Monday, June 30, 2008 - The Greatest Thing in the World
I remember that as a young junior Sunday school student, I memorized 1 Corinthians 13. That's the famous love chapter, and I can still quote it almost perfectly. But, like many other familiar scripture passages, I've quoted it and heard it so often, that the full implications of its teaching have not always impacted my life as they should.
Some dear friends once asked me, "How can we pray for you?" and my ready reply was, "Just pray that I'll love Jesus more and more and have a heart to love others." If those things are in place in my life, everything else follows. If not, nothing I do has any importance or meaning. Paul said I could speak with the voice of an angel, but it wouldn't mean anything without a loving heart.
Paul also said that love is the fulfilling of the law. This was a radical statement in his day, because all of his fellow Jews were focused on fulfilling the ten commandments and the 110 other commandments which they had manufactured out of them. Can you imagine how difficult that must have been, just to remember all of them? And now Paul brings this revolutionary principle: "If you do one thing, you will do these 110 things without even thinking about them. If you love, you will unconsciously fulfill the whole law."
When I taught customer service seminars, I pointed out that there was one basic principle underlying all good customer service, and that is the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If every company treated customers the way they would want to be treated if they were in the customers' shoes, every company would have a very high level of customer service and satisfied customers.
The same is true for us as Christians. If we focus on ONE thing–being filled with love for Jesus and love for others–all other things we need to be will automatically follow. Yet so often we reverse the process. I think of a woman who is in many ways very godly. She prays all the time; she studies her Bible constantly; she is at every church service; she keeps herself separate from harmful activities of any type; her life is exemplary in many ways. Yet, when she is with people, almost every time she causes them to be uncomfortable and hurts feelings because of her words which sound unloving and self-righteous.
Oh, we need to pray and read our Bibles and keep our lives separate from worldly actions, but those things should follow love, not precede it. Without being focused on love, we may do a lot of things that look good, but they'll never impress God, because he says without love, it's all a bunch of garbage in his sight. This is a powerful lesson for us to grasp.
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