1 Corinthians 13 is a wedding cliche now. The Apostle Paul emphasizes love with such poignant aphorisms that it is impossible for people to find it unappealing. In our world, we say we love tacos, pets, and our kids. Someone needs not date long before they realize people are working with different definitions of “love.” Our world is full of messages about love – but when it comes to our real lives it’s news, scandals, fun, relationship drama, bills, possessions, addictions, trauma, still tacos, problem kids, debt, and social media. About the only thing we know about love is wish we had it.

Two thousand years ago, the Christian community in Corinth was an impetuous and impulsive bunch. They loved bragging about who their favorite apostle was, who baptized them, how great their spiritual gifts were, their Eucharist seating arrangement, and so on. It was specifically in the context of spiritual giftings that Paul segways to love when he ended chapter 12 with, “But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.”

More Than Pets & Tacos

Love is the “higher” gift and the “more excellent way.” The Corinthian church missed the point – they made the things the point, much like Gideon turned an ephod into an idol or the local church making Republicanism the Gospel. Corinthian Christians, much unlike Christians today, were engulfed in the social game of inferiority and superiority. The Gospel of Love and Redemption was now The Gospel of Complying and Competition. The tools given to the church were meant for building people and inviting potential – not for keeping people out and making others inferior. That is the antithesis of the rebellion Jesus started.

Paul’s first paragraph in chapter 13 makes it clear that even with the most divine gifting, even if you chat with angels and can move mountains, if love is not present it is nothing. It’s when someone does something “nice” but with clearly selfish reasons. We hate it when people use us as objects and make us a means to an end. Paul’s point is that if we treat people as objects, if we don’t love them, then our actions are automatically outside of the world God is intentionally building. We work against Him when we are not in love.

Paul’s summary of what he is without love is stark: “I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal,” “I am nothing,” and “I gain nothing.” Rather than just discussing how things look without love, the apostle positively then describes what love looks like and how it behaves:

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends…” (v. 4-8a)

The language is poetic but also direct. There are no qualifications or conditions. Love is patient and kind – period. It is not arrogant or rude. Period. Therefore, when I am not patient and kind, when I am arrogant and rude, I am not being loving. When I rejoice over someone’s hurt or resent someone, I am not choosing agape love. Thus, “I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal,” “I am nothing,” and “I gain nothing.”

Love Is Not Optional

Paul the Apostle makes it clear that Love is not an option for this way of living – it is the thesis, the point of it all. He said that when he was a child, he thought and acted like a child, but when he grew up, he put those things aside. In this context, it’s clear what Paul is talking about – love. “Hey, Christian,” Paul says, “do you want to grow up? It’s about time to start loving people right.”

Love is not just a part of Christianity. It is the beating heart of it. It’s where we start and what we grow into. Love is what the members of the body of Christ are meant to be built into (Ephesians 4:16). If we don’t love, we don’t know God (1 John 4:20). If we don’t love, we aren’t Jesus’ disciples. If we don’t love, we can’t serve. If we don’t love, we are banging gongs. There is no other clear marker of the Christian faith than this one thing: do we love people or not?

This Is Not Hype, Snowflake

Just in case we’re tempted to think this love talk is just hype, just an emotional social fad, or another snowflake entitlement thing, the Apostle Paul is going to repeat something he said earlier but double down on it. And he says it in a way that I don’t think many Christians have considered the theological implications of.

Consider what and how Paul says his final thought before moving on: “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” At the inception of the chapter, Paul said, “if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” and then went on to say that if gives everything he owns away, he wouldn’t gain anything. Here, at the end of his love rant, he calls his Corinthian audience back to the discussion at hand, about what really matters in the Church. It’s these three things: Faith, Hope, and Love.

TJ Maxx Isn’t Selling This

We love “Faith, Hope, & Love” almost as much as tacos and lattes and being right. We buy “Faith, Hope, & Love” TJ Maxx wall art and hang it above our kitchen sink. Notice, however, Paul wasn’t done yet. He then said, “And the greatest of these is love.” Let me restate that: Greater than faith and hope is love. What does it mean that Love is greater than Faith?

Love is greater than faith. In the Christian realm of systematic theology, this could shake people to their existential core. Paul had no problem voicing Love matters more in every way that matters than Faith. It’s the same thing he said in the opening verses: if you have faith but not love, you’re nothing and gain nothing. James’ stance on good work equaling faith is basically the same concept: real faith produces good works (all examples of “loving” people) or else that faith is dead.

Let it settle. This chapter states Faith doesn’t matter as much as Love does. What about “it’s through faith we are saved”? Maybe that’s the point: What kind of faith and faith in what exactly? It’s almost like if we live out agape love, we’ll also live out faith. If we think we have faith right, but we are not loving people well, our faith could be in the wrong thing.

Do we Christians really believe this? Do we really act like this? Are we more concerned with loving people or more concerned with their sexuality, voting preferences, social context, profanity, substance use, or doctrinal statements? Do we evaluate our church metrics based on our fidelity and loyalty to love as much as we do on our unique blend of systematic theology? Do we get as upset when a political candidate so embodies the opposite of love as we do when a candidate is pro-choice or a pastor questions 6-day Creation? Do we use our Faith to keep us from Loving? Do we love people? Or do we love people like tacos and pets or like Jesus did?

Many churches couldn’t exist the way they do if they were to get this right. Many churches exist the way they do because they are getting this wrong. I know that me, there are a lot of areas I need to grow up. There are more ways, fuller ways, and more complete ways of loving people well. It’s time for me to grow up and put off my childish ways.