Ray Stedman`s sermon on First Corinthians Chapter 13 Past Two

Read the Scripture: 1 Corinthians 13:8-13

1 Corinthians 13:8-13

⁸Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. ¹¹When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. ¹²Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
¹³And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

New International Version

It will probably come as no surprise to you that I intend to speak on First Corinthians 13 this morning. We took the first seven verses of this great chapter last week, and I am not going to retrace my steps, but, beginning with Verse 8, will concentrate on the latter part of this passage.
In Houston these last couple of days I met with some twenty-two Christian men from all over the country who are very prominent in business. They were mostly young men, and, except for the five pastors present, everyone was wealthy. One morning we were discussing the subject of love and attempting various definitions of the particular form of love called agape, according to the teaching of the Word of God. One of these young men suggested this definition, which we felt was a good one: "Agape, or God's kind of love, is a deliberate choice to act for the best interests of another person." That is indeed true love. It is to put another's need and fulfillment ahead of your own, and to act deliberately to help to fulfill that need and that purpose. Paul makes clear here, however, that love has something more to it than that. I was a little disturbed with that definition because it seemed so cold. The apostle adds the element of warmth. He says that love is patient, kind, and truthful.
It is very difficult to combine truth and love. There is a passage in the letter to the Ephesians that has always intrigued me. In my judgment it constitutes the simplest, briefest, and yet the most profound definition of Christian maturity that I know anything about. I seek to measure myself against this, and I measure others as to whether they are mature or not in the degree to which they manifest this quality: It is in Paul's words there where he exhorts us to "speak the truth in love," (Ephesians 4:15a ). Now it is hard to combine those two. It is easy to speak the truth sometimes, to be blunt and caustic and even embittered, and you can speak truth, but there is no love in it. Or you can be loving, as we think of it, and refuse to hurt another and never tell him anything that is unpleasant or distasteful. But that is a quality that really reveals a lack of courage; it is a form of deception. It is the man or woman who can learn to speak the truth in love who is growing up in Christ. That is what this chapter is describing for us.
We have already looked at Paul's great word about the preeminence of love, how it is of more value than everything else; and we have also looked at the practice of love, how it comes out in a practical way, both in the negative and the positive of it. Now, beginning in Verse 8, we have Paul's amplifying of the persistence of love, the permanence of it. It is all put in the opening words of Verse 8:

Love never ends; (1 Corinthians 13:8a RSV)

The various versions translate that in many ways. The reason is that the apostle has employed a very unusual Greek word here that is translated "ends" in the version I am using. It really means, "to fall." It says love never "falls." Now that sounds strange to our ears, but it is meant in the sense that love never falls away and disappears; it never quits; it is never used up; love keeps on coming; the more you use it the more there is. That is the point Paul is making here.
Many of you have discovered this. You begin to exercise this kind of love and you find yourself enabled to exercise it even more all the time; the more you give it away the more you seem to have. Love is like bailing out a boat with a hole in it -- the more water you throw out, the more there is; it just keeps coming in all the time. That is the thought behind this, "love never quits"; it never stops coming on. One of my favorite hymns ever since I was a young Christian has been, O Love That Will Not Let Me Go. That is the idea; love that persists despite all the rebuffs that it may experience.
Some years ago I spoke at a conference in North Carolina and shared the platform with a friend, Dr. Stephen Olford, who for many years was pastor of the large Calvary Baptist Church in Manhattan. Stephen is an Englishman, raised in the mission field in Africa, the son of missionary parents. One morning he told us about his early boyhood. His father died when he was in Africa, and his mother took him back to England on a long 'tramp' steamer ride that took almost two weeks to reach London. They had not been out of port more than a few days when one of the seamen injured himself. His wound began to fester and to smell very badly, and the other seamen refused to have him in the cabin with them. They lacked adequate medicines to treat this man, and it looked like he was going to die. He was in great pain, but the other men took him up and dumped him on the deck, exposed him to the weather, and refused to let him come down at all. They passed food to him with a long pole, as no one would touch him.
Stephen Olford's mother was a godly, Christian woman, and, after about a day of this treatment, she took pity on this man and went up to him. No one else would draw near him because the stench was so terrible, but she took a basin of warm water, knelt down beside him, and washed away the pus and all the collected foul excrement of the wound. He cursed her, as he had cursed everybody who had come near him, but she patiently kept on and never said a word. She brought him his food that day, again in the evening, and again washed his wounds and took care of him. This went on for the duration of the voyage. When they arrived in London he was able to hobble off the ship. As you can well imagine, a display of love like that had broken through all this man's bitter defenses. He became a Christian and a lifelong love slave of Stephen Olford's mother.
I have never forgotten that story because it seems to illustrate so beautifully what Paul is talking about here: Love that will not quit, despite all the obstacles that stand in the way; love that refuses to give heed to what would turn off anything less, but keeps right on. God's love is like that, he says. It will never quit, even though for the best interest of another person it may temporarily turn its back, or appear to. God does this with us, as a mother eagle does with its young. To kick it out of the nest may look cruel, but the eagle knows that is the only way the young will learn to fly. It braves the wrath of its young in order to force it into maturity. Love will do that too: God's love will, and true love will, but even then it is hovering there, waiting and watching to see lest disaster strike, ready to help in time of need. This is surely what Paul is describing here. He contrasts this quality of love with the things that will not last, the things that do quit, the things that pass away, in Verse 8:

Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. (1 Corinthians 13:8 RSV)

Obviously he is comparing this now to the spiritual gifts. This is not knowledge in general or prophecy in general; this is the "gift of knowledge," the "gift of prophecy," the "gift of tongues" that he is talking about. These were the three favorite gifts at Corinth. They were making much of them in the church there, as many in the church today make much of them. Paul was telling them that, important and God-given as these gifts are, they were never intended to last in contrast to love, which never quits.
Prophesying is the gift of unveiling the mysteries of God, making known to man these radical secrets about humanity and society that are revealed in the Scripture which the secular world can never discover. It is not the gift of predicting the future so much as revealing the meaning of the present, and, therefore, of the future, because the present is always becoming the future and the future is becoming the present. This, therefore, is a great gift.
The gift of tongues is the gift of supernatural utterance of a language never learned in praise and thanksgiving to God. (We will see that more clearly in the next chapter.) It is called glossolalia, the ability to speak a language, a true language, that was never learned.
The gift of knowledge is the ability to grasp a great range of Biblical truth, to systematize it, and to know it, and it too is a great gift. But of the three, Paul says, tongues will absolutely cease. He uses a different word about tongues than he does for the others, as we will also see more clearly in the next chapter. This is because tongues is a "sign" gift, given as a sign to unbelievers, designed to arrest their attention. When that is accomplished there is no further need for the gift, so it ceases in the individual.
The other two gifts, prophesying and knowledge, will fade away gradually, Paul suggests. That is inherent in the word he employs. They are gradually being replaced by something else, which he calls the "perfect" thing. You will see how clear this is in Verses 9 and 10:

For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. (1 Corinthians 13:9-10 RSV)

