June is wedding season, and if my experience as a musician is accurate, on any given weekend in June you can probably find a ceremony with a reading of 1 Corinthians 13 right along with other wedding favorites such as Pachelbel’s Canon in D and the “Bridal March” from Wagner’s Lohengrin. But the popularity of this passage for couples planning their service belies the fact that Paul has something much more expansive in mind than just romantic love. As the hymn reminds us, “the love of God is broader than the measure of our mind.” So as we meditate this morning on these very familiar words, we will also pray in song for the love of Jesus to fill us “as waters fill the sea,” and that our hands would move at the impulse of His love. We will ask the “Lord of love” to “teach us how to love each other,” and we confess that we love because He first loved us. His divine love is “all loves excelling,” and in His steadfast love we find “a river of delight.” As we leave this morning, I hope that we will not forget that “His love looks mighty, but ‘tis mightier than it seems.” —Henry C. Haffner
Key Words: Love, All, Way, Part, Not, Nothing, Pass Away, Know, Knowledge
Keystone Verse: So now faith, hope and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13)
1 Corinthians 12:31b-13:13
And I will show you a still more excellent way. 13:1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.