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If I speak in the languages of humans and angels but have no love, I have become a reverberating gong or a clashing cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can understand all secrets and every form of knowledge, and if I have absolute faith so as to move mountains but have no love, I am nothing. Even if I give away everything that I have and sacrifice myself, but have no love, I gain nothing.—1 Corinthians 13:1–31
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If you don’t have love, all your talents will ultimately profit you nothing.2 You have to be loving in the first place; you have to be sympathetic and understanding of people’s problems.
Christianity wasn’t built on tough rules. It’s first of all built on love and consideration and sympathy and compassion. Jesus was tired out and tried to retire inside the house one day, but He looked out and there were thousands of people gathered there wanting healing. And He went out, it says, and He healed them all because He had compassion upon the multitude.3
If you don’t have compassion, if you don’t have love, if you’re not motivated because “the love of Christ constraineth me” and you’re sorry for people and you want to help them and you’re trying to do the best you can, then you are not going to get anywhere.4 You have to have sympathy and understanding. You can be sweet, quiet, wonderful, faithful, loyal, diligent and hard-working, but it’s not enough if you don’t seem to know people very well or the problems they face.
We need to have love for others and feel so sympathetic toward them that we could almost cry just thinking about them and try to do everything we can to help them and make it easy for them.
“We have not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all things tempted like as we are.”5 He suffered the same things and went through the same things we do in our human condition.
I don’t even think you can be a good salesman unless you have love. What makes a good salesman? Somebody who’s sincere, who’s sold on his product. He’s convinced that it will really be a help to the people he’s trying to sell it to and can convey that sincerity and the conviction that, “You’ve got to buy this, and I’m selling it to you at the least I possibly can to make it easier for you to do your job” or whatever it is.
I’ve seen some TV commercials that fall flat as a flounder. They try to really make it sound like they’re concerned about you and your health, your beauty, your comfort. But real salesmanship, especially in our business of preaching the Gospel, has got to have love or it will never go over, it won’t sell.
We first of all have to have love. If we haven’t got love, it will profit us nothing and we can do nothing of lasting value.
People in leadership anywhere in the Lord’s work should be trying to save souls and trying to help the soul-savers. Really, sincerely, honestly concerned about them, not just doing some kind of formal, mechanical job, going through the motions without the power thereof.6 What’s the power? Love! Without that power, we haven’t got anything.
Love is the lifeblood of God’s work—the Spirit of God. As my mother used to say, if the baptism of the Holy Spirit is anything at all, it is a baptism of love.
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God only uses broken people, broken lives, broken hearts, because only a broken heart gives you love and compassion for others. Only a broken life can help you sympathize with others. Only brokenness can give you humility.
If you show a real love for people, you won’t have a hard time winning friends, winning the lost who need love. When we show love to the most despised, rejected, and discriminated classes of people in the world today, they respond with love. Love begets love! “And the greatest of these is love.”7 Of all the gifts outlined in 1 Corinthians 13, love was greater than any other—because God is love.
If the baptism of the Holy Spirit is anything, it is a baptism of love. It doesn’t matter “whether you speak with the tongues of men and of angels,” without love, you’d become “as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.” “Though you understand all mysteries and all prophecies and have faith to remove mountains...,” even if you have great faith, if you don’t have love, you’re nothing.8
“And above all, have fervent love one toward another.”9 “Love one another.”10 In Jesus’ message to His disciples at the Last Supper, before He was arrested, taken to jail, beaten and killed, what did He tell them? He talked about love, that love was the most important thing.11
“Above all thy getting, get love.”12 Wisdom is love, did you know that? Because God is wisdom, but He’s also love. “Love one another.” “Have fervent love one toward another.” What is the greatest commandment? To love God. What’s the next greatest? To love your neighbor as yourself! He said that’s like unto the first one.13 To love your neighbor is to love God. Without love, it’s nothing.
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Love is always patient;
love is always kind;
love is never envious
or arrogant with pride.
Nor is she conceited,
and she is never rude;
she never thinks just of herself
or ever gets annoyed.
She never is resentful;
is never glad with sin;
she’s always glad to side with truth,
and pleased that truth will win.
She bears up under everything;
believes the best in all;
there is no limit to her hope,
and never will she fall.
Love never fails.
—1 Corinthians 13:4–814
Originally published in 1984 and 1969. Adapted and republished March 2014.
Read by Jerry Paladino.
1 ISV.
2 1 Corinthians 13.
3 Matthew 14:14.
4 2 Corinthians 5:14.
5 Hebrews 4:15.
6 2 Timothy 3:5.
7 1 Corinthians 13:13.
8 1 Corinthians 13:1–2.
9 1 Peter 4:8.
10 John 15:12.
11 See John 13:1, 34–35.
12 Proverbs 4:7.
13 Matthew 22:37–39.
14 ISV.
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