved the untouchable when they didn't deserve to be loved. He scorned the hypocritical for loving with strings attached. He illuminated the unconditional Love of God for the world. 

The church in America has been conditioned to think that our faith represents our best chance to reach our world. If you turn on Christian television, you will find preachers who communicate a Gospel narrative that highlights the power of faith. I do not deny Jesus' powerful teaching that corroborates faith's power. For instance, Matthew 17:20, Jesus taught, "if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you...say to this mountain, Move from here to there, '..." What an amazing thought! That a tiny bit of faith can lay low the highest mountains!

Yet, it was not faith that the Apostle Paul highlighted as the greatest attribute for a follower of Jesus to emulate. The Holy Spirit inspired him to write, "Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love" (1 Corinthians 13:13). 

How is Love Greater?

How could love be greater than saving faith or sustaining hope? The apostle gives us some insight earlier in this "love chapter." The things that we normally equate to acts of love do not inherently reveal the love that originates from the nature of God. For instance, love surpasses the bells and whistles of the supernatural show of gifts (vv. 1-2). What makes good showmanship does not equate to love. Someone may demonstrate great fanfare with supernatural leadings, but do so for notoriety or some form of self-gain. No amount of speaking with tongues can usurp the preeminent position of love that reflects the character of God. Additionally, no divine "words from God" can supplant the overwhelming power from one act of selfless love that has no audience. Love will always be greater than our self-promoted acts of grandeur. 

Second, love will always be greater than our self-abated life of goodness (v.3). No matter how much good we do for the poor, love will always surpass it. Philanthropic benevolence that costs me life and property cannot equate to unconditional love. Giving to the poor or giving up my life can be done for self-promotion. Agape love, which 1 Corinthians 13 teaches, leaves no place for self. To love like Jesus will always be greater than the good acts of my life. 

What Does It Mean to Love Like Jesus?

So, if love is always greater, then what does it mean to love with the counter-cultural love of Jesus? First, it means the person who loves like Jesus puts self to death (vv. 4-8). The death of self changes how we live in relationship with others, how we control ourselves, and to what extent we put others first in all things. Others who some overlook always take precedent over self when we love like Jesus!

To truly understand love that perseveres when faith and hope have disappeared, we need to look at Jesus' example of love. For example, Jesus regarded the untouchables. Jesus was known for including the ones who society excluded. Children represented a focus of Jesus' teaching (Mark 10:13-16; Luke 18:17). Women took a prominent role in the Gospel narrative (Luke 8:1-3; Matthew 28:1; Mark 7:24-30; John 4). He healed the banished lepers (Mark 1:40-41; 4:13). He turned toward the blind (Matthew 20:30-34). He delivered the demon-possessed (Mark 5:1-20). Jesus embraced people that society banished. 

Jesus also loved those who the religious establishment rejected. For instance, on one occasion, Jesus travelled where no self-respected Jewish person would go to meet a woman with a reputation (John 4). Jesus didn't worry about His reputation. He didn't concern Himself with the message He may send. Loving someone who was looking for love in all the wrong places was all that mattered to Him. To love like Him requires us to live against our natural tendency to exclude and overlook. Love requires us to die to ourselves. 

Second, loving like Jesus will always expose our self-righteous acts that elevate our importance. Jesus criticized the Pharisees and Sadducees for self-righteously promoting their faith to the populace. For us today, it could be all of us. We all must fight the tendency to put on our masks of hypocrisy to make ourselves look better than we are. Love may not sell like faith, but it will always outlast the messages we like to convey about ourselves like "everything in my life is working", or "I have it all together." Jesus' brand of love always included people who didn't have it all together because their lives were messy in many respects.  

His tendency to love the unlovable usually made Jesus a target by the religious. The Pharisees and Sadducees frequently ridiculed Him for meeting with sinners. However, He quickly dismissed their aimless accusations by reminding them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners" (Mark 2:17). Jesus' love looked markedly different than the self-righteous legalism that defined the religious establishment's self-absorbed worldview. 

Life Application

The apostle Paul taught us the principle of love, while Jesus demonstrated the power of love. Jesus turned his culture upside-down with love that surpassed all cultural boundaries, societal norms, and personal biases. 

We need to learn to love like Jesus again by abandoning our tendency to mask who we really are by loving with conditions or manmade parameters. Unconditional love without parameters will mean several things for us. 

It may mean:

• We must repent from our own self-righteousness that looks more like the Pharisees and Sadducees than it does Jesus. We don't always have all the answers. We're not always right. Our lives are not always flawless. We need to take off our masks by humbling ourselves before this world so that people can experience the love of God through us! We must embrace the people who offend us and our way of life to show them the power of God's unconditional love. 
• We must reevaluate our racial and social biases to break down the cultural barriers we have erected in the church by reaching out to people who look different than us, live different than us, or believe different than us. Gay people are not our enemy. Ousting liberal people is not the church's mission. Loving today's world like Jesus loved His world is what we are called to do. That means proclaiming the Gospel through life and love to everyone around us. 
• We must devote ourselves to Jesus before we devote ourselves to our political parties or positions. Political stumping for conservative positions, like banning abortion or shunning homosexual rights, does not equate to love for God anymore than giving to the poor or giving up your life automatically means you love like Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 13. All that will matter when everything else has faded away will be how we loved. 

Scriptures for further study

1 Corinthians 13

Mark 10:13-16

Luke 8:1-3

John 4