The Greatest of These Is Love

✦ Nothing Without Love

Paul begins by stripping away everything the church admires. Tongues — nothing without love. Prophecy — nothing. Knowledge of all mysteries — nothing. Faith that moves mountains — nothing. Even martyrdom — profits nothing without love. The list is deliberate. Paul takes the highest gifts, the greatest sacrifices, the most dramatic demonstrations of faith — and declares them empty. Not reduced. Not diminished. Nothing. Sounding brass. A clanging cymbal. Noise without music.

Baker said the will cannot be replenished with any object of goodness less than infinite. Paul says the same: every gift, every sacrifice, every act of faith — without love, it is less than infinite. And less than infinite cannot fill the soul.

✦ Love Defined by What It Does

Paul does not define love as a feeling. He defines it as a behavior — fifteen verbs. Love is what love does. And every verb is either patience or humility in action.

Suffers long — Bowen's be not weary in well-doing. The unwearied sun that rises every morning whether anyone notices.

Is kind — not merely not-cruel. Actively kind. Seeking the good of the other.

Does not envy, does not parade itself, is not puffed up — Bowen's humility from James 4:10. Know yourself. Where there is no pride, there is no hell.

Does not seek its own — Guyon's abandonment. Going to prayer not to obtain but to please. The soul that has ceased to seek its own has found the only thing worth seeking.

Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things — four "all things." No exceptions. No limits. No fine print. Baker's tyrannizing affection that cannot stop at an inferior degree.

✦ Love Never Fails

Everything else has an expiration date. Prophecies will fail — fulfilled and no longer needed. Tongues will cease. Knowledge will vanish away — not because it was wrong but because something greater will replace it. Bowen's excess of light absorbing the stars. The partial giving way to the perfect.

But love never fails. It is the only thing that passes from this age into the next without modification. The morning devotion and the eternal beatitude differ only in degree — Baker's teaching. And the substance common to both is love.

✦ The Dim Mirror and the Coming Face

A mirror in the first century was polished bronze, not glass. The image was real but imperfect — the shape without the detail. That is the present condition: real knowledge, real love, real communion — but partial. Through a surface that shows the outline without the fullness.

Then — face to face. Bowen's face from Psalm 27:9: hide not your face far from me. The veil lifted entirely. Not the reflection but the reality. Not knowledge about God but knowledge of God — just as I also am known. He already knows us fully. The promise is that we will know Him the same way.

Le said on July 23: I trusted Christ many decades ago. The trust is still the same, because He did not change His mind about me. The mirror is dim now. But the One behind the mirror has not changed. And the face that will be seen then is the same face that called at midnight in Lubbock, that knocked persistently on the closed door, that delighted in the soul before the soul knew it was delighted in.

✦ The Greatest

Three things that abide. Faith — the substance of things hoped for. Hope — the anchor of the soul. Love — the greatest. Not because faith and hope are small, but because they are fulfilled and absorbed. Faith gives way to sight when we see face to face. Hope gives way to possession when the promise is realized. But love does not give way. It does not arrive and dissolve. It is the same on both sides of the mirror — the same love that suffers long here will rejoice eternally there.

Mamãe Consuelo knew: A recompensa de Deus é o próprio Deus, e somente Ele. The reward is love itself. Not what love brings. Love. God is love. And the greatest of these is God Himself.