The Most Important Thing

The Most Important Thing

One day a lawyer asked Jesus a question “to test him.”¹  He said, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?”² Jesus gave him two answers: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”³ The second answer was this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”⁴ Love is the most important thing. Everyone knows this. Most people have heard this. Believers quote this verse by heart.

But do we really understand what love looks like? We all love the idea of love; we love the benefits of love; we love being loved; we love being in love—but all of us could do a better job of loving! The best thing ever written about love is, of course, 1 Corinthians 13. Paul gives us, not just a poetic definition of love, he gives us a picture of it. It’s a list, actually, of how to respond and how not to respond to hard things and difficult people. Here it is.

A loving person is patient and kind, excited when things go well for others, handles hard things admirably, remains positive about life, optimistic about things, and steadfast in trouble. A loving person is not envious or boastful, arrogant or rude, never insists on his own way, is never irritable or resentful, and lastly, is never happy when bad things happen to other people (even if they are bad people)! That is love. Love is the best response to hard things and difficult people—which covers all situations, doesn’t it?

But that’s not Paul’s final word about love. He says without love (which is the way we should respond to hard things and difficult people) our words are annoying, our knowledge is irrelevant, our faith means nothing, and our generosity is wasted. Love (which is the way we should respond to hard things and difficult people) is more important than what we think, what we say, and what we know because those things will all pass away; they are actually “partial” things, meaning they are incomplete, imperfect, and temporary, and love is the opposite of all that; love is complete, perfect, and eternal. And because “Love never ends,”⁵ we are to never stop responding this way to any difficult person or hard thing!

So . . . how’s that going for you? Why is this so hard? Paul has two answers for that question and they are clearly explained in the chapter. First of all, he says that when it comes to love, we must grow up! It is perfectly fine for children to act like children. Paul admits, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.”⁶ There comes a day, however, when we must act like adults and “give up childish ways.”⁶ That’s the first problem: many adults still speak and think and reason like children.

The second problem is we think we understand everything, but we really don’t. One day we will see clearly but for now “we see in a mirror dimly” and “know in part.”⁷  Our vision is blurred and our knowledge is limited, and we need to “trust in the Lord” with all our hearts and “do not lean on [our] own understanding.”⁸ If we want to become more loving, we must grow up and stop acting like we know it all!

Our 21^st century definition of love would probably include words like “sweet,” “gentle,” “modest,” and “agreeable,” but they are noticeably absent from Paul’s list. As a matter of fact, Paul’s kind of love is quite strong. There is nothing mushy or weak or timid about it. The love Paul describes is the life that Jesus lived, and we know this about that: “neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor power, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”⁹ There is nothing greater than love. It is still the most “excellent way.”¹⁰

There will be many days when we are faced with hard things and difficult people, so the most important thing we can do is to “pursue love.”¹¹

¹Matthew 22:35   ²Matthew 22:36   ³Matthew 22:37   ⁴Matthew 22:39   ⁵1 Corinthians 13:8   ⁶1 Corinthians 13:11   ⁷1 Corinthians 13:12   ⁸Proverbs 3:5   ⁹Romans 8:38-39   ¹⁰1 Corinthians 12:31   ¹¹1 Corinthians 14:1