Love Defended

Now I have a closing sentence or two to add about Paul’s reason for singling out love as the supreme possession.

It is a very remarkable reason: it lasts.

“Love,” urges Paul, “never failed.” Then he begins again one of his marvelous lists of the great things of the day, and exposes them one by one. He runs over the things that men thought were going to last, and shows that they are all fleeting, temporary, passing away.

“Whether there are prophecies, they will fail.” It was the mother’s ambition for her boy in those days that he should become a prophet. For hundreds of years God had never spoken by means of any prophet, and at that time the prophet was greater than the king. Men waited wistfully for another messenger to come, and hung upon his lips when he appeared as upon the very voice of God. Paul says, “Whether there are prophecies, they will fail.” The Bible is full of prophecies. One by one they have “failed”; that is, having been fulfilled their work is finished; they have nothing more to do now in the world except to feed a devout man’s faith.

Then Paul talks about tongues. That was another thing that was greatly coveted. “Whether there are tongues, they will cease.” As we all know, many, many centuries have passed since tongues have been known in this world. They have ceased.

Take it in any sense you like. Take it, for illustration merely, as languages in general - a sense which was not in Paul’s mind at all, and which though it cannot give us the specific lesson, will point the general truth. Consider the words in which these chapters were written –biblical Greek. It is gone from common use. Take Latin, the other great tongue of those days. It also ceased to be a common language long ago. Look at the Indian language. It is ceasing. The language of Wales, of Ireland, of the Scottish Highlands is dying before our eyes. The most popular book in the English tongue at the present time, except the Bible, is one of Dickens’ works, his Pickwick Papers. It is largely written in the language of London street-life; and experts assure us that in fifty years it will be unintelligible to the average English reader.

Then Paul goes farther, and with even greater boldness adds, “Whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away.” The wisdom of the ancients, where is it? It is wholly gone. A schoolboy today knows more than Sir Isaac Newton knew; his knowledge has vanished away. You put yesterday’s newspaper in the fire; its knowledge has vanished away. You buy the old editions of the great encyclopedias for a few cents; their knowledge has vanished away. Look how the carriage has been superseded by the use of steam. Look how electricity has superseded that, and swept a hundred almost new inventions into oblivion. “Whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away.” At every workshop you will see, a heap of old iron, a few wheels, a few levers, a few cranks, broken and eaten with rust. Twenty years ago that was the pride of the city. Men flocked in from the country to see the great invention; now it is superseded, its day is done. And all the boasted science and philosophy of this day will soon be old.

At the University of Edinburgh, in that time, the greatest figure in the faculty was Sir James Simpson, the discoverer of chloroform. Recently his successor and nephew, Professor Simpson, was asked by the librarian of the University to go to the library and pick out the books on his subject that were no longer needed. And his reply to the librarian was this: “Take every text-book that is more than ten years old, and put it down in the cellar.” Sir James Simpson was a great authority only a few years ago: men came from all parts of the earth to consult him; and almost the whole teaching of that time is consigned by the science of today to oblivion. And in every branch of science it is the same. “Now we know in part. We see through a glass darkly.”

Can you tell me anything that is going to last? Many things Paul did not condescend to name. He did not mention money, fortune, fame; but he picked out the great things of his time, the things the best men thought had something in them, and brushed them firmly aside. Paul had no charge against these things in themselves. All he said about them was that they would not last. They were great things, but not supreme things. There were things beyond them.

What we are stretches past what we do, beyond what we possess. Many things that men denounce as sins are not sins; but they are temporary. And that is a favorite argument of the New Testament. John says of the world, not that it is wrong, but simply that it “passes away.” There is a great deal in the world that is delightful and beautiful; there is a great deal in it that is great and engrossing; but it will not last. All that is in the world, the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, are but for a little while. Love not the world therefore. Nothing that it contains is worth the life and consecration of an immortal soul. The immortal soul must give itself to something that is immortal. And the only immortal things are these: “Now abide faith, hope, love, but the greatest of these is love.”

Some think the time may come when two of these three things will also pass away - faith into sight, hope into fruition. Paul does not say so. We know but little now about the conditions of the life that is to come. But what is certain is that love must last. God, the Eternal God, is love. Covet therefore that everlasting gift, that one thing which it is certain is going to stand, that one coinage which will be current in the Universe when all the other coinages of all the nations of the world shall be useless and unhonored. You will give yourselves to many things; give yourselves first to love. Hold things in their proportion. Hold things in their proportion. Let at least the first great object of our lives be to achieve the character defended in these words, the character - and it is the character of Christ - which is built around love.

I have said this thing is eternal. Did you ever notice how continually John associates love and faith with eternal life? I was not told when I was a boy that “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believe in Him should have everlasting life.” What I was told, I remember, was that God so loved the world that, if I trusted in Him, I was to have a thing called peace, or I was to have rest, or I was to have joy, or I was to have safety. But I had to find out for myself that whosoever trust in Him - that is, whosoever loves Him, for trust is only the avenue to love - had everlasting life.

The Gospel offers a man life. Never offer men a thimbleful of Gospel. Do not offer them merely joy, or merely peace, or merely rest, or merely safety. Tell them how Christ came to give men a more abundant life than they have. A life abundant in love, and therefore abundant in salvation for themselves and fulfillment of Christ’s great Commission to the world. Only then can the Gospel take hold of the whole of a man - body, soul, and spirit - and give to each part of his nature both its task and its reward.

Many of the current Gospels are addressed only to a part of man’s nature. They offer peace, not life; faith, not love; justification, not regeneration. And men slip back again from such religion because it has never really held them. Their nature was not all in it. It offered no deeper and more joyful life current than the life that was lived before. Surely it stands to reason that only a fuller love can compete with the love of the world.

To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is to live forever. Hence, eternal life is inextricably bound up with love. We want to live forever for the same reason that we want to live tomorrow. Why do you want to live tomorrow? Is it because there is someone who loves you, and whom you want to see tomorrow, and be with, and love back? There is no other reason why we should live on than that we love and are loved. It is when a man has no one to love him that he commits suicide. So long as he has friends, those who love him and whom he loves, he will live; because to live is to love. Be it but the love of a dog, it will keep him in life; but let that go, he has no contact with life, no reason to live. He dies by his own hand.

Eternal life also is to know God, and God is love. This is Christ’s own definition. Ponder it. “This is life eternal, that they might know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you has sent.” Love must be eternal. It is what God is. On the last analysis, then, love is life. Love never fails, and life never fails, so long as there is love. That is the philosophy of what Paul is showing us; the reason why in the nature of things, love should be the supreme thing - because it is going to last; because in the nature of things it is part of Eternal Life. It is a thing that we are living now, not that we get when we die. We shall have a poor chance of getting when we die unless we are living now. No worse fate can befall a man in this world than to live and grow old alone, unloving, and unloved. To be lost is to live in an unregenerate condition, loveless and unloved; and to be saved is to love. He that dwells in love dwells already in God. For God is love.