Love That Lasts: The More Excellent Way (1 Corinthians 13) - Sermon 15th February 2026

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Good morning, Church.

Reading this morning from 1 Corinthians 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.

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.

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.

Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered,

it keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

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 For we know in part,

and we prophesy in part But when completeness comes, what is in part disappears,

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.

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.

And now these three remain, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. Amen.

Not sure. I'm not sure. I'm under a bit of pressure this morning.

I've actually had a few people ask me about the length of my sermon before I

even preach. two of those three from my own family.

Jeremiah has a birthday party he's got to get to, and Kate is leading kids'

church, and he's worried she might run out of things to say to the kids,

and say, if you preach too long, I might run out of things to say to the kids.

Then she showed me her 54 slides and her craft. I think she will be okay.

And Isaac has a cricket game to go to. He's already checked his watch three

times since I started this sermon, I was tempted to add all back in the stuff

that you take out of a sermon this morning, but that wouldn't be very loving.

And on this weekend of Valentine's Day, it's a good reminder,

if nothing else, of the importance of love.

So happy Valentine's to you, whatever that might mean to you,

maybe for you, it means a really good opportunity to be cynical about romantic

love, or perhaps it's an opportunity

to be cynical about being told to love on a certain day because,

you know, I love every day.

I don't need a day. I love every day. I don't know. What if that means to you?

Maybe it means harmless fun. Maybe it means intensity and passion. I'm not sure.

As Tony mentioned this morning, preaching on 1 Corinthians 13 within a bigger

context is a good example of a love letter from God.

And the church in Corinth, the community that was there, was one that did not lack passion.

It also didn't lack intelligence. It didn't lack in spiritual energy.

If anything, it was a church that was completely overflowing with all of those

outward measurable things that people often think about when they ask, how is church going?

People came to their events. People volunteered. People prayed boldly.

They even had people speaking in tongues and prophesying. They debated theology

with confidence. It was a community that was alive with gifts.

And yet, underneath that outward appearance of vitality, something was fragile.

Relationships were strained. Pride was shaping interactions.

And amongst many things that were going on, loyalty to different leaders had turned into rivalry.

And so into that particular circumstance, Paul writes the letter that we now

have and know as 1 Corinthians.

And amongst all of the things in this wonderful book,

amongst the specific tips on navigating life as community and how individuals

with different skills and gifts and perspectives can fit into all of that,

we find chapter 13.

You see, at the end of chapter 12, where Paul had been discussing in great detail

the spiritual gifts and the importance of a variety and different types of people

who do different things within the life of a church,

where he even says that those things are good and can be desired,

he pauses and he says, before I go on, essentially, I want to show you something.

He says, I will show you the more or most excellent way.

And then you turn over the page and it's 1 Corinthians 13.

And it's a chapter that I don't think Paul ever intended to be read at weddings

or to be considered to have application to romantic relationships.

Although it definitely can speak relevant truths into those places.

But we should be careful about considering 1 Corinthians 13 as sort of like a poetic interlude.

Now, Paul places these words, this chapter, in between chapters about things

such as spiritual gifts and the life of a church and how people who are different

can work together on purpose.

He says, before you argue about all of that stuff, you've got to learn something.

You have to learn to prioritize something that sits above all of that discussion.

He says, you must learn how to love.

He says to them, if I speak in the tongues of men or of angels,

but do not have love, all I'm doing is making pointless noise.

He's saying, even if I am spiritually speaking, exceptionally impressive,

even if I do all of the things that make people go.

He's got it all going on with God, even if he does things that to some people

would be phenomenal, that would inspire a sense of, I want to follow Jesus,

that would inspire people to think, I want to grow in my spirituality.

He says, if I have all of that, but I don't have any love, it's pointless. It's nothing.

It's empty noise.

He's saying that all those things that we may debate about within the church,

all of those things that we might consider, and particularly the idea of spiritual

gifts or the variety of things that we all bring to the table,

the things that should be prioritized, the things

that need to be talked about in order for a church to function.

He says, without love and in the whole scheme of things, none of those things matter at all.

Whether, for this particular context, Paul or Apollos are better leaders or

better preachers, it does not matter.

Who is the most popular or who's saying the right things? It does not matter.

Who's the most successful or what's the most successful way to do things? It doesn't matter.

None of that matters when compared to the command and the demand that followers

of Jesus learn to love like Jesus.

And what I propose, what I suggest is that today, in the life of our church,

we still need this chapter about love as much as ever.

