THE PEARLS OF PAUL
THE LOVE CHAPTER- PART IV
DR. JIM DIXON
1 CORINTHIANS 13:4-7
SEPTEMBER 5, 1999
Bill Cowher is the Coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, an NFL franchise. He became the Head Coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1992. He is loved by his players, and he is generally considered to be a great coach. Of course, in the year 1997, Bill Cowher led his team all the way to the AFC Championship game where they lost to the infinitely superior Denver Broncos.
Now, a few years ago, Bill Cowher was at a civic luncheon in Pittsburgh, and he was seated right next to a woman that he had never met before, never seen before. So, he introduced himself and then she introduced herself. He said to her, “Well, what do you do?” She was kind of taken back. She said, “Well, I’m the Mayor of the city of Pittsburgh.”
It might seem strange to you that Bill Cowher could live in the city of Pittsburgh, coach the Pittsburgh Steelers and have no clue who the mayor of the city was, but those who know Bill Cowher say that it’s not surprising at all. They say that he has singularity of focus, and outside of his focus, he is kind of blissfully ignorant. Now, he has two primary focuses in his life, and one is his family. Bill Cowher loves his wife and three daughters, but his other focus is, of course, football. He pours all of his labor and thought and energy into football. Of course, most of us, as Christians, would like to be perhaps a little more well-rounded in terms of our focus, and yet is it not true that we, too, need to, at times, have singularity of focus. Our focus, of course, cannot be football.
Football is fun, and it can be a nice form of diversion and certainly entertaining, but it’s not worthy of the Christian’s primary focus. Even our families, as important as they are, and they are important, are not worthy of our primary focus. As Christians, the Bible makes it clear, our primary focus is to be on Jesus Christ, and in Christ, our primary focus is to be on love because this is what Christ is seeking to accomplish in your life and mine. He is seeking to make us more loving. He is seeking to make us more like Himself. He is seeking to instill in us agape or divine love.
At the end of 1 Corinthians, chapter 13, at the end of the love chapter and at the very beginning of the next chapter, 1 Corinthians 14:1, Paul makes this statement: “Make love your aim.” Make love your focus. Make love your aim. The tense of the Greek is present continuous, so it means “in perpetuity make love your focus.” Always make love your aim. This morning, as we continue to examine 1 Corinthians, chapter 13, we are making love our focus.
Now, in these verses, Paul describes love in four negative ways. He tells us that there are four things that love will never do, and these comprise our four teachings this morning. First of all, love is not arrogant. Love is not arrogant. Agape love, divine love, God’s love—it’s not arrogant.
Down in Colorado Springs, high above the Broadmoor Hotel, not too far from the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, there is the Will Rogers Shrine. Many of you have been there. Will Rogers was, of course, a kind of cowboy philosopher. His homespun humor made him beloved of people all over America and, indeed, all over the world. He died tragically at the age of 56 in an airplane crash off the coast of Alaska. The body of Will Rogers is not down at the Will Rogers Shrine. The body of Will Rogers is at the Will Rogers Memorial in Claymore, Oklahoma. At that memorial at Claymore, Oklahoma, there is a statue of Will Rogers. It’s almost exactly like the statue of Will Rogers in front of the capitol in Washington, D.C. On this statue of Will Rogers in Claymore, Oklahoma, there is an inscription, and it quotes Will Rogers’ most famous statement, and that statement was, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” That’s what Will Rogers said. “I never met a man I didn’t like.” Of course, he was speaking generically. “I never met a ‘person’ I didn’t like.”
Will Rogers, of course, never met Howard Stern. There were many people Will Rogers never met. Those who knew Will Rogers best tell us that the statement isn’t entirely true. The truth is Will Rogers didn’t like everybody. In fact, those who knew Will Rogers best tell us that Will Rogers did not like arrogant people. He could not stand people who were arrogant. I think most of us feel like Will Rogers did. Most of us do not like arrogance.
