Diagnosing the Loveless Heart, 1 Corinthians 13:5

Diagnosing the Loveless Heart,

I Corinthians 13:5

Text

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (ESV)

Focusing on 1 Cor. 13:5

Sermon Introduction

Our family watched :The Christmas Carol” with George C. Scott this past week. I love that story. Every time I see a good rendition of Dickens’ classic I weep. I weep at the love of the Cratchet family, at Tiny Tim’s death, at the sincere joy and love of Scrooge’s nephew Fred, I weep at the transformed Scrooge and his new life of “keeping Christmas”. I think you are like me. In all of us is the ability to recognize long of true love. We enjoy watching these movies and crying with them either in pain or joy when we see real love. Problem is, they are movies and usually don’t reflect real life accurately– sometime sadly so. Nevertheless, we know what love looks like and we long for it.

This section today and the context of the scriptures present a picture of true love that isn’t fantasy but reality. A reality grounded in the unshakeable truth of the good news of Jesus Christ. You see…

Main Idea:

we are called to true love,

true love that is not self-centered, irritable or bitter,

the good news of jesus christ is the only way to experience true love.

1. Love isn’t self-centered

1.1. Explanation

· Literally – not seeks things of itself.

Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament,

Young's Literal Translation

The King James Version

English Standard Version

The New International Version

The New Living Translation

Reina-Valera Actualizada

PFB Translation

5 οὐκ ἀσχημονεῖ, οὐ ζητεῖ τὰ ἑαυτῆς, οὐ παροξύνεται, οὐ λογίζεται τὸ κακόν,

5 doth not act unseemly, doth not seek its own things, is not provoked, doth not impute evil,

5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;

5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

5 or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged.

5 No es indecoroso, ni busca lo suyo propio. No se irrita, ni lleva cuentas del mal.

5 … it doesn’t seek its own, it doesn’t get irritated, it doesn’t document the wrongs

Again, the Corinthian believers were models of what loving Christians should not be. They were selfish in the extreme. They did not share their food at love feasts, they protected their rights to the point of suing fellow believers in pagan law courts, and they wanted what they thought were the “best” spiritual gifts for themselves. Instead of using spiritual gifts for the benefit of others, they tried to use them to their own advantage. Paul therefore tells them, “Since you are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek to abound for the edification of the church” (14:12). They did not use their gifts to build up the church but to try to build up themselves.^{^[1]}

This is the effect of the fall. This is the state of the natural man- man left without God at the center. Our miserable condition of worshipping something so unworthy. We are caught in this state. We truly think we are most worthy of our affections and energies and meditations.

Romans 1:22-25 (ESV)
²²Claiming to be wise, they became fools, ²³and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. ²⁴Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, ²⁵because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

We are seeking the things of ourselves.
Have you ever thought about this. Have you ever thought about what you think about? Have you ever thought about how we can be thinking about ourselves throughout the day and never grow tired of it? We hear about heaven and how the Seraphim never stop worshipping the Lord day and night, crying holy, holy, holy is the Lord and we might be prone to think, “don’t they ever tire of that?”. Yet, if we really think about it, we can spend all our energy every day thinking about ourselves. Now, I don’t mean that it is a blatant as saying, holy, holy, holy is Paul. But, I can be thinking – How does Paul feel right now? Is he hungry? Is he bored? Is he happy? Is he sad? What does Paul get to do next that will be fun? Do I feel good about myself right now? You bet I do, for I am so smart and athletic and handsome. Or, maybe, no – for I am not as smart as that guy on Jeopardy, or not as athletic as Doug Flutie (did I tell you I played against him in High School?) or not as handsome as Tom Cruise. How can I do better or look better.
Psalm 139 says that we can not comprehend the thoughts of God. I don’t think we can comprehend all the thoughts we have .. towards ourselves! This is all very sad. Not don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to say that there isn’t anything in us worthy of contemplation. We are made in God’s image and his handiwork is awesome. But, ultimately, every good thing we have is derived from God. Even though they are good, everything in us is influenced by our sin to some degree. So, ultimately, there is nothing in us truly worthy of all this contemplation and effort. Yet, that is what we do, day in and day out, hour in and hour out, minute by minute. Ever listen to yourself? Our natural selves think continually of the things of ourselves. We love our own glory and have exchanged the glory of the eternal God and Creator for the temporally derived and corrupted glory of the creature. And we like it that way. We treasure our glory and think about it continually. We think about how we can get more for ourselves, whether or not others value us, what we can do about those who don’t. We are like the Seraphim, never ending our self-worship. If you don’t believe me, answer this simple question – what brings you the most joy in your life? What I mean is, what gives you the motivation to keep living? If that doesn’t work, what is keeping you from being motivated to keep living – what is it you don’t have that makes it hard to go on? I would venture to guess, that at the bottom of it, to some degree, is the big “me”. Again, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that we are all completely selfish in the worst possible way. For many of us, we have met Jesus Christ and there is a new motivator in us, causing us to live for something far greater and gooder than ourselves. Yet, the transformation is not complete. For some of us, we have not come to that point yet, but we are still not completely and horribly selfish – for we do genuinely care about others - but mainly because they have some connection to self – they are our children, or our spouse, or our fellow men. At the bottom of it all is self. Left to ourselves, we worship ourselves continually.

