Love Came Down at Christmas
By Sinclair Ferguson
Read: I Corinthians 13
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Christmas time again and, to borrow the words of John Paul Young’s song, “Love is in the air.” (“Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh” was how the chorus eloquently ended, if I remember rightly.)
Love is “in the air” every Christmas. It features in the songs we hear as we shop for presents and in the commercials we see on TV (“Show someone they’re loved this Christmas,” as one department-store slogan put it). Love is present in the cards we send and in the words we write on the tags we attach to the presents we give (“With love from…”).
It is a theme that is also likely to feature prominently in the annual round of Christmas interviews in the magazines and newspapers. Each year various famous people are inevitably asked what Christmas means to them. Whether they’re an actor, a musician, or some sort of reality-TV “star,” the answers are usually similar. “Well, it means… I wish people would just love each other. That’s what Christmas is really all about, isn’t it? That’s what it means to me, anyway. Yes, love.”
Everyone seems to agree: Christmas is about love.
As Christians, we can attest that this much is true. Christmas exists only because of love. But what if the interviewers were to follow up by asking the “why?” and the “what?” questions? “Why is Christmas all about love?” and “What do you mean by ‘love’?”
Imagine for a moment that one of the famous people they were interviewing were a Christian. It might come as a shock to the reporter if their interviewee responded to the “why?” question by saying:
Christmas is about love because Love came down at Christmas. That’s why we have Christmas in the first place! The meaning of Christmas is found in the message of Christmas: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3 v 16).
And what if the interviewee, now on a roll, continued, “And you asked me what love is, didn’t you? The apostle Paul tells us in the Bible. He knew what love is because he had experienced God’s love for him in Jesus. He wrote that ‘The Son of God … loved me and gave himself for me’ (Galatians 2 v 20). In fact, he devoted an entire section of one of his letters to a church explaining what love is—I remember learning it by heart a few years ago!” Can you imagine someone reciting these words?
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13 v 1-13)
The poor interviewer might be left lamely asking, “Could you say that in just a few words?”!
In fact, you could do it in two words: Jesus Christ. He shows us what love is. Love is simply being like him.
So, love is a lot more than just having good feelings about someone else. It is the greatest thing in the world, but it is also the most demanding.
The Christian faith has a grammar all of its own. If we mess up the grammar of a language, we will not be able to speak it properly. In the grammar of the Christian faith, what we are called to be and do is rooted in who God is and what he has done for us in Christ. So the resources we need to love others are found in the love of Jesus Christ for us. That is why, when we read Paul’s words, we need to keep our ears open for echoes of Jesus’ life and look for his shadow falling on every line.
So, take a few moments to read that passage, preferably out loud (it was originally written to be read that way). When you come to the second paragraph, wherever you see the word “love” or “it,” substitute your own name. See how far you get!
Then, read the chapter again. But this time, in the same second paragraph, when you see “love” or “it” substitute the name “Jesus”—and read to the end.
These two ways of reading the passage go together. The first tells us what we are called to be as Christians— and exposes how far short we have fallen. The second tells us what Jesus is like. In the days leading up to Christmas, we are going to walk through this passage line by line and explore what it means for us.
“Why choose this passage for Advent?” one might ask. 1 Corinthians 13 is among the best-known chapters in the Bible. Quotations from it or references to it appear in some unexpected places. Bob Dylan alluded to it in his song “Dignity” released in 1994. Prince Charles read it at Diana’s funeral service in 1997. President Obama referred to it in his first inaugural speech in 2009. Perhaps no words have been read more frequently at wedding services than these.
But when you slow them down, and read them phrase by phrase, and apply them to yourself, they transpose into a different key altogether. They cease to be rhetorically pleasing and emotionally soothing; instead they become an analysis of your spiritual life. They are deeply challenging.
Perhaps that’s not what we expect at Christmas time. But the real meaning of the Christmas story is challenging as well as heart-warming. It is about love coming down. And it makes us think about love in a new way. So, let’s take a deep breath and begin to explore how and why Love came down at Christmas—and the difference this makes to our lives.
