Agape Love

A Seven Part Homily Series

Part Seven

Love Never Fails

By Michael K. Farrar, O.D.

© God’s Breath Publications

 

I Corinthians 13:4-8

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, 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.”

 

Love Never Fails

 

What does this short sentence imply? It implies that love will never fail in any situation no matter what the obstacle. How can this be? Many times we have found ourselves in situations where love has failed us or we have failed to love. So how can love never fail? We must understand that the love spoken of here is not erotic human driven love. It is divine love that comes from our Heavenly Father. It is part of the essence of who God is. His agape love is so powerful that it really never does fail.

 

The word for “fails” in the Greek here means “not to fall away like the petals of a flower.” Imagine a beautiful multicolored flower where the delicate petals would never turn brown, shrivel and fall off to the ground. Human love can blossom and be gorgeous in appearance but it can fade with trauma or neglect. Agape love is radically different. It is everlasting. It is durable beyond measure. God’s ways are not our ways and God’s love is not the same quality of love we express, unless we love with the power of His Holy Spirit. Our human love can fail at times, but that is one of the benefits of being a child of the King. He makes us new creatures in Him and gives us the capacity to love as He loves. This divine love that God enables us to express through His Spirit in us demonstrates beautiful love to others that will never fail in its ability to sustain itself because it comes from Him.

 

Paul is sharing the meaning of God’s love in this passage because the Corinthian Christians had placed spiritual gifts of a temporary nature over this eternal ability of loving as God loves. They were self-seeking individuals who were serving themselves and failing horribly to love each other. They had gone so far in their excessive pursuit of selfishness that they were flaunting their sins. The Corinthian Christians were not patient or kind with each other. They envied each other’s spiritual gifts and boasted about the ones that the Spirit had given them. They were rude and self-seeking. They were not only easily angered by each other; they also made a point of remembering every offense that was committed against them. They delighted in the evil behavior of others and failed to rejoice with the truth. Therefore they failed to protect one another, never trusted one another and failed to hope and persevere in their dedication to each other and God. Their human love was failing to sustain relationships with others and even with God Himself. This is a good example of what can happen when any Christian or church fails to seek to love in the way that Christ loves.

 

An amazing thing that 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 communicates to us is that if we allow ourselves to be empowered by God we can love in such a way that God’s love will never fail. Human love fails because it comes from our own meager motivations and needs. Most of the time we love others for the feeling it gives us or for what others can give us in return. Human love is often mutually satisfying. But problems can arise when those we love fail to love us back, wound us with their actions or spurn our efforts to mend relationships. Human love can and does at times fail us, but that is where the power of God’s love can intervene and rescue meager human love that has been wounded, faded or diminished in its intensity. Whether it is a friendship or marriage, no matter what form of relationship, God’s agape love is powerful enough to mend, heal, restore and recreate any relationship we have. As long as those involved in the relationship are open to God’s intervention, this agape love can work miracles.

 

We are called as Christians to love in this manner. Christ set the example for us to follow in His sacrificial life and death. He calls us to love unconditionally in all the relationships we have. Numerous portions of scripture address this type of love. Here are only a few.

 

1 John 4:7-12

“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”

 

1 John 4:16-17

“God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.”

 

1 John 4:19-21

“We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”

 

1 Peter 3:8-9

“Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.”

 

The following verse presents a most interesting concept about the love we are called to as Christians. See if you can discern the intent of this verse.

 

2 John 5-6

“I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.”

 

Did you catch the implication? We are commanded to love. Yes, I said commanded. We are commanded to love as God loves. But you may ask, “How can you command someone to love?” God’s answer is, because agape love is a choice. God chooses to love us even though we are unworthy and rebellious. He chooses to seek us and adopt us as His child even though we don’t deserve it and even though He knows we will often fail Him. He risks a lot in His relationship with us. He even gave up His son to die on the cross for our sins to make such a relationship with Him possible. God calls us to make this same choice. He calls us to choose to love others even though they may fail us, reject us, hurt us, wound us and fail to accept our actions of love. He calls us to obey all His commands and to love others unconditionally, without expecting a return on our efforts. If we love in this way, we may see others respond in love to us or we may not. But the point is not their response; the point is; are we being obedient to the commandment to love as we are called to as servants of Jesus. Do we love with God’s agape love?

 

We are inundated in our world with the human eros love that is transient and temporary. Such love lives for self-satisfaction. It desires to be complete only when its needs are met. God’s love is different. It seeks to meet the needs of others, not self. It seeks to love without expecting any return on its investment. God’s love can stimulate and encourage “eros” love in any relationship we have. It can mend broken friendships and it can restore troubled marriages. That is the beauty and power of agape love. It is divine and comes from God Himself. That power of self-sacrificing love can bring people together who were at odds or had lost love for one another. God’s love never fails to bring results that honor and glorify Him.

 

Such love is also the sign of spiritual maturity. Lewis B. Smedes states, “Only love is the sure sign of maturity in Christ. Any person who feels a pull toward another, an urge to care simply because the other is there, is in touch with eternity. The wife who cannot stop caring for a husband, even after he has long bruised her life and ignored her needs, after eros is dead, is in tune with the essence of God. The parent whose heart expands in loving affirmation of a rebellious child, grown now into an estranged adult who gives no affection in return, is sharing divine perfection. The business person who is able to see through the conflicts of competition to a hurting soul within a competitor is living on the fringes of heaven.”

 

Mature Christians love as God loves with unceasing forgiveness, sensitive concern for the well-being of others, the desire for the elimination of sin and evil, the encouragement of healing and mending, always seeking to love as God loves. This love invests in the lives of people. Its reward is the honor and glory it brings to God Himself.

 

“Love never fails. Three words that give a believer in Christ the only foundation that cannot be shaken, three words to destroy the power of sin, and pull you from the jaws of Hell, three words that span eternity from Almighty God to you.”

Colin Melbourne

 

We have taken an amazing journey in this seven part series on love. We have seen in this spiritual painting of God’s character the love that is central to His personhood. God is love. This love always has existed and always will. We are given the privilege as Christians to share in both receiving this love and giving it to others. May we seek to be filled with the Spirit so we can demonstrate this love to everyone we meet and make it the foundation of all our relationships.

 

Romans 12:10

“Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.”

 

Philippians 2:5-8

“Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross.”