The addict, who is in all of us, is a worshiper: all human beings are worshipers. We either worship the true God or we worship our passions, our idolatrous, false gods. To put it another way, you either love God and follow Him, or you love your desires and follow them. And when you follow your own desires, And when you follow your own desires, God allows those desires to run amok to the point where they enslave you.

Edward T. Welch, The Bondage of Sin, JBC, Winter 1999.

So, we seek the things of ourselves. This is the fundamental mindset and motivation of humankind. Romans 1 teaches us that all of humanity has fallen from the original intent, the original goodness God made us for. You see, it is not so much that we think and seek the things of ourselves, for that is to be expected and it is understood. Check out the second greatest commandment – Mt. 22:39 “love your neighbor as yourself.” Or check out Phil. 2:4 = “look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others.” You see, we are not told to ignore ourselves entirely. That would be Buddhism, where the ultimate paradise is the absorption of self in nothingness. No, God doesn’t want the elimination of self but the transformation of self. The problem is that there is something drastically missing from the equation. That is God. We have eliminated God from the equation. Not only that, but we militantly exclude him from our thoughts – at least from being the center of our thoughts.

It is so amazing it can be comical. The other morning I was singing the song by Bob Kauflin “ More of You and Less of Me” and found it very difficult to get the words right. I kept singing – “more of me and less of you.”

But it can be more serious than this. I think this might ultimately be the reason for some of the controversy surrounding Christmas this year. Have you followed it?

As close to home as Medway, MA we have seen some of the obvious but seeming unconscious bias against Christ. In Medway children were allowed to sing songs about Kwanzaa and Chanukah – not problem with that – but were not allowed to sing anything about Christmas. Instead of "We Wish you a Merry Christmas," the students sang, "We Wish you a Swinging Holiday." They eliminated songs from the play, "Jesus Christ Superstar," and were encouraged to call a Christmas tree a magical tree. (source Danielle Williamson/ Daily News Staff, MetroWest Daily News)

Why? If we were truly morally and spiritually neutral why the prejudice against Christian things? I am not sure of the motivations in the Medway School administration but I can tell you that it fits with the description of mankind in Romans 1. We don’t want God to really be in the equation. Especially when God makes such outlandish and insulting claims as he does in his Son, the God-man, Jesus Christ.

