Friday: From Lust to Love
WEEK 27
FRIDAY
FROM LUST TO LOVE
1 Corinthians 13:1-7
We have been studying the mighty affirmation of the Christian movement.
I looked at one of the most beautiful churches I had ever seen, and the pastor quietly said, “It was made of waste marble gathered from a dump.” Waste marble into that! That was happening in the Christian movement in the Acts; the marble from the moral dump heaps of humanity was being built into a beautiful temple for the habitation of God in the Spirit.
I sat with a cultured Christian from the Tonga Islands and heard him tell how a hollowed-out rock that had been used as a receptacle for babies’ heads that were to be crushed and offered to the gods had been transformed into a font for the baptizing of babies—from crushing to consecration! That was the mighty affirmation at work.
That transformation takes place today among the cultured. I sat with a devoted and beloved bishop whose life had been spent in Africa. I remembered the story goes that, after his first year in Africa as a missionary he was voted to be sent home, a failure, an impossible person. Then the committee decided to give him another chance provided he would read the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians every day for a year. He did. He was transformed, and the very people who were going to send him home elected him to be their bishop! Now note the lowest statement that could be made about a man—“he lives like a Corinthian”—has been transformed into the highest standard of human living—“he lives like the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians.” The lowest lust had become the highest love. The cleansing Affirmative!
No wonder Paul ends the Acts of the Apostles with these words: “They will listen!” (28:28). Those words were a summing up of Paul’s mighty faith in humanity: They will listen! His last recorded words in the Acts were words of faith that the Gentiles would respond. And his faith has been justified. We have responded!
O Jesus, we have listened! How could we help but listen when your voice speaks out of Reality to the depths of us? In you, the yes has at last sounded. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: If I have lived like a Corinthian, I shall live like the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians.