In the early 60’s AD, there was a major revolt against Roman rule in Gaul. Throughout the decade, Nero’s spent his reign building up his own image. In 64 A.D., he burned Rome to the ground, blamed it on the Christians, and then had many believers killed. The Jewish War began in 66 A.D. There were wars and earthquakes throughout this decade. In the middle of this hectic, bloody time, Paul the Apostle traveled almost 10,000 miles to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the Roman Empire. His letter to the Colossians was written in the middle of these events. Paul described the glory and fullness of Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Savior of sinners, as making new men and women by his Word and Spirit. John wrote his gospel during this time also, and his John 3:16 is perhaps the most famous words ever written: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.” We must not forget that the Scriptures were given in times like ours – political intrigue and assassination of one’s opponents, fluctuating economies and rising inflation, and tightening military oppression to prop up the Roman Empire. Then, especially the world needed to hear: “above all these things put on love.”
What Is Love
Love is God’s gift of His Beloved Son.
Even so, love is above all? When wars, inflation, uprisings, and tyranny threaten our way of life? Give us a battle plan or a way to escape oppression, but do not talk about love. Any fool can croon about love, and Satan has so many perverse counterfeits of love that true love is easily lost or altered by all his deceptions. Even so, love is above all, because the Lord tells us so. God is love. He is not hate. He is HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, but he never says, “I am wrath.” He never says that he “delights in hate,” but he does say that he delights in mercy. Men very much desire the death of their enemies, but the Lord does not delight in the death of the wicked (Ezek. 33:11). Despite this world’s evil, despite our evil, God loved this world. He sent his Beloved Son to save it from sin and destruction. The world’s fashions come and go, but this message has shaped the last 2,000 years. God is love. God sent his Son in love. Jesus Christ loved and gave himself for us (Gal. 2:20). The Holy Spirit pours out God’s love in our hearts (Rom. 5:5). The disciples want to call down fire from heaven, and he rebukes them. “You do not know what spirit you are of.” “I did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them” (Luke 9:56).
Love is the new man in Christ.
It is important to understand what the Lord means by love. The flesh and the devil do all they can to bury love under perversion. We know their tricks: love is a feeling; love is acceptance without judgment; love is getting what I want; love is sex; love is toward friends, never enemies. Colossians gives us a beautiful context to understand love. Love is from God the Father (1:2), by the power of the gospel changing us (1:9), aims first at pleasing God, not self (1:10), and is possible in practice only by his strength (1:11). Love is found in union with Christ (1:19), for we are reconciled to the God of love only through him (1:20). We cannot love unless we are at peace with God through the blood of the cross (1:20). Love grows in us as we are “rooted and grounded in him” (2:5-6), for in his fellowship we learn what true love is (2:9-10). We are dead and raised with Christ (2:20; 3:1), and therefore love is the new man in Christ (3:14). Love is something we must put on; it is not something we are born with the ability to do. Love, therefore, cannot be learned from the rebellious world. It is a heavenly gift, a fruit of the Spirit, a grace that comes only from union with Jesus Christ, the living Vine.
Love is the all of 1 Corinthians 13:4-7.
Yes, we can! 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 helps us understand what love is. It is patient – love endures under pressure. It does not seek a way out when giving is hard. It is kind – love gives us a gentle and kind demeanor toward one another. Love does good – it does not take. Love does not talk about pleasing and gratifying self, or self-expression. Love is not narcissistic and self-absorbed but self-emptying. It does not envy what others have or complain about what it does not have. Love does not boast, make displays of its gifts or possession. Love is quiet and not self-promoting. Love is not proud but has a low view of itself. Love is not rude; it is respectful and gives honor. Love does not demand its own honor. Love does not strive to be recognized or praised; it is content if others are praised. Love is not easily provoked, but quickly forgives. Love does not take offense or remember wrongs suffered. Love rejoices not in sin – which cuts out most of what the world calls love – but rejoices in truth. Love bears injuries, so that it covers them over, seeks to believe the best about others, and hopes for the triumph of God’s grace in itself and others.