The biblical Greek word for arrogance here is the Greek word “phusioo.” It means “to literally blow up or inflate,” “to be arrogant.” To be arrogant is to have an inflated view of yourself. To be arrogant is to believe that you are more important than other people. To be arrogant is to believe that you are superior to other people.
Some people have intellectual arrogance. Perhaps they have a high IQ. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if they’re arrogant, they believe that their high intelligence somehow makes them superior to other people, somehow makes them more important than other people. Intellectual arrogance.
Some people have socioeconomic arrogance. In England, in the 1600s, for the very first time, common people were allowed to attend Cambridge University. In the prior centuries, only members of the nobility could attend Cambridge University. Members of the upper classes, the wealthy, the socially prominent, they could be educated at Cambridge. No one else. Common people could not go to Cambridge. But in the 1600s, the decision was made to change all that. For the first time, commoners were invited to Cambridge, but all commoners had to sign a special document. They had to sign a special document wherein they put their name after the Latin words, “sine nobilitatae,” “without nobility.” They had to sign a document that they were without nobility. “Sine nobilitatae” was abbreviated “S.Nob,” so that it literally spelled “snob.” The nobility at Cambridge in that century sometimes called commoners snobs, but historians tell us that the meaning of the word flipflopped, and over time, members of the nobility were called snobs.
What kind of snobs were they? They were socioeconomic snobs. You see, their arrogance was socioeconomic. God doesn’t like arrogance. He doesn’t like intellectual arrogance. He doesn’t like socioeconomic arrogance. He doesn’t like snobbery. God doesn’t even like spiritual arrogance. Of course, some people have spiritual arrogance, and they feel superior because of their spirituality. The Pharisees were like that.
It was Jesus who told the story where two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thusly with himself, “God, I thank you that I’m not like other people, extortioners, doers of evil, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. For I fast twice a week, and I give tithes of all that I have.” But the tax collector, Jesus said, standing far off, would not even lift his eyes towards heaven but beat his breasts saying, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Jesus said, “Truly, I tell you. That man went back to his home justified, and not the other. For he who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.” You see, Christ hates spiritual arrogance. Indeed, God hates all arrogance. And love is not arrogant. If you have divine love, you don’t think yourself more important than others.
The Bible tells us that every single person in this world is soul sick. Everyone. Every woman and man on the planet is soul sick. The reason for that is the human race is fallen. The reason for that is that we are all sinners, and as sinners, as fallen humanity, our very souls are damaged. We have the guilt deep within us, the guilt of sin and separation from God.
Nobody is arrogant in their soul. Everybody, in their soul, has low self-esteem. They might not be conscious of it, but consciously or subconsciously every single man and woman in this world has low self-esteem because they are soul sick. Nobody is arrogant at the core. Arrogance is a garment we put on. Some people put it on to try to compensate for their low self-esteem, but arrogance is a garment we put on.
It was Satan who first put that garment on. Throughout human history, many have worn this garment, from Nebuchadnezzar the great king of Babylon to Napoleon Bonaparte. There are people in your neighborhood, people where you work, maybe people in your family who wear this garment. Maybe some of you have placed this garment on. But love is not arrogant. It does not choose to wear the garment of arrogance. The Bible tells us, “Clothe yourself, all of you, with humility. For God opposes the proud but He gives grace to the humble.” So, love clothes itself with humility. It is not arrogant. It does not think itself more important than others.
Then secondly, Paul says love is not rude. It’s not rude. Now, the Greek word here is “aschemoneo.” I want to illustrate this Greek word in kind of an unusual way. Just this last month, scientists and astronomers have made public a discovery of a mysterious object in space. This discovery has been reported on in astronomical and scientific journals. It’s even been disclosed in the most recent issue of Time Magazine. Scientists have discovered a mysterious object in space. The truth is that scientists at the California Institute of Technology made this discovery three years ago, but they just made it public this month.