Clearly that is a gradual process. Now, the question that it raises in our minds, of course, is, "What is this perfect thing which, gradually increasing in our life, replaces our concern about gifts?" I have been interested to see the many guesses the commentaries make about this.
Some of them suggest that the "perfect" thing here is the written Word of God. They tell us that here, in the 1st century, they did not have the New Testament as we have it. They relied upon the teaching of prophets, evangelists, apostles and others who spoke bits and pieces of the mind of God, but as the complete, written account of that mind of God took shape and form in the New Testament, all the need for these gifts would pass away. It is the claim of those who teach this that as the Word of God, as we think of it, came into being in the written New Testament, these gifts began to fade, so that all the gifts of prophesying and of tongues and of knowledge have all long since ceased and we are now shut up to the Word of God. Now, there are elements of truth in that, but that is not what this is referring to at all; that is to totally ignore the context in which this word "perfect" appears.
Others have suggested that what Paul is talking about is heaven. Heaven is the perfect place. Life is imperfect, and one of these days we will all fold our earthly tents, the wheels of earthly life will cease their turning, and we will go to heaven and then the "perfect" comes. Now, there are also strong elements of truth in that. (In fact, Paul is going to return to that theme a little bit later in the paragraph.) But, again, that is not what he means by the word "perfect" here at all.
If we take the passage in its full context, in relationship to all that he has said here and in the surrounding passages, it is clear that the word "perfect" refers to love. Love is that "perfect" thing, which, as it grows in our life, replaces our need for and concern with the gifts of the Spirit. We find ourselves growing up into that to which the gifts are designed to lead us, so, when the end begins to be accomplished, the means to that end are no longer as fully required. This is what Paul is saying, and it is confirmed by the illustration he employs in Verse 11, where he says:

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; (1 Corinthians 13:11a RSV)

There is nothing wrong with that. Children are supposed to act like children; everybody expects them to, and it would be folly and a shame if they did not. Paul says he did when he was a child, but,

...when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. (1 Corinthians 13:11b RSV)

Why? Well, because he had become a man. That is the end toward which a child always moves -- maturity -- and therefore these things were no longer needed. Now, what Paul is saying, of course, to these Corinthians (and to the Californians), is that the mark of maturity is the ability to love, to love the unlovely, the selfish, the distasteful, the ungrateful, and to not let that change your attitude or your actions toward them but to keep on working fully for their best interests. As the ability to do that increases in our life, it will replace all our childish concern about the gifts of the Spirit. To make much ado about gifts, as though they were the overall important thing that God wants to emphasize, is to be childish in our attitudes.
Have you ever watched children playing on Christmas morning after they had opened their gifts? Their minds are focused on all these new toys; there are so many of them they cannot take them all in; they are so excited about them. They always seem to want the one that somebody else has. They play with one for a few moments, cast it aside, and get another one until their brother or sister grabs the one they have just discarded. Then it seems to assume great importance in their eyes. They are back to grab it away, and pretty soon there is a squabble going on over gifts.
That is what happens in churches. To make so much over gifts as though they were the important thing is to miss the whole thrust of this passage on gifts. Gifts are designed to lead you to love; that is the whole point of it. Prophesying is to teach us in the revelation of the mystery of God that we have a power the world knows nothing of: It is called "resurrection power," the power to love as God loves, and that we can exercise it any time we choose to. We will not feel it ahead of time; it does not surge up into our being to remind us that it is there waiting. We make the decision only because we ought to, that is all, in obedience to God. But when we choose to, and begin to, the power is supplied to us. That is what prophesying teaches us; this remarkable element of truth is that we have a new secret revealed, the power to love.
The gift of knowledge is to help us systematize truth so that we can instruct and help others in these great facts, and that is the action of love.
The gift of languages, the gift of tongues, is given to arrest the attention of unbelievers (Paul specifically says that in the next chapter), so that they will give heed to the magnificences of God as they did on the Day of Pentecost when they heard 120 different people speaking in languages. What were they doing with those languages? Preaching the gospel? No. They were praising God. That arrested the attention of this secular crowd, and they began to listen, and take heed to the fact that God was at work. Now that is the gift of tongues. That is an action of love, and it is designed to lead to love.
To focus on gifts and forget the end to which they lead is foolish and hurtful and destructive. To squabble over them is the utmost in folly in a church. Gifts are good, but they are passing away. What we ought to be writing books about, and issuing magazines over, and broadcasting over the radio and television today is the ability to love, to reach out to the hurtful and to minister to them.
I get so sick and tired, I will be honest with you, with all the demands and requests of what I think of as phony Christian broadcasts today. They are bleeding the people of God to support spectacular showmanship going on in the Christian world and wasting all their time, money and effort instead of learning the simplicity and the grass roots process of loving your neighbor as yourself.
In Houston last week we had a man who has a gift of seeing through to the heart of things. (It is really the gift of discerning spirits.) He was telling us about having received a letter recently from a large international radio broadcast seeking support from Christians for their broadcasting. They sent out a letter, the kind that is double-spaced, every sentence is a paragraph, and they underline part of it, etc., and you know they all have the same advertising firm (you can always tell them this way.) The appeal of the letter was that God cannot be out-given, that if you give to God, he will give back to you. They announced that they needed a certain tremendous sum of money to maintain their broadcast. They had figured the number of their listening audience and they said in the letter that, if every person who heard their broadcasts would send in $76, this need would be met. Furthermore, they would guarantee, on the principle that God cannot be out-given, that he would find a way to give that $76 back three times over. This was, therefore, the appeal of the letter: Send us the $76 and God will give it back to you; just watch how he does it.
Well, this man in Houston said he wrote a letter back and said, "Sir, I believe what you have written; I believe it is true that God cannot be out-given; and I believe you have a tremendous need for funds. But I would like to suggest that you send me the $76 and God will give it back to you three times over. You can get rid of your debt a lot faster that way." Now, I think that is the way to answer a letter like that. The quality of Christianity does not lie in its showmanship (how we need to get away from that), but in its ability to love, to love the hurting, the weak and the foolish. Love then is the "perfect" thing, and, Paul says, one day it will be perfectly ours. Verse 12:

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. (1 Corinthians 13:12 RSV)

Clearly here he is anticipating the end of life, the dawning of a new day when the morning will break and every shadow will flee away; all the imperfection of life will come to an end, and love will stand face to face with love. Now, he says, it is like looking in a mirror dimly. He is talking about the way we are able to love. These ancient mirrors were not like the silvered glass ones we have today that give a clear and beautiful image, as they did not understand that process then. Their mirrors were simply highly polished metal, so that, when you looked in them, all you got was a rather indistinct, blurred image. This is a beautiful symbol for life: Paul says that is the way we love today.
We sometimes try to visualize the face of Jesus, but I think it is instructive that the Spirit of God has never given us a physical description of him. I do not like pictures of Jesus because, to me, they distract from what the Spirit is trying to impart, which is the true beauty of his being, his life, his character. Others may be helped by pictures; I do not fault them for that. Paul says our efforts to visualize and to sense the personality and the glory of Jesus are imperfect now, as we do not see him very clearly. But one of these days all those barriers will fade away, the mist will be dissolved, and we will suddenly find ourselves face to face with the Lord Jesus.
The disciples experienced a little of this on the Day of Pentecost. In the Upper Room, the Lord had said to them, "It is to your advantage that I go away," (John 16:7 RSV). They looked at him with unbelieving eyes. They must have been thinking in their hearts. "How could that be? To lose you, to lose our chief treasure is to leave life empty and meaningless, dull and dreary. We can hardly stand the thought of it. Are you telling us that it is to our advantage that you go away? How could that be?" But on the Day of Pentecost when the Spirit came to reveal Christ to them, they understood what he meant because suddenly all the questions they had been asking, all the doubts they had felt were resolved. An inner confidence sprang up within them that he was alive, and with them. They understood what he had said; words that they had been puzzling over, that had raised endless doubts and misconceptions in their minds, were suddenly clear and striking and startling. Now, that was just a foretaste of what is going to happen on the day when we stand in the presence of Jesus.
Paul suggests that will happen with our knowledge as well. There in the group in Houston we tried to grasp the way God works in history. We tried to understand what he is doing with the events that fill our newspapers. We asked ourselves, not what economic impact a certain event will have, but, "Why did God allow it to happen?" As we faced that question, we found ourselves able to see only very dimly, only to get blurred and incomplete images of what God was doing; little glimpses, fragments of insight perhaps, but nothing very clear. But, one of these days, Paul says, we shall be understood; we shall know him as fully as he now knows us. All our questions will be answered; all our problems will be resolved. So, in his final summary, Paul gathers it all up in the things that abide:

