Saturday after Trinity X - Devotion in semi-Exile

For some reason, this devotion did not get published. It was here, but with the new look to "Blogger" it just did not get published. My apologies.

   Lection for Saturday Trinity X
1 Kings 2:1-27    1 Corinthians 13:1-13

1st Corinthians 13 is  often referred to as the great “love chapter” of the Bible. It is the chapter many couple want read at their wedding, thinking it a great supplement to the Scriptural texts already designated to be read at their wedding ceremony. It is this description of love that the vow they will follow in their life with one another.
 
Indeed, if we ALL could love one another as this chapter describes, there would be no broken marriages…nor broken families, nor any other problems in any place.
 
Love in this text is a specific kind of love, as selfless, self-sacrificial love. It is typified as I like to describe it, as an act of the will, to do for another – sometimes involving sacrifice of self. It is the love of God for us in Christ Jesus.
 
If I were to change the word “love” in our text to another word that is the ultimate definition of agape, maybe it will reveal truth to you. Here is this chapter after changing just that one little word love (and adding where it is implied).
 
Christ is patient and kind; Christ does not envy or boast; Christ is not arrogant or rude. Christ does not insist on His own way; Christ not irritable or resentful; Christ does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but Christ rejoices with the truth. Christ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
    Christ 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 Christ abide, these three; but the greatest of these is Christ.
 
As much as we are to love as this great love chapter prescribes, it is even more important to know that this chapter is descriptive of the great love God has for us in Christ, and Christ is not just a name it is a title or description, Christ is the love and work of God fulfilled in the person of Jesus. God’s Christ means God loving you in laying down His life for you. He gave up His life in His unfathomable love, suffering the anguish of the cross. In His great love, He died to forgive us our failures to love – our failures to love even those closest to us, our family, much less our enemies. While we were yet sinners – while we war against God – Christ died for us.
 
Christ crucified is God’s proclamation, “I  LOVE  YOU!”
 
If we were to take 1st Corinthians chapter thirteen as prescriptive only – and take it seriously – we could only wallow in guilt and depression. An honest assessment of our lives and this chapter would drive to our knees before God, knowing we deserve only His wrath. It would find us saying, “I have failed to love! Lord, God have mercy!”
 
Out of His love for you, the fire of His wrath against you is extinguished in the waters of baptism. God does not just say, “I love you!” He loves you to His own death. And, in His word of love, the absolution, He covers your sins, removes them from you and buries them in His tomb
 
Love is His invitation to a sacred meal where He feeds you most holy food, His body and His blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.
 
The love of God comes to you, fills you, and constrains you so that you may love as He has first loved you.

By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  (1 John 4:9-11)


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