Languages Without Love
1 Corinthians 13:1
We come this morning to 1 Corinthians 13 and I really had intended to go further but we didn't get further in the first service so we'll stop where we did there just to keep our continuity. But this thirteenth chapter, without really me needing to say anything to you, is one that you recognize and probably if you're a Christian and have been for any length of time, you have a great deal of affection for and a great love for because of the tremendous impact that it bears on the greatest thing in all the world which is the subject of love.
Some people have said that this has to be the greatest and strongest and deepest thing that the Apostle Paul ever penned. It is called "The Hymn of Love." It has been called a lyrical interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. Somebody called it "The Beatitudes set to music." It is a dramatic chapter. Studying it is almost like taking apart a flower. I'm not sure that when the flower is apart it's as beautiful as it was before you did it, but you've got to do it to see in intricacy of God's design. And so, we're going to play spiritual botanists for a few weeks and tear it up a little bit so we can understand the beauties that are hidden beneath the surface.
What is exciting about the chapter is that it is a breath of fresh air, in a sense, in the middle of this book. This book is so intensely problem oriented, it is so negative in so many ways as Paul is attacking the Corinthian assembly for...for all of the misconduct and the immorality and the failures in their own lives to acquiesce to those principles which God had given for their blessing. And all of these things are sort of set aside as Paul just flies in chapter 13 on wings, as it were, in interpreting and sharing his Holy Spirit given inspiration on love.'
I can imagine that Paul's amanuensis or his secretary who was taking this down in dictation must have done a double take and looked into his face as he began to dictate 13 because of its dramatic change. It is so different from the rest of the book. It just is a tremendous change in style. It's lyrical, it's rhetorical, it's...it's just totally different than the rest of the book. He has been plodding through problem after problem with deep reasoning and carefully worded arguments and explanations and warnings and all of a sudden he just hits the rhythm of chapter 13 and it just begins to sing. It's kind of like a beautiful gem set in a setting and the setting is fine and the setting is great but the... but the gem is what makes the setting. And so it is with the thirteenth chapter of Corinthians being the gem of the setting of the whole letter.
But I want to add this. That even though this particular chapter has been treated with a sense of uniqueness and rightly so, and even though it's been pulled out and isolated so many times and preached on as if it were an entity in itself, dropped out of heaven without any connection to anything else, the real power of the chapter is found when you study it in its context.
This chapter, I couldn't make it mean as much to you as it means if I pull it out and just taught it. Course, I feel that way about every chapter in the Bible, but particularly this one because I think it gets abused along that line so very frequently. People just pull it out and teach it and they miss the power of it because the power of it comes when you tie it together with the rest of the book...particularly with chapter 12 and 14. You see, it's in the middle of a section on spiritual gifts, isn't it? Twelve, thirteen and fourteen, in chapter 12 he discussed the endowments of the gifts, the receiving of the gift, the way God has put the gift together in the church and the way He's melted it all so it can function. So chapter 12 is the endowment of the gifts. Chapter 14, the proper exercise of the gifts. This is how to do it ... this is how to do it ... this is how not to do it. And right in the middle is the proper energy or the proper motive or the proper power or the proper atmosphere, or the proper environment in which the gift operates and that is love. So it ties in. It's part of the more excellent way.
Look at verse 31. Having given them all the basics about how God has put the gifts in the church and how they are to be content and how they are not to feel inadequate and jealous and envious if they don't have a showy gift and how, on the other hand, if they do they're not to be proud and selfish and self‑seeking and boastful. And he says ‑ "Instead of accepting what God has given, you are coveting the showy gifts." That's the Greek rendering. It's an indicative, not an imperative. "You are continuing to covet the showy gifts.
But, I show unto you a ... what? ... a more excellent way. In other words, a more excellent way than coveting the showy gift is to be content with the one you have. A more excellent way than lording it over somebody because you happen to have a... the gift of speaking or teaching or whatever, or languages ... a more excellent way than being proud is to be loving and that's what he talks about in 13 as he describes in beautiful language the more excellent way which is love. The Corinthian church had the gift. The Corinthian church had a lot of things going on, had a lot of activity, but without love it wasn't excellent, it was counterfeit. And they were selfish and self‑seeking and operating in the flesh.
