Jesus the Example of Pure Love
1 Corinthians 13 NLT
If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless. When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.
LORD JESUS,
Give me to love thee, to embrace thee, though I once took lust and sin in my arms.
Thou didst love me before I loved thee, an enemy, a sinner, a loathsome worm.
Thou didst own me when I disclaimed myself; Thou dost love me as a son, and weep over me as over Jerusalem.
Love brought thee from heaven to earth, from earth to the cross, from the cross to the grave. Love caused thee to be weary, hungry, tempted, scorned, scourged, buffeted, spat upon, crucified, and pierced. Love led thee to bow thy head in death.
Thy love is not intermittent, cold, changeable; it does not cease or abate for all my enmity.
Holiness is a spark from thy love kindled to a flame in my heart by thy Spirit, and so it ever turns to the place from which it comes.
Let me see thy love everywhere, not only in the cross, but in the fellowship of believers and in the world around me.
Thy infinite love is a mystery of mysteries, and my eternal rest lies in the eternal enjoyment of it.
Amen.
(“Love” – The Valley of Vision, p. 161)
Gracious Spirit, Holy Ghost
If you have found this meditation helpful, take a moment and give thanks to God. Then share what you learned with a friend. This is how the grace of God spreads (2 Corinthians 4.15).
