Amen. Let's turn our attention now to God's Holy Word. Today we are continuing our sermon series through 1 Corinthians. And we're going to be in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verses 4 through 8a is the section we're looking at today. We're just going to be focusing on verses 4 and 5. But to get the context, let's go ahead and look at 1 Corinthians 13, verses 1 through 8a. And a just means it's the beginning part of verse 8. Love never ends. Here is God's holy word. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have and I deliver my body up to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. Amen. What a wonderful, wonderful passage. Let's pray for God's help as we look at it together this morning. Heavenly Father, this is your holy word. It is beautiful. It is powerful. It is sharper than any two-edged sword. It is a portrait of the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior. It is, for us, the words of eternal life. coming from you, the author of life. And so, Father, we pray that you would write your word on our hearts this morning, that you would make it very clear to our minds to understand, and that you would put it deep in our hearts to treasure and to respond in faith and obedience to what you teach us this morning. And we pray this, Heavenly Father, in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Well, we are looking at the middle section of 1 Corinthians 13 today. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. Originally, I was going to preach that whole section today. But as I've meditated on these verses, as I've begun to unpack them, it's too much to try to cover all at once without having the sermon being really, really long. And so we're going to take the first part today and the second part next week. And I'm calling this sermon, A Portrait of Love in Action. and very intentional about the title, A Portrait of Love in Action, because it's very important that we understand this very famous middle part of 1 Corinthians 13. We need to understand what it is, and we also need to understand what it isn't. And the first thing that it isn't, it isn't a series of commands. We are not being given, in this section of 1 Corinthians 13, a to-do list. 1 Corinthians 13, 4-8 does not read, be more patient, be more kind, stop being arrogant or rude. And it's very important that we note that that's not what this is. Just like last week, when we looked at the opening verses. of 1 Corinthians 13, verses 1 to 3. We noted that there, when Paul is speaking of the vital necessity of love, he is speaking from his heart about his own need for love. He's being very personal and very humble and very vulnerable. The whole section is dominated by that pronoun I. Remember, we looked at this last week. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all that I have and I deliver up my body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing. And we noted that Paul doesn't put this in the second person. He doesn't come at them, right, about their lack of love, although he could do so. It certainly was true that the Corinthian church needed to love more and had a profound lack of love, and Paul would have been perfectly justified to come straight at him and say, don't you realize that it doesn't matter how many of you speak in tongues? It doesn't matter how many prophets you have in your midst. It doesn't matter how much insight you have and how much knowledge you have. If you don't have love, then you are a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal. If you don't love more, you are nothing. If you don't love more, you gain nothing. He could have just sort of come at them like that, but he didn't do it. Why? Well, first of all, it wouldn't really be all that helpful, would it? You see, our hearts are not ultimately changed by being reminded of what failures we are and being given a series of commands and being told to do better. That's not ultimately what changes us, what transforms us from the inside out. But the second, more important reason why Paul didn't do that is it wouldn't be loving. And Paul is demonstrating, even in the opening verses of 1 Corinthians 13, he's demonstrating what love looks like by the way he chooses to address the Corinthians. And as he continues to unfold this theme of love in verses 4 through 8, he's continuing to show them A portrait of what love looks like in action. Only now, he can't continue to talk about himself in the first person. He can't say, Paul is patient. Paul is kind. Or, I am patient. I am kind. I am not arrogant. Can you imagine such a thing, right? How can a person say, I am not arrogant? rude, right? What an arrogant and rude thing to say. So he doesn't do that, okay? He's not giving us a series of commands. He's giving us a portrait of love in action. And that's also important to understand because the other way we can misunderstand this, we could misunderstand it as a series of commands, but we could also misunderstand it as being sort of a technical static definition of love. And that's not really what it is either. This is not primarily telling us what love is. but rather it's primarily telling us what love does and does not do. You see, in the Greek, it doesn't come across really well in our English translations because we don't have really good verbs that parallel with the verbs that are in this passage. But in the original Greek, this is a series of statements with active present tense indicative verbs. They're not imperatives, they're not commands, but they're also not adjectives, they're not descriptions. What this is telling us about love