And so, chapter 13 sums up the more excellent way. Not conflict in the body, not struggle, not self‑seeking, not pride, not even envy, not even jealousy, none of those things have a place, only love, only love.
Now really, as you talk about love you're getting into the very heart of Paul's view of spiritual life. Because love is basic. We could spend weeks and weeks and weeks just about that subject. But what he's really saying here is this, and I want you to get this because this is the heart of everything: the truly spiritual life is the only life in which spiritual gifts can truly operate. Okay? And the truly spiritual life is not controlled by the gifts of the Spirit, it is controlled by the fruit of the Spirit. And you have to understand what I'm saying. Let me say it again. Here are the Corinthians with all the gifts and none of the fruit of the Spirit and what is the fruit of the Spirit? Galatians 5:22, what's the first one? Love ... joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self‑control. If you don't have the fruit of the Spirit, then the gifts of the Spirit are functioning in the flesh. It's a simple process. The believer walks in the Spirit, the Spirit produces the fruit of the Spirit. Out of the fruit of the Spirit come the gifts of the Spirit operating in the power of the Spirit. And so it is then that if we do not have the fruit of the Spirit manifest, if love isn't manifest then maybe love is the fruit and the rest of those words just describe love in its dimensions, love is certainly the greatest according to 13:13 where he says the greatest of these is love. If there's no love there then what is coming off and what is being done is being done without the fruit of the Spirit and if it's being done without the fruit of the Spirit, it's being done without the Spirit. It's in the flesh, it's fleshly, it's carnal, it's counterfeit. And so, here are the Corinthians, they've got the gifts of the Spirit and they're doing their thing in the flesh without the fruit of the Spirit and Paul says ‑ When it all gets done, you got nothing.
Let me read you the first three verses of 13, listen...and change the word "though" to "if" the ean here in the Greek is better translated "if" and it reads like this: "If I speak with the languages of men and of angels and have not love, I am become a sounding bronze or a tinkling cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and though, or if, I have all faith so that I can remove mountains and have not love, I am nothing. And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and if I give my body to be burned and have not love, it profits me ... what?...nothing."
He says ‑ "All of the gifts of the Spirit and all of the activities mean nothing without the fruit which is love." Love has to be the driving force, love has to be the motive, love has to be the guts of anything in the life of the believer. You see, it's possible to have the gifts of the Spirit. It's not only possible, it's really true that we have the gifts of the Spirit and it's possible to have the gifts of the Spirit without spirituality. You see, having a spiritual gift doesn't make you spiritual. They can function in your own energy in the flesh as you counterfeit them or they can function in the power of the Spirit. And without the fruit of the Spirit it's in the flesh.
So, here are the Corinthians, they're up there prophesying and they're up there speaking in languages and they're out there supposedly healing people and they're out there doing all their things, the problem is there's no love which means there's no fruit of the Spirit which means the Spirit isn't operating which means the flesh is which means it's counterfeit. It's a tremendously important thing, I think, for us to understand today that God doesn't want us doing our own thing in our own power and I think we know that. But let's see how he unfolds this here.
Love is the more excellent way. Now, in talking about the word "love," I think we better define it because our world hasn't got the foggiest idea what the word "love" means. It's a word that in our age cries out for definition. Now, let me just give you some thoughts. The word, incidentally, in the Greek is agape which is the most grandiose concept of love, it's the highest level of love, it's the love that is associated with God. And that's the term and the question is ‑ What does it mean? Well, let me tell you what it doesn't mean.
