If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3 ESV)
$18,250. That is what you would expect to find in your personal savings account after putting $10 a day in it for 5 years. But instead you find a balance of $0 because unbeknownst to you, you were placing the money in your joint account with your teen and not your personal savings account! Five years of saving down the drain! Over $18,000 wasted on frivolous spending by a teen who probably thought they found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. All that time and money for nothing!
Great things we have done
We can also say the same thing about the good things we do and say if they are not rooted in love for God and others. We can be wasting our time, energy and money because our actions and words do not come from a foundation of love. Our scripture passage in this post lists a variety of great godly things we can say and do (see bold print below):
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3 ESV)
Pointless without Love
But the purpose of this passage is to inform us that all these great godly things have no value, put nothing in our spiritual bank accounts and make us worthless noisy instruments if they do not come from a foundation of love (see underlined words below):
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3 ESV)
Walking in the way of love
We can be doing all these wonderful things but if love is not there, it is all in vain. So how can we determine if we are walking in the way of love and not just going through these righteous motions? We need not look further than the next set of verses in 1 Corinthians 13 to discover what walking in the way of love looks like (bold and underlined):
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7 ESV)
This is God’s word we can use as a measuring stick every day to determine if we are walking in the way of His love. It says nothing about the actions of others as a determinant of how we are to act. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 clearly describes what love is to look like in and through us as followers of Jesus. Once we grasp this truth and walk in this way of love, only then can we be used by God as beautiful instruments to benefit others for His glory as well as reap eternal spiritual rewards for ourselves (Galatians 6:9).
Considerations 