1 Corinthians 13:1-6

1Co 13:1-6

1. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

2. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

3. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

4. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.

5. Doth nor behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

6. Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.

The Essentials of Charity

We have opinions by the thousand in number, and every one sharp as a bristle; but that is not enough. We have controversy; some men have no greatness but in debate, their whole genius expires in the fray of words, in the foam of easily forgettable eloquence. What we want, according to the testimony of the Apostle, is love. Is that all? Yes, that is all. Love comes first, and love comes last, and love reaches all the intermediate space, but the love at the last is not the same altogether as the love at the first: it is richer in quality, it is wider in intelligence, it is more heroic in spirit; it is the same love, and yet not the same as the blossom is not the root, yet without the root there could be no blossom. If we believed this chapter we should all be converted men; we should drop all our present method of doing things, and startle the world by the originality of unselfishness.

This chapter should be read in one breath. If you halt in the reading of it you seem to miss a great deal. All the words are hyphened, and the whole deliverance is one urgent burst of eulogy. It comes in here quite in a Pauline manner. Paul had no little rules of rhetoric; when he wanted rhetoric he made it; he was not the slave of your small syntactical accuracy; he rushed, sometimes he plunged like a cataract, and sometimes he flowed like a deep broad river. Here he has been arguing about a good many things; he was going to settle things. All men have their moments of weakness; so Paul became a kind of ecclesiastical housekeeper, and he would arrange matters, he would descend to exhortation: and suddenly he gathered himself together, and became a new man, as if to say, What does all this amount to? This is mechanical, arbitrary: what you want is inspiration, the spirit; and the name of that spirit is Love. Where there is an abundance of love all the housekeeping goes easily, whether it be a little cottage or a great palace or a church comprehending multitudinousness of character, opinion, and force. Where there is no love there can be no reliance upon the easy working of the machinery; you may have compromise and concession, and a policy of give-and-take, but not until love rules the spirit will the life settle into rich, massive, worthy music. We should all be found offering homage to a different altar if we believed this chapter. We now worship "tongues," "prophecies," "mysteries," and small miracles of almsgiving. This exhortation was peculiarly seasonable in the case of the Corinthian Church. Nearly everybody in Corinth was either a good speaker or a good hearer; it was the city of eloquence. Paul having heard eloquent declamation said, All this amounts to nothing, unless it be backed up by an infinity of love. And when he heard faulty, hesitant speaking, speaking almost contemptible for its stumbling and feebleness, he said, This kind of speaking will tell in the long run, if there be behind it the love that suffers long and is kind. Love wins. Be not tired of love. This same Apostle says, "Be not weary in well doing." What does "well doing" mean there, in the language which Paul employed? We now take that as a text, and preach upon it to Sunday-school teachers and to tract-distributors and to various agents and servants of the Church; and with rational unction and legitimate persistency we say, Be not weary in well doing: keep on teaching your young, giving away your literature, and helping men to live better: be not weary in well doing. That is right: but that is not what Paul said. When he said "well doing" he meant, Be not weary in courtesy, graciousness of manner, complacency of spirit, the way that is suave, conciliatory, yea I will repeat for that is the word which holds the whole meaning gracious. Men will go down in courtesy before they go down in morality. That is the mystery of our human nature. We break away at points, and many a man becomes bearish who does not become absolutely dishonest in the marketplace. He tires of gentleness, he says he will be no longer gracious, he will try another policy. He has no right to try any other policy, for that is the Divine policy; and he has no right to be weary in it, and he must keep on being gracious, courteous, tender, sympathetic to the end: be not weary in love. Many a man will set himself up as a very distinguished and even model moralist who has a bitter tongue, and an evil and satirical way of speaking about other people. What about his morality? It is rubbish, it is rotten through and through; all over his face he has painted the ten commandments, and he has written a commandment on each finger and thumb, he is all commandments together, but he is no child of God: why? Because he has become weary in love, bitter in speech, unkindly in spirit; he has lost the nobleness of charity. We cannot allow that man to address the Church. He is too moral in his own esteem.

