Love Does Not Envy or Boast; Love is Not Proud (1 Corinthians Sermon 48)

Pastor Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. The main subject of the sermon is how love manifests itself as not being envious, boastful, or proud.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT -

So I'd like to ask that you turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 13. So we continue to make our way through this incredible chapter, the love chapter. Now, the ancient Israelites, as they encountered the living God at Mount Sinai, he descended in fire on that mountain. And he spoke to them out of the cloud, and as he did, they saw no form of any kind, and they were forbidden to make any artistic representation of God of anything they saw in the heavens above or in the Earth beneath, or the waters below. They were forbidden to make any artistic representations; instead, God through the Holy Spirit gave the Israelites words, descriptions, character traits of Almighty God. For example, Moses, when he went up on that same mountain, heard the Lord speak his name, the Lord the Lord, and then gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love. These are virtues, these are character traits or attributes of God, and the Bible is filled with these descriptions, we have these God is statements. For example, God is Spirit, meaning you can't make any physical representation of him. No artistic rendition of God can be made. God is light, and in him there's no darkness at all. And then beautifully, God is love. These are the descriptions we have.

Well, similarly in the New Testament, when the Word became flesh, became an actual human being, Jesus Christ born of the Virgin Mary, had an actual physical body, but we have no physical descriptions of Jesus, we don't know what his cheek bones look like, we don't know the color of his hair, how long it was, we don't know what his eyes look like, the shape of his nose, none of those things matter, we have no portrait of Jesus physically given to us in the New Testament, instead, similarly to Almighty God, we have words that are given that describe who Jesus is, and I believe 1 Corinthians 13 is a portrait of Jesus, the perfect man of love: the perfect man of love.

I. The Portrait of Christ Multiplied

Now, some preachers, I've listened to a lot of sermons on 1 Corinthians 13, trying to understand how best to preach this incredible chapter. And one preacher I heard said, “We ought to insert our own name in these descriptions,” so this is what it would sound for me, and I can't do it very long because it becomes difficult such as: Andy is patient, Andy is kind, Andy does not envy, I'm gonna stop right there. Because it's not true, I wish it were. I wish that this would perfectly describe me, and I think you can do the same thing, you can insert, not my name, but your name in there and put your own name, and then you can see how convicting this chapter can be. But Jesus Christ lived out this perfect love every day of his life. Jesus was the perfect fulfillment of the Law of God, the two great commandments, vertically to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, horizontally to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus is the only man that has ever fulfilled both of these perfectly. Now we, in our minds should go ahead to the cross, that's where we get the perfect picture of Jesus, the man of love. He loved his Father perfectly by going to the cross. He said in John 14:31, “The world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what the Father has commanded me to do.” In other words, going to the cross, Jesus' death on the cross under the wrath of God was a perfect display, vertically, of his love for God.

It was also a perfect display of his love horizontally for others. As it says in 1 John 3:16, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” But Christ's perfect love for other people was put on display before he ever went to the cross, every single day of his life, so therefore, we can look at these words as a beautiful portrait of Jesus. We can say Jesus was patient. Jesus was kind, Jesus did not envy, Jesus did not boast, Jesus was not arrogant. Jesus was not rude. Jesus was not self-seeking, Jesus was not easily angered, etcetera, this is a perfect portrait of Jesus Christ.

Now, in our salvation, in our sanctification, once we have been justified, once our sins have been forgiven through faith in Christ, we begin that internal journey of sanctification, of growth in godliness, of growth in Christ-likeness. And so the indwelling Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit enters us at conversion, he begins to form the portrait of Jesus in our souls, not a physical likeness, we don't physically look like Jesus, we don't know what he looked like. But every day, the Holy Spirit transforms us more and more by the ministry of the Word to make us like Christ. And so it says in Romans 8:29, “For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son.” So that's the work of the Holy Spirit in us in sanctification, that we would be conformed to Christ, the Holy Spirit within us, the indwelling Spirit inside a Christian's heart is a skilled artist, and he takes the same paint brush and paint of the Word, of words, and works them in our souls, he paints Christ in our souls, we become gloriously conformed to Christ, and that means we will become perfectly loving.