So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13 RSV)

Faith abides because faith is a human response to a divine provision. Faith is doing something with what God has given you, and that is going to go on through all eternity. We lack everything; we human beings have nothing in ourselves. We are constantly taking wisdom, power, instruction and ability from the hand of God. Everyone is, whether he knows it or not. There is no ability to function as a human being without the gift of God to you first. Faith is a simple, deliberate response to the provision of God, therefore it abides, because we will go on doing that throughout eternity.
Hope abides because hope is the expectation of yet more to come. There is a phrase earlier in this letter where Paul speaks of "the things God has prepared for those who love him," 1 Corinthians 2:9b RSV)). We are beginning to dabble in the shallows of that now; we have found a few of those things already, but that is an infinite number, and finiteness can never encompass infinity. God, therefore, is going to keep on opening our eyes to new vistas, opening our spirits to new opportunities, to new adventures of faith. It will never grow old; it will never get less; it will go on forever and ever because he is infinite. Hope, therefore, abides.
But love abides too, and the reason love is the greatest is because God is love. God is not faith; God is not hope; but God is love. Therefore, to learn to love is to achieve the absolute, paramount value of the entire universe -- to become like God. That is what it is all about, isn't it? The lie of the devil in the Garden of Eden was, if you disobey God you will be like God; you will learn how to have a fulfilled life. That lie and its sad results are visible all around us, in our own lives and in the world today. But the Word of God says to trust him, to follow him. To use what he gives you is one day to discover that the clouds pass away, the mists all melt and the morning breaks, the shadows flee, and you are face to face with him and you are like him. When we see him "we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is," (1 John 3:2). Therefore, love abides -- and "the greatest of these is love." Paul really concludes this section with the opening words of Chapter 14. Therefore,

Make love your aim... (1 Corinthians 14:1a RSV)

The word is pursue it; set your heart on it; make it your chief goal; work at it; think about it; aim toward it; follow it; pursue it. That is the idea; that is what life is all about. To become a loving, compassionate, patient, kind, truthful person is the reason we exist. Everything else must either minister to us to that end, or be regarded as useless and wasted time. May God help us to hold this clearly in our minds and understand the reality of these words, "the greatest of these is love."

Prayer

Lord, we feel so incapable of manifesting this quality of life, and yet your Word assures us that that is what was intended. We do not have this ability in ourselves, but we have it supplied to us in unending quantity if we but choose to use it. Help us to make that our goal. Beginning the rest of today, and all of next week, and for the rest of our lives, we will "owe no man anything, but to love one another." In Jesus' name, Amen.

Ray Stedman`s sermon on First Corinthians Chapter 13 Past one

Read the Scripture: 1 Corinthians 13:1-7

1 Corinthians 13:1-7

¹If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ²If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

New International Version

Our theme this morning is love. We are looking at the most beautiful chapter in the whole New Testament, First Corinthians 13. This chapter is justly famous, not only for its majestic language, but for the lofty idealism of its subject matter and the very practical behavior it describes.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all that I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3 RSV)

Analyzing those words is almost like taking a beautiful flower and tearing it apart. But some analysis is necessary in order that we might fully grasp what the Apostle Paul is saying here in this great apostrophe to love. There are three aspects of love which he considers in this brief chapter: First, the preeminence of love over everything else; Then the practice (in a very forthright and helpful way); and then the permanence of love, the enduring quality of it.
We should remember that this chapter on love, though it is often read separately from the rest of the content, really fits beautifully with what the apostle has been talking about in the previous section. Beginning with Chapter 12 he introduced the subject of the spiritualities, the matters pertaining to the Spirit of God. The first part of that chapter was the focus of the Spirit on the Lordship of Christ. Jesus is Lord; this is always the emphasis of the Holy Spirit. He makes Christ real to us. If we have any sense at all of the reality and living presence of Christ it is because of the work of the Holy Spirit within. Then Paul talked about the gifts of the Spirit. We have been looking at how every believer is equipped with certain spiritual gifts that put him into the ministry. If you are not learning to use those gifts, you are going to sabotage the program of God as far as you are concerned. He has given them that you might have a ministry within the Body of Christ.
Now, here, in Chapter 13, we come to the fruit of the Spirit. The apostle has introduced it with a hint already that the fruit of the Spirit is far more important than the gifts of the Spirit. That we become loving people is far more important than whether we are active, busy people. Both are necessary, but one is greater than the other. Paul has said so: "I will show you a still more excellent way." That is the way of love.
I call this the "fruit of the Spirit" because in the letter to the Galatians, in the famous passage in Chapter 5, the apostle details for us what the fruit of the Spirit is. It is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, (Galatians 5:22-23). It has been pointed out that all of those qualities really are manifestations of the first one, love -- that, after all, joy is love enjoying itself; peace is love resting; patience is love waiting;kindness is love reacting; goodness is love choosing; faithfulness is love keeping its word; gentleness is love empathizing; and self-control is love resisting temptation.
Love is the key; love is the main thing. This chapter, therefore, is setting forth that quality of love which is the work of the Spirit of God within us reproducing the character of Christ. Now once you have love all these other qualities that are part of the fruit of the Spirit are possible to you. If we have the love of God in our hearts, then we can be patient; we can be peaceful; we can be good, loving, faithful, gentle, kind, and all these other qualities. But without love all we can do is imitate these qualities, and that is what produces a phony love. One of the most deadly enemies of the Christian cause is phony love. That is why, in Romans, Paul says, "Let love be genuine," (Romans 12:9a RSV). When you come into the church, especially among the people of God, love must be genuine. If it is not, it is hypocrisy. If it is put on just for the moment, if it is an attempt to put on a facade, to act like you are kind, thoughtful. gracious, faithful, and so on, but it all disappears as soon as the situation changes, that spreads death within the whole community. Genuine love, however, will produce all these qualities.
The word "love," I will point out before we look at this, is not the Greek word eros. That word is used to describe erotic love, sensual love, what you feel when you "fall in love," a passionate attraction to another person. That kind of love is not even mentioned in the Word of God, strangely enough, though it is a common form of love today. And the word here is not philia, which means affection, friendship, a feeling of warmth toward someone else. This too is a universally distributed love, but this is not what is mentioned here. Paul is talking about agape, which is a commitment of the will to cherish and uphold another person. This is the word that is used about the love of God always. It is the only word ever used to describe his love. It is a word, therefore, addressed to the will. It is a decision that you make and a commitment that you have launched upon to treat another person with concern, with care, with thoughtfulness, and to work for his or her best interests. That is what love is, and this is what Paul is talking about.
Now this kind of love is possible only to those who first love God. I do not hesitate to say that. Any attempt to try to exercise love like this without having first loved God is to present a phony love, a fleshly kind of love. The reason I say that is because the Scripture tells us there are two great commandments. The first is, "Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength." The second one, Jesus said is, "Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself," (Matthew 22:37-9, Mark 12:30-31, Luke 10:27). We try to turn that around. Many of us are trying to love our neighbor, whoever he may be, in our family or anywhere else, without having loved God, and it is impossible to do that. It is "the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit," as Romans puts it Romans 5:5, that fulfills the definition that is given in this chapter, and only that love. Therefore, you cannot love other people until you first love God.
Love for God is not difficult, because all you need to do is be aware of how he has loved you -- in creation, in the supply of all you need, in leading and putting you in various places with various persons. But above all else he has loved you in having given his Son for you, having redeemed you, having forgiven you, having healed your inner hurt. Your loneliness, your guilt is taken away. By these means God has called you to himself and given you a standing before him as a son within his family. To remember all that is to be stirred with love for God. When you love God you awaken your capacity to love people. Therefore, it is very important that we understand, in reading this passage, what Paul has been reminding us of all through this letter, that love is a supernatural quality. God alone can give this kind of love. God alone can lead you to make a choice to love somebody who does not appeal to you, who does not awaken anything within you. Yet that is what God's love is. That is what is so desperately needed and so beautifully described in this passage. It can only come as we love God and love is awakened within us by the Holy Spirit.
Now remember, therefore, this chapter comes after Paul has said that all believers are baptized with the Holy Spirit, made a part of the Body of Christ -- all of them, without exception. As Jesus put it, we are "in him" by that process (John 14:20b). Then all believers have been filled with the Spirit, indwelt by the Spirit, "made to drink of one Spirit," (1 Corinthians 12:13b). By that process our Lord's words, "I in you" (John 14:20c), have been fulfilled. Because of that we all have the capacity to act in love. All that Paul is saying in this little passage is, "If you have that capacity then do it. Love one another." To encourage this he shows us some of the qualities of love:
Number one, of course, is this preeminent value of love. What makes life worth living? Love does. Paul contrasts love here with certain things that were highly regarded in Corinth and are still highly regarded in the world today. The first is the ability to communicate. These Corinthians valued communication. They enjoyed eloquence; they admired oratory. They were especially entranced by the gift of tongues, the ability to speak in languages that had never been learned, which had been given among them, but which by the power of the Spirit enabled person to pray and praise God. They were making much of this gift, as many are today, so Paul begins on that note. He says,