It's not just a sentimental poem it's not just for wedding days and moments

such as that it's a manual for community,

and we need it because like every church it's very easy to get distracted and

twisted up with all of the other stuff the other stuff that does need attention

that paul says is important,

but if it distracts us away from if it takes us away from,

knowing how to love,

then we've missed everything.

What we should be careful here is that what Paul is not doing,

he's not diminishing individuality,

he's not saying that we ought to be people that just go with the flow,

he's not saying that discussions around being equipped by the Holy Spirit,

discussions around gifts of God that he gives to different people,

discussions around the function of the church should be stopped.

No, what he's saying is all of that is utterly dependent and secondary to the

more important discussion, the discussion of how can we learn to love like Jesus.

And what Paul is doing here, amongst other things, I think,

is to a church that had in its mind an idea of what a mature Christian looked

like, he's taking the opportunity here to redefine maturity.

He's taking the moment to try and shape not just how we might love,

but how we might understand or consider what it means to be grown up.

And he does this by describing love in language that is very regular,

very normal, very everyday.

And I've always found it interesting, if not annoying, that when he begins to

describe love, he starts with, love is patient.

Personally, I'd prefer if he eased into it.

Maybe more of the active, like, love always protects.

Yeah, like I can get by an unprotector or some of the other ones,

perhaps. But he starts with what I think, for many of us, has to be the hardest

and the most mundane and everyday one, which is love is patient.

So you and I, we might consider ourselves, we know that actually,

we're very patient people.

All of us here are very patient people we could go hours being patient but then,

another person comes into our day and that ability to be patient is tested immediately.

Paul says love is patient. Love is kind.

Kind is almost a soft word, an easily dismissed word.

Yet for him, number two, love is kind, a nice gesture, or even just having a

charitable interpretation of what somebody else is doing instead of assuming

the worst of what their motivations might be.

It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud.

These aren't sort of abstract values. They're things that you and I more easily

can think about how that would look like in our lives, in our days,

in the way that we go about our worlds.

I wonder if you are somebody who on occasion keeps a record of wrongs.

Maybe not written down. That'd be probably a big issue if you were someone that

had them all written down.

But just somewhere deep down.

If you have the ability to smile to someone's face while remembering within

you that hidden ledger of that time they let you down, or that time they failed

to live up to what you wanted.

It's confronting when we're reminded that mature love refuses to compare,

refuses to keep a record, and remembering this might sort of convict us a little bit.

But amongst all of that, we're told that love rejoices with the truth.

We're not being invited to be doormats at every turn. We're being challenged

to not weaponize our memories,

and to, in the little moments, the ordinary moments, choose to make other people's lives slightly easier.

When Paul describes love in all of these ways, he's not just offering sentiment,

but a blueprint, I think, for a church to actually survive.

Because a church that is characterized by envy and pride and scorekeeping is

a church that will eventually disappear, a church that will collapse.

A church, rather, that is characterized by the things that we ought to aim for

when we think of love, a church that's characterized by patience and kindness

and humility and truth, will grow into something more resilient and steady.

And that kind of church doesn't form by accident. It's built,

I think, slowly, choice by choice, by people who have decided that loving matters

more than any other metric of success that we might think about or come up with.

I don't know about you, but there are many people in this church that inspire

me to love more. I'm sure you've met them.

The ones that do those extra things that necessarily noticed or celebrated.

Those ones who go out of their way to be kind to somebody else.

Those ones that make sure they check in with the ones who are easily forgotten or missed.

Love is something that this church has been aiming for for a very long time, I think.

But an interesting thing happens in 1 Corinthians 13, because he doesn't just

stop with the descriptions of love like maybe we think he could.

From verse 8 onwards, Paul shows us that love shouldn't just matter because it's a nice idea,

but that logically, love should matter because it will outlast every other part of church life.

He says love never fails but it transitions into this idea that amongst all

of the traits all of the characteristics,

out of everything that we might be encouraged to be or do that love cannot be

beaten it cannot be outlasted by things that are temporary.

And he says, and he suggests that the mature Christian learns to embrace the

permanent over the temporary.

That the nudging of 1 Corinthians 13 isn't just the nudging to embrace love

over hate or indifference or selfishness, but it is the nudging to embrace the

permanent over the temporary.

He says, when I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child.

When I became an adult, I put childish ways behind me.

A child's way of loving is not wrong.

It is exactly what is appropriate for their stage of life.

