The climax of this “Love Chapter of the Bible” comes in these words:

1 Corinthians 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

 Love is the greatest, the best, above everything else, supreme. As great as faith and hope are, love is greater. There is an enduring quality to faith and hope, but they are things of this world. Of the three, love is the one that will continue in the live to come. All three are necessary here on earth. Without faith it is impossible to please God. But faith without love is something cold. Hope without love loses its meaning. Love is over all, and love lasts forever. And remember, we are talking about God’s love. That is why it is called the greatest. In a very real sense, love is our foretaste of eternal life with God, given to us now and shared with our brothers and sisters.

We have to remember that the world continues to corrupt what love should be.  Whitney Houston was an enormous talent and a tragic story. People remember her for her powerful performance of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.” But before that, almost forty years ago, she had another huge hit: “The Greatest Love of All.” That song had this refrain: “Because the greatest love of all is happening to me, I found the greatest love of all inside of me.”  She had an amazing voice and did a fabulous job on that song. But do you what that song identified as “the greatest love of all?” That song says: “Learning to love yourself, it is the greatest love of all.” That is the wisdom of this world, which is a distortion of the love that really is the greatest.

That distortion leads to the self-centered mentality that is so prevalent in our world. The mindset of this world is that love accepts people as they are and allows them to remain in their sinful condition. “Don’t tell me I have to stop doing what I want to do. That is not loving.” The world tries to tell us it is loving to abort babies, to kill the aged or terminally ill. The world wants us to believe that love approves of behavior that God tells us is outside of His will. When we hear people advocating this mentality, we are tempted to respond with anger and disgust. You know what we need to do to those people? Love them. We need to love them the way Jesus loves them. We need to care for them and show them that God has something better for them. We need to love them.

The greatest love of all has happened to you. It is not coming from within you or from another person. The greatest love of all has happened and is happening to you in Christ Jesus. God’s love, the greatest, has been shown to you so that you might have forgiveness and eternal life. That is the greatest love of all. That is the love He wants you to share.