Love the greatest gift of the Holy Spirit: (chapter-13):
Apostle Paul hit the nail on its head by giving one entire chapter on Love. The Corinthian believers were perhaps harping on their gifts of speaking in tongues or miracles or prophecies, but they had no Love. There were parties, superiority feelings. Paul exhorts them through this chapter, that if they do not have love for each other, all their gifts would be vain and amounts to nothing.
Love is supreme: (13:1-3):
The Corinthians were fascinated with the gifts of tongues. Here Paul makes a point if they speak in tongues of men and angels, it is meaningless without love. It only amounts to sounding brass or clanging cymbal or empty noise. The Greek word for tongues is “languages.” Some people say, it is the capability of learning the new languages to communicate the gospel in other languages. But here Paul refers tongues to something supernatural language by which a believer communicates to God. Angels also communicate to God with something different tongues.
Further Paul says the gift of prophesy which is ranked as the first and foremost gift which can fathom the depths of mysteries and knowledge, a faith which could move mountains (Matt. 17:20), an amazing thing making the impossible thing possible, all these would be vain and amounts to nothing without love.
Further Paul says that giving alms to the poor is a good thing and dying for the faith and our stand for the Lord or martyrdom is the ultimate sacrifice.
But all these things gain us nothing without love. Paul summarizes these three verses like this: Without love “I say nothing, I am nothing, and I gain nothing.”
Clearly, we must have love when we are exercising our spiritual gifts. In our ministry we have to stop for just a moment and reflect on your spiritual gifts and our ministry in the local church.
- Are we doing the ministry out of genuine love for people?
- Are we serving just with a sense of obligation?
- Are we serving because of the satisfaction we derive from ministry?
- Are we ministering just to sharpen our skills?
Sometimes we may not have these perfectly pure motives, we must seek to grow in our love quotient. Paul says that love is an action, not an emotion.
Let us look at the different kinds of love:
- Eros: It described, as we might guess from the word itself, erotic It refers to sexual love. It is also the husband-wife love. A good word.
- Epithumia: This is sexual love, a bad word. This in other words is infatuation which is just attraction at first sight or a state of being completely carried away by physical attraction driven to selfish sex.
- Storge: It refers to family love, the kind of love there is between a parent and child or between family members in general. It is also the love that friends feel for each other. In some cases this friendship may turn into romantic relationship. Storge love is unconditional, accepts flaws or faults and ultimately drives you to forgive.
- Philia: It speaks of a brotherly friendship and affection. It is the love of deep friendship and partnership. This is the word used for Philadelphia church in (Rev.3:7ff). This may be described as the highest love a man, without God’s help, is capable of.
- Agape: This is the love Apostle Paul is speaking about. It is a love that does not change. It is a self-giving love that gives without demanding or expecting re-payment. It is love so great that it can be given to the unlovable or unappealing. It is a love that loves even when it is rejected. It does not demand or expect repayment from the love given. It gives because it loves, it does not love in order to receive. According to Alan Redpath, we get our English word agony from “It means the actual absorption of our being in one great passion.” It can be defined as a sacrificial, giving, absorbing, love (1 Jn. 2:15). This Agape love has little to do with emotion but it has much to do with self-denial for the sake of another.