The Apostle then calls upon us to believe that unless we have love everything else goes for nothing. He does not depreciate other things, but he values all other things in proportion as they are charged by the spirit of love, and directed by loving purpose; and where there is an absence of other things, that absence is forgotten in the presence of overflowing love. Let there be a child in God's kingdom rather than a philosopher. If you cannot be both, be the child. "He that receiveth a little child in my name receiveth me." That holy Speaker never said, He that receives a philosopher with great pomp of hospitality receives the whole Trinity. Never! He did say, "Whosoever receiveth one such little child" and there was quite a number of these little creatures round about him "in my name receives the Christ of God"; and he who receives the Christ of God receives God himself, and turns his house into a heaven. If we could believe this we should banish controversy, we should get rid of contention: we should no longer see man fighting man on ecclesiastical ground; the Church would cease to be a beargarden, and would become the abode of peace. Of course there are those who do not understand the meaning of love in this connection; they think of it as implying carelessness, indifference, reluctance to meddle with anything or discuss with anybody, a total disregard of variety, of judgment, opinion, and argument; and they look upon love in this connection as simply signifying a very beautiful but a very futile sentiment. Those who talk so never knew what love can really do. Every man is born again when he feels the first touch of love. He rises to another level, he sees life and all things from another standpoint, he alters the whole standard of judgment, and his strength rugged, tremendous power is sanctified and chastened and utilised in the most beauteous forms. Love uplifts a soul. Love will last longer than law; love can sit up all night, and in the morning can so graciously deceive itself as to say that it is not tired. Love will save us, where argument will only irritate, confound, and destroy.

We must go into this description a little; but it would be more profitable for us to conduct what little analysis or criticism is necessary in private rather than in public. But first of all, the Apostle gets rid of all genius, mental power, pretence of mental eminence, yea he gets rid of all almsgiving and all self-martyrdom. The Apostle had a tremendous fist. Whatever he struck reeled under the stunning blow. He comes into all these little pomps and ceremonies by the right of birth, by the right of merit. When some men try to take down the Church they seem to be doing something beyond their strength: when Paul undertakes to remove, to rebuke, to set things in their right relation, he works with the dignity of a master, and with the ease of one who could produce his credentials if called upon to do so. It is Paul therefore, and not Peter, who sets aside great speaking, great thinking, fine utterance, and even charity of a visible and palpable kind; it is Paul who puts his foot on the smoking ashes of self-martyrdom, and says, All this is useless: what about your love, your self-sacrifice, your living in the spirit of Christ? Where is the cross on which you died for other lives?

Trying myself by this standard, and inflicting myself in so doing with cruel yet righteous humiliation, I have endeavoured to reverse the process. Thus: "Love suffereth long, and is kind." Do I suffer long? Am I kind with it all? No; I break down at the "kind." The longsuffering may be beyond my control, I cannot get things straightened and rectified and put into musical relation and form: I have suffered twenty, thirty years and more from this; so that if I have suffered long, have I love? No; that is the point of self-deception. Love suffereth long, and is through it all sweet, kind, courteous, gracious, uncomplaining; there is not a reproach upon its tongue, there is not one drop of bitterness in its gentle heart. Ah me! if that be so, I have no love.

"Charity envieth not." Do I envy? This is not the refrain of a song, this is the discipline of a soul. Do I envy that brother who is doing more than I am doing; that merchant who is making his fortune more rapidly than I am making mine in my slow-going business? Do I envy the gifts, the adornments, the accomplishments, and the honours of some other man? Do I? Soul, tell no lies to thyself! Yes, I envy. I do not want to envy. I would cut the throat of that foul knave, but no steel is keen enough to shed its blood: my God, God of the Cross, help me! I thought I had charity when all things were according to my will, when I was the supreme person, when I had nothing to envy, when I could simply look down upon all other people and wonder at their littleness; but when I saw some one greater, truer, grander O my Saviour! I felt something shoot through my heart that made hell there. Then I have not love. But if I have the tongues of men and of angels, will not that stand me in good stead? No, Thou envious man, thou evil soul, thy heart is a nest of foul birds, thou dost not know the Cross. But I am strong on doctrine! That is useless. I had held up my hand in church assembly to expel heretics. That is worthless; it is only an aggravation of thine abominableness: thou hast envy! My Lord, after this, who can be saved? Are there few that be saved?

"Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly," never goes to the front seat as if by right, never treats the weak as if they were a nuisance, never lifts itself up in self-reliant pomp, or displays itself in the circumstance of glittering ostentation: charity, love, will sit down anywhere, and not do that ostentatiously. There is a sitting-down in the back seat which means, Look at me now: how extremely humble I am! It only sits down there because there is no other seat vacant. That is not love; that is calculated modesty, that first writes its name and then blots it out. Charity is not swollen, inflated, wind-driven; love is simple, frank, self-unconscious, asks with a child's transparency of soul, What is the next thing to be done? If I can do it, here I am. But that man has no views about predestination! Blessed be God then; let him come farther up. That man takes no interest whatever in the controversies of the fourth century: how can he be saved? That man listens to the doctors in the temple, disputing with one another with most impious ferocity, and says in language they deem profane, What is all this Babel about? What then is his claim to attention? Why do the angels gather around him as around a shining spot? Because his soul is the habitation of love.

Love "seeketh not her own." That is the crucial point. Some most unselfish and noble souls will allow you to do whatever you like in the house if you do not touch their particular armchair. You have seen such generous hosts. Men have said, How kind, how ample in hospitality! Yes; but if you watch all the twenty-four hours round you will see that their self-oblivious love always holds itself in its own little corner.

"Is not easily provoked." Why, we take offence as quick as lightning. We say we are sensitive. O Christ of God, thou wast lacking in sensitiveness! When men smote thee on one cheek, thou didst turn the other also; when thou wast reviled, thou reviledst not again; when thou didst suffer thou didst not threaten; thou didst give thy back to the smiters, and thy cheeks to them that plucked off the hair! Oh, where was thy sensitiveness, Man of Golgotha, Victim of Calvary?

"Thinketh no evil." Who can follow this music? who can beat time to it? who can be part of it? There are men who have no genius but in evil thinking. They can always tell you why other people do certain things; their minds are perfectly fecundant, infinite, in the abundance of suggestion regarding evil motives. They know why others stand up and sit down; why they challenge public attention, why they vary usual methods of treating all the institutions of the country; they can always tell you the motive, and it is never a good one. Charity "thinketh no evil."

"Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; heareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." Oh this universality of genius! "Charity never faileth." Yet the Church can expel members, and never look after them. I have seen heretics driven out of the Church, and heard the church-door bang after them, and not a soul ever went out to say, Oh, poor exiled one, come back! He would have come back if we had bidden him. I saw him. He looked to see if anybody was coming after him, and he saw nothing his soul was in desolation.

Prayer

O thou God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we would be swallowed up in thy love! We bless thee for this desire; this desire is of thine own creation; we were once as sheep going astray, but now by thy grace we have returned unto the shepherd and bishop of our souls. This is the miracle of grace; this is the triumph of the Cross. May this desire grow upon us, until we live and move and have our being in God, not of necessity, but by our own loving consent; then shall we be as the angels of God, there shall be no time, no space, no burdensomeness; we shall live in God's own great eternity. Towards this we are moving by the Spirit; hitherto we have been little, foolish, frivolous, looking for small mercies and often missing them, but now our eyes are unto the hills; not the little hills of earth and time, but to the everlasting hills of light and glory and summer: our help cometh from the Lord. We bless thee for all thy care and love; thou hast made our houses homes, sweet, quiet dwelling-places, and that we have been enabled to find in our own fireside a hint of the ever-burning fire on the altar. We thank thee for sleep, for communion with one another in all holy and tender speech; we thank thee for the bread which perisheth and the water of earthly fountains, and these we have taken sacramentally, as if eating the body and drinking the blood of the Lord's anointed. Inasmuch as we have had to go down into the rough world and the tumultuous marketplace, thou hast been with us there; thou hast prospered us in basket and in store to some extent, and thou hast returned us to our houses glad that the bustling conflict was over, and thankful that the spirit of rest was brooding once more over our aching lives. We thank thee for all our hopes; the worlds are nearer than we thought, heaven's fragrance attempers the winds of earth, we almost hear the upper song: may we listen for it, may our souls delight in sweet anticipations of immortal fellowship, and may we come out of these high reveries determined to work more, suffer more patiently, to accept every discipline more willingly, and to do all our little day's work as men whose citizenship is in heaven. Amen.