The Holy Spirit’s context for “love above all” and his defining of true love in 1 Corinthians 13 should remove our squeamishness about speaking of love so highly. Rome had its perversions of love, among high and low, but it was into the midst of Satan’s enslaving delusions that God’s truth shone most brightly. It is the same with us. In speaking of love toward God and one another as the highest virtue, we shall need to distinguish it from the world’s false loves. Rejoice in the opportunity! The world needs clarity about love, even as it does not need our hate added to its raging inferno of malice, suspicion, political jockeying, and economic envy. True love is what is shocking in such a mix. God’s love is shocking. God’s love in Christ. God’s love in us. He did not hesitate to send John 3:16 and Colossians 3:14 in that particular decade. It was worth being misunderstood and ridiculed by one’s enemies in order to see his elect saved and his church enjoying the love of Christ in her midst. Nothing magnifies the grace of God as much as his love for sinners and when we love one another. It is the brightest light of heaven shining into the dim world of sin and hatred.
Why Is Love above All
The Covering of All Other Graces
But why is love above all? Should we exalt one virtue above all others? It is not that love is better than being longsuffering. It is that one cannot endure provocation patiently unless the heart is calmed and controlled by love – the commitment to do good to others, irrespective of how it is treated. Will we forgive those whom we do not love? If we love someone, we will not envy their prosperity or exaltation, even if we sink lower. We will rejoice in their success and patiently endure our trials. This is beyond the human heart, unless it is filled with an invincible love. Do you, Christian parent, rejoice to see other parents succeed, if your children are wayward? Love teaches us to rejoice in the gifts of others. Or, what if your marriage is unhappy and disappointing, but you see other couples enjoying one another and generally happy? Love quenches envy and rejoices in God’s truth bearing fruit in others, even if it is not yet bearing fruit in you. Again, this is wholly beyond us. This is the new man in Christ. It is not learned in books. It is learned in Christ’s fellowship, which he offers to us.
These are but a few reasons that love is “above all:” it covers all other graces of the Spirit, supports them, and sets a tone in the soul so that they can grow. This is perhaps the reason that the “fruit of the Spirit is love” (Gal. 5:22). Most take “love” to match the singular “fruit,” with all the other graces coming from the soil of love. And “we are taught by God to love one another” (1 Thess. 4:9). It is his personal lesson in each redeemed soul. Why is this? Love led him to choose us in his Son before the world began (Eph. 1:4-5). Love led him to send his Son to redeem us from all our sins. Love motivated our Savior to suffer the bitter cross to provide satisfaction for our sins and righteousness before God (John 13:1). Love is above all. It is the highest. It is fruitful unto every other grace. Without love, nothing else we do matters or counts for anything (1 Cor. 13:1-3). Without love, we cannot be like God, have not been taught by his Spirit, and cannot legitimately claim to have been born again (1 John 4:7).
The Bond that Perfects
“Bond” is translated “ligament” in 2:19. A ligament ties together. A bond that perfects in our context is a tie that completes or brings to maturity. This is a fitting description of love. Love is the tie that binds. Love is evidence of spiritual maturity and Christ’s saving presence in our lives. Love that gives, patiently endures, and respects is the bond that helps husbands and wives through hard times in their marriage. It is the tie that brings peace to members of Christ’s body when there is disagreement. Love is the highest. Faith and hope are beautiful and very necessary in this life. We walk by faith in God’s promises and cannot please God except through faith (Heb. 11:5). We are “saved by hope” (Rom. 8:24), for unless we are “confident that what the Lord has promised, he is also able to perform,” we cannot endure the many trials of faith or Satan’s ferocious attacks against us. Yet, there will come a day when we will not need faith or hope. They will be superfluous. It is hard to imagine this, for faith and hope lead us to cling to Jesus Christ and confess: “Lord, to whom else shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). Love will be with us in heaven – rapturous love for our Father when we see him in the face of Jesus Christ. We shall be completely, eternally captivated with our Savior and satisfied with his love.