It was three years ago that they discovered this mysterious object in the constellation serpents. It cannot be seen with the naked eye, only with a powerful telescope. Through a powerful telescope, this object looks like perhaps an unusual star with unusual coloring. But as they did spectral analysis of this object, and as they did computer graphing, they understood this was not a star. It was not any form of star, and so they were mystified. Perhaps it was a distant galaxy. They did spectral analysis again and computer graphing, but they found it was not a galaxy. Perhaps it was a quasar, but again, they found that it did not fit the form, it did not fit the patterns of any of these things. The spectral analysis revealed a form, a pattern, that was unknown and not normal. It was not the pattern of a star, not the pattern of a galaxy, not the pattern of a quasar. It was a complete mystery. To this day, scientists are calling it “the mystery object.”
The Greek word that would be used to describe an object like that is this word in our verse for today, “aschemoneo.” It comes from the word “schema,” which means form or pattern, and “aschemoneo” means “without normal form, without normal pattern.” You see, that’s why the object is mysterious. It’s without normal form. It’s without normal pattern.
The word aschemoneo was used socially in the Greek world because there are social forms and there are social patterns just like there are physical or scientific forms and patterns. And, of course, our social forms, our social patterns, comprise what we call civility or courtesy or politeness. If someone says hello to you, you’re supposed to say hello back. That’s part of the pattern. That’s part of the form. If someone gives you a gift, you’re supposed to say thank you. That’s part of the proper form and the proper pattern. But this word was used to describe people who socially did not have the proper form or pattern. They were considered to be rude, without proper form socially, without proper form in their behavior towards others. Rudeness.
Now, there’s a lot of rudeness in this world, and we all, at times, lose form. When we think of proper form as the form of Christ, the kindness of Christ, the courtesy of Christ, we all, at times, lose form, don’t we? Even those of us who take the name of Christ and call ourselves Christians lose form.
Years ago, there was a movie called “Fried Green Tomatoes.” I didn’t see it. Barbara did. Barb told me there was a scene in the movie that reflects an actual event which took place years before. The movie kind of changed the scene, but in the original event, what happened was there was an elderly wealthy lady who decided to go into town. She brought her luxury car. As she needed a parking place, she saw that somebody just got into their car and was going to back out, so she waited. She waited for the person to leave, and she waited quite a while because the person was kind of slow, but she was patient. Finally, the person back out. She was just about to pull her car into the parking place when suddenly a young man came zipping up in his car and just zoomed right into the parking space and took it from her. She was angry. She rolled down her window and she shouted, ‘That was rude! Why did you do that?” He looked at her and he said, “Because I am young, I’m quick, and I’m in a hurry.”
Well, he went into a business, went into a building, and came out a few minutes later and was stunned. This elderly woman was taking her luxury car and using it to ram his car. She was putting it in reverse, and then back into forward, and she was just plowing into his car again and again, just destroying it. He said, “What are you doing? Why are you doing that?” She said, “Because I am old, I am mad, and I am rich!”
Supposedly that really happened. It’s not that hard to believe. It’s not that hard to believe because we live in a rude world. Certainly, that elderly woman lost her form. The young man who stole her parking place… you’ve got to wonder whether he even ever had form. The reality is there’s a lot of rudeness out there. We live in a rude world with an absence of civility and courtesy and politeness because there’s not enough love—not enough agape love, not enough divine love.
Sometimes rudeness is kind of subtle, and each of us can be rude. I know at times I’ve been rude. I want to tell a little story about something that happened 27 years ago. Now, I’m sure I’m rude almost every day… In any event, 27 years ago, an incident took place, and I’ve told some of you this. Twenty-seven years ago, I was in seminary. I had completed my Master of Divinity and I was working on a Th.D., working on my doctorate. I thought that I wanted to teach at a college or university or perhaps a seminary, but I wanted to teach theology.