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. (1 Corinthians 13:1 RSV)

-- just a big noise maker, that is all. There is no suggestion in this that the gift of glossolalia -- which is speaking in tongues -- is identical to what Paul refers to as "the tongues of angels." I know people today who claim that the gift of tongues enables you to speak with the tongues of angels, but Paul does not say that at all. In fact, it is a pure, arbitrary assumption on the part of anybody that the gift of tongues constitutes the tongues of angels. Angels do communicate, but we do not know how. Nothing is said about it in the Bible. This is the only reference in all the Scriptures to the tongues of angels. All Paul is saying is that to be a loving person is more important than to be able to speak in all the languages of earth or heaven. Therefore, it is essential to learn to love. Communication without love is a useless thing. Then he compares love to two other qualities that are admired both in Corinth and today in our age as well: Power to know and to do. He says:

And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. (1  Corinthians 13:2 RSV)

-- absolutely nothing. Paul is thinking of theologians particularly, men and women with great ability to detect and understand the mysteries of the Scriptures, to unscrew the inscrutable, and to answer all Biblical questions, riddles and parables. Everywhere I go I am always asked some of the same questions: "Why doesn't God kill the devil?" "Where did Cain get his wife if he was the only person in the world?" (That seems to be a matter of concern to a lot of people.) "Why does God allow injustice, accidents and tragedies in our world?" These are questions flung at every Bible teacher. Now, Paul says, "If I could answer all those questions, if I could explain all those mysterious movements of God and still was not a loving person, if I was difficult, cantankerous, hard to get along with, even though I could move mountains by faith, if I lacked a loving spirit, it is all nothing."Finally, he takes up the matter of sacrificial zeal:

If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:3 RSV)

There are many reasons why people give away things. Sometimes they give because they are deeply concerned about certain cause or a need. They are willing to sacrifice their own possessions in order to meet that. But sometimes people give for very selfish reasons, although it appears to be a generous gift. I have known people who gave great sums of money to a cause they actually had no interest in at all, no more use for than a hog has for hip pockets, and still they gave their money. Why? Well, because they had a selfish interest in it. Now you can do that. You can give away everything. You can impress people with tremendous willingness on your part to sacrifice, even as some have done, as we read frequently, by pouring gasoline all over their bodies and setting themselves on fire to call attention to certain cause. That is happening more and more often these days. That is a supreme sacrifice, and surely it bears eloquent testimony to the fact that those who do so believe in the cause they are espousing. But to do that, Paul says, without having learned to love will gain nothing. At the judgment seat of Christ it is regarded as wasted effort. Love is the important thing. Nothing can underscore that fact more than these words. This is what life is all about. We are set here to learn to love, and to live without learning to love is to have wasted our time, no matter how impressive our achievements in other ways may be.
In the next section the apostle goes on to show us that love must be practical. Love is not an ethereal thing; it is not just an ideal you talk about. It is something that takes on shoe leather and moves right down into the normal, ordinary pursuits and aspects of life. That is where love is to be manifest. Nothing is more helpful, in reading a chapter like this, than to ask yourself the question. "Am I growing in love? Looking back over a year, am I easier to live with now? Am I able to handle people more graciously, more courteously? Am I more compassionate, more patient?" These are the measurements of life. This is why we were given life, that we might learn how to act in love. Nothing else can be substituted for it. There is no use holding up any other quality we possess if we lack this one. It is the paramount goal of every human life, and it is well to measure yourself from time to time along that line. To help us the apostle gives us some very practical ways of testing love. He says:

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. (1 Corinthians 13:4-6 RSV)

Notice in that paragraph there are only three positives; all the rest are negatives. So love is really only three simple things, basically. It is patient, it is kind, and it is honest. It rejoices in the right. (The word really is "truth." It rejoices in the truth.) The quality of love we are talking about is that which produces patience, kindness and honesty. The negatives that are given here are associated with love in the apostles though -- because these are the things we must set aside in order to let the love of God, which is patient and kind and honest, manifest itself. We do not have to produce this love in the Christian life. We only have to get the things that are hindering it out of the way. Those are the negatives that are suggested here.
All progress in the Christian life comes by first experiencing the cross and then the resurrection. That is a symbolic picture of all we repeatedly go through as Christians. To give up the pleasure which these negative expressions give us is to experience a kind dying to self. That is the cross. But it always results in a resurrection, a release of the power of God to reach out in patience, in kindness, and in honesty. That is the way to love.
Many people admire this chapter on love but they do not understand how to produce this kind of love. The reason the apostle does not tell us here is because that is what he has been telling us all along through the whole book -- that God is ready to love through us if we are ready to renounce the false, the negative expression that we enjoy experiencing. I do not have to argue with you about that. We all know the perverse pleasure we get out of some of these negative qualities. We do not want to give them up. It is too much fun to rip people apart, give them a piece of your mind, make them suffer for all the injuries they have done to you; at least freeze them out; be silent toward them and let them stew a little bit in their own juice. You know how delightful that is, don't you? We want love, but first we want the flesh. That is why we do not experience the love of God. Therefore, we are given these negative qualities to help us to understand what we must renounce.
What are the things that keep us from being patient? (That word, by the way, is always used with regard to people, not circumstances.) This word always means being patient with people so that you do not immediately wipe them out, or turn them off, but you are understanding, you wait patiently and let them work things out. The word actually means "a great suffering," enduring some suffering in order to let people have a chance to work out their problem. That is patience. Kindness means courteousness, to be gracious, to be pleasant to people. That is what love is. What are the things that stop that?
First on Paul's list is jealousy. We are often not patient or kind because we are jealous. We are spiteful and short with people because we see them enjoying something that we want. They have a relationship that we envy; they have a quality about themselves that we do not have and we are angry about it, so we are short and spiteful. That is one reason why we are not patient and kind.
Next on Paul's list is boastfulness: "Love is not jealous or boastful." Oftentimes we are not patient because we cannot wait to listen to others. We are so anxious to brag about ourselves so they can begin to admire us. But that must be surrendered for love to appear. Then, Paul says, love "is not arrogant." Arrogance is disdain, lack of respect for another person, ignoring how he will feel and asserting yourself regardless of what the result may be. Nor is love "rude," Paul says. This is to ignore another's rights; literally, the term is, "to be puffed up." It means to be haughty. or cutting, sarcastic. One of the major expressions of rudeness is sarcasm. And "love does not insist on its own way." It is not stubborn. intractable, inflexible, insisting that everybody else adjust. It is willing to find a way, to examine a matter, to look at it from a different angle. When we get stubborn and inflexible and refuse to even talk about a matter we are choosing to exercise the self-centeredness of the flesh. Therefore, we cannot allow the love and patience and kindness of God to appear in that situation.
Then love "is not irritable or resentful." Nothing destroys human relationships more than that. Henry Drummond, in his great little message on this passage, The Greatest Thing in the World, writes about this:

No form of vice, not worldliness, nor greed of gold, nor drunkenness itself does more to unChristianize society than evil temper. For embittering life, for breaking up communities, for destroying the most sacred relationships, for devastating homes, for withering up men and women, for taking the bloom off childhood, in short, for sheer gratuitous misery-producing power this influence stands alone.

