Week 11—Tuesday 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
Week 11—TUESDAY
THREE GREAT INTERPRETERS TOOK
THE TORCH FROM HIS HAND
We saw yesterday that the author of our faith put his finger on the highest value as love to God and to others. Was that a unique position in the Founder but sidetracked in followers? For a time it seems as though Paul, his chief interpreter, is going to make faith the supreme value. But when it comes to the crucial choice, he says: “So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13). So he took the torch from his Master’s hand and held love up as the supreme value. John, in his epistles, looks as though, in putting the capstone on Revelation, he will choose knowledge as the supreme value. He did use the word “know” thirty-six times in the epistle, for he was writing against a background of gnosticism—the so-called knowers. But when he comes to the supreme emphasis, he makes love the supreme emphasis, using the word forty-three times. And he wrote something that had never before been written in human history. And when he was about to write it, all heaven leaned over to see if he really would write it. And when he did, all heaven broke out in applause: “At last they’ve got it!” And that phrase was: “God is love.” Others had said, “God loves,” but no one had ever said: “God is love” in God’s essential nature and cannot do an unloving thing without violating God’s nature.
But that could not have been said by John had he not looked in the face of Jesus Christ. Only then could he come to that conclusion. And Peter also takes the torch from his Master’s hand when he too makes love supreme in this climax: “Supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with fortitude, fortitude with piety, piety with brotherly kindness, and brotherly kindness with love” (2 Pet. 1:5-7, NEB). So the four great interpreters of the gospel—Jesus, Paul, Peter, and John—all make love the supreme value.
Dear Lord and Father, we thank you for this revelation of your nature as love. Beyond that revelation the human race can never progress. This is it—and forever! And now we know where we head in. Help us to head in with all our beings. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall be in the line of succession of these interpreters and interpret life as love.