A sermon for Dalkeith Rd Church of Christ 27th September 2020
ESV 1 Corinthians 13:7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
NIV 1 Corinthians 13:7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love believes all things seems like a strange thing to say, or a romantic and unrealistic thing to say. Should we understand this statement to mean that we must believe anything and everything that people say to us, no matter how ridiculous or obviously untrue? Does it mean that Christians must be utterly naïve and credulous? If Christians believe everything that is told to us, we would become very easily manipulated and led up the garden path. When Paul writes “love believes all things”, he is NOT saying that we must believe lies and let everyone around us manipulate and cheat us. So what does it mean?
In 1 Corinthians, and indeed in the rest of the New Testament, believing has a very particular object. Faith is not a general concept but a specific one. Christians are to believe in the person of Christ. He is always the object of our faith. There is no other place to put our trust. Let’s have a quick look at a few passages in 1 Corinthians about believing. This should make my point for me.
“For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:21-24 NIV).
“For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power” (1 Cor. 2:2-5 NIV).
“Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. 3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,” (1 Cor. 15:1-4 NIV).
These examples are each about faith that comes through hearing the gospel, that is, the message about Jesus Christ. Our faith as Christians is always faith in Christ. It is never faith in something other than Jesus.
Having established this, let’s return to 1 Cor 13:7, “love believes all things”. Perhaps the NIV is closest when it says, love “always trusts”. People and events can easily make us cynical and jaded. But love has a different view of the world because love always trusts in the Saviour Jesus Christ. When we see things through our faith in Christ, we can love instead of simply becoming cynics. How can looking at one another through the eyes of faith help us to love one another? I want to consider this in regard to both individuals and the church as a whole.
The behaviour of the Corinthian church was enough to make your hair curl. They bickered over who was the best leader (ch 3), a man in the church was sleeping with his step mother (ch 5), people were suing one another (ch 6), some were frequently brothels (ch 6), and church services were rabbles, with everyone doing whatever they wanted with no regard for others (chs 11,14).
Looking at this church and the behaviour of the Christians within it, a person might have every reason to throw their hands in the air and give up on everyone in the church. This is precisely what Paul did not do. He viewed the church in Corinth the same way as he viewed all the other churches he corresponded with, as people in Christ.
We see this truth in Paul’s remarks at the beginning of the letter. He wrote, “I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. 5 For in him you have been enriched in every way– with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge– 6 God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you. 7 Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. 8 He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Cor. 1:4-9 NIV).
Paul knew full well what was going on in the church. But he viewed the Christians in Corinth through the eyes of faith. They were people saved by God’s grace. Regardless of the fact that their behaviour was dreadful at best and abominable at worst, he did not give up on them. Instead Paul reminded the Corinthians of the gospel and applied this to their sin. The sins of the Corinthians did not make Paul cynical. Although he had to correct them many times in this letter, he wrote, “I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children” (1 Cor. 4:14 ESV). Paul believed that these people, in their sin and foolishness, were fellow believers with him.
His many words of admonition did not change the way Paul thought of the Corinthian church. In chapter 16, the final chapter, he spoke in love to them. “After I go through Macedonia, I will come to you– for I will be going through Macedonia. 6 Perhaps I will stay with you for a while, or even spend the winter, so that you can help me on my journey, wherever I go. 7 For I do not want to see you now and make only a passing visit; I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits” (1 Cor. 16:5-7 NIV). These are affectionate words. They express Paul’s confidence in God’s gracious work in his people. Paul fully expected that the church would be able to help him in his ministry and he wanted to spend time with them. They are not the words of a cynical man. He ended the letter with “My love to all of you in Christ Jesus. Amen.” (1 Cor. 16:24 NIV).
The immaturity and sin in the church never made Paul cynical. He did not give up on them or despise them. He never said, “If that is what church is like, I will have nothing to do with these people. They cannot really be Christians.” He saw them through the eyes of faith, as people for whom Christ died (1 Cor 8:11). As such the people in the church at Corinth were people in whom God was at work. The Holy Spirit lived in them and was doing a good work in them.