Finally, love "does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right." Love is not gloating over other people's miseries. If somebody tells you he is sick and your feeling is, "Well, I hope it is nothing trivial," you may be clever but you are not exercising love. Love does not gloat over another's misfortune, but rejoices in honesty, in the truth, when it is brought out. Love is willing to hear even the truth about itself. It is not so concerned about being protected from hurt or injury as it is in knowing what is really happening -- what reality is. This is a great quality of true love. Paul now gathers it all up with this beautiful expression,

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:7 RSV)

Bears all things is literally "covers everything." Love covers. When it does learn something unpleasant about another it does not run and scatter it all over the neighborhood. It does not take delight in some of the misdeeds of others. Love covers it over, keeps it silent. Not that it will not do something about it, but it does not spread it about for others to hear.
Love "believes all things." That does not mean love is gullible. but some have read it that way. When Jesus was kissed by Judas in the garden he did not say to him, "Oh, Judas, what a beautiful kiss. I'm so glad you have changed your mind and are showing this." No, he understood that this was a traitorous action. He said to Judas, "Would you betray the Son of man with a kiss?" (Luke 22:48 RSV). He was not gullible. He did not believe that action of Judas. Nevertheless, love is ready to believe anything that has a ground of reality to it. It is always ready to start over. What this phrase means is that it is ready to trust somebody anew. It does not assume the attitude, "Well you've done that three times before and you did not do it right so I'm not going to trust you anymore." If somebody wants another chance love grants it.
Then, third, love "hopes all things." No cause, no situation, no person is ever regarded as totally hopeless. There is always a place to begin again. Love will find it; it never gives up hope. Thus Paul adds the final word in this section, love "endures all things." Love never quits; it never gives up on anyone. It has been pointed out that you could take this paragraph and insert "Jesus" in place of the word "love" and you would find that it fits perfectly: "Jesus is patient and kind; Jesus is not jealous or boastful; he is not arrogant or rude; he does not insist on his own way; he is not irritable or resentful; he does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Jesus bears all things; he believes all things; he hopes all things; he endures all things." When you read it that way it is clearly evident that love is the character of Christ. That is what the Holy Spirit is seeking to reproduce in us, so that becoming Christlike means becoming a more loving person. This is the measure of our spiritual growth.
I know Christians who do not seem to have changed in twenty years. They are just as querulous and cantankerous and difficult twenty years after they became Christians than they were at the beginning. Something is wrong in a life like that. The whole purpose and thrust of the work of the Spirit is to teach us to be loving, patient, kind, forgiving, understanding, giving others chance, trying over again, open to correction and instruction ourselves, easy to be entreated. These are all the qualities that can be produced in a Christian life. That is what makes life worth the living. This is the measure of true Christian spirituality.

Prayer

Lord, we pray that the gift of love may be manifest in our lives in our families in our homes that we may manifest this quality that you have brought into the world by the gift of redemption. We pray in Jesus name, Amen.

Ray Stedman`s sermon on the Gospel of John 17th Chapter

Read the Scripture: John 17

John 17

¹After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: "Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. ²For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. ³Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. ⁴I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. ⁵And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.
⁶"I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. ⁷Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. ⁸For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. ⁹I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. ¹⁰All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. ¹¹I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name—the name you gave me—so that they may be one as we are one. ¹²While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled. ¹³"I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. ¹⁴I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. ¹⁵My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. ¹⁶They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. ¹⁷Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. ¹⁸As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. ¹⁹For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.
²⁰"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, ²¹that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²²I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: ²³I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. ²⁴"Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. ²⁵"Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. ²⁶I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them."

New International Version

The passage for our study today, John 17, is often referred to as the "Holy of Holies" of the New Testament. This wonderful prayer of our Lord closes the Upper Room Discourse and precedes his agony in the shadows of Gethsemane, the betrayal by Judas the traitor, his arrest and the beginning of his trials. I have called this "The Longest Prayer" for two reasons:
First, it is indeed the longest recorded prayer of our Lord. In it we can discern the inner thoughts of his mind and learn much of his relationship with his Father. But this prayer is also the longest in the scope of time that it covers. It stretches across twenty centuries and includes us as well as the apostles.
John never forgot the scene in which this prayer was uttered. Our Lord had left the Upper Room with his disciples and had passed through the vineyards that surrounded Jerusalem. As he paused somewhere along that route, in all likelihood he picked up a vine and taught them, saying, "I am the vine and you are the branches." Then in the vineyard or elsewhere along the way, in the bright Passover moonlight "he lifted up his face unto heaven," and prayed aloud in the hearing of the disciples. I propose to take this prayer in but one message. That is roughly akin to being handed a gallon bucket and being told to empty the Pacific Ocean in less than an hour! While I regret that I cannot dwell on details, there is great value in seeing the full sweep of this prayer.

Our Lord prays essentially about three matters. First, he prays for himself that he may be glorified, then he prays for the eleven apostles, that they may be protected and sanctified, and, finally, he prays for the whole church down through the centuries, that they all may be unified.
The first eight verses of the prayer constitute his prayer for himself:

When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify thy Son that the Son may glorify thee, since thou hast given him power over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom thou hast given him. And this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. I glorified thee on earth, having accomplished the work which thou gavest me to do; and now, Father, glorify thou me in thy own presence with the glory which I had with thee before the world was made. I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou gavest me out of the world; thine they were, and thou gavest them to me, and they have kept thy word. Now they know that everything that thou hast given me is from thee; for I have given them the words which thou gavest me, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from thee; and they have believed that thou didst send me." (John 17:1-8 RSV)

