Category: Love

Prophecy and Love

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I’ve decided to take us on a tour lately of 1 Corinthians 13 and see what this magnificently beautiful chapter has to say about love. My wife knows that one of my prayer requests every night is to understand this chapter. Tonight, I’d like to look at the first part of verse 2. It raises the point about having the gift of prophecy.

What do we know about Paul and his view of prophecy? Paul was abundantly clear that prophecy was the greatest of the gifts and he advised the church to seek prophecy. Moses in the Old Testament had a wish that all of God’s people could be prophets and in the New Testament we see at Pentecost the start of the fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel as to the pouring out of the Spirit would mean that people would prophesy.

Now we’re not going to get to the end of the verse tonight, but Paul’s point here is that if one has prophecy, but they do not have love, then they are nothing. Note that he is not saying that he has nothing. He is saying that he himself is nothing. As important as prophecy was to Paul, love was far more important.

What was prophecy? Today, we can often think of prophecy as simply foretelling the future. To an extent, that did happen in prophecy in the Old Testament especially, but it was not always that. Much of prophecy in the Old Testament is the exhorting of the people to righteousness. It was not so much telling the future as it was giving commentary on the present.

In the New Testament, the closest role could be to that of a pastor. Because someone was a prophet, it did not mean that they were telling the future. It could mean that they possessed a key insight into the message of God at the time and knew how to apply it to the lives of the people. After all, it is doubtful following the rules of 1 Cor. 14 that God would give one prophecy to one person only to have them sit down when He decided to give another prophecy to a different one.

Paul values prophecy because it is involving the proclamation of the gospel. Tongues would be seen as a means of conveying the gospel, but prophecy would be seen as having to do with the content of the gospel. Paul was grateful to God that he had the ability to prophesy. Of course, being an apostle, he did such on a far greater scale, yet at the same time differentiated. In 1 Cor. 7, we find him making a distinction between what he says and what the Lord says. If anyone could say “Thus sayeth the Lord” surely Paul could, but he did no such thing. He simply pointed to his authority as an apostle and we trust today that God did guide this fine evangelist in what he said.

Let us not skip over this part however. Remember what Paul says about prophecy and look at what he says about it after this chapter and what is his conclusion? IF you have prophecy, but you do not have love, you are nothing. You’re not worth talking about. No one should take you seriously at all.

Let us keep this in mind as we pursue what love really is.

Tongues of Love

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I’m going to be continuing again our look at 1 Cor. 13. Last night, I wrote on how agape is the kind of love being discussed in this passage. What is agape exactly? Before he gets to what it is, Paul wants us to know how valuable it is. Often times, I fear some of us can be so eager to get to the latter part which describes love and then get to the ending part with so many great quotes we regularly use, that we miss the gravity of what has been said here.

The text is as follows:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

The text is straightforward enough, but what is being said? Let us consider the surrounding context. Paul has been talking about spiritual gifts and one that has been a hotbed of controversy is the gift of tongues. For now, let us lay aside what we think the gift of tongues is. Whatever it is, we can all agree it is a gift and all sides I know of believe it contains with it a way of speaking another language or understanding another language, be it an earthly language or a prayer language.

Let us suppose that someone has this gift, to which Paul himself later says that he does. Note that in Paul’s time, oratory ability was highly valued. There were several rules for speaking and one needed to be a good speaker in order to get the point across. Paul does the same in his epistles as well as there was a proper rhetoric to follow when giving an argument.

Many of us have experienced today the idea of being dazzled by a speaker and while we cannot really tell what they said, they sure sound persuasive. Politicians try to specialize in this wanting to get an audience caught up in an emotion rather than address the arguments that they put forward. Sadly, a lot of preachers do this as well thinking that a lot of emotion in place of a good point is enough to spur people to Christlikeness and shows that their message is from the Holy Spirit.

In saying that, I am not against rhetoric. I do believe that talks ought to be presented in a way to be persuasive. I believe there is a great importance in emotional appeal, thus there is no reason to decide someone does not know what they are talking about simply because there is great emotion there. There is also no reason to they they know what they’re talking about because they lack great emotion.

