Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13.

One of the greatest orators of all times was Sir Winston Churchill, and who would deny the power of his words during Britain’s darkest hours?  Yet, says 1 Corinthians 13 from the New Testament, the greatest orator in the world is nothing apart from love.   That is why it is so necessary to translate love into the kitchen where you face dirty dishes, and into the laboratory where you rub shoulders with unlovable men and women, and into the classroom where you must learn to love those who disagree with you and actually dislike you.

Writing to the Corinthians Paul said, “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 have not love, I am nothing.”  Stop!  The Corinthians were intrigued by supernatural gifts, and rightly so.   Paul mentions four:  prophecy, the ability to foretell the future; understanding spiritual mysteries; knowledge, and faith.

Paul says though you may be a brilliant scientist who unravels the secrets of the universe but have no love in your life, you are nothing.  Though you may be a person of great spiritual prominence, though you can believe God for great works and see them brought into existence and still are loveless, you are nothing.

The word Paul used means “worthless, meaningless, of no value whatsoever.”  Now was Paul being theatrical?  Or did he mean what he wrote?  Think of it like this.  If you have a very tiny amount of something, you can measure it, you can subtract from it or add to it, but when Paul said, “You are nothing!” that means you do not even rate the dust of the ground.

So that we might know the real from the counterfeit, the apostle Paul took pen in hand and described the power of love in a secular world.  Then wrote Paul, “If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”

John Huss was the greatly loved pastor of the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague.  For 17 years he pastored the most sophisticated church in the city.  People waited for hours to hear the Gospel and it revolutionized the city.  But when he attacked the corruption of the aristocratic landowners and the abuses of the church, he made enemies.  He preached in his native Bohemian tongue and the masses loved him.  The message of Huss was “Every saint is a priest, but every priest is not a saint.”  When I visited the Cathedral in Constance in Switzerland, in broken communication I asked one of the attendants to point out the spot where John Huss stood when he was finally condemned to his death for preaching to the masses.  It was sobering to stand in that place and realize that Huss was a man who was willing to die for his convictions.  Huss gave his body to be burned rather than recant what he had said and done.  As the flames licked at his body, Huss said, “I have said the truth according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, so I’ll choose to die–and gladly.”

Have you the convictions of a John Huss?  If you have, and still have no love in your life, Paul says you are still nothing!  Paul’s words have a way of getting under your skin, of making you look yourself straight in the eye and realize that no matter what great charitable causes you support, even to the extent of giving away everything you have, or giving your body to be burned at the stake–without love, you are nothing.   And that is pretty insignificant.

Resource reading: 1 Corinthians 13:1-3