The word "love" as it appears in the Word of God does never mean "romantic" or "sexual" love. The Greeks have a word for that but it isn't this word. And the word that they do have for that never appears in the New Testament. For example, when it says in Ephesians 5, "Husbands, love your wives," it isn't talking about romance. And yet how many sermons have you heard or how many books have you read where a guy says, "Husbands, love your wives," and then gives four illustrations about opening the car door for her or buying her flowers and feeling the old romance and, you know, total woman and all that stuff? But that isn't what it's talking about. It isn't talking about the romance and the sex and all of that, there's a different word for that.
And another thing, love in the Bible never means emotional love. He's not talking about a tingly sensation. He's not talking about sentimentalism. He's not saying the greatest of these is sentimentality. That, too, is not scriptural love.
And thirdly, the word love as it appears never means "a friendly spirit of tolerance and brotherhood toward others no matter what the convictions are." In other words, it's eccumenical love. The people who say ‑ "Well, it doesn't matter what anybody believes, as long as there's some kind of common ground, we just got to love them all."
Recently there was a certain prayer meeting and certain people were there of other than Christian religions and faith and somebody asked the director of it who happened to be a Christian, "On what basis they got together?" And he said, "Oh, on the basis of love." Well, they don't even believe the truth of the gospel? "No, we don't agree on that but we do agree in prayer, we all pray... and that's our common ground." Even if we don't pray to the same person, I guess, it's okay. But you see, that kind of friendly, spirit of tolerance and brotherhood without any thought of conviction or doctrine isn't what the Bible's talking about.
And I'll add a third thing. It doesn't mean charity and unfortunately by virtue of the introduction of the Latin term in the King James we come up with love as charity. You have that in the old Authorized, charity all the way through. But it is not talking about, you know, giving your nickel to the United Fund, that isn't the...that isn't the basic thrust of the chapter or of the term.
So, if it isn't romantic or sexual or emotional or the friendly spirit of eccumenical tolerance or charity, what in the world is love? What is it? Well, I'll show you what it is biblically. Turn in your Bible to John chapter 3 verse 16, you remember this one, John 3:16. Now watch this work out. Now see if any of these other definitions fit. "For God so loved the world that He felt romantic about it." "That He got a tingly sensation down His spine?" "That He had a friendly spirit of tolerance and brotherhood no matter what they believed." "That He gave to the United Fund."
No. "God so loved the world that He ... what? ... gave His only begotten Son." What is love? Love is an act of self‑sacrifice. Love is not a feeling. And biblically, you see this again and again and again and again, love is an act of self‑sacrifice. There's no such thing as agape without action. There's no such thing as agape as a feeling, or as an emotion, or as a sensation. It is an action. And the sensation may or may not be there, but the action is there. Go further to the thirteenth of John. The thirteenth chapter and you'll see the same thing, and you can support it on your own as you chase around in your Bible, you'll see it's continually this, but John 13:1, Jesus meets with His disciples for that last time, and we've studied this chapter. And he says, John does, "Jesus loved His own which were in the world and He loved them unto the end." Literally in the Greek, "He loved them to perfection." "He loved them to the limits of love." He loved them all the way as far as love could go. Now then, in response to loving totally and loving purely and loving to the limit, what's He going to do? Well, in verse 4 He rises from supper, lays aside his garments, took a towel, girded Himself, poured water into a basin, began to wash the disciples' feet and wipe them with the towel with which He was girded. He loved them and His love took action. What did it do? It washed their dirty feet while they sat around and argued about who was the greatest in the kingdom and who was going to get to sit near Jesus in the millennium. And they weren't about to wash each other's feet, Jesus stooped and did it and loved them.
Now, you go over to verse 34 and you find this thing really comes home hard. At the end of the same chapter, He says: "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another." How? "As I have loved you." Now had He just loved them? By washing their feet. You see, it's the same thing that He's asking of us. Love is an act of self‑sacrifice. It is an act of sacrificial giving. It's washing feet. It's giving your Son.
Go to John 15 verse 9, and do you see it again? "As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you. Continue ye in My love." As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you, how had He loved them? By coming into the world and dying for them. Now verse 10: "If you keep My commandments then you abide in My love." In other words, love then toward God is the act of self‑sacrifice of my will to do His will. That's it. It's an act of self‑sacrifice.
