Did you know Paul’s love hymn in 1 Corinthians is really about Jesus? It is. Here’s the proof — just plug in “Jesus” for “love” in the hymn and see how perfectly it reads:
Jesus suffers long and is kind; Jesus does not envy; Jesus does not parade himself, Jesus is not puffed up; Jesus does not behave rudely, and does not seek his own; Jesus is not provoked, thinks no evil; Jesus does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; Jesus bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Jesus never fails.
Of course, the love hymn is also a description of what the church *should* be:
The church should suffer long and be kind; the church should not envy; the church should not parade herself, the church should not be puffed up; the church should not behave rudely, should not seek her own, the church should not be provoked, the church should think no evil; the church should not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoice in the truth; the church should bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things. The church should never fail.
—
A bit more about Jesus and the love hymn in 1 Corinthians 13…
Later in the chapter, Paul says in that our hope is to see and know “face to face.” There is a lot going on this paragraph (e.g., what Paul says ties in to the cessation of special revelatory gifts — but I will sidestep that issue for now). I want to limit my focus to just one thing: knowing and being known face to face is our deepest desire. This is what we all long for. We want to know others face to face. We want them to know us face to face. What is a face to face relationship? It’s a deep connection. It is fellowship, friendship, closeness, transparency, and ultimately (of course), love. To know face to face is to love and be loved in the deepest possible way. This kind of face to face love is the only thing that can satisfy our hearts.
Once again, we should “Jesusize” the text if we want to really understand it. More than anything and anyone else, what we all need and want is to know and be known by Jesus in a face to face way. We want to see Jesus face to face, to behold his glory. We want to be seen and known by Jesus, to feel his loving gaze upon us. We want to meet our Maker. We want to know our Redeemer, the lover of our souls. We want to know love with a capital “L” – the Love that is Jesus himself. We want to be wrapped up in that Love forever.
This is exactly what the gospel promises to us, but in order to understand it, we have to dig deeper. In 1 Corinthians 13, in Paul’s “love hymn,” he is talking about Love with a capital “L”,” Love that is the person of Jesus. We can actually trace this love all the way back to its fount in the Trinity. This Love is the deepest reality in the universe. It is the core of everything.
John opens his gospel with the famous words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.” The “Word,” or “Logos,” of course, is Jesus, the eternal Son of God who was made flesh and tabernacled among us. As John’s gospel goes on to show, the Logos of God is also the Love of God. The Greek mind would have kept Logos and Love separate — cold logic and warm agape could have no direct connection anymore than deity and humanity could be in contact in the Greek worldview. But John aligns Logos and Love in the closest possible way. The Logos and Love are One — One eternal Person. Jesus is light and heat, wisdom and warmth, reason and charity, in himself. He is the embodiment of God’s glory, the One in whom all the divine perfections are revealed to us. He is Logos made flesh and he is Love made flesh.
But there’s more. This Logos is “with” God, and has been from all eternity. The English preposition “with” does not really capture the force of the Greek term “pros.” John is really saying the Word is united to God in the closest possible way. The Word is not merely alongside God, he is in a dynamic, active, personal union with God. He is in communion with God. He is in fellowship with God. He is personally related to God. He IS God. The Word and God are distinct and distinguishable and yet are somehow in an active and total union. “The Word was with God” describes intimacy — in this case infinite intimacy because divine intimacy is in view. To put it another, when John says, “The Word was with God,” he is saying, “The Word was towards God, the Word was facing towards God.” Or even better, “The Word was face to face with God.” The Father and Son have been face to face from all eternity.
This face to face closeness that exists between the Word and God, the Father and Son (in the bond of the Spirit) is the model for all relationships. As image bearers, we are designed for face to face relationships with one another, because we are designed to reflect the inter-Trinitarian relationships of God’s eternal existence. But more than that, we are designed for a face to face relationship with God himself. The problem — or perhaps we should say “problem” — is that (as John later puts it), no man has at any time seen God (John ). No man had ever seen God face to face before Jesus. Even Moses had to be hidden in the cleft of a rock as God’s glory passed by, and he only got to glimpse God’s backside.
Jesus is the solution to this problem. Jesus is the face of God. He has opened up God’s face to face relationship to us. In Jesus, we behold the face of God. He is the Logos and Love made flesh. He is God made flesh. In Jesus, we can be face to face with God. Through Jesus, we can have a face to face relationship with God. And once we are restored to a face to face to relationship with God, we can be restored to true face to face relationships with one another. In Jesus, we experience not only love but Love. And having experienced this Love, we are free to not only love one another but Love one another — because we love others with the same love with which we have been loved. Our love for one another becomes an overflow and outflow of the Love that God has poured into us through his Son. We are with Jesus and Jesus is with us — we are face to face with him. And so we can be face to face to one another. We can know and be known.
In the upper room discourse in John 13-16, Jesus said quite a bit about him abiding in us and us abiding in him. In 1 John, the apostle shifts to us abiding in love and love abiding is us. Again, we see that Jesus is the Love of God in human form. When Jesus abides in us and we abide in him, Love abides in us and we abide in Love. “And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him” (1 John ).
The Love that is God, that has been at the heart of the Trinity from all eternity, is the Love manifested in the incarnation and at the cross. And this same Love is now to be the animating force in the life of the church. The Love that is at heart of God, at the heart of creation, at the heart of the cross, is the Love that is to be at the heart of the church.
Of course, we cannot fill in any definition of love we want (which is what our culture does). Not everything that gets called “love” really is love. Love is defined by God and by God’s Word. Love is mirrored by God’s law. Love is revealed in Jesus, and thus is inseparable from his holiness, righteousness, and truth.
The only chapters in the Bible that rival 1 Corinthians 13 as an exposition of love are John 13, which reveals the love of Jesus for us as the model of our love for one another, and 1 John 4, which shows us that the love that we have towards one another is simply the love of God himself abiding in us. We live lives of love because we have been loved. His love is the source of our love. Love begets love. We love him because he first loved us. We love one another because he first loved us.
TPC Pastor's Page 