And children, amongst many things, are designed to receive, to take.

Their nervous systems and all of that still forming.

Their sense of safety is still being built. their understanding of how to be

human is just being laid brick by brick,

and a child will be asked to be fed, to get, to be held, to be noticed,

to be reassured to be comforted, all of those things and we know,

at least we ought to know, sometimes easier to know when it's somebody else's child not your own,

that when a child does all of these things that it's normal and natural, why?

Because they're a child, they're a kid A kid is meant to, in some senses, take and get.

They're not being selfish. They're being human in the earliest, most dependent form.

However, as a child gets older, something is supposed to change as they mature.

This is often the challenge of the parent, is when do I nudge them to become

the person they're becoming, and when do I remember that they're just a kid?

Because something is supposed to change.

They're supposed to get mature. And maturity,

as adults doesn't mean that we stop needing love and it doesn't mean that we

stop needing on occasions to get and to receive, but it does mean that we also

become capable of giving,

love in a way that doesn't always put ourselves first.

The center of gravity, in some ways, is supposed to shift.

We're supposed to, as we grow older, move from a life that is primarily shaped

by the idea of, like, how does this affect me, or what can I get,

or how many can I have, or all of those things.

But it's supposed to be increasingly shaped by a different question,

which is, how can I make this better for others?

And that Paul suggests is what love looks like when it is grown up.

A four-year-old is meant to put themselves first, meant to prioritize taking and receiving.

A 40-year-old who still does the same thing, and I hope no one just flashed

into your mind as I said that, a 40-year-old who still does the same thing hasn't grown up.

And so Paul says, when I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a

child, I reasoned like a child.

When I became an adult, I put childish ways behind me. He's in some way saying.

That's the normal, natural way of doing things.

And a part of that is growing up is learning how to love like he's outlined

here. But another part of it is he's reminding us that childhood is temporary.

That season of life where our focus is me me me is good and normal but it's

supposed to be temporary those thought patterns and those patterns of reasoning

are superseded by the maturity of adulthood and he's saying to them,

the patterns of childhood are temporary,

but so are the things that you as a church,

obsess over they're temporary and if you want to love like a grown-up.

Compare your behaviors and compare your priorities to the characteristics of

love that I just outlined.

You see, the community in Corinth had begun to treat spiritual abilities as

something that was like a competition.

There were better and there were worse. There were those worth following and those not.

There was a sense amongst their community that somebody's prominence and success

required somebody else's diminishment.

And ultimately, what they struggled with is something that we still struggle

with today. They struggled with comparison.

And comparison is a silent killer in communities, and it is a silent killer in relationships.

Comparison poisons us. Comparison turns friends into enemies.

It only leads to destruction.

It actually only offers us two paths, both bad.

The first is that comparison might make us feel superior, and we can't love

from a position of superiority.

But the other path is that it might make us feel inferior, put a chip on our

shoulder, remind us of all the ways that we're not as we ought to be,

and actually also inferiority isn't a position that we can love from either.

Comparison is what leads to insecurity to quiet rivalry,

sometimes not so quiet rivalry and it leads to division and paul says that all

of that that comparing of ourselves to other people.

All of that is not only childish but it is temporary consider the image of two

children playing in a sandpit,

building a sandcastle each, and you come across them and they are arguing with

each other about whose sandcastle is better than the other.

Well, mine's taller. Well, mine's got a flag on it. Well, mine goes out wider.

Well, mine's got a tunnel. Mine's better. No, mine's better.

All of us, I hope, would have some mature ways on how to guide that discussion.

Paul is not just saying Mm-hmm.

In the discussions that we have, that we ought to be grown-ups,

he's also pointing to something that is true, whether we know it or not,

whether we accept it or not, whether we believe it or not.

He's pointing to the fact that those sandcastles will be gone tomorrow either way.

But if those children internalize what it means to say, hey,

yours is really cool, confident and content and happy with mine.

And I'm also able to love and say, I like what you've done there.

It's different to mine and that's good.

The sandcastles disappear, but that idea of love lasts forever.

And Paul is saying it's the same with what we do in church. There are things

that are temporary and there are things that last forever. And this chapter

is not just saying, hey, love better. It's saying, hey, embrace the stuff that

will be there in a million years.

He's saying that comparison is not just poison. It's temporary.

It won't last. Insecurity, temporary.

The fascination that we can have with status and being better,

temporary. But love, love is not temporary.

Love lasts forever.