Now, this is an incredible work on the part of the Holy Spirit, this is an incredible work, because, look who he has to work with. John the Baptist called his generation, the people that came to listen to him, especially his enemies, a brood of vipers. The Apostle Paul picks up this image in Romans 3, talking about the natural human being apart from regeneration, is like a brood of vipers. He says, “Their throats are open graves, their tongues practice deceit, the poison of vipers is on their lips, their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood, ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.” That's who we were apart from the transforming work of the gospel, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, a brood of vipers. So picture a whole kind of nest of wriggling, writhing poisonous snakes, they're hissing and snapping at each other with bared fangs, or maybe you could picture a bunch of junkyard dogs snarling, barking, circling each other, ready to go for the throat, that's what we are naturally, apart from the grace of the gospel.

This is the raw material that the sovereign artist, the Spirit of God has to transform and some day he's gonna take this pen of junkyard, rabid dogs and make us in heaven, a colony, more than that, a city, a nation, a world of perfectly conformed to Christ, people, redeemed, perfectly loving, and that's something we can look forward to. Now, 1 Corinthians 13 really is law, it is the law of God, and we need to understand that. That's why when we read it, we have this initial sting, this initial conviction comes on us. The law of God is perfectly summed up in love. Romans 13:10 says, “Love is the fulfillment of the law.” Now, the law is relentless. The law cannot justify us, the law cannot forgive us for the times we violate it; however, justification is a gift of God to all who believe in Jesus. Jesus' perfect obedience of the law is ascribed to us; it's imputed to us as a gift, so that, by faith, we are seen by God to be as obedient to the law as Christ was. We are seen to be as loving to each other as Jesus was to those around him.

"The law cannot justify us, the law cannot forgive us for the times we violate it; however, justification is a gift of God to all who believe in Jesus."

Now, once we have been justified through faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit then brings us back to the law of love and says, “Now, obey this. Obey this.” And so, yes, it's relentless, but at the same time, it's powerfully transforming as we look at the law, we don't have to prove ourselves, we could never do that, but we know now based on this law of love how we are to live, and as we gaze into 1 Corinthians 13, it's really gazing not only at a portrait of Jesus, what we should be, but we're also looking as in a mirror at what we are, and both of those things happen. I wanna grab an image from one of my favorite Michael Card songs, Michael Card's a Christian artist, and he wrote a song called, “When a Window is a Mirror” and so I want you to picture this image, I'm gonna expand it a little bit. Imagine that you love to hike, and you pick out a mountain in the Rockies and you go on a vacation out there and you rent a cabin with a fantastic view of the mountain that you're intending to hike, and you wake up just before dawn and you look through the window at the mountain, you can see a beautiful view of it, right up to the summit, maybe you can even see the path you're gonna travel, the course you're gonna take, the path, the trail you're gonna hike, but as you're looking in the low light of the early, early morning, you can also see a reflection of your own face, so you can see your face and you can see through the window, the distance you have yet to travel as well, and that's what happens with this mirror that is also a window. We can see where we're going, we can also see who we are.

Now, this idea of the law as a mirror comes from James, we just finished going through the whole Book of James, and you remember James 1:22-25, James says, “Do not merely listen to the Word, and so deceive yourselves, do what it says. Anyone who listens to the Word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in the mirror and then goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it, he'll be blessed in what he does.”

