Love Will Last
Day 232: 1 Corinthians 12:27-31, 13:1-13
"Love will last forever." - 1 Corinthians 13:8 NLT
One of the most cherished passages in the entire Bible is this one in 1 Corinthians 13. Yet you won't find a more challenging section in all of Scripture. All the facets of love do not come to us a la carte. We cannot commit to being patient without also keeping no record of wrongs.
So there are two questions that arise from this:
How are we ever going to live up to the standard love sets?
Isn't it risky to treat another flawed human being this way?
The answer to the first question is that we won't live up to the standard, at least on our own strength. God not only sets the standard for love (1 John 4:7-21), he also empowers us to start loving the way He does (Galatians 2:20).
In answering the second question, we need to know that to love someone else is to take all of the risks of them not reciprocating. Jesus saw this as a risk worth taking for us when He went to the cross. His sacrificial love is still saving nearly 2,000 years later!
So much in our world is failing. Not love. It stubbornly persists.
"Love is permanent; it never fails, where the verb commonly means ‘to fall’. It comes to be used with the meaning ‘collapse,’ ‘suffer ruin.’ Love will never suffer such a fate. ‘Many waters cannot quench love’ (Ct. 8:7)." - Leon Morris