Perspective: What Do They Hear?

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What Do They Hear?

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (NRSV)

Drink to all that we have lost

Mistakes we have made

Everything will change

But love remains the same

From "Love Remains the Same" by Gavin Rossdale

The thirteenth chapter of St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians is perhaps one of the most beautiful discourses on love.  It begins with those immortal words: "If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal."  It reminds us, "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude."  It teaches us that love "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."  It assures us that, when all else is lost, "faith, hope, and love abide" and that "the greatest of these is love."¹

What many call the "Love Chapter" is often read at weddings, but it was not written with romantic love in mind.  What most of us don't consider is that Paul actually wrote it amid a discussion on spiritual gifts and how they should be expressed in worship services.  The church in Corinth had a lot of problems, not the least of which were self-centeredness and disunity within the congregation.  Paul wrote his letter to the Corinthians in order to address these problems.

Paul reminds his readers that, as followers of Jesus, they are like individual parts that together make up a single body, namely the Body of Christ.  Each part is gifted by the Holy Spirit to carry out an individual function, and, when all parts do what they are gifted and called to do, together they carry on the work of Christ in the world.  Each part of the Body is necessary, and every spiritual gift is indispensable.  One is not permitted to diminish the spiritual gifts or functions of another, nor is one permitted to diminish one's own gifts and functions.  All of the parts are interconnected.  The thriving of the whole depends on the thriving of the parts, and, when one part suffers, the whole body is afflicted.²

Paul encourages his readers to "strive for the greater gifts" and then goes on to describe "a still more excellent way," which is love.³  In light of what Paul has said about the purpose of the Church, the "Love Chapter" teaches us three things.  First, no matter what we do as the Church, it is all for naught if it is not done out of love.⁴  Jesus was the incarnation of love itself, so the Body of Christ must likewise embody love.  Second, because the Church is made up of interconnected members who collectively reflect the Light of Christ in the world, members must seek the common good.  Love, according to Paul, "does not insist on its own way."⁵  Third, love will outlast anything else the Church will ever do.⁶

Whatever we do as the Church, we must make sure that we are motivated by love.

Paul encourages his readers to "pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts."⁷  He then goes on to discuss two specific spiritual gifts, both of which involve speaking: tongues and prophecy.  One speaks in tongues when one is so overcome by an ecstatic experience that one begins to speak unintelligibly.  It is a gift that many people in Paul's day wanted to experience, and many who had experienced it thought that they were closer to God than those who had not experienced it.  Prophecy, on the other hand, is the gift of communicating God's will to others.⁸

Paul suggests that, even though speaking in tongues can be a great blessing to an individual, prophecy is actually a preferable spiritual gift to pursue.  Speaking in tongues is only meaningful to the one who is speaking, because only God could possibly understand what the speaker is saying.  Speaking a word of prophecy, on the other hand, is beneficial to anyone who hears.⁹

Paul asks his readers to consider what a person outside their faith might hear if she were to wander into one of their gatherings.  If she heard everyone speaking in tongues, she would think that they all had lost their minds, and she would not want to come back.  If, on the other hand, she heard a prophetic word in the gathering, she might feel in her heart that God was speaking directly to her.  Paul concludes, "Tongues, then, are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers, while prophecy is not for unbelievers but for believers."¹⁰  In other words, speaking in tongues keeps people out, but a prophetic word draws people in.

It is evident that Paul is concerned about what the world is hearing from the Church.  Are people hearing wisdom from the Church, or are they hearing nonsense?

I think that modern-day Christians need to be concerned about what the world is hearing from the Church in our day and time.  Are people being drawn in by our love, or are they being repelled by our rhetoric?  Are people hearing messages of hope, or are they hearing messages of condemnation?  Are people hearing that they are loved and accepted by God and by the Church, or are they hearing that they are, for some reason, "incompatible" with the Church?

May we who call ourselves Christians be self-aware.  May we consider not only what we think we are saying to the world but also what the world is actually hearing from us.  May we be motivated by love alone, and may we repent of anything else that is driving us.


Notes:

1. 1 Corinthians 13 (NRSV)
2. 1 Corinthians 12
3. 1 Corinthians 12:31 (NRSV)
4. 1 Corinthians 13:1-3
5. 1 Corinthians 13:5-7 (NRSV)
6. 1 Corinthians 13:8-13
7. 1 Corinthians 14:1 (NRSV)
8. William Barclay.  The Letters to the Corinthians, Revised Edition.  1975, Westminster Press.  pp. 127-8
9. 1 Corinthians 14:1-5 (NRSV)
10. 1 Corinthians 14:22-25 (NRSV)

The drawing of ancient Corinth appeared in The American Cyclopædia, published in 1879.