God says through Paul in the first Corinthian letter that love never fails. We can all agree when things are going well that love never fails, but Paul’s admonition is most critical when the world isn’t going well.
Here is what we are told, “love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.”
Paul wrote this to a congregation or set of congregations of the people of God, folks attempting to live as disciples of Jesus. They were failing at the very core of their practice, love for one another. It didn’t look that way to them. They thought they were OK in their cliques, their ignoring and abusing of each other, of their picking sides aligned with their favorite preacher.
What they were doing every day seemed rational, normal, and even pious. They may even have uttered derision and condemnation toward those who were in the Paul group instead of their group. It’s easy for those of us learning to walk the Way of Jesus to get lost in our everyday lives, to risk being soil that is overcome by the cares of the world.
Paul says this to another group of disciples in slightly different language, “but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…” He had to say that for much of the same reasons as he had to tell the Corinthians what love is. If we are disciples of Jesus, if we are living in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit is with us and guiding us, then our lives Paul says, should reflect these sorts of things. We should be patient people, we should be kind people.
Peter will tell us much the same. In his first letter, “...make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.”
Pete’s reason for writing those words is slightly different than Paul's. Paul was correcting the ongoing behavior of disciples toward each other and perhaps even outsiders. Pete is writing to forestall apostasy, the abandonment of Jesus as savior—being that soil overcome with those cares. Pete is writing so that his readers can come to know God most fully and in that way he says, “there will be richly provided for them an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
When Paul tells us that love never fails, he doesn’t mean that love always achieves what it wants What he means is that disciples of Jesus don’t stop loving. Fail here is best understood as end, love never stops.
But Paul isn’t talking about love as his central theme. He’s talking about you and me and his expectation—God’s expectation of our lives. That is where we pick up Pete’s concern, that we come to know God and in that knowing live like God as true disciples of Jesus. Lives like that—born from so intimate knowledge of God—His character, values, and desires—are those lives that live with God now and will live with God in the end. Those disciples have Life with God now and will have that same Life with God when the world is set right.
As we continue into the new year, as we mark the appearance of our God to the world, let us take the admonishments of Paul and Pete to heart, reflect and discern how closely our lives reflect the love and knowledge of God, and to set our minds and hearts on becoming true disciples and fully images of our God.
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