is a series of present, active, indicative verbs. Now, some of you might be glazing over it, because I just threw a whole bunch of grammar stuff at you. I talked about imperatives and indicatives and verbs and adjectives, and you're like, hey, hey, hey, I didn't like high school English. So let me just, it's okay, let me just unpack what I mean, because it's actually really important that we understand this. An indicative verb form indicates to us what love does and does not do, or what love is or is not doing. An imperative would be a command telling us what we should do, and an adjective would be something just telling us what love is in sort of static and abstract. There's nothing abstract about this. It's actually very active. and it's very much showing us what love looks like in action. Anthony Thistleton has a great commentary on the Book of First Corinthians, and his translation of this passage, he works very hard to try to render this more in verb-type language in English. So let me share that with you. Here is Anthony Thistleton's translation of this section of 1 Corinthians 13. Love waits patiently. Love shows kindness. Love does not burn with envy, does not brag. is not inflated with its own importance. It does not behave with ill-mannered impropriety. It is not occupied with the interest of the self, does not become exasperated into pique, does not keep a reckoning up of evil. Love does not take pleasure at wrongdoing, but joyfully celebrates truth. It never tires of support, never loses faith, never exhausts hope, never gives up. I like that. I think that's helpful to show us this action, a portrait of love in action. I also find the Amplified Bible translation to be helpful with this particular passage. I don't always find the Amplified Bible to be helpful with everything, but this one I think they do a good job of unpacking because there's a lot packed into the little verbs that are used in the Greek, and I think they do a good job of unpacking that. Love endures with patience and serenity. Love is kind and thoughtful. Now probably would be better to say love acts kindly and thoughtfully or something like that, but it is not jealous or envious. Love does not brag and is not proud or arrogant. It is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not provoked, nor overly sensitive or easily angered. It does not take into account a wrong endured. It does not rejoice at injustice, but rejoices with the truth when right and truth prevail. Love bears all things, regardless of what comes. Believes all things, looking for the best in each one. Hopes all things, remaining steadfast during difficult times. Endures all things without weakening. Love never fails. It never fades nor ends. That is just very, very powerful. And it shows us what this passage is. This passage is not primarily focused on our obligation to love as much as this passage is unpacking for us a beautiful and compelling portrait of what love does and does not do, what love looks like in action. In other words, Another way to put this very simply is this passage isn't primarily about us. God is love. The Bible tells us that twice in 1 John. God is love. And Jesus is the incarnation of God. And so he is the embodiment of perfect love. And so if I think this passage is all about me, then I'm going to try to read it like, Jason is patient and kind, or even, Jason should be more patient and kind. Jason should stop being so arrogant or rude. And while that's true, obviously that's true, that's deliberately not what Paul is doing. Instead, the way we should read this is more like this. Jesus is patient and kind. Jesus does not envy or boast. He is not arrogant or rude. He does not insist on his own way. He is not irritable or resentful. He does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Jesus bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Jesus never fails. Because ultimately what 1 Corinthians 13 is giving us as a portrait of love and action is a portrait of Jesus in action. And that's really what we need to see. We need to see what love looks like with skin and bones on. And that's a large part of the reason why Jesus came. Philip Reichen, who for several years was the pastor of 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, did a sermon series through 1 Corinthians 13, and he called it, Loving the Way Jesus Does. And it's a very, very good sermon series. You can get it on Sermon Audio. It was also published as a book, if you like books, Loving the Way Jesus Does by Philip Reichen. It's very helpful. And what he does is he takes each one of these attributes of love, each one of these characteristics of love and action, and he goes to the Gospels and he finds Jesus living out that characteristic or that attribute, and so he has nearly a full sermon for each individual attribute. We're not going to do that, but I think he did a really good job with it, and I would commend it to you if you want a deeper study of how it is that this passage is showing us Jesus. But we're going to do something very similar, and that is, as we walk through these descriptions of love and action, We're going to look to see Jesus here, and we're going to look to see what this shows us about Jesus, knowing that we are called to be more Christ-like. But we're not going to jump ahead to the application right up front, because that short circuit's what we actually need. And what we actually need is to see and to know and to trust and to love Jesus more for who he is. That's how our hearts are changed. So let's begin unpacking verses four and five, and we'll start with love is patient and