Using God's gifts without Giving God's Love...

Last week, we saw Paul respond to the abuse of spiritual gifts by explaining that every single follower of Jesus has a spiritual gift that must be exercised. Paul also commanded the members of the church to earnestly desire the greater gifts. However, we never answered the question as to what exactly those greater spiritual gifts were. We never answered that question, because, as we will see, Paul instead addresses a more important question. So let’s begin by looking at this more important question, which we find in 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:3:

And I show you a still more excellent way. If 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. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

Paul begins this section of his letter to the members of the church at Corinth by stating the he will show them a still more excellent way. To understand what Paul is communicating here, we need to understand what was happening at the church.

As we saw last week, the members of the church at Corinth were experiencing division due to their diminishing and discounting of those who had spiritual gifts that they did not view as being important, valuable, and necessary for the church. This division resulted in two negative consequences for the church. First, many of the members of the church viewed themselves with a sense of spiritual pride and arrogance as a result of their spiritual gifting. The members of the church were also competing for prominence and position as a result of the spiritual gifts that they had received from God. Second, many members of the church were failing to exercise their spiritual gift as a result of their gifts being disregarded and diminished by others.

Paul responds to this situation by commanding the members of the church to earnestly desire the greater gifts. Paul is calling the church to strive to intensely exert oneself toward the spiritual gifts that are superior in their ability to meet the needs of others in a way that builds them to grow spiritually. The more excellent way that Paul wants to show to them involves exhibiting to them a far superior motivation behind the use of our spiritual gifts as we live out our lives as followers of Jesus.

For Paul the issue was not “what is your spiritual gift”; the issue was “what is the motivation behind the use of your spiritual gift?” In verse 2, Paul explains to the members to the church at Corinth that if they exercised the spiritual gifts of prophecy, or word of wisdom, or word of knowledge, or were so gifted with faith that they could perform miracles, but were motivated by any other reason than love to exercise those gifts, they were nothing. The word nothing here literally means worthless or meaningless. Paul’s point is that when love is not the driving motivation behind exercising the gifts that God has given us, our efforts prove to be meaningless and worthless in terms of reflecting Christ and advancing the kingdom mission that we have been given.

Paul then hammers his point home referring to the spiritual gifts of giving or serving. The phrase surrender my body to be burned, in the language that this was originally written in, literally means to hand over my body so that I might boast. Paul’s point here is that even the most outwardly appearing selfless act, if it was motivated by a selfish agenda instead of an other-centered love, would provide no benefit or profit for the person who was exercising their gift in Jesus eyes.

You see, while many of the members of the church at Corinth were exercising the spiritual gifts that they were given, they were not exercising them in a Christ-like, God glorifying way that focused on building up others spiritually. And is the same way today, Christians act unchristian when we use God’s gifts without giving God’s love.

When we live out God’s gifting without giving God’s love, we glorify self instead of exalting and glorifying God. When we live out God’s gifting without giving God’s love, we are trying to advance our kingdom instead of God’s kingdom. And in the rest of this familiar and famous section of our Bibles, we see the Apostle Paul reveal to us two reasons why we are to live out God’s gifting by giving God’s love as followers of Jesus.

We will spend the next two days looking at the two reasons why we should use God's gifts by giving God's love.