However, what Paul is saying is to picture that you are a great speaker in some way and you do have the gift of tongues, even if you could communicate with the tongues of angels. Paul says that if you do not have love while you have that gift, then you are simply making noise.

Consider the magnitude of this. This was a gift that the Corinthians were taking pride in. They were vaunting their spirituality by this gift and what does Paul say about it? “You’ve got the gift? Well congrats. But you don’t have love, so you’re just making noise. Nothing good will come of it.”

What does that say to us today? It tells us that we don’t want to be just making noise either. Now I believe in our evangelism there is a time to be tough and a time to be soft, but there is never a time to not have the love of Christ in what we say. In our talks, we need to be persuasive and prepared, but we must have love. It is absolutely necessary. Otherwise, we could spend hours upon hours talking, and we would simply be making noise.

What else has Paul to say about the importance of love? That is for next time.

Agape

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’ve lately been looking at 1 Corinthians 13 and love. In discussing the four type of love in Greek thought, we are going to be discussing now the one that Paul writes about, which is agape.

We are often told that agape is God-love, but this isn’t really the case. After all, agape is said to describe the love of darkness that some people have. We would not say that they have the love of God of darkness. What can it mean then? I would take it most likely to mean something like the love of devotion.

More can be said about agape love as we go through this series, particularly after we get started on verse 4. However, I do wish to give some general comments. To begin with, I do believe that agape is the love that makes all of the other loves better.

What about storge? As an Aspie, I am familiar with how people can do social niceties and not mean anything whatsoever by it. They just do it because that is what they are supposed to do. I don’t know how many times I heard someone come to me at work and say “How are you?” and then have them walk right on by. It always has left me with the impression of “If you don’t care, don’t ask. I’d appreciate it more.”

Of course, there could be times people really do care and I don’t realize it, but wouldn’t it be best if good manners were genuine rather than something that we do because we think we have to and aren’t going through the motions? Wouldn’t it be great if when someone at church said “I’ll pray for you” that you were sure that they meant it?

What of Phileo? Phileo is the love of friendship and we would like the friend that sticks closer than a brother. What would it mean for phileo if friends were really, well, friends? Christ told us that there was no greater love than that a man would lay down his life for his friends. Do we have that kind of love?

And eros love? What would it mean if sex was more focused on the joy that one person could bring the other than in the joy that person received from the other? Now I do know that you do have to in part focus on your pleasure as well so your spouse can know the best way to please you, but that should not be the focal point. If you are both focused on the love of the other, then will you not find your own pleasure that way?

Agape improves everything. Devotion to that which is good in proper proportion is always good. Let us make sure we are doing both. We should only devote ourselves to that which deserves devotion. We should also not devote ourselves to that thing if we make it greater than what it is. As wonderful as your spouse is, don’t make an idol out of them. My wife and I regularly make sure to state that we are each other’s #2 in life. God is our #1.

Next time, we shall start going through the text.

Eros

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I’ve started to take a look at the topic of love as found in 1 Cor. 13 and tonight, I’m going to be talking about eros. Why am I doing so in this order? Storge love is familiar love. Phileo is a higher form of that in friendship. I consider eros a deeper form of friendship and thus a sexual form.

Note that eros is not sex however. Sex is a part of eros and when eros is fully shared, it is an important part, but it is not the whole. A mistake of our society is to confuse sex with eros where if a couple has sex, then it can be seen as automatically having eros.

Sex can in fact be just a physical action between two people. Now I have actually heard a guy tell me before that he thought I was making too big a deal since I did not believe in having sex before marriage. After all, I was told, it’s just orgasm. Such a person however does not understand what is going on.

Sex is a physical activity, no doubt, but it is not just physical. It transcends the physical and while it certainly has great physical sensations, the greater joy of sexual love between two people in a married relationship is the bond of intimacy that they are building with one another.

For a woman, she has to be totally open with her body. She reveals herself entirely to her man. There is nothing for her to hide behind. She has to give total trust to him and open up to him a very vulnerable part of her body and give him the freedom to come and enjoy her.

For the man, he also has to have a high degree of trust. Many men do suffer from insecurities that they will not share, as do women, and for most men it has to do with their bodies. They have to trust that their wives will accept them and put a lot on the line when they engage in a relationship with the woman, particularly the sexual one. Am I really a man? Do I have what it takes to please this woman?