I saw that there was an opening at a college in southern California, an opening for a Professor of Theology. I called up to throw my hat in the ring. They said they would be glad to put me on the list. I said, “The list? How long is it?” They said, “140 people.” I said, “140 people? How many of these people who are applying for the job have doctorates, Th.Ds. or Ph.Ds.?” They said, “113.” Well, suddenly I realized there was just a glut of people with doctorates in theology and not enough jobs to go around. I began to think through what I wanted to do with my life, and I began to pray about it. For the first time in my life, I began to feel an openness towards working in the local church. I never thought I would ever work in a church.
I went to the placement services at the seminary, and I said I wanted to interview with some churches. They said there were some senior pastors who would be visiting the campus, and they would set up appointments for me. They set up three appointments for me one Monday. They set an appointment up for me with the Pastor of Granada Hills Presbyterian Church, PCUSA, in southern California. I was told the time and the place where I was to meet the Senior Pastor of Granada Hills Presbyterian Church and be interviewed by him. I didn’t remember his name, but it didn’t worry me because I knew where I was to go and meet him.
I went to the room at the right time and knocked on the door. He opened the door and he said hi with a friendly face, shook my hand, and he gave me his name. I was kind of nervous and preoccupied, and somehow his name didn’t register with me. Then I sat down, and he began to interview me. He began to tell me things about the church where he served. He began to ask me questions about myself. Finally, he said to me, “Jim, if you come to Granada Hills Presbyterian Church, if you come on our staff, you’re not going to need to be a Billy Graham,” and I was thankful for that because I knew that I didn’t have the call or the anointing. He said, “You don’t have to be an Oral Roberts,” and I was grateful for that. He said, “You don’t need to be a Burt Smith.” I thought for a moment, “Who is that?” Finally, I began to just laugh out loud, and I said, “Burt Smith? Who in the world is Burt Smith?” This guy just kind of reeled back in his chair and he said, “I’m Burt Smith!”
Needless to say, I didn’t get the job, but through the whole rest of the interview, I couldn’t stop laughing. I just couldn’t believe what a fool I had been. I couldn’t believe how stupid I had been. But I had not only been a fool. I had not only been stupid, I’d also been rude. You see, I’d been rude because it’s rude to shake somebody’s hand but not really focus on them. It’s rude when somebody gives you their name and you don’t even pay attention. It’s rude and it’s the absence of love because love focuses on others, cares about others. It is not rude, and it doesn’t lose the form of Christ.
Well, thirdly Paul tells us love does not insist on its own way. Love does not insist on its own way. The Greek phrase here is “zetei ta heautes,” which literally means, “love does not seek the things of self.”
We saw earlier how there is a mystery object in space. The truth is there are many mysteries in the universe, and most of the great scientific minds are humbled by the mysteries of the creation. Now, it is true that science is growing in its knowledge and astronomers are growing in their knowledge of the universe. Some of the mysteries are kind of unraveling. Black holes used to be a great mystery, but science is understanding more and more about black holes.
You’ve all heard of black holes. Scientists believe that there’s a black hole at the center of every galaxy, at least a black hole at the center of every spiral galaxy. Of course, a black hole has incomprehensible power. A black hole is matter that has literally compressed. It’s matter that has literally caved in upon itself, and it is so dense that it has an incomprehensible gravitational pull. Not even light can escape its gravitational pull. That’s why black holes are black. Of course, they draw matter from space. They just suck matter out of the void into the vortex of the hole itself.
Scientists cannot see a black hole because they are black, but they can see the effects of a black hole. They can see what they call the “accretion disk” which is the growing disk of spiraling material that’s being slowly drawn into what they call “the maw” or “the mouth” or “the throat” of the black hole, slowly being sucked into the vortex. They can see this spiraling matter approaching the black hole. Indeed, just recently at the NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Institute, they’ve discovered that, by observing the redshift effect, that some matter is going into black holes at 6.5 million miles an hour. Unbelievable.
