The Greatest Thing

“The greatest of these is love.”

1 Cor. xiii. 13.

HE theme of i Corinthians xiii., the “New Testament Psalm,” is the exaltation of love, not merely as the “greatest thing in the world,” but as the greatest thing in all worlds.

Note first of all the divine method in this exaltation of love. That method is, chiefly contrast, but contrast not with things that are evil, but rather with things which would be supremely good if love were not better than they.

The human way would be to say that love is greater and better than hatred, malice, uncharitableness, bitterness, evil speaking and like vices. The divine way is to take up, one after the other, things of almost infinite worth, and by contrast with these, lift love into its anb 0^tx Snterpretationsi right place of absolutely infinite worth.

So here, love is greater than the mightiest gifts for service; greater than angelic and human eloquence combined; greater than the most absolute consecration and utter zeal; greater as a motive and a method than all other motives and methods; greater than knowledge; greater than faith; greater than hope.

Then love is exalted by its qualities. It suffereth long and is kind; is void of envy, self-importance and vanity. Love governs the very manner, and is filled with patience and self-control.

Then the Apostle comes back to the thought of verse two — love is better than knowledge. This is not to say that knowledge is not good, but, as Paul had already warned these knowledge-loving Greeks, “Knowledge puffeth up, but love buildeth up,” There is a tendency

I Cor.
1-3.

I Cor.
13.

I Cor.
4-7.

I Cor.

8-12.

I Cor. viii.

io Room in tfje 3nn

Gen. iii. $.

ATdjf knowledge but
love,

I Cor. ii.

in knowledge to breed pride, and so the believer is reminded that with all his complacency of learning he is but a child, or like one seeing objects but dimly in an ill-lighted mirror, and that as the starlight, though still shining, is swallowed up in the glory of the sunlight, so our tentative and imperfect knowledge, though true in its shadowy way, will *’ vanish away ‘’ when the full knowledge comes.

In our age, when as never before mere knowledge is exalted as the supreme good, it is well worth laying this lesson to heart. We are lavishing untold wealth on libraries and colleges, and this is well, but if this be all, or chief in our American thought, we shall learn in bitterness and overthrow, the old lesson of the Greek that there is no salvation in knowledge for either individuals or nations.

Already, in the small history of anb 0ti)tv interpretations;

HS

this small world, the race has seen much ‘* knowledge” vanish away. The Hamitic knowledge vanished in the Greek, and while the product of the Greek imagination is deathless, Aristotle has given way to Copernicus, iEsculapius to Lord Lister, and Archimedes to Edison — what folly to suppose that the knowledge of these moderns is any whit more eternal than the outworn knowledge of the ancients!

The heart of this beautiful psalm lies in verse seven — Love is greater than faith and hope by as much as that which creates is greater than that which is created. Love is the greatest of the three cardinal graces because it creates the other two: ‘* Love believeth all things, hopeth all things.”

In the thirteenth chapter of Romans love, as in Corinthians, is not an emotion, nor yet a principle, nor even a character, but an entity.

The new
personality — Love.

Rom. xiii.

Jto 3loom in tfje 3nn

Eph. iv. 24.

2 Cor. V.
17.

Gal. vi. IS,
R.V.

John i. 12,
13.

I John iv.
7, 8.

a somewhat to which all the terms of personality may be applied. Love is the fulfilling of the law/* consequently, ‘’ he that loveth hath fulfilled the law.’*

This fact should be allowed to possess the mind; that love, in the Pauline sense, is a state of being which may be conceived of most readily in terms of personality. This may be seen by the substitution of the name of Christ in those great passages where love is described: “Christ suffereth long and is kind, Christ vaunteth not himself.”

So also, without violence, the ‘’ new man “may be substituted. The new man suffereth long and is kind; is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, beareth all things, believeth all things. But the new man is the ‘^ new creation,” the born again one, the child {teknon, literally “born one,”) of God, and this new man, like his Creator, is anil 0t)tt HJnterpretationjBi Love, and therefore loves. That the manifestation of the new man in acts of love is so imperfect is due, of course, to the survival of “the old man,” and to the failure of the believer to “walk in the Spirit,” but the blessed fact remains always, that the new man is “love,” and love is the fulfilling of the law.

It is not that the believer is under the law, and becomes loving by fulfilling it. The precise contrary is true. He is not under the law, and the law worketh not love but wrath. But the believer is, as to his new man, love “and he is ‘* under grace “and so ^’ loveth,” fulfilling the law. He is under, not love of law, but the law of love. To be under law is vainly to seek by way of external obedience, to love God and the neighbor. To be under grace is to love God and the neighbor, by an interior constraint of the

Not law
but love,

Rom. vi.
14.

Rom. iv.
IS-Luke X,
25-28.

Mo 3iom in te Mn

Rom.
5.

X. 4,

Rom. viii.
3, 4.

Heb. viii.

Heb. viii.
10.

renewed nature. Just as no man is really honest who abstains from stealing for fear of the penitentiary, so no man really fulfils the law through fear of the law. An honest man obeys the law because he is an honest man, in utter forgetfulness, often, that there is a law. He ‘* fulfils the law “not because of the law, but because he ^’ loves” the right conduct which, incidentally, the law approves.

The believer ‘’ loves “therefore not because the law commands him to love, but because in his new nature he is a loving man. This is the essence of the new covenant. “I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts.” No better illustration can be found than mother love. Laws may be found on the statute books which prescribe penalties for the neglect of children by their parents; but when a mother says “I must go to my child,” she is not thinking of anb 0ti)tv 3nterpretationj( the statute and its penalties. A law In her heart makes her say “I must.” She usually does not so much as know that there is a statute. Yet when tenderly caring for her child, in obedience to mother love, she is *’ fulfilling ‘’ the statute.