By Not Known
A Google search of the word ‘love’ produces about 1,810,000,000 links. That’s a
lot of words. Love inspires many and great words of poetry, literature and song.
These many words take our souls soaring and hearts heaving with their lofty
abstractions and grand declarations. But, is love just words?
Paul gives us yet more words about love in 1 Corinthians 13. But there’s something
distinctive about his key words. They are all verbs. Nouns talk. Verbs act. Love
does.
Consider this version of Paul’s words:
Love hangs in and gives with kindness. It doesn’t envy, show off, puff
up, nor act shamefully, help itself, get angry, file a record of wrongs
or smile at evil. Instead if cheers along with the truth and covers
believes, hopes and endures everything.
Love is a verb. It’s a sweaty, messy down-to-earth kind of verb. A verb that gives
and gives until it is exhausted and then gives some more. A verb that loves the
unlovable and the unloving.
There’s a good test of our love here. Let’s ask ourselves: What do I do from love?
Do I love only when it is easy, or do I stretch myself beyond discomfort? Do I do
love’s deeds just to those whom l like or (even worse) to those from whom I hope
to gain something? Or do I love the unlovable and love when there is no echo?
God has verbalised love. His call to love is just another way of saying: ‘Follow me’
and ‘Be perfect as I am perfect’. We can only love because he has loved us first.
We must love because he loved us first. We must love as he has loved us first.
God’s deed of love is found in the Cross of Jesus. He loved the unlovable to the
point of loving his enemies. He loved at immense cost to himself. He loves and
loves tirelessly as he welcomes us back to his Son and forgives again and again.
There, on the Cross, is love divine, all loves excelling. Let us pause at the Lord’s
Table today to remember this love. Then let us rise to verbalise God’s love in our
deeds (1 Jn 3:18).