This morning we will turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 13 as we finish our series on our new teaching theme on the love of God. First Corinthians chapter 13. We will read this morning verses 8, and study, verses 8 through 13.
Before I pray and read the passage, a couple of introductory remarks. I think that all of us throughout a year would have these beacon events or landmarks throughout a year that our mind tends to wander to during the mundane nature of the day to day, during the grind of the week. We tend to look forward to certain things and draw strength and bits of energy and even bits of brightness from those beacon events. Maybe it’s a beach vacation. It could be a hunting trip with friends. It could be a date night. It could be a kick off. It could be a quiet evening or a quiet weekend. We have these things that we hold onto and look forward to, to try to find energy and strength to persist. And our minds, they tend to wander to these things, don’t they, when we are alone.
And it makes me wonder how often our minds wander to the new heaven and the new earth, that world of perfect love that is promised to all who are in Christ Jesus. Maybe, maybe your mind wanders there quite often. Maybe especially so if you’ve been bruised and beaten by the fall and the world has been unkind to you as of late. But maybe it’s possible that you hardly ever think about that everlasting home that we are called to. Either way, this morning our text is an invitation to do just that, to truly contemplate and to truly meditate upon our future and final home, the perfect world of love that is to come. And this can only be good for our souls as we do this. So that’s the invitation of this text this morning – is to set your mind on things above, set your mind on the hereafter, to really meditate and to really think deeply about what is to come for all who are in Christ Jesus.
So let me pray and then I’ll read the text.
Lord, we admit that we think so little of Your astounding promises of love perfected for eternity. Help us to take it to heart through the power of Your Word this morning, and would we leave here with our minds set on Your promises, with hope and with strength and with deeper faith and may our lives be marked by a shadow of that love, that perfected love that is to come. We pray this asking for Your help, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
First Corinthians 13, starting in verse 8. This is God’s Word:
“Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
Amen. This is God’s Word.
And we’re going to look this morning at the nature of perfected love, and it would do us all such good to consider it as deeply as we can. The nature of perfected love from this text. Three things. It’s permanent, it’s pure and it’s personal. Permanent, pure and personal.
So first, the nature of perfected love in the everlasting is permanent. Verse 8, “Love never ends.” Perfected love will never end. It’s forever. And you are probably thinking to yourself, “I know this,” but I want us to think about what that really means. I want us to consider what that really means. God’s love will never end because it never began. The most solid, the most rock solid human loves, they can and they often do crumble and they erode and they fade, but God’s love cannot fade. It cannot be diminished. It cannot be defeated. It has always been full within the triune Godhead. The Father loving the Son in the Spirit forever and ever. And there has never been a time when this perfect love within the triune Godhead has not existed, has not been true. God is and always has been fully satisfied, fully blessed within Himself forever. For God is love. This is a love, an infinite, incomprehensible love that is beyond our ability to understand, to fully understand.
And yet stunningly, this very love, the divine, perfect love of God, this is the love that has been shared with the redeemed. John 17:26, Jesus says this, “I have made known to you your name” – speaking of His Father, speaking of the Father – “and I will continue to make it known that the love with which You have loved Me may be in them and I in them.” “That the love with which You have loved Me may be in them and I in them.” Consider that. The love of the Father for the Son shared with you. Shared with all of the redeemed. And so it is that Jesus came into this world to welcome unworthy and unloving people into the very eternal love of the trinity. His love, the Father’s love, the Spirit’s love, extended freely, bountifully to sinners like you and me. And it’s all out of the abundant generosity of His overflowing kindness and the pleasure of His goodwill. And it is secured for us by the excruciating sacrifice of Christ on the cross where Christ, He did not lose the love of the Father but on the cross He lost every sense and perception of it in His human nature, all so that we could share in that neverending, divine love that He has always known.
This is the kind of love that we are given in Christ Jesus, and so to think that it could ever run out or ever fade, even an iota, is to question the very sturdiness and the very fervor of the eternal love of the Father for the Son. So Christian, ask yourself this question – Can the Father, will the Father ever stop loving His Son, His only begotten Son? And your answer to that question is the answer to the question of whether or not God will stop loving you. Love never ends. And yet, in this fallen world, our vision is clouded, it’s obscured. We doubt; we don’t fully understand. We are a forgetful people. Our ability to sense and to comprehend this incomprehensible love is deluded and fragmented and inconsistent because of the world around us, because of our finitude and also because of our sin. And all of this affects our ability to be loving towards God and to be loving towards people. And so we have a fragmented and inconsistent and impure love. It is a weak love. Even those who most closely walk with Christ have a weak and fragmented love.