And so we look into the law of love here in 1 Corinthians 13. We gaze into this, and then James calls it, the perfect law that gives freedom, we are set free from some invisible chains that have held us back from being truly free, truly loving, and so we're about to embark in 1 Corinthians 13 on a series of negatives, 1 Corinthians 13 gets very negative. Those are the chains, the invisible chains that hold us back from really loving one another. There are eight negatives in all, one after the other, we're gonna look at three of them this morning. But look at verses 4-6, “Love does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil.” Do you see that? Eight straight negatives. Why, all these negatives? Well, I believe you could picture the first man, Adam, before he fell into sin as a pure human being, ready to love God with all of his heart, ready to love others as himself, ready to love creation, not idolize it or make an idol of it, but see God's glory in it. He was ready, this effusive, beautiful spring of love, ready to flow, but sin made that reservoir of love blocked up, you could think of sin as blockages would be one image, or you could also see sin as pollutants that pollute the spring and make it poisonous, and so it is with our hearts, we are filled with blockages, envy, which we are about to talk about is a blockage, it keeps love from flowing, flowing out, or it's a pollutant, it's a toxin, and we are full of envy, we are also full of boasting, we are defiled to the core by pride, we are consistently rude, we are habitually and fanatically selfish. We flame into anger at the drop of a hat, we keep careful and meticulous record of wrongs other people do to us, and we secretly delight in evil. That's who we are apart from Christ, and that’s someone who we still can be from time to time, even as Christians. Now, when we're redeemed, the heart of stone is removed and the heart of flesh is put in by the sovereign working of the Spirit. We are given a new nature. “If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation, the old is gone, behold, everything has become new,” 2 Corinthians 5:17. Now with this new nature, this mind of Christ, that we have in us, we are able to love as Christ did, but we still have vigorous traces of toxins, of poisons flowing through our spiritual bloodstreams or in the spiritual organs within us, there are blockages keeping them from functioning normally, and the first we're gonna look at to seek to remove is this issue of envy. Love does not envy. 

II. Love Does Not Envy

Now, Jonathan Edwards in his treatise on this, Charity And Its Fruits, defined envy this way, “Envy may be defined as a spirit of dissatisfaction with and opposition to the prosperity and happiness of others as compared to our own,” a spirit of dissatisfaction with and opposition to the prosperity, or I would say the blessedness, that we see in others as we compare it to our own. So the envious person sees the happiness of another person, his success, his possessions, his honors and achievements, his spouse, his car, his house, and he's displeased that that other person has those good things, it makes him actually angry to see those good things in the possession of another. The spirit of envy is especially aggravated then when the person compares those items with his own, he compares his office with that of a co-worker, he compares his car with that of a neighbor, he compares his house with that of his neighbor's house or a vacation home that he doesn't own and his heart is embittered by those blessings that have been given to that other person. This envy is actually exceedingly common, it is much more common than we think it is. Ecclesiastes 4:4, the preacher says, “I saw that all labor and all achievement spring from man's envy of his neighbor. This too is meaningless, a chasing after wind.” Now, that's an overstatement, but it is a strong tendency in the natural world that achievement and labor is driven by envy. Now, in the '50s, it was called, “keeping up with the Joneses” during that suburban kind of pattern of life. People would see the Joneses got a new car. We need to get a new car. Etcetera. It's just based on envy.

Now, there are a lot of very tragic examples of envy in the Bible. Go back to the very, very beginning of the history of sin. After the fall into sin, Cain killed his brother Abel out of envy. Because God spoke well of Abel's offerings, but he did not speak well of Cain's, and out of envy, he murdered his brother. Joseph's brothers were envious of him because of the favor that Jacob, their father had given to him over against all of them, they were envious of his coat of many colors and his apparent status as the heir, and so they wanted... Some of them wanted to kill him; they threw him into a pit and eventually sold him as a slave into Egypt, all out of envy. Or think about in the story of Esther, we've got this evil man, Haman, who is lavished with all kinds of honors and privileges and money and power and all that. But he said, he actually said to his friends, “None of it brings me any satisfaction at all because of Mordecai the Jew,” because he will not rise in fear before me, etcetera, he's envious of Mordecai's servile submission to his power and he can't enjoy any of his blessings because of that. The greatest envy that has ever been, most significant envy ever was of Jesus' Jewish enemies to Jesus, they were envious of him. They were envious of his miraculous powers, they were envious of the crowd's accolades when they said, “Hosanna!” and, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” and they were honoring and showering blessings on him. As a matter of fact, Pontius Pilate, it says in Matthew 27:18 said, “he knew that it was out of envy that they had handed Jesus over to him,” he saw right through- this man had done nothing wrong, he only did good to other people, but the Jewish enemies were envious of him.