And for both, because they are different sexes, there has to be trust in what is being experienced. A man can never know firsthand what sex is like for a woman. He can study all about the female body all he wants and understand all the physical aspects, but he can never know what it is like the same way a woman can. The same goes that a woman cannot know what it is like for a man.

Thus, in the act itself, the husband and wife have to give total trust to each other in what is liked and what isn’t liked. If the wife says that she likes something, the man has to trust that she really is liking it and she is not just saying it in order to please her husband. The same goes the other way. The woman has to trust that the way she is acting with her husband is bringing him joy or not bringing him joy.

We’re often told that for men the act is physical and for women it is emotional and relational. There’s some truth to that I think, but we need to realize that really, the act is both for both. A man can be incredibly fortified by the act and have an affirmation from his wife that, yes, he is a man. That bond that he feels with his wife is incredibly strong.

This is something many women can seem to forget, hence that there can be marriages where the man feels he is sexually neglected. For women, I’d say if you think your marriage needs some work, try starting in the bedroom. “Well he doesn’t do what I want him to do!” Okay. Are you doing what he wants you to do? A woman can clean the house all day and take care of the kids and the man can appreciate that and she should be doing that, but what the man will really want is to know that his wife can affirm him sexually. Women need to realize that this is a deep need for a man.

Men on the other hand need to realize that because their wife isn’t interested at the time does not point to a lack of love necessarily on her part. A man can be ready for sex in a moment’s notice. A woman is not that way. It has been said that women are stoves and men are microwaves. If men want to be have times of romance from their wives, they need to do their part. Are the men cleaning up around the house? Are the men helping with the kids? Are they forming dates? Men. Don’t expect to come home, prop your feet up on the footstool while sitting on the couch, expect your wife to bring you dinner while you watch your favorite TV show, and then have her be in a mood to please you when the day comes to an end. Go the other way. Why not wait till she has to go out one day while you’re home alone? Clean up the house, take care of the kids (And send them to their grandparents then or someone else’s house) and when she comes home, have dinner ready and let her hold the remote control. Or better yet, go without the remote and try a candlelight dinner where you just talk. Such actions will build up desire in your wife for you.

Our society has made sex an idol and fails to realize eros has many more components to it. Eros is found when the man is being a man for his woman and the woman is being a woman for her man. It does not have to be necessarily sexual, but there is such an aspect. It is when the woman fixes her hubby dinner, or when the man holds open the door for his wife.

To limit sex to just the physical is to cheapen the activity entirely. You might be able to get a good time out of it, but you wouldn’t be getting the best time that you could get. This happens in the bond of marriage where the two are already committed to each other. Neither one of them needs to think that they are on trial. They have already been accepted and can then give themselves with abandon.

To which also men need to make sure that their women know that they are more than just objects of sexual pleasure to them. Women, on the other hand need to know that the sexual pleasure they give their husbands is important. Sex should not be seen as everything in marriage. The other temptation to be avoided is seeing it as nothing.

In sex in marriage, there is a unique bond in that you two are the only people that can satisfy that desire for the other. If the man wants to go watch a movie, he can call a guy friend up and go watch a movie. If he has to, he can go watch one by himself. If he wants to have sex however, he can’t (Or he shouldn’t at least!) call up another female and ask if they want to get together for sex. The same goes for a woman. She cannot call up just anyone to get that unique closeness she should only have for her husband.

Another mistake we make with eros is that we make eros a feeling. Eros can and certainly often does result in feelings, but strong feelings are not the sign of eros either. When you marry, you do not make a commitment to a psychological state of feelings where you say you will have those feelings for the rest of your life. You make a commitment to a person and that commitment is before God and men and lasts until death do you part. When the feelings are there, enjoy them. They’re great! When they’re not, then oh well. You’re still called to be a great spouse anyway. As one in ministry, I can attest that if I only served Jesus when I had strong feelings for serving Jesus, I would not be serving Him that much.

