2013-10-09 ILC Chapel — Love
1 Corinthians 13 (Listen)
The Way of Love
13:1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,1 but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;2 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Footnotes
[1] 13:3
[2] 13:5
(ESV)
Hymn: TLH 439, st. 2-4 :
O God of Mercy, God of Might
2. And Thou, who cam’st on earth to die
That fallen man might live thereby,
Oh, hear us; for to Thee we cry,
In hope, O Lord, to Thee.
3. Teach us the lesson Thou hast taught,
To feel for those Thy blood hath bought
That every word and deed and thought
May work a work for Thee.
4. All are redeemed, both far and wide,
Since Thou, O Lord, for all hast died.
Oh, teach us, whatsoe’er betide,
To love them all in Thee!