kind, or love waits patiently and shows kindness. Now, the Greek word for patient here means to persevere patiently and bravely, enduring offenses or troubles, or even bearing patiently with the offenses and injuries of others. This is not a weak or a passive word. It is strong and enduring, and it reflects actually the heart of the character of God himself. In fact, if we look at Exodus chapter 34, We see a place where God reveals himself to Moses. You may remember the scene in Exodus 34. Moses wants to see the glory of God. He's been pleading with God, I want to see your glory. And God says, well, no one can see my glory and live. But here's what I will do for you. I will hide you in the cleft of a rock, and I will cause all of my glory to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name to you." And so that is what God does for Moses, and this is what he proclaims. The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generations. You can take almost every part of this self-disclosure of God's character, and you can line it up with some of the attributes of love from 1 Corinthians 13. And that's for a very good reason, because as we said, God is love. And in this particular case, patient parallels to slow to anger. Slow to anger. The Lord is slow to anger. And literally, that word for slow to anger could actually be translated as long of nose. Long of nose. Now, don't immediately start thinking of Pinocchio here. It rather comes from a rather clever Hebrew idiom. It's the idea that when a man gets really mad, And fathers, you can ask your kids if they've ever seen this from you, or maybe not ask them. But when a man gets really mad, sometimes he turns so red of face that even his nose turns red. Right? And so to be long of nose is to have a nose that is slow to turn red. It's just a kind of a striking image, but that's literally what this word means. Now, the King James uses the word longsuffering, both in Exodus 34 and in 1 Corinthians 13. And that does get, I think, to the point of it longsuffering, although today we think of that as suffering for a long time. And we just think of suffering as having, you know, bad things happen to you. But it really has more to do with the idea of being long-tempered. In fact, Anthony Thistleton says we need to bring into the English language the word long-tempered. I mean, after all, we have the word short-tempered. We all know what it means when someone is short-tempered. Why don't we have the English word long-tempered, which is the opposite? That's what this means. And so when I think of Jesus being patient in this way, I think of his patience with the disciples who were so slow to learn. I mean, after spending years with Jesus, James and John were still jockeying for position, and they even sent their mom to Jesus to say to him, Lord, would you please grant that my sons can sit one on your right hand and one at your left hand in your kingdom? And then a little while later, they're at the Last Supper and Jesus is breaking the bread and distributing the wine of what was the Passover meal and he was instituting the Lord's Supper for them. And Luke tells us that they're arguing about which one of them is the greatest. How does Jesus respond to this Ridiculousness. After years of being with them, they're jockeying for position at his right hand and left hand. They're arguing about who was the greatest. This is how Jesus responded. John chapter 13 tells us, he got up after supper. He stripped himself down to the waist. He tied a towel around his waist. He filled up a basin with water and he came and washed their feet, their dirty, stinking feet. Now it's significant because this was after supper, and this is normally something that would have been and should have been done before supper. But none of them had been willing to do it. None of them wanted to take this place of lowest service. This was normally a task done by the lowest ranking household servant, and none of the disciples were willing to take this task on themselves. So Jesus waits patiently, and then he treats them with kindness, and he washes their feet. Peter later would say to Jesus, If everyone else falls away, I will never deny you. And Jesus responds to this impulsive arrogance of Peter by saying, I'm praying for you. Satan has desired to sift you like wheat, Peter, but I have prayed for you. This is the patience and the kindness of the Lord. When I think of the patience and kindness of the Lord, sometimes, if we're honest, Aren't we a little bit impatient with the patience of the Lord at times? Sometimes we get our feathers ruffled because we want God to do something and we want God to do something right now, right? Well, Peter reminds us in 2 Peter 3 that the Lord is patient. He says, do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. And then later he says, therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these things of the Lord to return and to renew the heavens and the earth, if you're waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish and be at peace and count the patience of our Lord as salvation. Just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him. I remember so many times when I was a teenager and a young adult college student, early twenties, I just wanted Jesus to come back. I really did. I mean, there were times when, you know, the clouds would be in the sky in such a way that the sunlight was sort of shining through and it looks like you're getting a peek into glory. And I would just say, Oh, Maranatha, Lord Jesus, come quickly. But he's patient. He's patient and waiting. And part of the reason why