Pat Propster
Be the Valentine you would like to receive. That being said, this week is also National Marriage Week, that started last Tuesday, Feb. 7 and continues through Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14.
As we look through the lens of a biblical worldview, marriage is and always has been God’s idea. Marriage is also the key element of family, which is the foundation of a successful and healthy society. Whether you’re married or not, we can encourage those marriages that we are in fellowship with, praying for them and being a good encouragement to them. I’m sure many of you reading, if not all have attended at least one wedding.
Often times at a wedding ceremony a passage from First Corinthians 13 is read.
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. 9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. 13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
“But the greatest of these is love.” The apostle Paul wrote this letter and gives a beautiful description of true love, known in the Greek as an Agape love. The highest form of love, a selfless love, a love without condition.
The amazing thing about this passage is it’s not contextually written for a wedding ceremony. It is written as a definitive lifestyle referred to as “a more excellent way” of serving one another in life, in church, in general, as found in a previous passage, First Corinthians 12:31.
What I like about all of these Bible passages, especially at this time of the year is, they serve as a type of report card. Here is the life challenge, place your own name where any reference to the word love would be in verses four through eight and see how you’re doing.
Please be encouraged by the things you are doing well and challenged in the other areas where we all seek to be more Christlike. Be the Valentine!
Pat Propster is lead pastor at Calvary Chapel Carson City.