1.2. Application

You see, the self centered person must come in conflict with the good news of Jesus Christ. This good news is uncompromising in insisting that God be at the center and men and women take their proper place.
The good news is simply this – Christ died for my sin. Five words. Count them on your hand. Christ died for my sin. Why is that so important? Why does it offend the self-centered person? Why is it good news?
First – Christ is mentioned. This is a word that means the anointed one – something they did for Kings. The anointed One is the King. So it is the King died for my sins. Not just any old king, but THE king, the King of all Kings. The God as man King. The greatest and most perfect and kind and compassionate and wise and good King that ever was and ever will be. Just spend some time reading the gospels and you will see what I mean. He is Christ the King, the rightful ruler of all our lives.
Second, he died. He was put to death on a cross-piece of wood. He was crucified. The most brutal form of execution the ancient world knew. Considered cruel even by the cruel Romans. Not only that, but in his death he not only suffered physically but he suffered spiritually. He bore the wrath of God. He bore all the righteous indignation owed for all the heinous crimes of humanity towards God and towards one another. He bore the holy hot wrath of a perfectly patient and just God who must eventually have His justice in order to remain just. So he poured out all his fury for sin on the Son. He measured out his entire wrath for the sins of all those who would become his. He didn’t hold back. Jesus took it all. He took it all for you. All the sin you have committed – against God and against others – he died for them. That is, if you would admit such sins and receive such a sacrifice.
You see – that’s the rest of the sentence – “for my sins.” He died for my sins. Sins – the willful ignoring and transgressing of God’s good and perfect ways. We all know we have done this. We all know that our lives are full of either ignoring or flagrantly disobeying God, thinking of ourselves first, railing against him for not giving us what we want, or for frustrating our long laid plans or taking away something or someone we love. Also, our lives are full of treating others wrongly – seeking our own good to the hurt of others. Disobeying and lying to our parents, cursing the slow poke in the fast lane, judging the slow waitress, ditching the nerdy neighborhood kid, looking at those pornographic images online, picturing yourself married to someone else, thinking about how you would ingratiate yourself if you ruled the world. All these things are what is called sin. And they are wrong and they are a disease that hangs on us and they deserve God’s righteous indignation.
This is why it is good news. You see, left to ourselves we must face the judge for our sins. And we all know what the verdict must be for God to be truly just. Guilty! Guilty as charged your honor, no contest. And the bible clearly states the wages of sin is death – Rom. 6:23. That’s why this five fingered truth is good news. Romans 10:9-10 says:

Romans 10:9-10 (ESV)
⁹…if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.^{^[2]}

You can be saved from the just judgment of God. You can let all the penalty fall on Christ.
You need to confess him as your Lord – as your King – as the one you will seek to follow and obey – not yourself but Him – you need to turn away from sin towards Jesus. Your orientation must turn from self to the King. And you must believe that he is who He says He is and He did do what He did. That is, die for your sins, for your forgiveness and for a new life.
That is good news – forgiveness, a new life and reconciliation with God – to now enjoy the love of God with a clean conscience.
Now we can see why this is good news. But why is it offensive to the self-centered person? Well, it leaves no room for alternatives. It ultimately says that we are such a mess in and of ourselves that God himself had to die to pay the price for our faults, for our sins, for our negligence, for our ignorance. That is humble pie. I’ve eaten myself.

I remember when I was a junior research engineer and just getting to learn certain aspects of research. I shared a desk with a sharp undergraduate student who was assisting my superior. She was making these special specimens that took hundreds of hours to make just right for what’s called a TEM – Transmission Electron Microscope. Each specimen was a very slim disk about ¼ inches across. They fit in a special holder that looked kind of neat. It was about 2x4 inches and had all these little compartments to just fit the tiny specimens. It had a slide over cover of transparent plastic. Well, genius here picked up the sample holder from the desk, upside down mind you, and said, “what’s this?”. I proceeded to open the cover, and, unbeknownst to me, all these very expensive and important specimens representing a year’s worth of research fluttered to the floor unnoticed by me. It all seemed find – ignorance is bliss – until the next day or so, when my workmate sat at her desk and took out the specimen holder and asked in front of me and a bunch of fellow engineers – “What happened to my specimens?..Oh, how did they get on the floor![most likely ruined]”. I was forced to eat humble pie. I could have said nothing but knew I couldn’t get away with that before God. So, in front of everyone I had to tell what a dope I am and what I did. In a much greater way, the cross confronts us with our utter failure and our desperate and inescapable need for intervention and rescue.

