But the Greatest of These is Love
Can I [Brenna] make a confession? 10 or 11 years ago, when City Church was just beginning to move toward an affirming posture with the LGBTQ+ community, I was really irritated when people “side-stepped” what I considered big, weighty Scriptural questions with something like, “well, it all comes down to love.” Back then, I wanted to be affirming, but I also really wanted to figure out how to reconcile that impulse with all those passages in the Bible people always brought up.
I think about it so much differently these days. While I still value Scripture deeply, while I’m glad for the opportunities I’ve had to wrestle with and understand better the context behind those “clobber passages” Bill and David unpacked for us so masterfully this past Sunday, I also now agree: it all comes down to love. Because there will always be questions, there will always be different interpretations of various passages, we’ll never be sure we’ve gotten it right on any given one, and we can be absolutely certain we’re wrong about many, many things!
But here is what Scripture itself assures us, speaking through the Apostle Paul in 1 Cor. 13:
“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing… Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
Understanding is good, giving to the poor is good. But the heart driving these things matters most. With whatever partial knowledge we have, are we operating out of love?
Perhaps you’d like to talk these things over with Jesus. You can bring him your questions - you can bring him your heart.