So what is so evil about envy? Well, it's a greedy, grasping- it just seems demonic, selfish spirit, it's at the root of envy, it's so wicked, it corrupts the heart, the whole heart with bitterness; it always competes and drives us to achieve. We're unable to love others and be happy about their successes, it is as we've seen the root of some of the most hideous and evil actions there have ever been in history, it has murder, actually, and thievery as its ultimate goal, not only does it rob the envious of happiness in the good news of others, it robs them of happiness in their own blessings, their own blessings seem so inadequate. They’re essentially thankless people. We become bitterly discontent about our salary, about our car, our home, our family, our clothes, and yet all of these are good gifts from God that we didn't deserve, but instead of being thankful, envy pollutes that stream that should be flowing up to God in thankfulness and out to others in blessing, envy pollutes all of that. Instead of being peacefully content and thankful to God, we grumble against God for blessing the other person.

Now, the opposite of envy really is love. But we're gonna define it specifically in this regard: it is delight, actual delight, heart delight in another person's blessedness from God. We actually take delight that the other person is blessed. We realize as James 1:17 says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights.” And we see the hand and purpose of God in giving that specific blessing to that specific person. And we delight in it, because we delight in God. And everything God does is right. It enables us to celebrate the goodness of God in someone else's life really as though it were happening to us. Now, I'm not gonna go into any great details about this. Probably out of pride, I don't know. But when I was a teenager and on, you know, toward the end of my teenage years, I was ugly competitive in sports. Some of you guys who love sports, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I was like John McEnroe in the tennis court. I remember just hitting a tennis ball over the fence into the woods when I was playing it with a friend of mine. I had this rage inside me. This competitiveness. And it went out to any time I would compete on the court; I had this ugly rage inside me before I was converted. Once I was converted, the Lord began to show me how evil that was, how wrong that anger was, and that envy of others. And I began to enjoy sports just on their own, and I'll never forget, there's this one time, it just shines in my memory, it was at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, we were involved in a church plant and some friends of mine, some brothers, we used to get together regularly to play basketball. And we were playing basketball together, and I looked around at the faces and the people, the brothers that were there and I realized two of them were about to go overseas as career missionaries and we were not likely ever to play together again, we'd played together many times. And there just came a sweet happiness in that one occasion that we had, one last time to play together. And every basket that was made, I felt like it was a celebration of God's goodness. It didn't matter that it was the guy I was guarding that made the basket. I would try to guard as best as I could, but I was happy that they made it, and then happy about my own baskets. My heart expanded out to include all of those people because I saw that basketball wasn't important. What mattered was our friendship in that one time. That one last time we had together. And that was God having transformed my heart from bitter envy and jealousy and rage to an actual celebration of the good thing that person just did or that... All of it is a display of God's goodness to us all. God wanted to scatter his athletic gifts to other people and not consolidate them all in me. And that was an expansive love. That's the essence of love. You look at another person and you say in your heart, or even verbally, you say, “I find delight in that blessedness you have from God. I'm glad you have it. Truly glad.” That's what love is. Now, this extends out to evangelism. We want to give blessedness to other people. And we are willing as evangelists and as missionaries to put up with a lot of difficulty, even a lot of abuse and a lot of pain, so that we may have personally, the delight of seeing that person cross over from death to life. And then in our mind, go ahead to the delight we'll have for all eternity in fellowship with that person. That's that horizontal expansion out to love. That's the essence of it.