The self-centered person is insulted by such assertions. They are made very strongly and undeniably by the cross. In order for the self-centered person to grapple with the cross he must ultimately yield and die himself on the cross. The cross takes no prisoners – all must die with Christ if they are to be with Christ. That’s just the problem, we don’t want to die, we want to live and keep ourselves at the center. The death we die with Jesus is not the death of annihilation but the death of our own kingship. We continue to exist in Christ but because of our new life in him we have found a new king, a much better and glorious and worthy king, but nevertheless, a King of Kings.
The Corinthians knew this good news, they had wrestled with it and surrendered to Christ and experienced genuinely new life. Yet they had allowed sin to continue and regain its footing. That is the temptation of every Christian. Even though we have a new king, the old king is still hanging around. The sinful nature, our fallen humanity still hangs on us and will do so until we go to be with the Lord.

This old king, the sinful nature, is like Gollum in the Lord of the Rings, always plotting and planning how he can get back the ring and regain what he had.

· What is the cure then? Well, the good news is always the cure, both the day you first believed and every day. You see, it is at the cross where our pride and selfishness is crucified. It is at the cross where we see the glory of God in his holiness, justice, wisdom and love. It is in the resurrection that we see the new life we are given and called to. It is in the gospel that we most clearly see our God in all His glory and where we hear him call us to death and new life. It is in our encounter with the gospel that we receive a new king by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Titus 3:5-6 (ESV)
⁵he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, ⁶whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,^{^[3]}

· Now we can center on him and love him. Because he loves his people and all his creation, we too will love others, but only as we draw from him. If you need a cure for self-centeredness, return to the good news. Consider its truth, behold your Savior and King crucified for your sin and raised for your justification. Repent from all things that would rob him of his rightful place in your life and know his love and glory and holiness and follow this wonderful Savior and King! Believe and receive the new life he imparts and obey wholeheartedly.

Romans 6:10-11 (ESV)
¹⁰For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. ¹¹So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.^{^[4]}

· Next time you find the old self reasserting itself, run to the Savior and His glorious good news of grace! Run, don’t walk, don’t meander, run! Call friends and let them know of your struggle; confess your sins one to another so you may be healed. Saturate yourself in the word, in the gospels, in the truth. Pray, worship, seek to be continually filled with the Spirit. Get around others. All so you might live close to the Savior and His good and life-transforming news!

· What are the situations you see yourself most likely to be seeking first the things of yourself? Is it when you are alone and left to your thoughts? Let others into your thought life. Confess your sins. Ask them to pray for you. Memorize and meditate on the word of God that it may wash your mind from selfish meditations.

· Maybe you are tempted to be centered on self when you are alone. Maybe your loneliness is turned inward and you spend much time and energy thinking about how miserable and lonely you are and how unfair it is that you don’t have friends or that you aren’t married. This is a deadly trap. That way of thinking will only lead to more loneliness. The solution is to repent and believe the gospel. Here the Lord calls you to die to self, to put him first and live for others. It is denying your life that you find life. He who loves his life will lose it, while he who hates his life will keep it for eternity. Loneliness is a fantastic opportunity to put into practice the truths of the gospel – dying to self and living for God calls us to reorient ourselves around others. So, instead of wallowing in your loneliness, do the one thing that will cure it. Live for others. Spend time with God, worshiping and praying, praying for others. Than take the step to reach out to serve others. Give your life away instead of keeping it. If you will spend your energy this way you most likely will find yourself overwhelmed with friends and short on time. Find others to serve. In the church, outside the church. Families, singles, children, the community, the lost, the poor, the needy, the single mom, the elderly, the imprisoned, the recovering addict. There are more opportunities to give your life away and find friends than you could accomplish in a lifetime.

· Love Doesn’t Seek its own.

2. Love is not irritated.

2.1. Explanation

Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament,	Young's Literal Translation	The King James Version	English Standard Version	The New International Version	The New Living Translation	Reina-Valera Actualizada	PFB Translation
5 οὐκ ἀσχημονεῖ, οὐ ζητεῖ τὰ ἑαυτῆς, οὐ παροξύνεται, οὐ λογίζεται τὸ κακόν,	5 doth not act unseemly, doth not seek its own things, is not provoked, doth not impute evil,	5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;	5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;	5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.	5 or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged.	5 No es indecoroso, ni busca lo suyo propio. No se irrita, ni lleva cuentas del mal.	5 … it doesn’t seek its own, it doesn’t get irritated, it doesn’t document the wrongs