“¹If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”

Among the most well-known of Bible passages, the Love Chapter provides a powerful sonnet of a life saturated with meaning and significance. It is at once an attitude, a commitment, and an action. Not that our Christian faith exists without feeling, but we have other words for that, like compassion, empathy, “eros”(emotional, sexual love), and possibly even “phileo”(brotherly love). Love that has come to be identified by the Greek word “agape”is not a feeling, as the well-regarded saying goes.

Some today, as with all generations seeking to distinguish their study of the Bible from previous generations, minimize the differences between the various kinds of love, but 1 Corinthians 11 unambiguously points to the uniqueness and profundity of “agape”love. Rather than quote etymological or philological studies of the Greek term, we simply take this chapter on its own terms, looking to how the inspired apostle Paul defines the word for us.

First, the importance of love is conveyed by its contrast (verses 1-3). Life without love is absolutely and completely lacking when we do not have and give love. Notice, this is an active love, not a passive love. In other words, my life does not have significance so much by my being on the receiving end of love, as it does when I am on the giving end of love. Of course, this is rooted in the eternally satiated well of love we drink from that comes from the Lord. But we must be a channel of this love, not dam it up for our own personal relish. We need to havethe love of Christ and to pour it outon others. Otherwise we are nothing more than those whose “…work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire” (1 Cor. 3:15).

The first of three “for instances” has to do with one’s oratorical abilities, quite significant in light of the Corinthians’ misuse of the spiritual gifts of tongues. Any preaching, prophesying, or utterance claimed to be of exalted human or angelic origins is absolutely worthless unless accompanied by and motivated by love, and is akin to scratching fingernails on a chalkboard.

Every time angels spoke in Scripture, they used recognizable human languages, so this is not a reference to the gift of tongues (the supernatural ability to speak in an otherwise unlearned human language). The point is that whatever kind or level of speech we use, whether common or eloquent oratory, without love we are speaking selfishly, accomplishing nothing of spiritual value.

Lord, help me move beyond words to putting my love into action. Help me not twist Scripture selfishly to use spiritual gifts to edify myself rather than others.