he was patient and waiting in a very practical way in my life is that it was his will that I should get married, and that I should have three children, and that I should bring those children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and I should see those children come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and come to salvation. So count the patience of our Lord as salvation when we want God to do something now. We need to remember that love is patient, and love is not just patient, but love is acting kindly while it is patient. So love waits with patience, and it acts with kindness. This word kind here, it's actually the only place in the whole New Testament where this particular word is used, and it literally means to show oneself to be mild, not harsh. We can think of the ways that Jesus responded to his disciples when he was being patient with them. He showed them kindness. He showed himself to be mild. But when I think of Jesus being patient in a way that can be frustrating to his disciples, and then showing kindness in that patience, my mind goes back to John chapter 11, which is one of my favorite passages in the Gospels. It's the raising of Lazarus in John chapter 11. and his sisters Mary and Martha had been among Jesus' closest friends and most loyal supporters. And we read something very interesting in John chapter 11. Mary and Martha have sent word to Jesus saying, Lazarus, whom you love, has fallen ill. which is obviously a plea for him to come right away, but this is what we read. Now, Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. Then after this, he said to the disciples, let us go to Judea again. That's John 11, 5-7. And when he finally did arrive at Bethany, Martha rushed out to meet him and said, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you. This is an exasperated response from a grieving sister who knew that Jesus had intentionally delayed his coming to her in her hour of need, and yet she is also expressing faith in her Lord. Mary didn't even come out to meet Jesus. In fact, Jesus had to send Martha to go and get her and bring her out. And in verse 32, we read that Mary comes to where Jesus was and she saw him and she fell at his feet and she said to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. She says the exact same thing as her sister, which leads me to think that this is what they had been saying to each other. If only Jesus had been here, Lazarus would not have died. Lazarus had been dead for four days by now, but they were saying to each other for these four days, if only Jesus had been here, Lazarus wouldn't have died. How would Jesus respond? to these grieving and confused sisters? Would he rebuke them for thinking that they could command him to come and heal at their pleasure? No. Verses 33 to 35 tell us how Jesus responds. When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled and he said, where have you laid him? They said to him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. Jesus was kind and he grieved with them. He didn't rebuke them for the lack of faith. He didn't rebuke them for thinking that they could sort of order him around and make him do miracles on their command. No. He was tender and compassionate toward them. He wept with them. And then he showed his power and he raised Lazarus, which had been his plan all along. God has a plan for the full redemption of all of his people on the day of resurrection. He has a plan for the full restoration of all of our losses and the full healing of all of our pain. And the raising of Lazarus is just a short little picture of what we can anticipate. All grief will come undone. All loss will be restored. This is what God has planned for the future of his people when Jesus comes again. But in the meantime, he is patient and kind. And he calls us to respond to his love in love, which means we are called to be patient and kind, too, because God is patient and kind with us. Next in verse four, love does not envy or boast. Oh, envy. Envy is the green-eyed monster, the angry and selfish blend of coveting and resentment. The Greek word literally means to burn with zeal, which is why Anthony Thistleton renders it as love does not burn with envy. Now, zeal for the Lord and for the Lord's name and the Lord's house are good and proper. In fact, Jesus cleansed the temple twice. Right? Overturning the tables of the money changers, driving out the animal sellers. And John explains the first cleansing of the temple by quoting from Psalm 69, zeal for your house consumes me. So zeal is not always a bad thing, but envy is a selfish zeal. It's a burning honor. It's a burning zeal for the honor of my name, for my rights, for my property. Charlie Brown's younger sister, Sally, In that most wonderfully and profoundly Christian of all Christmas specials, A Charlie Brown Christmas, she says it well when she says, All I want is what's coming to me. All I want is my fair share. That's the voice of selfish envy, and it's so American, isn't it? Envy burns with a selfish zeal because someone else has gotten what I think I had coming to me. a promotion at work, a bigger year-end bonus, a nicer car, a bigger house, whatever. Honestly, it's why most guys in America just can't stand Tom Brady. I mean, 10 trips to the Super Bowl, and hundreds of millions of dollars, and a supermodel wife, and kids. I mean, come on. How much can one guy have? But that's the voice of envy, and it's not right. Love does not burn with selfish envy. Here's what Paul tells us in Philippians 2, verses 5 through 7. He says, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God