Go down to verse 13. Here is the supreme example. Greater love has no man than this," in other words, here is the greatest definition of love that is ever given, this is it. You want somebody to give you a definition of love? This is the greatest that's ever been given. "A man lay down his ... what?... his life for his friends." The greatest definition of love is an act of supreme self‑sacrifice. That's the way it always is in the Scripture. That's the way it always appears.
If you go to John in the gospel of John, you see it in chapter 21. We won't take the time. You see the same thing with Peter. "You love Me, Peter, then follow Me and it will cost you your life." If you go to I John chapter 4 verses 8 to 11, "God loved us, how do we know? Because He gave His Son to die for us to be the propitiation for our sins." In other words, God's love is demonstrated in an act of self‑sacrifice, so is ours.
Now, when we talk about love$ that's what we're talking about. It is the act of self‑sacrifice. It is humility. It is saying that I want to meet your need, that I want to do what God wants me to do. There's no self‑seeking in there. There's no pride. There's no selfishness. There's no self‑glory. There's no vanity there. But you know, we can minister our gifts in pride, to be famous. I can preach to be famous or try to be famous ... might not work out too well. I can preach for fame or success or glory or prestige. I can preach to be...to be accepted. I can ... you can do the same. You can minister your gift because of peer pressure, everybody else is doing it and you feel you want to belong so you crank up and do yours You can minister whatever gifts you have to get out from under a divine obligation that's bugging you and so you're paying your dues to God. You can minister your gift so somebody will pat you on your spiritual back and tell you how great you are. So can I.
In other words, there are a myriad of other reasons or motives that we could have but there's only one that's legitimate... I minister because I do it out of the sacrifice of myself to the will of God and the sacrifice of my life to the needs of my brothers and sisters. That's the only legitimate reason. Nothing else matters. And anything else adds up to zero. You are nothing, you are nothing, you are nothing. You're nothing but noise, a banging gong and a clanging symbol.
So, that's what he's talking about. Now let's go back to I Corinthians 13 if you're not still there and now when he's calling on these people to love, he's saying ‑ "Forget yourself." When he said to the Philippians, "Have the same love," he then defined it as "let each man look on the other and not on himself." Be like Christ who thought it not something to hold on to to be equal with God but stripped it, became a man, humbled Himself and died for us. That's love. The love is the act of humility in service and self-sacrifice. And, boy, this is what the Corinthian church needed, believe me they needed it. Ah, they didn't have a doctrinal problem. Do you realize that he doesn't even mention any doctrine of any significance until he gets to the fifteenth chapter when he talks about resurrection? But up until that time, he didn't have to straighten them out like he did the Colossians and the Galatians and so forth, on their doctrine. These people had that. They just didn't have love.
Now, as we look at this chapter in terms of love, we're going to see some very poignant things. The chapter falls into four parts and we'll be looking at these four parts over the next few weeks: the prominence of love, the properties of love, the permanence of love and the preeminence of love ... the prominence of love we find in verses 1 to 3; the properties of love in verses 4 to 7; the permanence of love, verse 8 to 12; and 13, that beautiful statement on the preeminence of love. But for today we'll just begin to look at the prominence of love and he starts out by trying to show how important love is. And how the Corinthians are wasting their time. Remember the church at Ephesus? Remember what he said to the church at Ephesus? "You have this and you have this and you do this and you do this and you do this, but I have something against you because you have left your ... what?... your first love." You got all that activity without any love and it adds up to meaninglessness and the church at Ephesus was removed from the face of the earth, wasn't it? Never to be replaced again. And there isn't one there to this day. The candlestick was taken away.
Now, I want you to keep in mind that as we study these three verses in the next two weeks, remember that Paul is using hyperbole in order to make his point, he exaggerates. And he pushes everything to its ultimate limit. For example, he says, "If I could talk with the language of men and angels," if I knew angel talk, it wouldn't matter without love. And he says, "If I had all mysteries and all knowledge and all faith and bestowed all my goods and gave my body..." In other words, everything is extreme, it's pushed to its limits to make his point that it doesn't matter what you do, it doesn't matter what you know, it doesn't matter how far you go unless love is the motive it's all nothing.
