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Love never ends. (1 Corinthians 13:8)
This phrase catches my eyes.
There is so much in this passage. I can talk about so many things about love.
But this phrase stands out for me.
Love Never Ends.
Love is eternal. The eternal quality is intrinsic in Love.
But that’s not what we experience about love in this world.
People fall in love and easily fall out of love. Today they go crazy about each other and tomorrow they go separate ways.
We don’t experience the eternal quality of love.
That’s what celebrities always experience. People are crazy about them and they say how much they love them. But once their popularity goes down, nobody really cares for them.
Loving your neighbours is what we have learned from our Lord Jesus.
We try to practice that and we also expect that from our neighbours. But all of a sudden, they tell us that we have to pay 25% tariff.
We feel betrayed. Once we were neighbours and now we feel like we are strangers.
That is the kind of love we experience in this world.
Today we are a friend, but tomorrow, we become a stranger.
We don’t experience the long lasting quality of love in this world. So, people don’t trust love. They sing “What’s love got to do with it.”
Love we experience is a very momentary thing.
It doesn’t give us security and confidence. It is just feeling you feel for the moment.
And it doesn’t last too long.
That’s what feeling is. Feeling is never eternal.
To many people, love is just feeling. It comes and goes. One day you feel very close. The next day you feel indifferent.
But Paul boldly proclaims that love never ends.
Everything else comes to an end. But love never ends.
He said,
But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. (1 Corinthians 13:8)
But love we experience is a very small fraction of the true love that is eternal. We feel that love but only momentarily.
Then what is love that never ends? Where does it come from?
This was what John said.
God is love. (1 John 4:16)
God is love and love is God. That’s where love comes from.
We don’t feel God but we feel love that is God. We don’t experience God but we experience love that is God.
Love is God’s essential attribute. God is made up of love.
So that’s why John didn’t say that God HAS love. He simply said God IS love.
Love we experience is God’s love.
But only the fraction of it. Only momentarily. Even that momentary experience is heavenly bliss.
Love is God’s gift for us, for the humanity. This love created the world.
When God’s love is materialized, that is creation. The birth of a child is God’s gift of love for the parents.
The abundance we enjoy in our lives is God’s gift of love. The breath that makes us alive is God’s gift of love.
This love sent his son to the world to save it.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. (John 3:16)
Because we have love that never ends, we have no fear.
We have dark time coming ahead of us. We are not clear how this relationship with US will affect us.
But because we have love that never ends, we don’t fear. It is time to pray for Canada.
We should be united, not divided.
Because we have love, we don’t fear judgment. Because we have love, we are not afraid of death.
So, John said,
Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:17-19)
The last sentence.
We love because he first loved us.
We don’t have love on our own.
The love we have is imperfect. The love we have is not complete.
We love because God first loved us. We love because God gave us love.
Love is God’s greatest gift to us.
Faith is also God’s gift. Hope is also God’s gift. But love is the greatest gift.
And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13)
When you love, you participate in the most profound and marvellous realm, sphere of God’s world. You enter into the most holy and sacred space.
When you love, you enter into the eternity.
When you love, you will be able to see the great mystery of God.
Your eyes will be open and you will be able to see the true purpose and meaning of life.
For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. (1 Corinthians 13:12)
My friends, let us enjoy God’s greatest gift to us.
This gift will enliven our lives. This gift of love will make our lives abundant and meaningful.
If there is no love, everything will become useless and everything will end in nothing. Our life will end in nothing.
That was what Paul eloquently articulated in the beginning.
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. 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 do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)
What good is it if you are the most powerful person in the world? What good is it if you have everything people desire?
If you have no love, it means nothing.
When everything becomes nothing, the only thing that remains is love.
Love never ends.
And nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God. That was what Paul experienced.
And that is the good news. Nothing can separate us from the love of God that never ends.
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?…For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39)
God loves you! He loves you eternally!
Love others as God has loved you. That is how to live eternal life.
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