You Are Loved - 1 Corinthians 12:27-13:3
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We have no idea what 2025 is going to bring us. What decisions we're going to have to make. What opportunities we're going to encounter. What disappointments we're going to be faced with.
But we what we can do is begin this year of following Jesus by reminding ourselves of the
single most important fact in the universe.
How's that for a teaser?
We can begin this year by dropping a pin in the place where everything begins. We can
enter this year by committing to live in the central reality of human life.
3 words.
You. Are. Loved.
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1 Corinthians 13:4-6
Love is patient: with internal and external self-control when things are difficult.
In Exodus 34, God appears to Moses and says, "I am--the Lord God. I am compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion and faithfulness. Maintaining loving devotion and faithfulness to 1000 generations."
Because God is love and love is patient.
Love is kind: gentle and caring.
In Jeremiah 31, Yahweh God is quoted by the prophet saying, "The Lord appeared to us in the past saying, "I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, I have led you along with loving devotion." Kindly and gently, step by step.
Because God is love and love is kind.
Love does not envy: indulging in desire for something that is not yours to take.
In Matthew 4, Jesus is being tempted in the wilderness. The enemy plays on Jesus' potential capacity for envy: Hey, take from the earth what you want, whether or not the earth is ready to give it. Jesus says no. Then take what you want from God. He probably wants you to have it. God wants you to be happy. Jesus says no. Then take what you want from the nations of the world, what they say you don't deserve! Jesus says no. Just as later He would say, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's; give to God what is God's."
Because love God is love and love does not envy.
Love is not boastful: sounding their own praises, showing off.
In Exodus 3, God says to Moses, "I am who I am. Go and tell the Israelites I AM has sent you." God does not begin by trumpeting how great He is. He doesn’t have to. That would be a long journey of discovery for Israel.
Because God is love and God is not boastful.
Love is not proud: inflated or arrogant.
In Philippians 2, Paul writes, "In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who was God... but rather He made Himself nothing by taking the nature of a servant."
Because God is love and love is not proud.
Love is not rude: speaking and acting dishonourably towards another person.
In Matthew 26, Jesus speaks honour towards the children. Other people were dismissing them and telling them to go away. But Jesus said, "No, the Kingdom is made of children." In Luke 7, He speaks honour towards a "sinful" woman who gave Him a gift. Everybody else in the room was snickering and elbowing each other, "You know who that is, right?" But Jesus stopped them. He spoke honour toward her: "Her gift will be remembered forever."
Because God is love and love is not rude.
Love is not self-seeking.
In Ephesians 5, Paul writes, "Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her." How did Jesus love the church? He gave His entire life, His time, His patience. He brought humility, and submission to the will of God. He surrendered His own desires as a human person. He gave up sleep. He gave up meals. He gave up comfort. He gave up convenience. He gave Himself up for the church.
Because God is love and love is not self-seeking.
Love is not irritable: cranky and easily angered.
Jesus spent all those years of His ministry constantly surrounded by people who kept missing the point. Asking nitpicky questions and trying to get Him in trouble. Jesus may have sighed on occasion, and He may have taken a deep breath once in a while, but He walked and He sat and He taught and He answered and He answered and He answered.
Because God is love and love is not irritable.
Love keeps no record of wrongs: holding a grudge.
In Micah 7, the prophet is speaking to God when he says, “Who is a God like you? You don't stay angry forever. You delight to show mercy. You will tread our sins under foot and hurl all of our iniquities to the depths of the sea.”
Because God is love and love lets go of wrong.
Love does not take pleasure in evil.
This is not a verse we see on coffee mugs and bumper stickers: in Revelation 3, Jesus says, “Those whom I love I rebuke. Those whom I love I discipline.” In other words, those I love I hold to account when they get it wrong. I call them back.
Because God is love and love takes no pleasure in evil.
Finally, love rejoices with the truth.
In Zechariah 3, the prophet is speaking to the nation of Israel about a day of God's choosing when they will be restored to their home in Jerusalem. Zechariah says these words on God's behalf, “For on that day, I will restore clean lips to the people, that they may call upon the name of the Lord and serve Him shoulder to shoulder... The Lord your God will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you with his love. He will rejoice over you with singing.”
Because God is love, and love rejoices with the truth.
Paul says, “This is what love does. This is what love looks like when you see it happening right in front of you.”
Does this sound like anybody you know?
Being loved by God means both being ‘loved on,’ and being ‘loved up.’
First, we are loved on. God pours His love, His focus, His care onto each one of us individually, and to all of us as the Church that Jesus founded on the rock of Peter's testimony, “You are the Christ.”
Personally, I admit I have a hard time really owning the fact that God loves me. Maybe it's because, according to the birth order template, I'm a mix of eldest and middle. Maybe it's because I'm a strong and independent woman. Maybe it's because I'm an adult child of an alcoholic. Regardless of why, I really do wrestle with getting that I'm loved by God.
I don't have a hard time believing that people like me, that that people respect me, that people need me, that people appreciate me, that people are glad when they see me walk into the room. But I do genuinely struggle to take ownership of the fact that God loves me. I don’t doubt that there are others who encounter the same difficulty. Who say, “I don't feel it. I don't really get how it’s supposed to feel.” When we try to embrace God’s love, it’s like hugging a hippo.
Second, we are loved up. If I were to say to you, “My phone battery is charged...” If I were to say to you, “The river is fed and full...” you would have a picture in your mind.
You would understand that the battery and that the river have both been given something, have both received something that defines and identifies them. Because the purpose of a battery is not just to be charged. The purpose of a river is not just to be fed. A battery is a good battery when it's powered up enough to provide power to something else. A river is a good river when it is full enough to send that water where it needs to go, and to be endlessly refilled at the source. A human heart—the heart of a believer in Jesus—doesn't exist simply to feel God's love. It’s not just something that we receive.
I am deeply blessed and profoundly grateful when I have had an experience of God coming alongside me with his arm around my shoulder.
I am deeply blessed and profoundly grateful when I've had an experience of being reminded that God is, as one writer put it, “positively disposed” towards me: is fond of me, wants to be with me.
I am deeply blessed and profoundly grateful when I have an experience of God running to the rescue, quieting my fear.
But I am not just a receptacle of God's love. The human heart of a believer in Jesus operates according to a simple logical progression:
God is love ==> I am made in the image of God ==> I am made to live as the image of God's love in my world.
I came across an old Italian proverb this week: Who has love in their heart, has spurs in their flanks.
Although I don't always feel an awareness of God’s love for me, or always sense His love, I know based on past experience, and based on the stories of other believers, and based on what I've read in the Bible, that He loves us. I know that He loves me and, as an act of faith, I choose to live as though it's true.
I choose to live in a way that says that I am created in the image of the God who is love. His love is in me: both for me, and through me. Like the power in the battery, I store it so I can pass it on. Like the water that flows into the river, I carry it through the world. God's love is my essence. I am the image of the One who is love.
I say this not just to the Church, but to each individual unique one of us. I say it to myself:
Yes, be comforted. Be comforted because you are loved. God has chosen to look on you with patience and kindness and affection and generosity and empathy and joy.
At the same time, be inspired. Feel those spurs at your flanks.
Be loved on. Be loved up.
You are filled with the essence of God Himself.
Be the image of God's love in this sad, and confused, and unpredictable, and longing planet.
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