A Life Of Love, All Things | Christian Sermon by Zack Eswine
1 Corinthians 13:7
Introduction
Paul writes this verse with emphasis! “All things bears, all things believes, all things hopes, all things endures.” Passion flows through the pen.
“All things” means that no matter what happens with circumstances or neighbors—no matter how tragic, horrid, or beautiful—the love of Jesus has something to say about those circumstances or people and a power to bring to them.
These things in Corinth included their issues of celebrity, comparisons, and neighbor misuse; all of their Jew/Gentile fractures of race and ethnicity; and all of the beliefs, worldviews, and actions opposing the gospel.
Regardless how impatient, unkind, envious, rude, arrogant, or irritable they or their neighbors have been; no matter how misguided with ambition, violence, drunkenness, sexual misuse, or how puffed up with religious pride in their gifts of speaking, knowledge, faith, and sacrifice, love goes there.
Love Provides, Maintains, and Does Not Surrender
Love provides the stamina to put up with all things and to maintain our own mood in light of an opposing grump. Love does not surrender to the foul interpretations that are offered to us by the present tantrum of wrongdoing that shouts, stomps, or tears at our lives. Love does not agree or go along with or throw its hands up in the air; instead, love bears all things.
Love also provides faith. In saying that love believes all things, Paul doesn’t intend us to hallow naïveté or praise gullibility. Verse eleven of this chapter makes that clear. Rather, Paul is saying that no matter what, faith takes its stand.
Through slanders, betrayals, miracles, shouts of praise, Gethsemane, and the cross Jesus’ trust in the Father held. He purchases such faith by grace for Paul, for those in Corinth, and for us.
Love goes on to provide hope. It maintains its own mood and keeps the faith because love believes that there is more in front of us than this present moment. The character of the God we love is before us. All things, no matter what they entail, will not have the last word.
Because of this, love endures all things. Love has the wind for a marathon. It will not quit. Love will outlast all things to the other side.
There is nothing stronger therefore than love in Jesus. Sometimes as individuals we suffer terrible wrongs or we inflict them. We doubt and can feel like we are at our end. But Paul writes to a community of people.
We strengthen a person when he or she struggles. He or she strengthen us when we struggle. Jesus apprentices the community into this strong love.
It is because only love has this kind of “all things” bearing, believing, hoping, and enduring, that our sermons, doctrine, faith, and sacrifice won’t offer enough for what some neighbors must face.
Only these good things in surrender to the love of Christ are sufficient.
Conclusion
Jesus’ love is strong:
1. It is strong enough no matter what (all things).
2. It is strong enough to provide (bears, believes, hopes, endures).
3. It is strong enough to apprentice a community.
Zack Eswine
Zack Eswine serves as lead pastor of Riverside Church in St. Louis, Missouri. Zack Eswine, is an award winning author who writes about the significance of an ordinary life and ministry in Jesus.