Scientists now understand that black holes used to be stars. Black holes used to be stars, and these are stars that have just collapsed. They’ve just cratered. They’ve just turned inward upon themselves, and that’s where they get their density. They used to give light but now they take light. They used to give life, perhaps, but now they take life. Black holes once were stars. They are stars turned inward. They say our own star, the sun, which has a diameter of 865 thousand miles… if all of its matter were condensed into a diameter of one mile, it would become a black hole, and it would just suck our solar system into its vortex and all of the asteroids in the asteroid belt. And it would begin to draw nearby neighboring stars towards itself. Everything would be focused on itself. It would insist on its own way. It would seek the things of self.
There’s an analogy here. People were meant to be stars. I was meant to be a star. You were meant to be a star, meant to give light, meant to give life. And yet the human race is fallen, and there’s a little bit of a black hole in each of us, and it’s called the sin nature. When a person just gives way to the sin nature, they literally become like a black hole. They’re just caved in upon themselves, and all their focus turns inward. Instead of giving light, they take light. Instead of giving life, they take life. They view everything that surrounds them as theirs to use and abuse. They just literally are self-centered and self-focused. There are people like that in the world. Of course, that’s reflective of a fallen world.
The Bible says that in the last days, people will be “philautos.” That Greek word means “lovers of self,” but it’s not used in a positive sense. I mean there is a sense in which all of us are to love ourselves because God loves us and He created us, but philautos means to be self-centered. The Bible is saying in the last days, the human race is going to be self-centered. Of course, we live in a world like that, a world that is self-centered.
Most of you have heard of Narcissus. You don’t even have to know Greek mythology to know the story of Narcissus. It was really the Roman poet Ovid who, in his collection of tales called Metamorphoses, gave the most famous version of the Narcissus story. According to Ovid, Narcissus was handsome, so handsome that all the women loved him, and they courted him for his beauty. But he was prideful, and he was focused on himself, and he felt superior to all women. He turned them all down. The gods became angry, and so they pronounced judgement upon Narcissus, and they sent him to Mt. Helicon in Greece, and they ruled that he had to sit there by a reflecting pool for the rest of his life, just looking into that reflecting pool. And so he did, and he just marveled at his own beauty as he examined his features in the pool. He did this day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, until slowly he began to decay and to rot. Finally, he just became dust, and from that spot a flower grew called the narcissus flower. That was the old story.
But, you see, even the Greeks and even the Romans understood it’s a dangerous thing to focus on yourself too greatly. It’s a dangerous thing to give too much focus, too much attention, to yourself. It’s not healthy. Even the Romans and the Greeks understood that.
This is Labor Day Weekend. Labor Day was established in 1894 by the decree of President Grover Cleveland. He signed a document making the first Monday in September a national holiday where we honor labor. The truth is that in many decades before, individual states had already established labor days where labor was honored because it was all part of the Protestant work ethic that came out of the Protestant Reformation. Labor was considered to be dignified. If it was honest and if it was moral, that labor, whatever form the labor took, was viewed as a service of God and a service of man. That’s what made labor great. It was how we serve God and how we serve each other. Labor.
And yet, ask yourself, when you last viewed your job that way? I mean, do you wake up in the morning and do you think, “Boy! I can’t wait to get to work because this is a way in which I serve God, and this is a way in which I serve people”? That’s how you are supposed to feel about labor. But, you see, philautos, self-centeredness, has just permeated our culture. Now, most of us approach our jobs or whatever we do with the question, “What’s in it for me?” People look at their jobs and say, “How can I prosper myself? How can I pleasure myself?” Because we live in a world that is becoming increasingly self-centered. But love is not like that. Love focuses on the service of God and the service of people, and so it does not seek the things of self.