But what of earth? What of now? Love for one another gives us some taste of what is coming. This is the reason we must put it on. It is not yet all there is. When we would love, envy is with us. Pride raises its ugly head. Fear of being overlooked fights against low views of self and preferring others to ourselves. Love is in a war for survival against the world’s hate and our sinful flesh’s vices and strategies against the new man. Like an outer garment, we must be draped in love, tightly cinched in love, and bound to one another to love one another as Christ has loved us. This is an imperative verb (3:12). Whatever other duties we have, we are commanded to be clothed with the coat of love. Do not forget this, especially in these times. Remember the 60’s AD. Put on love! How irrelevant! We need to be clothed with hatred and suspicion, quick to defend our rights, unwilling to back down from anyone! This is a different gospel, brothers and sisters in Christ. We should run from all false gospels, cultural gurus who embody it, and even religious leaders who espouse it. The Father chose us in love. The Son saved us in love. The Spirit fills us with God’s love. And now, we are to love one another with a pure heart fervently (1 Pet. 1:22). It was love by which the church in the Roman Empire endured that hard decade of persecution and warfare. Loving God, she endured and bore faithful witness to his truth. Loving one another, she gained a powerful reputation with her tormentors: “These Christians love one another.” Love is not only above all, the grace that binds together all other graces, but love saved the world. It will save our world. God’s love in Christ is saving the world at this moment.
How to Get Love above All
Worship God’s Loving Heart
How can we love like this? Love is foreign to the world. It is self-consumed – sports figures and celebrities with their fame, politicians with money and power, women with their beauty and security, men with their plans and pleasure. In the church, we are often as self-consumed, if in different ways – to be thought right, to avoid conflict – or to seek it – or to be seen as pious or to rise. In our own strength, we cannot leave these behind. We must be made new – which is exactly the point of Christ’s redemption. The old man of sin and self is like the old wine skins in our Lord’s parable. You cannot put the new wine of his kingdom and truth into them. They cannot hold it. We must put new wine into new wine skins. The new man is like this. The old man of the world is blind, self-absorbed, and virtuous only out of self-interest. But we are new men and women in Christ. We love when hated, bless when cursed, and rejoice when persecuted. This is because we have been changed by God’s love. He has delivered us from the selfish old man. The more we worship him for his grace and love, the more we come into his light and are changed by it. Preach the gospel of God’s love in Christ each hour to yourself. Think upon what it means that God has loved you. Think how much his love has shaped you, blessed you, challenged you. Stand in awe that he “rests in his love” for you and rejoices over you with singing (Zeph. 3:17).
Examine Our Hearts
Because so much weakness remains in us, we must examine our hearts to make sure we are ruled by love and bound together by love. Since love is above all, we must seek to be more loving. We must pray for loving hearts (Eph. 3:17). Each day, we must judge ourselves by the rule of love. Love is so important that it cannot be left to chance. It is not our normal reflex, which is typically to pull back from love, from showing love, from saying loving words. We think too much of a brother’s faults or a sister’s failings. We waste all our emotional injury nursing hurts rather than nurturing love. It is no wonder, then, that our relationships do not often manifest the “love that is above all.” Love is lost in the dust of our selfishness and buried under the rubble of our grievances. And the sad truth is that we justify these responses to personal injuries. Instead, we must look constantly upon God’s love in Christ and ask him to shape our hearts in the shadow of the cross. Even as we forgive because Christ forgave us and is forgiving us now, we love because he has loved us. His love defines our attitudes and duty.
Imitate Christ’s Heart
Thankfully, the new man in Christ is not his own guide. We have our Lord Jesus Christ, our beloved Master to teach us. We do not know how to love rightly, but he does. Start with washing one another’s feet, he says to us (John 13:14-15). This is his command to us. We follow him by washing one another’s feet – serving, praying, looking out for ways to do good. Even this one imitation will change your family and relationships – not, how have others failed me, but what can I do to serve them? Like my Savior! He set an example for us, so that the world would know there is a different way than Satan’s way of pride and grasping, hate and division. He came to show us that nothing is more heavenly than self-emptying and serving. Love like His is beautiful, satisfying, and shocking. You mean the way up is down? The way to heaven is humility? Yes. It is the Way of our Savior, the way of the cross, the way of love, the way of God. “For God so loved the world, that he gave.” Have we been made new? Givers? Servers? This is the heartbeat of the new man and woman in Christ! How can I believe like my Master? Who can I serve in his name? How can I be more like my Savior, who so loved us? Love is above all.
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