Twice Jesus asks to be glorified, in two different ways, and for two different reasons: First, he asks to be glorified in and by means of the cross. This is what he means by the words. "The hour has come." All through the gospel we have seen him moving toward this hour which he has long anticipated, the hour of crisis when he confronts, deliberately and personally, the massed powers of darkness. Thus in the cross, with its agony, blood, grief and loneliness he is asking to be glorified. It is not a selfish prayer because he immediately adds that by means of his death he will glorify the Father.
We must understand what this term "glorified" means. How is someone "glorified"? The word means to make manifest hidden values, hidden riches. The sun is a glory because the gases that make it up are being consumed and manifested in brilliant light. Jesus himself is glorified that way. John began his gospel by saying, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, ... and we beheld his glory," (John 1:14a, 1:14b RSV). What glory? "Full of grace and truth," (John 1:14b RSV). All his inner qualities of grace and truth became visible. Here our Lord is praying that by means of the cross something that is hidden to the world will be manifested.
We do not have to guess what that is because he tells us. It is, first, that God has given him "power over all flesh," i.e., he has Lordship, sovereignty, the right to rule over all the nations of the earth. This will come by means of the cross.
How truly this is confirmed by the epistles. In Philippians, Paul writes that because Jesus became obedient unto death, God the Father "highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, ... and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father," (Philippians 2:9-11 RSV). Thus by means of that exaltation following the cross, God the Father is glorified. At the close of the gospel of Matthew our Lord stands in resurrection glory beside the Sea of Galilee and says to his disciples. "All power in heaven and on earth is given unto me," (Matthew 28:18). What an encouraging word for all believers! The One we follow holds in his hands the reins of the nations and all the forces at work on the earth even the powers of darkness. In Colossians, the apostle says that on the cross Jesus "disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example or them, triumphing over them in it," (Colossians 2:15 RSV), i.e., in the cross. So this prayer has been fully answered. In the cross Jesus was glorified and his Lordship was revealed.
But more than that, our Lord also states that through the cross he will gain the right to give eternal life to all whom the Father brings to him. He defines eternal life as "knowing God." That is really living. Coming to know the Father and Jesus will fill life to the full. It is a quality of life that lasts forever. That is what Jesus means. Through my own lifetime I have come to learn that God is the most exciting Being there is. It is the world that is filled with boredom, loneliness, and misery. All its offers of adventure and allurement crumble to dust when you try to grasp them. But when you walk with God, every day is an adventure. He is innovative, imaginative, creative. That is the eternal life for which everyone longs deep in his heart. Jesus says that is what he gives -- his redemptive life -- to those who come to him.
Thus the cross reveals both his Lordship and his Saviorhood. He is the source of life to all who come to him. No wonder we sing in one of the great hymns,

In the cross of Christ I glory,
Towering o'er the wrecks of time;
All the light of sacred story
Gathers round its head sublime.

That is Jesus' first reason for asking to be glorified -- not only because it will bring glory to the Father, but, as he goes on to say, it will complete his work on earth: All that he has done finds its completion in the cross. Thus he says, "I glorified thee on earth," having accomplished the work which he now sees as completed, anticipating the cross, "the work which thou gavest me to do." This death he awaits is the capstone of that work.
Then Jesus prays to be glorified by returning to heaven: "And now, Father, glorify thou me in thy own presence with the glory which I had with thee before the world was made." Surely this is his creative glory. Before he came to earth he was not the Redeemer, he was the Creator, the One behind the mysteries of nature, the One who invented all the marvels of the universe. Several passages in Hebrews and Colossians make that declaration. Now he is to return to that glory so, as Hebrewstells us, he now "upholds all things by the word of his power," (Hebrews 1:3 KJV). We sing of this in another hymn.

Fairest Lord Jesus.
Ruler of all nature.
O Thou of God and man, the Son.

He asks now to take up again the manifestation of his creative glory, because his redemptive work is finished. He summarizes it in Verses 6, 7 and 8: "I have given thy name to the men whom thou gavest me" and "I have given your words to the men whom thou gavest me, and they have received them and know that I came from thee and have believed that thou didst send me." That work is now concluded, so he prays that he may he permitted to resume the glory which he had before.
Verses 9-19 constitute the beautiful prayer of our Lord for these eleven men. It divides into three sections. First, he prays for them because they belong to him: then he prays that they may be kept from the enemy, from the world and the devil; and finally he prays that they may be sanctified.
It opens with words of tender concern:

"I am praying for them; I am not praying for the world but for those whom thou hast given me, for they are thine; all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them. And now I am no more in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to thee." (John 17:8-11a RSV)

Jesus gives two reasons for this prayer. First, because these disciples are his: they are a gift from the Father. He has spent 3-1/2 years with them. He knows them intimately and they are very precious to him. That is how we, too, pray. We pray first for those we love. Perhaps you have heard the minimal prayer of the man who said he prayed for his wife, and himself, his son John and his wife -- "us four and no more." Some of us, perhaps, may pray that way. Because they are precious to us, my wife and I try to pray every morning for our children and our grandchildren before we pray about other matters.
This is surely our Lord's feeling here. He sees the apostles as a gift from the Father and therefore precious to himself. This is what he means when he says he "does not pray for the world." The world, i.e., secular society, has not been given to him in this intimate fashion by the Father. But these men are so given, and thus he makes this distinction. This does not mean, of course, that Jesus had no concern for the world. It was for the world that he was to die. It was the world that drew him from heaven to earth. If you wish to hear him pray for the world, listen to his words from the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," (Luke 23:34).
Jesus also is conscious that he is leaving these men behind, and he is concerned for them.
Our friend, David Roper, said once that, when he left home, he told his wife he would pray that God would keep her while he was away. He was startled when she replied. "Who do you think keeps us when you are here?"
Knowing that he must leave these men behind, Jesus commends them to the Father's care for it was in the Father's name that they were kept when he was with them.

"Holy Father, keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in thy name, which thou hast given me; I have guarded them, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition, that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves." (John 17:11b-13 RSV)

First, he desires them to be guarded and kept by the Father's authority and by his activity. "Keep them," he prays, "in thy name." The name, of course, stands for all God's resources, power, and ability. He is asking God to assume responsibility now for these men directly so that while he is personally absent from them they may be kept by wholly adequate resources.
Notice to what end they are to be kept: First, to an unbroken unity. "Keep them that they may be one even as we are one." "While I was with them." he says, "I kept them in thy name," i.e., he was conscious that the Father was at work with him and was able to supply through him the power to keep. This is the way we can guard others in a consciousness that it is God who must keep them. We must pray for them as Jesus prayed for his disciples! And he says he fully succeeded: "Not one of them is lost except the son of perdition," i.e., the one whom the Scripture had said would never belong to that group that would be kept. He is referring to the traitor, Judas, who never was truly a member of the apostolic band. Outwardly he was, but inwardly his heart never yielded to the grace, love and mercy of God. He retained his fancied independence, the deadly force by which men are still kept from the Kingdom of God.
Further, the Lord points out that they were kept by his word and his gift of inner joy: "These things I speak in the world" (the revelation of truth which he came to give), "that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves." That is what kept these men. He told them the truth, and as they believed it they found it worked and led them to joy.
But what is it they are to be kept from? It is the world's hatred and the devil's enmity.

"I have given them thy word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world, I do not pray that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one, They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." (John 17:14-16 RSV)

Jesus clearly saw the terrible danger these men faced. He understood that the world would hate them, fight them, and undermine them every way it could. Why? Because he had given them the Father's word. It is the Scripture, the Word of God, that is the primary object of the enemy's hatred. If he cannot destroy it, he seeks to dilute its impact.
At a pastors' conference where I was teaching a group of pastors the necessity of preaching from the Word, one pastor asked, "What should I do when I have analyzed a passage of Scripture, learned what it means, and found that I do not agree with it?" I had not anticipated such a question, but had to answer it. I replied, "I'll tell you what I would do, I would ask myself, 'What is wrong with me that I do not agree with this passage?'" The problem is never in the Word, but in our limitation, our foolish, unreasonable resistance to truth, and our feeling that we know everything. That feeling is the work of the enemy, part of his subtle attack upon the Word. Jesus reveals that the apostles will be hated because they speak the truth.
He prays then that they will be kept in the midst of the world. This is very important. For centuries Christians have read the Scriptures as indicating that, because the world is a dangerous place, we ought to keep as far from it as we can, we ought to put up walls around our family, our home, to keep the world out. As I was growing up I was taught that the only safe thing to do was to steer clear of the world, and have nothing to do with it: Do not go to places where worldly people go. Do not have contact with non-Christians, do not make friends among them. Some families would remove their children from any contact with the world by sending them only to Christian schools. Now there is a good reason for that at times, but one can go too far in that direction, and create another danger entirely -- the danger of boredom from uninvolvement with life.
We are clearly not to isolate ourselves from the world. When he sent these men out to preach, Jesus had said. "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves," (Matthew 10:16). No sensible shepherd would ever do that, for wolves are dangerous animals. With one slash of their teeth they can rip a sheep's throat wide open. The world can do that to believers too. We must never forget that it is a dangerous place. The only safeguard is the provision the Shepherd has made to be with us, and in us. Maintaining that loving relationship with him is what enables Christians to be in the world, but not of the world -- to make contact with the world, to establish friendships in the world, and yet to be kept from the terrible dangers of the world.
Behind the world's hatred, Jesus sees the god of this world, the devil. "I pray that they will be kept from the evil one." "The evil one" -- that malevolent, monstrous being who is constantly seeking to physically and spiritually destroy our race. Death is his weapon. Jesus called him "a murderer." He invents a million ways to kill people. His favorite tactic is to deceive them. Thus drug abuse ends in death, and despair ends in suicide. Even to give ourselves to pleasure -- automobile driving, for instance -- ends in traffic accidents and death. That is why quarreling ends in killing and murder, and differences between nations end in bloody wars that involve terrible slaughter. It is from this evil one that the Lord prays that his people be kept. He assures them that the devil really has no claim on them, they do not have to follow him: "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world."
Our Lord's second request for these men is that they may be sanctified:

