What is Love?

There was a time when 1 Corinthians 13 was the “go to” scripture reading to hear at weddings. That’s Paul’s beautiful description of love that begins “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” You’ve probably heard it. “The greatest of these is love,” it concludes.

I’m not sure if it’s still as common. There are so many non-biblical things read now, and weddings are far less likely to be “churchy” these days.

Still, give it a read - reading all of Paul’s first letter to the people at Corinth is a good idea, too - and you can easily see why this would be appropriate, and popular, for a wedding. In that beautiful moment of affirming your love and committing to each other surrounded by loved ones, what more could you ask for than an eloquent description of the love that you celebrate together?

Except … Paul didn’t write these words to people who were happy and doing well and celebrating a loving relationship. He wrote them to people who were struggling, and finding that being in relationship as a community was a challenge, full of differences and disagreements. It seems Jesus’ commandment to ”love one another” wasn’t as easy as they thought and they weren’t being too successful at it.

Paul’s just finished telling the Corinthians that being in community is like being a body. We’re each different and unique parts, but we need all the parts, working together, for the body to be whole. At the end of that discourse about being in relationship, Paul writes “I will show you a still more excellent way.” His next words are this practical description of  love, what it means to love and how, unlike all these other things, love is eternal.

Long before the Gospel of John told how Jesus commanded the disciples (and us) that they should love one another as Jesus had shown them to do (John 13), here’s Paul distilling the stories and teaching what he knows of Jesus into his own words. And, just like Jesus, he’s speaking to the troubled, the broken and hurting. First of all, love is at the heart of all things. Have all the gifts of language, prophecy, wisdom and faith, and everything else, but they are meaningless without being grounded in love.

And what is love? Well, it’s an action word: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:4-7).

Keep love at the heart of things and put it into action like this, says Paul, and it never fails. All of the other things in life have an ending when this life ends. Even faith and hope will be fulfilled when we return home to God. But love doesn’t end because God is love and the love that gives us life here is the love that fulfills us when this life is done.

These aren’t just words for those who’ve found love, who are prepared to commit to a relationship. It’s for those who struggle to love, who find it difficult, who are challenged by the world around them. Love one another the way I showed you, says Jesus. Here’s a practical description, says Paul.

Imagine that kind of love in action. Don’t just make noise. Make a difference. Go and love.