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Begin by reading 1 Corinthians 13
I know that this series was meant to focus on living out the first eight verses of Romans 12, but I can’t possibly talk about the importance and functions of the Body of Christ without talking about Romans 12:9 and the importance of love. There are four passages in Scripture that deal with spiritual gifts – 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, Ephesians 4, and 1 Peter 4, and each time the subject is mentioned, it is always surrounded with teaching on love and unity.
1 Corinthians 13 is often read in weddings and applied to a marriage relationship. However, many forget that the context of this famous chapter is that Paul is writing to a church and teaching about spiritual gifts. His point can be summed up in the first couple of verses: It doesn’t matter if you have all of the spiritual gifts in the world. If you don’t love the people with whom you are sharing your gifts, you have nothing and are accomplishing nothing.
In a world plagued by self-interest, self-righteousness, and selfishness, perhaps this is the greatest lesson that we could possibly learn. Love is like worship. It is a choice, not a feeling. Falling in love and the pitter-patter beating of your heart is not the love I’m talking about. I’m talking about the choice to put someone’s interests above your own. Our society lacks that kind of love. We see it in corporate greed, in the astounding divorce rate, in abortion, and in how many churches operate. Dare I say that few understand how to love because we have misunderstood what love is.
I believe that this misunderstanding of love in the church is directly correlated to a misunderstanding of church. In our business-minded society, we can easily begin thinking of church as an organization rather than an organism. While we have legal requirements to be incorporated by the State and financial obligations, we ought not to think of the church as a business. Businesses think in terms of economics. Economics is only concerned with numbers and statistics, intentionally ignoring actual lives. We must be different. We must love individuals.
Let’s be honest. Sometimes, it’s hard to love everyone at church, or at least it’s hard to like them. There may be people with whom we have nothing in common. Certain personalities may annoy us. We may disagree with someone’s point of view or way they go about doing something. It’s important to remember that love is not a feeling born out of convenience, rather it is a choice, born out of self-sacrifice. I do not say this because I am an expert at sacrificial love. I confess my failures and my shortcomings. Perhaps this forty day exercise is more for me than anyone else, and the Lord has used these days of study and reflection to make me see the necessity and priority of love in church leadership.
Let me close with this thought. One of the gifts I have often longed for is the gift of healing. In college, I was enamored by the stories of missionaries healing people – raising people to life, limbs growing back, and vision and hearing restored. I wanted to be that person that could go around healing people. I’m not sure God will ever give me that gift, but I do remember Him telling me, “Healing people should not be born out of a desire to use the gift but motivated because you deeply love the stricken person and are moved to see them whole.”
Perhaps the lack of the gift of miraculous healing in America is correlated with the lack of love in American churches. May we be different. May we grow in our love for church because we grow in our love for the people that are the church. May we be like Jesus who looked beyond outside appearances into the soul of each person. He was so motivated by love that He couldn’t help but heal the sick. He was so motivated by love that He gave up His life for us. That’s love. Hopefully, we will choose to love each other like Christ chose to love us.
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