"Sanctify them in the truth; thy word is truth. As thou didst send me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth." (John 17:17-19 RSV)

"Consecrate" and "sanctify" are the same word in Greek, so that this whole section is talking about sanctification. Many misconstrue that word. It is a religious, a theological, word. Some think of it as involving a kind of a religious fumigation where all evil is somehow washed away. Some have actually believed that after they have gone through what they call "sanctification," by means of prayer or dedication, that they now were incapable of sinning. That is a very distressing situation, quite akin to living with people who don't take a bath because they never think they need to be cleansed.
But what does "sanctification" mean? It means to separate, or set apart, to a specific purpose; to put to an intended use. You are sanctifying those pews at this moment as you sit on them. You sanctified your car as you drove here this morning. (It did not make it run better but it was put to the proper use!) I sanctify my comb when I comb my hair -- I use it for its intended purpose. And what are we intended for? What purpose did God have in mind in making man? That he might use him as the instrument of his working and to manifest his character. That he might be the instrument of God. When you become that, you are sanctified. In this context it includes a sense of personal agreement with that, a determination, a willingness, to do it. Thus we could use the word "commitment." Our Lord is praying that these men be personally, willingly committed to the work of being used of God.
He models this himself. "As thou didst send me into the world, so I have sent them into the world." Just as he was God's instrument, living among people right where they were (he did not hide from them but ministered to the weak, the hurting, and the broken), so he sends us to do the same. We are sent to the same task, sent with the same resource, and thus we are continuing the work of Jesus in the world. That is sanctification.
Further, he prays, this will be made possible by his death on the cross: "For their sake I sanctify myself." Love was willingly determined to go to the cross "that they also may be sanctified in truth." As the outcome of that death of Jesus on our behalf we are granted the power of the Spirit by which we may be useful instruments in the Kingdom of God.
In the last section of his prayer Jesus prays in words which reach out to the whole of the church, and encompass all believers of all time, including us here this morning. This section is also in three divisions: He prays for the unity of the church, for its ultimate destiny, and for its present intimacy.

"I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me, The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me." (John 17:20-23 RSV)

Notice the inclusiveness of his words. He says, "I do not pray for these only [he is referring to the eleven apostles], but also for those who believe in me through their word." There is a sentence that extends clear across the running centuries of time. He is praying for all the millions of people who have come to believe through the apostolic word. "I pray for these ... and those." They add up to the word "all." "That they may all be one." So the first element of his prayer is that all Christians may share with the apostles in the apostolic faith.
The apostles have given us the Word, the truth. The church is to rest upon the apostles' witness. We do not need modern apostles.
A woman came up to me after the service this morning and said she had been for years a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which claims to have modern apostles. She said, "Where does it say in the Scriptures that there are only twelve apostles." I referred her to the book of Revelation to the great city that God is building and the statement "the foundations of the city have upon them the names of the twelve apostles."
We are linked with them. The only errorless faith is the apostolic faith. The Jesus that we must worship is the Jesus presented by the apostles. Thus, there is a oneness of faith throughout the church.
But more than that, there is a spiritual unity. Notice the nature of it: "that they may all be one: even as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." Just as the Father and the Son share life, so all believers share the same life: the life of the Son in us. That is what makes us brothers and sisters wherever we are in the world.
As I travel around the world I meet people with a different color of skin and a totally different background than mine, yet, the minute we meet, I know they are my brother or my sister because we share an inward life.
That is the unity for which our Lord prays. He is not speaking of outward union. There have been many attempts to bring all churches together in one great outward organization, but it has never succeeded and cannot succeed. Our Lord never intended that to be. There is divisiveness that is totally wrong within the body of Christ. But when we meet together, regardless of what our local label may be, we belong to one another because we share the same life together. That is the life the world will recognize as true.
Notice the means by which this is produced. It is the inner glory of love: "The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them." What was that? It was love. The Father loved the Son. That was the Son's glory. He strengthened himself by that. Jesus says that same love "I have given to them, that they may be one." That is why we are to love one another as our Lord has bade, because it creates the oneness he desires.
Then he prays for the church's ultimate destiny.

"Father I desire that they also whom thou hast given me may be with me where I am, to behold my glory which thou hast given me in thy love for me before the foundation of the world." (John 17:24 RSV)

What vast cosmic themes are hinted at in this magnificent prayer! Here is the prayer that the church will be with him. That is the promise of Scripture. Paul speaks of this in First Thessalonians: "The Lord himself shall descend with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God, and then shall the dead in Christ rise first and we which remain shall be caught up together with them in clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord," (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17). To be with him, that is heaven -- and that is our ultimate destiny.
The purpose of that, he says, is "to behold my glory." That sounds as though we are all to sit around for all eternity staring at him. But that is not what he means. Other Scriptures interpret this. It means that we shall be like him: "When we see him we shall be like him," (1 John 3:2). And his glory which we behold is something that we are actually experiencing. George MacDonald has caught this beautifully.

Then shall my heart behold thee everywhere.
The vision rises of a speechless thing
A perfectness of bliss beyond compare.
A time when I nor breathe nor think nor move.
But I do breathe and think and feel thy love.

That is it. We become part of the glory. Thus everything we do is a beholding of his glory. What a marvelous fate awaits us!
Our Lord concludes his prayer with a prayer for the present intimacy of the church:

"O righteous Father the world has not known thee but I have known thee; and these know that thou hast sent me. I made known to them thy name and I will make it known that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them." (John 17:25-26 RSV)

Intimacy with the living God is the key to vitality and fruitfulness. It begins with the recognition of Jesus as "sent from God." It develops as awareness grows of the Father's power and love, and finds its deepest expression in a growing consciousness of the presence within of Jesus himself. The saints of all time have borne witness to the reality of this. Thus, love is the hallmark of the true church. The church must be a loving community if it desires the world to believe that we have been with Jesus!
Let us pray that this wonderful prayer of Jesus will be fully experienced by each of us who claim to follow him.