Eros will also grow deeper over time. For the sexual aspect, the honeymoon is just the start of it and it’s a start that gets better and better as the two of you come to know each other more and more. You will come to understand your spouse in other ways as well and know their personality. My wife and I today are far closer to each other than we were the day we got married and I am still amazed many a night when I go to bed and realize the woman I am sharing it with. God was not obligated to give me a spouse, but He did. That is His blessing and I ought to treasure her more and more every day.

For the young Christian also, enjoy eros. Many of us can have a feeling of shame when it comes to eros. God made the sexual system however. It was His idea. He fashioned all the parts and even has a whole book of the Bible for celebrating sex, the Song of Songs. We can talk all we want of it being an allegory of God and Israel or Christ and the Church, and in some ways it could be, but let us also affirm that it is also a book celebrating sexual love. If God considers it something to celebrate, ought not we?

Of course, the Song includes warnings about not awakening it before its time, so don’t. Be cautious. There are many a couple who have regretted not waiting until their wedding night. I do not know of any who do regret waiting until their wedding night. My wife and I both waited, and we are glad we did.

Next time, we shall look at agape.

Phileo

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I started a look yesterday at 1 Corinthians 13 and decided to start that by discussing the four kinds of love. Yesterday we looked at Storge and today, we will be looking at Phileo, the brotherly love.

Phileo is an interesting love in that it could be possible to live without brotherly love. The race could survive without it even. We would not want to however and we often think our lives are richer because of our friends. Special moments are in our lives as well. When it came to filling out my wedding party, the first place I looked to was to my friends. When I’m in a bind and need someone to talk to, I can often turn to friends as well.

Friendship love is often different amongst males than females. I notice regularly when my wife is with female friends, they will tell her mow much they love her or they will speak of both of us and how they love us. From what I’ve seen, if guys got together and said that, they would be on their way to relentless teasing.

That could be a deficiency amongst us men. Most men are pretty stoic. In fact, it has been noted that when men get together and talk as friends, they don’t tend to look at each other. They tend to look straight ahead in one direction.

C.S. Lewis remarks that most friendships begin with these words. “You too? I thought I was the only one!” There are three kinds of friendships that often form. The first is the friendship of pleasure. These are friends who get together and what unites them most is a form of pleasure. They might watch a TV show or a sporting event or have a hobby together.

The next is a friendship of utility. These are friendships that form because it is beneficial to both, such as two co-workers who happen to work together or two athletes who train together. While both of these exist in some form in the final friendship, having a friendship based on just these principles does tend to make it be not a firm friendship that will last.

The last is a friendship of virtue where the friends seek to bring about the improvement of each other. Unfortunately, this can also work in reverse where the friends drag each other down. Such is the power of friendship. The same principle that makes them build up also leads to the possibility of tearing down.

However, this friendship is the best kind of friendship and the one that we should seek the most. We should seek to be people who will build our friends up and accept it when they seek to build us up. I come to see my friends as comrades in arms as we work together on regular quests.

It is a comfort to be looking at my cell phone list a number of times and see a number of friends that I can call for support if need be, some that are even thousands of miles away.

Friends might be something that someone can live without, but I am very thankful that I do not. To all my friends, I say thanks. I am who I am today in many ways because of the way God has used you in my life.

Next time, we shall look at eros.

Storge

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. Tonight, I’d like to start a new topic to discuss. I recently preached a sermon at my church on 1 Corinthians 13. The sermon was quite popular and now I’d like to write out some more about the topic of love. Before doing that, I think we should take a look at what love is and to do so, we should see what each of the four kinds of love are.

First off is storge, which is familiar love. Storge love is the kind of love you have for your fellow man just because he is a man. It is also the kind of love that you have for family. For example, suppose that you did not know the people that are now your parents. I am assuming that you have a good relationship with your parents for this. If not your parents, try to think of any relative you have a good relationship with. If you were not related to this person and you just met this person, do you think you’d really form such a bonding relationship with them?

It is because they are family that you form such a great bond. For some of my younger readers, I wish for you to know that if you have a relationship with your folks that isn’t terrible, but you wish it would be better, that it does improve when you get out of the house. It’s amazing how much you learn that your parents really do. Now as a married man, I have come to realize more and more that my mother knows a whole lot more than I ever realize and our relationship, though it has never been bad, has never been better.

