How do you measure a church? By the number of worshippers? By its music or preaching? Community outreach and care? Growth? What about healing and miracles? Paul saw all these things in the early church, yet he said they were nothing (not something – nothing) without love. Power is nothing without love. Truth is nothing with love. It is love that will change the world, one person at a time.
When we meet together: Love one another
15 August 2021 • Pastor Michael Dutschke • for the 12th Sunday after Pentecost
Bible Passage: 1 Corinthians 12:31 - 13:13
+ expand31 Now eagerly desire the greater gifts.
And yet I will show you the most excellent way.
13 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
New International Version (NIV) - for other versions see BibleGateway.com