What difference would it make if I looked at myself through the eyes of faith instead of only seeing my failure to obey God perfectly? What difference might it make if we viewed fellow Christians through the eyes of faith instead of looking at their sins, whether that be immaturity, outrageous behaviour, or simply annoying habits?
Instead of seeing myself as a person who fails repeatedly to do what is right in the sight of God, viewing myself through the eyes of faith means remembering that the gospel is the power of God that saves sinners (Rom 1:16). Because of this I can boldly acknowledge that I am a sinner. Reformer Martin Luther famously wrote:
“If you are a preacher of Grace, then preach a true, not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly. For he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here we have to sin. This life in not the dwelling place of righteousness but, as Peter says, we look for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. . . . Pray boldly you too are a mighty sinner.” (Weimar ed. vol. 2, p. 371; Letters I, “Luther’s Works,” American Ed., Vol 48. p. 281- 282)
Luther was not saying that disobeying God is a great idea. Rather, he said this because sin is the only qualification that you and I have to receive the grace of God. If I come to God as a sinner in need of mercy I will be justified, because God justifies the ungodly (Rom 4:5). If I refuse to come to God as a sinner then I do not qualify for grace. I will need to justify myself.
I am a sinner saved by grace, and every person in the church who confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord is also a sinner saved by grace. I should never measure my salvation based on my own performance. I don’t love God perfectly. In truth, sometimes I don’t love God at all. I don’t love people perfectly. Sometimes I feel downright indifferent towards other people. But my salvation depends on Jesus not on me. I receive that salvation because I believe that he is Lord of heaven and earth. If you believe that Jesus is Lord of heaven and earth, then you too have received God’s salvation. Don’t think that it depends on how good you are. Love looks at the sinful people in the church and believes that God saves sinners because of the work of Jesus.
Those sinful people are sometimes going to look like hypocrites because they act like sinners. But love believes that God is truly at work in his church. In the letter to the Ephesians, Paul wrote, “His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph. 3:10-11 NIV). This is a powerful statement about what God is doing in and through his Church. This church is made up of ordinary people, a group of sinners saved by grace, but this group of ordinary people, living ordinary lives, has been chosen by God as his means of demonstrating his manifold wisdom to angelic beings in the heavenly realms. What sometimes looks pitiful and weak, what is often sinful and short of faithfulness, is actually what God has eternally purposed to show forth his power and glory and wisdom to every being in heaven. We might be hypocrites but God is at work in us.
We are sinners, but the church is destined to be the bride of Christ himself. In the midst of teaching how husbands and wives submit to one another, Paul explained something profound about Christ and the church. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Eph. 5:25-27 NIV). The church has been chosen by God and washed in the blood of Christ so that it would be glorious and without blemish, made as a bride for the Lord Jesus Christ. When Jesus sees the church, he sees his bride to be and he loves the church that he died for. When the eyes of faith look at the church, they see the spotless, glorious bride that will one day unite with Christ.
Paul saw the church this way. His eyes of faith did not merely see the sins of the Corinthians but what they are in the sight of God. For this reason, he never gave up on them and never declared that they were not Christians, despite their sinfulness. When fellow Christians sin against us, act in embarrassing and shameful ways, betray one another, or are simply lazy and indifferent, love sees them through the eyes of faith. Love sees what the church is in the eyes of God.
So how will seeing ourselves through the eyes of faith change what I do? I suggest a couple of things in closing.
1) If I see myself through the eyes of faith, I will ask God for forgiveness when I sin instead of assuming that I can’t be saved when I am so terrible. I will remember that my salvation depends of the work of Christ, not on me.
2) It is almost inevitable that fellow Christians are going to hurt me at some point in my life, and probably more than once. But if I see that person through the eyes of faith, I can forgive because I am also a forgiven sinner.
3) If we can see the church as God sees it, we will not give up on church. Problems do arise in churches but we don’t have to throw up our hands and never come to church again. God is at work in his church. I know this by faith.