Learning to Love

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. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind.

It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

⁵It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love.

But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13)

I’m not so great at love. I do love, and deeply, but really, I am still learning to love. What Paul is writing is that it doesn’t matter if we are the greatest, the best, the premier, or the champion. If we do not love, we are nothing. Love is our legacy, and our testimony. Love is how others know we are saved by Jesus.

One day, when we are all in heaven, we won’t need prophecies, or translators, or even schools or classes to gain knowledge because we will truly see and know as we never have before. We will be complete, therefore we won’t need all the above listed things because they are just support mechanisms to help us along while we are still incomplete. Knowing Christ, means loving Christ, and that means our love must grow and mature. Mature love recognizes that the person and the relationship are the most important. Pride and Ego and all that stuff doesn’t really matter when viewed with an eternal love. We can’t always love like we are children. Immature believers love for the blessing, for the good. Mature believers love even during the bad, the hard, and the broken. Our love needs to grow. My love needs to grow.

John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world…” It doesn’t say that He so loved the good parts, the good ones, the just ones, the ones really trying, the rich, the poor, the pastors, the missionaries, the puppies and ponies and baby otters. God so loved the world, all of it. The snakes, the spiders, the sinners AND saints, the middle class, the crooks, the politicians, the cancer, the bad hair days, the fungus, the ones who are broken, the ones pulled apart, the dying, the living, the world. He made it, He loves it, and He is redeeming it through Christ’s death and resurrection. This is mature love: loving what God has made because God made it, and not because it benefits us. This is why we love our enemies. Because God made our enemies. Mature love loves God and everything God has created and blessed regardless of how the devil has tainted and twisted it.

Do I love like God does? No. I’m still learning to love the mess and the chaos and the brokenness that comes from living in a world that is still in the process of redemption. I’m not always patients with my husband or son, I’m not always kind or gentle. I am not always joyful or self-controlled. I am still learning to love God and others because I am still a work in progress. I am still learning to love myself because I am still learning about myself. God is still showing me how He created me, and that I am a good creation. In the midst of my sinfulness I am learning that God is good because God is love, and I too can be love to others.