Let's start with ... Love
1 Cor 13
Philip Comfort has translated this well-known passage, which was a poem in the original greek, into modern English verse. Watch the video below then read silently through the poem. After taking time on the video to familiarise yourself with the poem, take time on the second reading, to ponder and notice.
The Supremacy of Love
1 If I could speak all the languages used by men and angels, but do not express love, I am a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal. 2 If I could prophesy about all the mysteries, and have faith to move mountains, but do not know love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away everything I own and surrender my body to martyrdom, but do not give love, I cannot boast I’ve done anything. 4 Love is longsuffering and love is kind. Love is not jealous, boastful, or conceited. 5 Love is not pretentious or self-seeking. Love is not irritable or resentful. 6 Love, unhappy with injustice, is pleased with truth. 7 Love is all-enduring, all-believing, ever hopeful, and ever steadfast. 8 Love never fails. Prophecies will vanish, tongues will fall silent, and our knowledge will fade away. 9 We know imperfectly and prophesy imperfectly. 10 But when the eschaton comes, we will be done with imperfection. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, thought like a child, and reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I stopped my childish ways. 12 as for now, we see mere reflections in a mirror, but then, we will see clearly, face to face. As for now, my knowledge is imperfect, but then, I will fully know, even as I was fully known. 13 Three things will always remain: faith, hope, and love. The most supreme is love.
(Philip Comfort, The Poems and Hymns of the New Testament. Used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers. www.wipfandstock.com)
So let’s explore this ancient poem on love. Notice the groupings of three in the passage. (Groupings of three are interesting to note in the other poems to come also.)
The first three verses or stanzas unveil a series of poignant if/then statements, each portraying a grand theatrical gesture. Yet, their underlying message highlights the absence of any real love.
Following these dramatic gestures, we encounter eight very simple statements that define the true nature of love. Despite their apparent simplicity, they reveal themselves to be arduous if not impossible standards. The pinnacle of which is the final statement: "Love never fails." However, if we understand them, not to be “rules”, but an understanding of how God loves us, it then serves as a testament to the boundless love of God. And, it is only this boundless love of God and an intimate relationship with Him, that can help us love others in the same way to a lesser extent.
We then find another set of three elements that fade away. These elements are the grand gestures of the initial stanzas. Just as those grand gestures lose their lustre, so do most things in the face of enduring love. It is an interesting question, what will we be most remembered for, …our knowledge, our rhetoric or our love?
The second last stanza offers three interesting statements about human knowledge. They underscore its imperfection and dimness in the present, yet hold hope for a brighter understanding when Christ returns.
In the last stanza, we are reminded that three things remain to guide us in our journey through life: faith, hope, and love. So, in the end it is not what we know but our faith, hope and love that matter. Love, of course, shines most brightly as the foremost of these.
The music that you hear in the video, written in response to this poem, follows a similar pattern, mirroring the structure of the text. A hymn-like section at the heart of the composition reflects the eight simple declarations about love.
This hymn reappears as a “Love” motif in other pieces in The Orchard. This musical connection underscores the notion that the other fruits of the Spirit, are an outworking of love.
May you continue to live in the love of God…