Now let's look at what he says, and on your outline there I gave you a whole list of things and we only got to the first one. First one is this, in the first little section, verses 1 to 3: Languages without love are nothing.... languages without love are nothing. Now, verse 1 says: "If I speak with the languages of men and of angels and have not love, I am become a sounding_ bronze or a tinkling cymbal." Now this introduces us, someone said to me after the first service, "Why do you talk about the charismatic people? Why do you talk about that movement?" Well, the reason I talk about it is because it's in this verse that we have to talk about the gift of languages. And so, we'll attempt to talk about it from a biblical standpoint, not just bring up an issue to be fighting against a movement. I would feel very badly if what you got out of this sermon was we're right and there's a movement around that's wrong. What you want to get out of this message is what God is trying to say to you here about the way you function within the body of Christ. That's the key. But we will cover some other ground so that you'll understand what's being said and you will have answers for those who might want to confuse you.
All right, having said all of that which probably doesn't make any sense to you but does to me, I feel better, verse 1, we get into verse 1, okay? "If I speak with the languages of men and angels," and notice Paul puts it in the first person. And that's a good thing to do when you're a teacher so that you identify as one who is also a sinner, saved by grace and able to fall into any sin that anybody else could fall into. Paul says: "I just like you could do it without love." I could do it without love. I could use my gift of languages and incidentally, he did have that gift according to chapter 14 verse 18, he said: "I thank my God I speak with languages more than you all." So, he said ‑ "I could fall into this, I could have the languages of men and even talk angel talk, and if I didn't have love, I would become a sounding bronze and a tinkling cymbal."
Now, notice the phrase "speak with the tongues or languages of men and angels." In the first place, I like to translate the word there "languages" not "tongues" because that gives some confusion that can be eliminated very quickly. The word is the word for languages so we translate it that way. The gift of languages.
Now, he says with the languages of men and of angels. Now we have to stop here for a minute. We've covered every spiritual gift except this one, but now we're going to have to cover it because we're getting into 13 and 14 and I didn't want to create an issue when it wasn't necessary to just talk about this gift but now that we're here we re going to need to get into it so I want you to just kind of think along with me. We can't cover everything today, some loose ends are going to be there and if you'll stay with us till we get to the end of chapter 14, you won't need to ask questions cause we'll try to cover all of them. But let's just look at this idea of the languages of men.
What does it mean to speak with the languages of men? What is the gift of languages? We've seen all the other gifts, now we're going to briefly look at this one, we'll cover it in great detail in the fourteenth chapter. But let me say this for this morning. The New Testament is exceedingly clear on what this gift was. There isn't any doubt about it, I don't think, in my mind there isn't. And I think as you study the Word of God you'll find that it's relatively simple to ascertain what this gift was. It isn't that difficult. Let me take you to its first occurrence in Acts chapter 2 and see what it is and get a basic definition ... Acts chapter 2.
Now, in verse I of Acts 2, we find that the great day of Pentecost had arrived, a great period of time following the Passover, a feast time, a time when Jerusalem was loaded with people who had come on a pilgrimage to the festivals. "And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place." The 120 were gathered, waiting for the promise of the Father which is the Holy Spirit to come and the church was about to be born and you know what happened, there came a sound from heaven like a rushing, mighty wind and it filled all the house where they were sitting and there appeared unto them cloven tongues like fire, some kind of a thing that appeared on top, sitting upon each of the individuals, looking like a tongue of fire, not necessarily actual fire but appearing as a fire, in the similitude of fire, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other languages as the Spirit gave then utterance.