Review : Bible Study Magazine by Logos

Posted November 19, 2008 by Paul Lamey in Bible Software, Book Reviews. 3 Comments

In a day where serial print media is rapidly fading into history by going digital, it is either a brilliant or bizarre move for a digital publisher to step out in print. The sharp minds at Logos Bible Software have stepped out with a new magazine printed on real, not virtual, paper. It may be the only thing I have ever received from Logos on actual paper. I was recently asked by the publisher to review Bible Study Magazine here at Expository Thoughts and I am glad to do so. I’ve reviewed many books but have never reviewed a magazine, especially one that has only produced one copy thus far.
Full disclosure: I am an avid fan of Logos software. It is a product that suits me very well which my friends will tell you has not always been the case. Nevertheless I believe I can maintain objectivity. When it comes to software and hardware I am a true pragmatist. I represent a minority that believes my computer and all that it contains should serve me as its master. Therefore I am not a believer in companies but a believer in products which is why my computer is a MacBook Pro, my software of choice is Logos, and my drink is Coke Zero. It’s all about me which is not unbiblical so long as we’re talking about computers. So even though I have mucho dollars invested in Logos products, I am hopefully objective enough to offer a fair review of their newest product.
Clearly this is a product that will scratch various itches. It is well produced, polished, and assembled. It has a very high quality feel and appearance. From a design point of view it is top of the line.  From a content perspective, I believe their selling point is mostly accurate: “There is simply no other magazine on the market that focuses entirely on the Bible and Bible study.”
There are fifteen featured sections that include interesting items like basic Greek word studies, brief book reviews, and in-depth studies. The magazine maintains a good balance of helpful articles and interviews from the very basic to more challenging subjects (e.g., the relevance of the Dead Sea Scrolls). In this particular issue, there is an insightful bible study that takes the reader on an eight-week study tour of Hebrews. One observation is that there seems to be more “about” Bible study than actual Bible study.
The theological tone is broadly evangelical but the “about us” disclaimer makes it clear that it is a non-denominational publication. This is further reflected in the guiding statement of faith, which is the Apostles Creed. I have no heartburn about the Creed but it is interesting that a magazine dedicated to Bible study chooses a creed that says nothing about the Bible. Is this an oversight or is it intentional?
In short I think this magazine is a welcome addition and should encourage Christians in various ways. However, I would offer the following reflections and questions for the keen minds behind this endeavor.  I offer these with charity and great appreciation for what Logos has done in serving the Christian community.
Fifty years ago a food company scored a major marketing coup by producing a cookbook that, in order to be used effectively, required the home cook to purchase food items that were exclusively produced by the publisher of the cookbook. Yes it’s brilliant but it is also troubling. It appears that this marketing strategy is in full swing with Bible Study Magazine. In almost every article and on every page there are call-out boxes or by-lines that encourage the reader to “learn more” at a web address that redirects them to Logos products. Some of these further explorations have price ranges in the hundreds. This is not an accusation but one man’s observation that this has the feel of a bait and switch. These are not free articles but imbedded advertisements at times masquerading as an opportunity to “learn more.” There’s no escaping the fact that this magazine pushes the reader to make purchases at Logos. Even the word search in the “puzzles and comics” section has a note that states, “Puzzle generated by Logos Bible Software.” There may be some readers who perceive that Logos is more concerned with selling a product than fostering Bible study. I don’t believe this is the case but the company has not helped themselves in how they have presented this particular aspect.
Obviously, the bread and butter of print media is advertising but it can also be an annoyance. Over the course of fifty pages there are twenty-three ads, ten of which are full page. The current generation of media consumers enjoys their media with as little explicit advertising as possible (e.g., Tivo, ipods, satellite radio) so this approach seems to move opposite of current trends. I’m no marketing expert and I’m sure Logos folks have done their homework but I am one consumer who seeks to turn off and tune out as much advertising as possible.
What follows are questions that I believe are too premature to be answered succinctly since only one issue has been published. However time will fill in the blanks.

1. Will the high quality production continue without sacrificing the central dedication of fostering Bible study? I could point to many Christian magazines that have long left their original focus.
2. Is there a genuine market for this type of media and if so how long will it remain viable in the changing arena of media forms?
3. Will the costs of production affect the pricing of Logos software?
4. Should the magazine be sent free to Logos users who have already spent hundreds even thousands of dollars on their software products?
5. Will advertising continue to dominate space in the magazine or will the company seek other avenues of revenue and sustainability?
6. Since the target readership is 93% male and 54% church leadership (according to their web site), how will this shape the content and depth of resources to be offered?
7. Are there real conflicts of interest? Do they want the reader to study the Bible or to buy a product? Regardless of intention the line is not clear.
8. Is there a better way? Could this be an opportunity for Logos to develop an online community that digitizes the same content with the goal of strengthening local churches? I think of sites like Bible.org, which offer thousands of free articles and resources to the church abroad.

With the above cautions and questions in mind, I gladly recommend Bible Study Magazine to our readers. I want to thank Logos for asking me to review Bible Study Magazine. If history is an accurate indicator then I know we can expect Logos to continue offering quality products and resources.

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1. 
   Posted by Patrick on November 19, 2008 at 5:43 pm
   

   Like yourself, I am an avid user of Logos bible software. I can’t think of many (or any for that matter) other pieces of software that I could have paid $1300 for and 2 years later be completely happy with my purchase and think that I got more than my money’s worth.
   That being said, I was excited to see their magazine come out, and I quickly subscribed. After making my way through my first issue, I was generally pleased. However, one thing that I was really hoping that they would do is devote more space to various methods or “new” methods of using the Logos software to assist in our study of the bible. I’ve used the software for 2 years, been to a training session on it, and own the MP training manual, and I’m assuming that I’m still only scratching the surface of the software’s capabilities, so I was hoping for some articles outlining how others are using the software for their ministries and biblical studies.
   Overall though, I enjoyed the magazine.
   Patrick
   http://www.TheologyOfOmaha.com
   Reply
   
2. 
   Posted by Dan Odom on November 20, 2008 at 10:07 am
   

   Thanks Paul for the great review. I think you have tipped me over the fence I was on! I too am a faithful logos user and have spent far too much money yet continue to do so for my digital library. I have wondered about this mag and your thoughtful commentary has helped!
   Grace and Peace!
   Reply
   
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Article from Good News Magazine January/February 2011

Just What Is the End Time?

From the time of the early New Testament Church, people have asked, "When is the time of the end?"
Jesus' disciples asked Him for the signs that would precede His return. "Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives [on the east side of Jerusalem], the disciples came to Him privately, saying, 'Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?'" (Matthew 24:3).
Jesus' disciples were familiar with Old Testament prophecies. They understood that the end of the age meant the end of human misrule on earth, replaced with the righteous divine rule of the promised Messiah.
They knew about prophecies such as the one from Daniel that foretold the coming Kingdom of God: "And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever" (Daniel 2:44).
God promises to end human self-rule on earth because mankind has never produced a peaceful and lasting government. Indeed it cannot (Romans 8:7). Human history is largely a chronicle of wars, emanating from selfish human nature and motivated by "the god of this age," Satan the devil (2 Corinthians 4:4).
Since God has promised to remove all human governments at Christ's return, there is necessarily a "time of the end" or end of the age of man's rule on earth. This is what end time refers to—the end of this present evil age and the dawning of a new age under God.
The Bible uses various terms to refer to the end of the age of man's rule, such as "last day" (John 6:39), "last days" (2 Peter 3:3), "last time" (1 Peter 1:5), "last times" (1 Peter 1:20), "latter day" (Job 19:25, King James Version), "latter time" (Daniel 8:23), "latter times" (1 Timothy 4:1) and "the day of the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 5:2). To determine what each term means, one must consider context. For example, "the time of the end" in Daniel 8:17 and 11:35 and verse 40 is the period at the very end of this age of man's rule and the return of Jesus Christ.
The apostle Peter spoke about the last days beginning in his time (Acts 2:17) and lasting all the way to Christ's return, reflecting the fact that the trends Jesus foretold shortly before His death would soon begin, continuing and intensifying up until His return.
Again, context tells us whether the expression refers to such a long stretch of time or the brief period prior to Jesus' return.
To better understand the end of the age, request or download your free copies of the booklets You Can Understand Bible Prophecy, The Book of Revelation Unveiled and Are We Living in the Time of the End? GN