as a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man. That's what the Lord Jesus did, and that's the mind that we have. It is ours in Christ Jesus. And love does not boast. Love literally does not engage in a self-display, employing rhetorical embellishments and extolling oneself excessively. Love is not a braggart. Think about the Lord Jesus and what he did. He patiently taught people the truth about the kingdom of God and the nature of God's love. He demonstrated clearly who he was by his actions, and whenever he was challenged as to who he was, he always pointed to the miracles that God did through him. But he did not walk around proclaiming himself loudly as the long-awaited Messiah and the salvation of God's people. In fact, when the people tried to make him their king, he walked away. Even at his trial, after he was betrayed by Judas and put on trial before the Sanhedrin and the cross was awaiting, the Sanhedrin pressed him and said in Luke 22, Are you the Son of God then? And his reply to them was simply to say, you say that I am. So Jesus was not boasting. Next, we're told that love is not arrogant or rude. Now, the word for arrogant means puffed, as in being puffed up, having an overinflated ego. We know this all too well, don't we? It's kind of a popular thing to have in America. Paul uses this word, arrogant, puffed up repeatedly throughout 1 Corinthians because it was one of the heart problems that the people in Corinth had. The super spiritual, egotistical believers were puffed up. And in 1 Corinthians 8, verse 1, when he's talking about food offered to idols, he uses this word and he contrasts it with love. He says, now concerning food offered to idols, we know that all of us possess knowledge. This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. When we are focused on our superior knowledge, even when we are right, we are wrong. That's convicting. When we are focused on our superior knowledge, even when we are right, we are wrong. Some Corinthians knew that an idol was really nothing. But this knowledge, even though it was accurate, was leading them to be puffed up and to look down their nose at their brothers who were concerned when they saw them eating in a pagan temple courtyard, eating meat that had been used in the worship of that idol. And they just were callous to it because they were puffed up. They weren't loving their brothers and sisters. They were acting out of arrogance. Love seeks to build up instead of being puffed up. It is more concerned for real spiritual strength and maturity and not an overinflated ego. And love is not rude. That means love does not act unbecomingly or in an unseemly manner. Thistleton translates this as, it does not behave with ill-mannered impropriety. manners. Our culture doesn't care much for manners these days and so we might think that manners are not all that relevant or important but you see true manners, true manners are not about being overly formal or fussy. How many forks do you need at the table and where does the dessert spoon go and you know all those kinds of things. That's not what real manners is. Real manners is a practical way to show love to others. You see, when we're acting casually and completely without manners, we're only focused on our own comfort. Am I acting in a way that makes me comfortable? But when we act with manners, we're focused on the comfort of others. Now, there's an interesting place where we see Jesus not being arrogant, puffed up, and not being rude, but acting in a very mannerly, considerate way. And it's a very unusual picture, but it's the one that came to my mind as I was reflecting on these words. And it's Jesus on the cross. Jesus is on the cross, naked and bloody. He's bearing the sins of the world. He is certainly not being puffed up. He's being crushed for us and for our salvation. And yet from that cross, he looks down and he sees his mother, Mary, and his youngest disciple, John. They're standing at the foot of the cross, faithful to him when so many others had fled. And he looks Mary and he says woman behold your son and then he looks at John and says behold your mother Here Jesus has humbled himself all the way to the point of death even death on a cross as Philippians 2 says and yet He's not thinking about his own status his own rights. He's not thinking about what he is due He's not concerned for his own comfort but he's looking down in love to ensure that his mother is would be well cared for by a faithful believer and that this very young faithful believer would have a mother in the Lord to care for him. He wants to know that they will be cared for by caring for each other. That is love. We're going to take the last three from verse five together. Love does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. These three ideas are related and they're already related to things that Paul's been saying about love. First, love does not insist on its own way. That means that love is not self-seeking. It's not preoccupied with its own concerns. In Philippians 2, as Paul is calling the Philippians to be more Christ-like, he says, And that's exactly what Christ did. Christ did not insist on his own way. He could have stayed in glory. He could have enjoyed fellowship with the Father. He could have enjoyed the worship of angels. He was content. He was satisfied. But he did not insist on his own way. Rather, he willingly, in love, left all that was his by right to take on him all that was ours by wrong. And he willingly made that exchange. He did not insist on his own way. He embraced our sin as God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that