I Corinthians 13

Is this one of your favorite chapters?  It is one of mine!  It is almost too precious to try to write about.. but I will anyway :) 

Love! Agape - affection or benevolence ( in a social or moral sense) - charity. ( Strongs concordance). 

It is this kind of love that Paul instructs us to go after to - "Pursue love.." ( 14:1) 

It is this kind of love that Paul teaches us is a "fruit of the Spirit" ( Gal. 5:22)

It is the kind of love that we are to have for the Lord, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind."  And the love that we are to have for our neighbor as well. (Matthew 22: 37-39)

It is related to but different from "phileo" love - that for a friend.. a personal attachment; "as a matter of sentiment or feeling". Strongs concordance says this,  agape love -"is wider, embracing especially the judgement and the deliberate assent of the will as a matter of principle, duty and propriety;... the former being chiefly of the heart and the latter of the head.. " 

In other words - this love that we are to pursue - is a love that we choose to express as opposed to an emotional reaction or relationship with another person. It is a gift of God, for certain, for it is not always easy to choose to love those for whom we feel no emotional love.

 In John 21 when Jesus speaks to Peter asking, "Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?"  Jesus is asking Peter about agape love. And each time Peter tells Jesus, "Yes, Lord; You know that I love (phileo) You." Peter loved Jesus as a dear friend.  He had a great relationship with Jesus.  But, Jesus wanted him to have an even greater love, agape love - a love that would choose to keep loving even to the point of sacrifice.   Even when he didn't feel like it. 

This is the love that Paul beautifully defines for us in I Corinthians 13. "Love is patient and kind, not jealous, not boastful, not proud, rude or selfish, not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not gloat over other people's sins but takes delight in the truth. Love always bears up, always trusts, always hopes, always endures. "

Without this kind of love, Paul writes, "  I have become merely blaring brass... a cymbal clanging .. I am nothing.. I gain nothing.."  Even those spiritual - super-natural gifts of the Spirit will amount to nothing unless love is present. "Love never ends". Everything else will cease.. everything else will become useless, but love is eternal. 

"Pursue love".

"And may the Lord direct [our] hearts into the love (agape) of God and into the steadfastness of Christ" (II Thessalonians 3:5)

Amen.