So when this letter was penned, and in the apostolic era what God’s people needed and what God provided were prophecies and tongues and special knowledge to be revealed. These were the methods by which the love of God would break through the veil, the thick veil of this fallen reality. But those were impermanent. They were impartial. They were always meant to pass away. Just as today we need the full Word of God preached to us, we need week in and week out preaching, we need the sacraments, we need prayer, we need these things to drive us to and remind us of the love of God that is true and eternal. We need these things to break through the impediments and the barriers of this fallen world and our fallen nature. I’ve heard it said that rich worship, it makes, at least from our perspective, the veil between heaven and earth seem thinner. And I think there is truth to that. These are good things. These are gifts from God, and we ought to make good use of them. But even the preaching of the Word, even the sacraments, even prayer, even these are partial and they are not meant to be forever. For when the perfect comes, verse 9 and verse 10, when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. But love never ends, and the perfect will come.
So think with me, think with me for a moment – no more chaos, one day, no more chaos of Sunday mornings, dragging kids to church and piling in the car, putting out fires all the way there, just to hear maybe some of a sermon. Maybe you thought it was going to be the senior minister; turns out it’s just the young adult guy! No more! Simply pure unfiltered adoration as you behold Jesus. No more need to do that very important work of preaching the Gospel to yourself over and over again. As Christians, we have to remind ourselves over and over again that the Gospel is true as we tend to slide back into sin and fear and bondage and self reliance. We know that subtle drift all too well in this life. No more. One day, one day we will not be able to lose sight of the wonders of redeeming love. No more need to sit – excuse me – to sip on a bit of wine and eat morsels of bread to remember that we are forgiven in Christ. We will dine richly in the presence of King Jesus at His royal banquet as we see His scars. No more need to call out in our pain, our confusion, our heartbreak to the God who we do not see. For the promise is that He will wipe away our tears.
You know the uphill battle we fight off trying to carve out time to read our Bible? We fight off sin, we fight off sleepiness just to forge out a little bit of time each day in prayer and in God’s Word. One day we’ll be thoroughly captivated, completely consumed by the glory of our loving God forever. One day there will be no more need to repent, to regain a sense of God’s love. It’s a love we can never be separated from but so often our sin from our perspective dampens and seems to cloud. No more. We’ll finally rest in His blessed presence and be free of any sinful hindrance, enjoying Him forever.
We need these things. We need prayer, we need sacraments, we need the preaching of the Word, we need repentance, we need all these things, but they are temporary. They are not permanent. They are simply the opening acts to the main attraction which is the permanent and lasting and glorious love of God shining upon His people in all His fullness, for love never ends. It is permanent. It is forever. And so first, love perfected will be a permanent love.
Secondly, love perfected is pure. It will be pure. God’s love has always been perfectly pure. Our love is not pure. But the good news of this passage is that for any Christian, one day our love will be perfectly pure. Paul writes in verse 11, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” When the perfect comes, the imperfect, our imperfect love will be replaced by a perfectly pure love, a grown up love, a love that is what it has always been supposed to be. One author says that, “True love decenters the self.” We know, we know this because we see it all the time, that childish love, childish love is a self absorbed love. Childish love is self absorbed and preoccupied, but mature, grown up, pure love, it is centered upon God and others.
My daughter, Libby, she’s two. She’ll do this adorable thing where she’ll want to share with mom and dad, and it’s really sweet and we’re very proud that she’s learning to love and to share, but we don’t always necessarily want what she has to share with us, especially when she’s in her highchair, and whatever she has in her hand may not look that appetizing. And she’ll look at me and she’ll say, “Dada have some?” And sometimes I have to say, “No, no, I don’t want any of that!” Or, “I can’t have that right now!” And not every time, but sometimes when we say, “No” to her intentions to share, usually this correlates to how tired she is, sometimes her little eyes will close and her cheeks will turn red and she’ll stick out her bottom lip and then the tears will flow as she’ll scream and cry. She’s trying to love, and yet she is loving on her, she’s trying to love on her own terms.
The thing about it is, we do that in our own more well adjusted ways, don’t we? Even our most sincere loves, they have strings attached. How much of our love is riddled with self interest, with fear, with the desire to control, with the expectation of reciprocation. How much of our love is laced with neediness? The good news of this passage is that it will not always be this way. When the perfect comes, we will be transformed into who we were always meant to be with pure and undiluted perfect love for both God and man.