Well, finally, love is not irritable. I just want to say a few brief words. The word for irritable is the word “paroxynetai.” Some of you, I’m sure, golf. Maybe quite a few of you have golfed before. I know that whenever I golf, I rarely hit the ball in the fairway. I oftentimes send the ball off into the rough. I wind up walking into the weeds looking for my golf ball. And you know how that is, perhaps. You walk through the weeds and sometimes you get thorns stuck in your socks. I mean, have you ever had that happen to you as you’re walking through a field? You get thorns kinds of stuck in your socks? You get those little prickly things, and they irritate, don’t they? If you’re golfing, maybe you play another hole or two, but after a while you just think, “Man, I’ve got to get rid of those things,” and you start trying to pull them out of your socks. That’s what this Greek word describes, “paroxynetai.” It describes those things which irritate, prickly things which irritate.
Greek scholars are divided with regard to this teaching. Some Greek scholars think that Paul’s meaning here is people who have divine love, people who are loving, do not irritate other people. Love is not irritable. People who are loving do not irritate others. Other scholars believe that it means people who have divine love are not easily irritated by others. Probably we should include both meanings within this. If you’re really loving, you don’t want to irritate others and you’re not easily irritated by others.
Now, we all can be irritating. I know at times I can be. I want to tell you a little story, as we close, on myself. This also took place a long time ago when I was growing up. All of my sins are so old. This took place a long time ago when I was growing up in California. Mv brothers and I, we were blessed to live in La Cañada, California. My father and mother had bought a home up there in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. Really, there was nothing but just sagebrush and forest around us. Mv dad wanted mv brothers and me to have a really good time. He really made the place fun. He put in a swimming pool. He put in a basketball court. He put in a shuffleboard court. Now all of you, I’m sure, have played shuffleboard. Perhaps it’s been a long time, but most of you have played shuffleboard.
My brothers and I were very competitive. One afternoon, my brother Greg and I were playing shuffleboard. The winner was whoever reached 100 points first. In shuffleboard, at either end of the shuffleboard court there is a triangle. At the top of the triangle, you can score 10 points. There is a little section where you can score 10 points. At the base of the triangle, it’s minus 10 points, and then there are a couple of sections where you can score 8 or 7 points, and you try to push them into the right spot.
Well, the match was ending up, and we were both drawing near 100. I had one puck left and Greg was done. It looked like he was to win because he had just gone over 100 and I only had 85. I pushed two pucks, but they were on lines. He had a puck in the 10 and a puck in the 8 and a puck in the 7, so it looked like he was going to break 100 and I was going to lose. On my final push, I pushed the puck down the shuffleboard court, and everything just went crazy. It knocked all of his scores out. It sent one of them in a 10 off, and it knocked all of mine off the lines and made them score so that I went over 100 and he went under 100, and I won!
Greg became very angry. He was very angry. He turned to me, and he said, “That was the luckiest shot I’ve ever seen!” That very thought had occurred to me! It really was lucky, but then my response was very irritating. My response was very irritating. I said, “Well, it was what I was trying to do!”
Isn’t that irritating? I mean, that is so irritating! My brother Greg just lost it because, at that point, he was easily irritated. He took the shuffleboard stick, the push stick made out of aluminum, and he just swung it at me and it just like wrapped around my legs, because when aluminum meet steel, that’s what happens! Just kidding!
But isn’t it true in all of our relationships that sometimes we can be irritating and sometimes easily irritated? Isn’t that true at work? Isn’t that true at home? It can even be true at church. And yet love is not like that. Love seeks not to irritate, and love is not easily irritated. So, we who take the name of Christ and call ourselves Christians, we’ve made love our aim. If we’ve made love our aim, then we want to avoid arrogance, recognizing that we are not more important than others, and we want to avoid rudeness. We want to keep the form of Christ. We want to be courteous and polite. We want to be civil towards people.
If we want to make love our aim, then we don’t want to be turned in on ourselves. We don’t want to insist on the things of self. We don’t want to be self-focused. We want to serve God, and we want to serve each other. If we’ve made love our aim, then we’re going to seek to avoid irritability, trying not to irritate others or to be irritated by them. This ends the teaching from God’s holy word. Let’s pray together as we close.