Love: The Point of 1Corinthians.

This is the second in a series on Christian love. You can read the first post here: The Endless Quest for Love.

Love is something we tend to think of in sentimental terms, as though it were dessert after the meat and potatoes of life. God wants us to see that love is the meat and potatoes of life, as well as the dessert.

Accordingly, Paul’s great meditation on Christian love is part of a much longer letter written to a fledgling church facing significant troubles within and tremendous odds without. Paul spends most of the letter talking to the Corinthians about how they are cannibalizing themselves spiritually speaking. Their only hope is the one thing they haven’t tried: the love of God which was incarnate in Christ now must become incarnate in them. Apart from that the church will grow sicklier and ultimately die, and the world will be no different for its having existed.

Throughout church history, the Corinthian church has been the “poster-child” of problem churches. It is the church no church wants to be like. It is also the church every church comforts itself that it is not like. This is an easy opinion to maintain, as the Corinthians’ problems are catalogued in Scripture, and ours are not. But this way of thinking, aside from being delusional in many cases, completely misses the point of 1Corinthians.

People are people, sinners are sinners, and Christians are both. All our problems the world over stem from the same few root evils. By holding up the Corinthians with their problems in full bloom, God intends that we learn what those problems stem from and root those plants out of our lives altogether, not seek to groom them just short of full flower. Thus while we start out looking through a window at the Corinthians, we end up looking in a mirror at ourselves. (James 1.23-25.) Whatever your church family (or home family) is facing, the key to health within and potency without is Christ’s love in the midst. If Christ’s love was sufficient for the Corinthians with all their challenges, it is more than sufficient for us.