through him we might become the righteousness of God. And love is not irritable. It means that love is not easily provoked or stirred to anger over minor slights or unimportant issues. Now, it's not true to say that love never gets angry. That's not true, because Jesus was certainly righteously angry when he cleansed the temple. But love is not selfishly angry. Love is not grouchy. Love's not walking around on edge, looking for an excuse to let loose and let someone have it. Boy, if anyone gets in my way today, they're in for it. That's not love. That's not love at all. And again, how many times was Jesus patient with his disciples? And even how many times was he patient with the scribes and the Pharisees? when he would heal someone on the Sabbath day and they would say, why are you healing on the Sabbath day? He didn't just, you know, zap them or blow them away or take the disease off of the person he healed and put it on them. He could have done all that. You know, he could have done all that. But instead he said things like, which one of you, when he has an ox and it falls into a ditch, does not go out and rescue that ox? Isn't this child of Abraham more valuable to God than an ox? So he responded in a way that wasn't irritable, but that was loving. And love is not resentful. That means that love does not keep an accounting of wrongs. Love does not take into account the wrongs that have been suffered. Earlier in the service, we read Psalm 130, verse 3. If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? If God kept a record of all of our sins, we would have no hope. We would have no hope, but love, love takes the blood of Jesus and cleanses us of all sin and then determines not to keep a record of that sin, but to separate our sins from us as far as the East is from the West, to throw them into the sea of forgetfulness, to remember them no more. God says of our sins, he will remember them no more. And Jesus on the cross, where do we see this displayed? Jesus on the cross looks down at the Roman soldiers who are crucifying him, and he prays, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And years later, the first martyr, Stephen, cried out as he was being stoned to death, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. Now that is love. Oh, this is a stunning and challenging portrait of love in action. And I can't wait to continue unfolding it next week together. But at this point, I just want to remind us, it would be so exhausted to get to this point in this portrait and say, yes, I know that I need to love more. But I can't do this. This is just beyond me. And the truth is, that would be the right thing to say. We can't do this. It is beyond us. That's why love came from heaven to earth to be incarnated as our Savior. We need to love more, but we need the Savior to save us from our sin and to make us more like himself. It is absolutely essential that we love more. but we must do so by looking more like Jesus, who is love incarnate. Now here's the good news, the really good news, for you and for me. God's plan and purpose for all of his children is, in fact, to make us look more like Jesus until that day when we see him face-to-face and we will look perfectly like him forever. Romans 8, 28-30 says, And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose, for those whom he foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. we have been predestined to what? To be conformed to the image of his son. And Philippians 1.6 says, and I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus. And 1 John 3.2 says that what we are, what we will be has not yet been made known. Sorry, what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. That's 1 John 3, 2. When he appears, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. Be encouraged, believer. If you believe in Jesus, you have been called to that faith according to God's purpose. And His purpose is that He has predestined you to be conformed to the image of His Son and that He who began this good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus when you will behold Him as He is and be instantly transformed into His likeness. Until that day, God is at work in you. God is conforming you to the likeness of his Son. He is patient and kind in his work because he loves you truly. Next week, we will explore more about exactly how God is doing this work in us and what our role in that work is. But for now, we need to rest in the one who is love. in action, the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior. We need to trust that He is at work by His Holy Spirit to make us more like Himself. I am not nearly as loving as I should be. I fall so far short of the description in the middle of 1 Corinthians that it is incredibly convicting. But by God's grace, He's growing me. I've grown over the past 10 years, and by faith I look forward to growing over the next 10 years. And I know that while I'm in this life and in this flesh, I will never be perfect. I will never even be close to the standard of love. But God is persevering in his patient kindness in working in me and in you, and we can trust him. Amen? Let's pray. Father, we thank you for such love, for such a Savior who is love incarnate, love divine, come down from heaven to earth to be our Savior. Would you save us from our selfishness, our pettiness, our foolishness, and our lack of love? And would you make us more like Jesus day by day by your Spirit's work in our hearts? We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well, let's respond to God's word now by singing, More love to thee, O Christ.