Storge love does not mean that you make the stranger someone you have a deep devotion to, but it means that all things being equal, you treat them as a human being. You hold the door open for someone just because they are a person. It is the kind of love that we ought to show, which is what should ideally take place when driving for example, a place that we can bear to improve on.

Of course, this does not mean that you can never be tough on someone, but they must give a reason for such toughness. If some stranger comes up to me and insults my wife for example, he’s not going to get storge. He may be the stranger still, but he is also someone who has shown himself to be in opposition to the good of the person that I love far far more.

Most of us don’t deal with such, although we do deal with some people who get under our skin. It is our case of judgment to know when we ought to say something and when we ought to ignore. As one in the working industry, I often ignore such things realizing when I go home at the end of the day and spend the time with the Mrs., that what was said will not really matter. Are there some battles not worth fighting? Of course. Some are however, and I suggest the reader consider themselves more on which battles to fight and which to not based on their ability, the situation, and the possible consequences.

Next time, we shall look at Phileo.

I Want It!

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. Yesterday I happened to speak at my church where I was given the task of preaching on 1 Corinthians 13. Within that sermon, I made a point on love not seeking its own. I would like to expand on that point in today’s blog as I continued thinking on it throughout the day.

Go to any department store or grocery store and watch children with their parents in line begging for something like a piece of candy. What is their reason that they always give for why their parents should buy that for them?

“I WANT IT!”

As Christians, we’re told to not seek our own but the good of others. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with wanting something for yourself to an extent. You need the basic necessities of life. However, your main priority is to be the Kingdom and we are told that we ought to esteem others as better than ourselves and be seeking their good more than our own.

We are to be childlike indeed, but we are not to be childish, and yet so many times we are. We each seek simply what we want and who cares about anything else? There are times that things don’t go our way and we don’t get what we want. What are we to do then? Grow up and deal with it. God never promises to give us everything we want.

But what is our problem? Is it that we want things? Could it be that the Buddha was right after all and the key to happiness is to extinguish our desires? Would it be better if we did not want anything after all?

Well, no.

C.S. Lewis said that the problem is not that our desires are too strong but rather that they are too weak. We do not want that which we ought to want and want what we ought not want. Where our desires can be for the right object, they can often be not in the right proportion. We are told to seek first the kingdom of God because too often we’re too busy seeking our own kingdom.

What we often think with our petty wants is that we want something and we want it then and so since we do, we ought to have it then and because the world doesn’t go the way that we want it to, we get angry about it. Though we may not agree with the stoic philosophers in all they said, they had a great truth in saying that our happiness ought not to be dependent on the contingent external circumstances around us. We as Christians should seek our ultimate happiness in God.

We can have other things that can bring us happiness and if we get them, that could be good. If not, oh well. We don’t get everything right now. For instance, my wife and I like many of you at this time are concerned about our finances with my just having a part-time job and donations being down. The problem with worry is saying “If we do not have what we need right now, we will never have it” forgetting that in this very passage Jesus tells us to seek the kingdom and not worry about what we need. Just trust God to provide.

But if that provision is not here right now, it can be difficult.

Of course, a lot of the idea of what we want is the problem of sin. A young couple wants to have sex without having the burden of going through marriage, and so they just go for what they want. A person wants justice against an enemy and rather than wait on God to provide it someday, decides that murder is a better option. Someone wants an object he cannot get and rather than go out and work for it and earn it, he decides upon thievery.

Being the way we are, we also take this attitude and put it onto God.

“Well if God wants everyone to be saved, obviously, He should just give everyone a grand vision of Himself and prove He exists right now!

Nothing happened?

See. God doesn’t exist!”

This is actually a common argument that can be seen in atheistic circles. If God existed, He would do something like this. Why think this is the case however? Do we not often think we know the best way to get something that we want and it turns out that that isn’t so because there are other factors in the situation that we overlook?

Yet somehow, we think we have it all figured out when how it should be that God goes about His plan.

Perhaps if we wish to argue the existence of God, we should argue from truths that we know rather than speculations about what should be?

Then, we need to change our desires. We need to desire the things of God more and if we do not, we need to ask why. There is some good in all that we want, but we need to ask ourselves if we are really wanting the good.

We don’t want to be children after all.