Here the Holy Spirit descends. The Holy Spirit baptizes the believers into the body, the Holy Spirit moves into the lives of the believers, the Holy Spirit fills the believers and to give evidence of that, there was a marvelous miracle that took place as they began to speak in languages ... under the uttering of the Holy Spirit. Now, other languages, the word languages here is glōssa, it is the word for language. It is the normal, normative Greek word for language. They spoke other languages. Now there are some people today who say that the gift of tongues is ecstatic babble, it is a prayer language, I've even heard many who say it's your own private language, you get your own language, your own private language. But let's look into this and see if that is in fact true or not true. "They began to speak with other languages." Now what is this? Is it babble or is it not?
Well, it's easy to find out, just keep reading. "There were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven and when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, were amazed because every man heard them speak in his own language." There's no question about the fact that they are languages. That' has to be. Everybody heard in his own language. They were amazed and they marveled and they said, Behold are not all these who speak Galileans? Now Galilee was, you know, that was like...those are like the hayseeds, you know, the hicks who lived in Galilee, I mean, they weren't connected to the highfalutin' stuff in Jerusalem and how could Galileans be linguists? I mean, they don't even have schools up there to teach this stuff. So they were just amazed and they hear every man in his own tongue or language, verse 8, 1 and then he lists them. What language did they speak? First he starts in the east with the Parthians, and the Medes and the Elamites and the dwellers in Mesopotamia. Then he goes west to Judea and he goes north to Cappadocia and Pontus and Asia and Phrygia and Pamphylia and Egypt. And now he's south in the parts of Libya, Cyrene. And then he gets very general, and Rome and Cretans and Arabians. And they all spoke in our languages the wonderful works of God.
Well, it even tells you what they were, they were languages. What languages were they? They were the languages of the Parthians, the Medes, the Elamites, the Mesopotamians, Judeans, Cappadocians, and on and on and on...languages. That has to be what he's saying. We hear them, verse 11, in our own languages. What did they say? The wonderful works of God. Let me ask you this. How would they know it was the wonderful works of God if they didn't speak it in their language? They wouldn't know what it was. The fact that they knew what it was, the fact that they recognized their own language, it's languages. It isn't babble. It isn't ecstatic speech. It isn't everybody with his own private little thing that you do in the closet all by yourself. It was languages...bonafide human languages.
Now, I want to show you that the gift of languages was always languages and never anything else. Because that's an important point for you to understand because that's what the Bible says. Now I could probably give you about 20 or 25 reasons that languages are always in view but we don't have time to do that so I'll give you 10 .... briefly, okay?
First of all, the word "glōssa" the word "glōssa" from which we get glossolalia which is a word that's found its way into English without being translated and means the tongues. But the word "glōssa" means "human language." It means "human language." It always biblically means "human language." New Testament‑‑yes. Old Testament‑ in the Greek Old Testament, or the Septuagint, its meaning is "normal, bona fide human language." Only two times in the Septuagint does the word glōssa appear when it doesn't mean normal human language and those two times, Isaiah 29:24 and Isaiah 32:4, it doesn't mean ecstatic speech, it doesn't m an pagan babble, it simply means a stammering or a stuttering. But the normative except for those two occasions is intelligent, normal human language. That's the way it appears in Acts chapter 2, glōssa" because that's what its normal meaning is.
Further, the word dialekto from which we get the English word "dialect" also appears in Acts 2:6 and 8. There you have the word "dialect." Some of them heard in their own language, some in a dialect which is a sub‑group of a language. So they were speaking languages and dialects. That's very clear. Those classifications would never be used if babble or ecstatic speech or some kind of spiritual gobbledygook or the kind of pagan speech that was normative to pagan cults was being done. But rather they were normal languages and dialects known to the people who heard. And then you hear people say, "Well, yes, we agree with that in the book of Acts, but as it goes along further it changes." No, it doesn't change. If you look at Acts chapter 10 and verse 44 and following there, "The Holy Spirit fell on them who heard the Word and they of the circumcision who believed were astonished as many as came with Peter because on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Spirit for they heard them speak with ... what?...languages." Now, you can't say "Well, by now it's turned into babble." No. It's