So again, let’s contemplate, let’s meditate and stop and consider what this will actually be like. And here, the theologian Jonathan Edwards has been a great help. In eternity, we will be perfectly patient. You may say, “Why would there be a need to be patient?” We will be perfectly patient with our creaturely limits. We’ll be perfectly patient with our finitude. We’ll be perfectly kind, bursting at the seams with that beautiful and tender benevolence of lovingkindness. It will be impossible for us to envy. The good and the well being and the flourishing of others will only deepen our joy and gladness. There will be no trace of arrogance or self exaltation. We will be incapable of irritability. No more lies. No more gossip. All we will be able to do is rejoice with full hearts, with the truth. No more grudges or coldness or distaste or enmity or contempt. No more defensiveness. These relationship killers, they will no longer threaten or harm. There will be no more fear because “perfect love casts out fear.” No more jealous insecurity; rivalry – it will be unheard of. Just perfect unity. We will be filled to the brim with the most sincere, the most self forgetful affection and delight. Our intentions will only be loving and our intentions of love will be perfectly executed all the time. And moreover, our love will always be perfectly reciprocated towards us. That deep craving that we all have to be loved will be perfectly met in the way that the very best of friendships in this world can only be a shadow of.
And best of all, our hearts will be filled with the incorruptible and pure love for the very source of true delight – our Redeemer and our God. We will be lost in wonder, love and praise with no fear of condemnation, no apathy, no lukewarmness, no divisions in our heart. No doubting His goodness, but only a pure, undivided, complete love. Our love will be fully grown. This is what we were made for. Free of self absorption, free of vanity, perfectly centered, perfectly set upon God and others. Full, free and pure. I believe it was Sinclair Ferguson who remarked that one of the great joys of heaven will be seeing people we’ve known in this life and saying, “There you are! That is who you have always been!” Isn’t that beautiful? This is a promise of this text for all who are in Christ Jesus by faith.
Now is it hard to imagine being this way? If you think about your life today, is it hard to imagine? I hope it is. I hope it is hard to imagine because the invitation to this world of perfect love, it is not given to those who consider themselves to be capable. It is only extended to those who see their great need, their great spiritual failure, and cast themselves on the only one who has ever lived a life of perfect love, the Lord Jesus Christ, who became a curse for us, for our lack of love. And so it is Jesus Christ alone who can and will make your heart pure and blessed. “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” So love perfected. It is permanent. It is pure.
And finally, love perfected is a personal love. Verse 12, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” – even as I am fully known. I came across in my study for this a study about the benefits, the positive outcomes of eye contact. The central idea is that in all spheres of life, eye contact has a synchronizing effect. In all the different relational dynamics we find ourselves in – family, peer relationships, workplace, hierarchical relationships – eye contact, it brings order, understanding and harmony. So my question is, “What kind of synchronization will happen when we see God face to face, when we look our Redeemer in His eyes? What will be brought into harmony?” Well, it’s His love for us and our ability, as much as we are possibly able in our finitude, our ability to truly understand it and truly believe it. His love for us; our capacity, our ability to receive it and believe it and know it and trust it. God has always loved His people maximally, infinitely, and yet in that moment when we see the eyes of our risen King, when we see Him face to face, we will love, we will know His love as much as we have the creaturely capacity to comprehend and our cup will finally be full. Our cup will be full.
And yet mysteriously, it gets better. The amazing reality of eternity is that our capacity to know the infinite love of God will be stretched and stretched and stretched, just like you pump a balloon full of air, filling further and further, always discovering more and more and more of His infinite and incomprehensible love. We’ll never reach the bottom of it. We will not want to. Eternity will not be boring. It will be more and more discovery of His infinite, amazing and astounding love for us. And on and on we will go, expanding our ever growing capacity to know His infinite love for us. Ephesians 2 tells us that we are saved by the grace of God “so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.” The immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness towards us. The riches of His lovingkindness that we will forever discover more and more of.
I’m sure many of you have a picture of a loved one who has passed away in Christ and gone on to glory. Maybe it’s a spouse or a parent or a friend or even a child. I’m sure it’s likely that when you see that picture, possibly of them smiling in such a way that only they could, you let yourself imagine seeing them again. I’m sure that as you do, you feel that painful rush, the painful hint of the future joy that you will experience when you meet them again, and how good and how beautiful that moment will be. And yet, it will be almost as nothing compared to the joy that we experience when we look into the eyes of our risen Messiah, never again to doubt what has always been true – that we are loved perfectly. George Herbert writes, “What wonders shall we feel when we shall see thy full eyed love, when thou shalt look us out of pain, when thou shalt look us out of pain?”
There is a day coming for every weary soul who clings to Jesus, a day when faith and hope – those loyal companions who have ushered us through this life – they will fling open wide the golden gates of new Jerusalem and we will be welcomed into the world of never ending and perfect love. For the greatest of these is love, and love never ends.
Pray with me.
God, You know that we could spend this whole day meditating on what is to come. Help us to do that. Help us to contemplate and to keep Your glorious promises at the forefront of our minds on this day or worship and rest that You have given us. May our hearts gravitate towards what is true and lasting as we eagerly anticipate the world of perfect love where we will see You face to face. Father, I pray for any soul in this room who does not yet know Your love that You have shown us in Christ. I ask that they would turn to You, even now, and trust You and know an eternity of perfect love. We pray this all in the name of our loving Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.