He's not just urging them to grow up. He's urging them toward the very quality

of life the very thing that will endure when everything else falls away.

And he continues, he says, for now, we only see a reflection as in a mirror.

Soon we shall see face to face. You see, in Corinth at this time,

they were famous for some of the stuff that they made for their bronze work.

And amongst the most prized things that you could purchase or buy from or get

from Corinth were actually little bronze mirrors.

And what we shouldn't imagine is the mirrors of today, but rather it was something

that was polished bronze.

It did its best and if you polished it really well and if you made it really

well and you looked into it you could get a sense at least a little bit of what

your face looked like if you wanted to know or not I don't know.

But the thing is, is that it was in one sense real, but it was in another sense

softened, slightly warped.

And actually, even the mirrors that we rely on today, the one that you looked

at just before you went out the door just to check that you,

I don't know, weren't going to be completely wrong in what you've chosen to wear or whatever,

even the mirrors that we rely on today, scientists will tell us that they are

also not showing us reality.

If you've ever seen a photo of yourself and thought, that looks different to

what I thought I looked like, it's because we are used to the mirror version of ourselves.

Mirrors, light bouncing off surfaces and returning to our eyes,

and it changes things in that process, reverses and shape by angle,

distance, perception, all of that stuff.

A mirror doesn't show ourselves as others see, as it presents a version of it.

And so when Paul says, we now see through glass darkly, he's saying to them,

hey, you know all those mirrors that you make, they do a job,

they've got value, people want to buy them, you can still see something,

but one day you're going to see the whole thing in HD.

The mirror isn't without value, but it's not permanent.

Its value was temporary and attached to a particular era, a particular moment

in time, but one day something's coming that will mean you don't need that anymore.

And Paul says that our church-type activities are in some sense the same.

Temporarily useful, functionally valuable, not to be dismissed or said silly, pointless.

I know I said before, it doesn't matter, but within the context of love that

was, He's not saying that it doesn't

matter at all, but it's bound to the limitations of a functional moment.

And the important point amongst all of that is that love isn't like that.

Love's in a different category. So when we finally set the mirror aside,

when the shadows lift, love will still be there and we're invited to not just

wait for that love, but to participate in that love

today in the ordinary and in the everyday. day.

Because when we realize that love invites us to something greater,

when we realize we don't need to win every conversation, when we realize we

don't need to extract validation from every single moment, when we realize that

life is not meant to be me, me, me, take, take, take, give, give, give.

What we can do is then set our eyes on Jesus, whose life and death perfectly

modelled the characteristics in 1 Corinthians 13.

Jesus, who was patient with those who misunderstood him, kind to those overlooked

by society, unwilling to boast when given opportunity, who instead of keeping

a record of wrongs prayed, Father, forgive them.

The love of 1 Corinthians 13 is an invitation, but it's also a reminder of the

one who did embody all of these things perfectly.

And I say this because we ought to not take these words as simply a like,

okay, yeah, I'm going to go and be better.

Because amongst all of this, what we can be reminded of is that somebody's already

loved like this and done so on our behalf.

This love is not natural love, it's supernatural love, it's the love of Christ.

And so when we start to step into this type of way of being,

we're not just being better, but we're being conformed to God's Son.

And so perhaps this week, you might ask yourself questions like,

who is it that I have kept a record of wrongs against?

Where is it that I'm probably insisting on my own way too much?

Where are the times and the moments when I'm not being patient?

And we can do that and we should do that. But amongst all of that,

we can set our eyes on Jesus, who did it already for us.

So as I finish and as I'm about to pray, I hope that we might be able to consider

individually, but also as a community, what are we aspiring towards?

What are the metrics that we want to use for considering ourselves as a community

and ourselves as individuals?

We live in a world that says self-promote Go big, be impressive But mature love

goes in a slightly different direction,

Mature love of 1 Corinthians 13 isn't one that feels dramatic It's not achieved overnight,

But it's formed over time And we're invited to grow into it We're invited to

embody the love And to walk the path of that more excellent way The path that

our Savior Jesus walked Let's pray.

Lord, I pray you do nudge us this morning.

I pray you do encourage us and motivate us. I pray that you do,

for each of us, illuminate to us in our individual unique ways how we might,

better embody this idea of love.

Help us as a church to better embody this idea of love.

And we want to say to you, thank you so much for Jesus, whose love to us was

and is always patient, who shows us that way to live. Help us again to turn our eyes to Him.

We pray in His name. Amen.