The Gift of Love Endures -- A Reflection



I will be preaching this coming Sunday from 1 Corinthians 13 (I’m following the tour through 1 Corinthians in the Revised Common Lectionary, so I’ve already offered two sermons from 1 Corinthians 12). I also posted a reflection this past Monday a reflection on the reading from 1 Corinthians 13. At the same time, I’ve been reading Tom Oord’s latest but not yet available book—Pluriform Love. I will be reviewing it in the next few weeks. As you can see love is on my mind. But what is love?


In the English language we use the word love in many different ways, so context is important. The New Testament was originally written in Greek, and as many will know, Greek has several words that we translate as love. The most common word for love in the New Testament is Agape. At the same time, the word Eros is not found in the New Testament. Interestingly, I’ve discovered that Greek-speaking theologians have used the word eros with regard to God. This is especially true of pseudo-Dionysius and Maximus the Confessor. If we are to say with 1 John that “God is love, and that those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them” (1 John 4:16) there is, thus, much to explore.  For more on how I read 1 John 4, see my book The Letters of John: A Participatory Study Guide, (pp. 69-77).


                I was intrigued by the focus of Karl Barth on 1 Corinthians 13, a chapter in Paul’s letter that he devotes sixteen pages, including his close exegetical work, under the title “The Manner of Love” [Church Dogmatics, IV.2§68.4]. Placing this hymn of love in the context of Paul’s discussion of the charismata (gifts of the Spirit) and the work of the Spirit, he grounds Christian love, the love expressed within the community, in the love of God. When he comes to interpreting verses 4-7, he writes:

It is of the nature of the true and proper thing which takes place in love alone as opposed to the realization of all the possibilities of the Christian life (even those given by the Holy Spirit), thus making love the conditio sine qua non of the existence of the Christian community and the individual Christian, that love conquers and triumphs and is victorious. To this extent it reflects the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and prefigures the coming resurrection. It is the revelation of the superiority of the divine. Yes, the yes of the free grace of God, over the dejected No of the man who is alienated from Him and his neighbor and therefore himself. It is the revelation of the superiority of life over death. What takes place in love is the transformation of the old creation or creature into the new; the yielding of the old aeon and the coming of the new. [CD 4.2 p. 832 -- page numbers are to original edition].


God is love and loves from God. Those who love, abide in God, so says 1 John. And as we explore this idea and seek to live it out, it is important that we remember that it is love alone that will endure. As Barth concludes his study of 1 Corinthians 13, he writes of love

It is the future eternal light shining into the present. It therefore needs no change of form. It is that which continues. For whatever else may be revealed in activity and the life of the community may attain its goal with everything that now is and happens, one thing is certain and that is that love will never cease, that even then the love which is self-giving to God and the brother, the same love for which the Christian is free already, will be the source of the future eternal life, its form unaltered. Already, then, love is the eternal activity of the Christian. This is the reason why love abides. [CD 4.2 p. 840].


Yes, there is much to contemplate when it comes to the question of love, and what it entails, especially when it comes to the place of eros in the conversation (I still have more work to do on that question, especially as I explore Eastern Orthodox theology).


 Image attribution: Indiana, Robert, 1928-. Love (four ways), from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55272 [retrieved January 27, 2022]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/unlistedsightings/2383631294/.

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