How does the Holy Spirit work love, this aspect of love in us? Well, it enables us, as I've said, to see the sovereignty of God in every blessing, to understand every good thing comes from God. We don't deserve any of them. To see how Christ lived that way. How he delighted in what God had done in other people's lives. He… God causes us to be content in the good gifts that we have, the overwhelming gift of salvation through Christ, but also all the lesser gifts, realize, and we don't deserve any of them. They're contrary to what we deserve. And he causes our hearts to expand to include our neighbors, to truly yearn for what's best in them, positively, but then turn around to see how ugly envy really is, and to hate it. To love righteousness and hate wickedness, that's salvation. He causes us to examine our hearts to see if there's any bitterness of envy, any root of bitterness within us, and that we would take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ. Perhaps it's a childless couple that has to learn by grace to delight in other people's good news when they find out that they're expecting. Perhaps it's a single Christian who yearns some day to be married and has to learn by grace to celebrate another person's engagement or wedding. And even be involved in it. Be a groomsman or a bridesmaid in that wedding, and really genuinely celebrate. Perhaps it's a pastor like myself, really delighting in someone else's success, evangelistically or the size, or the prosperity or the health of their church. And not compare it with my own, but really delight in what God's doing through other people. Perhaps it's a set of parents whose teen is a chronic under-achiever and that individual struggles, but then some other parents have this really achievement-oriented, excellent, intelligent, skillful child that's going off to an incredibly prestigious school and be able to celebrate someone else's blessedness and skills and gifts and not be jealous. So examine yourself. Examine your heart to see if there's any bitterness, to see if there's any envy or jealousy in you. And realize it's part of your birthright as a Christian, to be conformed to Christ in this area and have the darkness of envy driven out by the light of God's love. When you get to heaven... I can't say this enough, you are going to so delight in other people's rewards as though they were your own. We're part of one body, and when one part of that body is honored, the whole body shares in that honor. And we are going to delight in other people's honor and glory as though it were our own.

"How does the Holy Spirit work love, this aspect of love in us? Well, it enables us, as I've said, to see the sovereignty of God in every blessing, to understand every good thing comes from God. "

III. Love Does Not Boast, Love is Not Proud

Now, the next negative, I'm gonna combine them: Love does not boast, love is not proud. I wanna put those two together. This boastfulness that Paul mentions here really is a parallel evil to envy. Whereas envy is angry and jealous over a blessing given to another person, boastfulness is pride over blessings given to us and not to other people. That's the specific aspect, “I have it; you don't.” Ironically, a boastful person is trying to stimulate envy in other people. He would delight in other people being envious of him. It's an evil thing. It makes us feel superior to others. It's interesting the Greek word here is related to a windbag. Imagine a big bloated balloon of hot air. It kind of reminds me of the earlier statement, “knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.” So you become this big hot windbag of self-praise and self-worship. That's what boasting is. It forgets again, that all honors, privileges, skills, talents, abilities, positions, all of that comes from God, and is given... All of those things are given to be an outflow of blessedness to other people. Remember 1 Corinthians 4:7, it says, “For who makes you different from anyone else? And what do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, then why do you boast as though you did not?” That's a perfect verse for killing boasting. The root evil of this boasting is pride as pride really is the root of every kind of evil. Pride was at the root of Satan's fall originally. Pride was the doorway by which evil entered the universe through Satan's fall. God created all creatures at varying levels of ability and scope and power and stations. And that began with the angels. He created different angels with different levels of power and different levels of glory. It seems, based on Isaiah 14, Satan thought so much of his own power and his own ability that he thought, “Not, only am I superior to all the other angels, I think I can topple God from his throne.” So with the five “I wills” he says, “I will ascend, I will make myself like the most high.” Ezekiel 28 gives an opposite kind... Or another angle... Not opposite, but another angle of the pride where it had to do with beauty. He was infused with a superlative beauty, a radiant beauty, maybe greater than any other angel or archangel. And he became enamored with his own beauty, fell in love with his own beauty, and decided to topple God. He decided to worship himself and become his own God. This is pride.

Now, humanity through Eve's temptation, and then Adam, we sinned in Adam. We in pride joined Satan's rebellion. We sought to make much of ourselves, really to worship ourselves, to become like God knowing good from evil. Envy springs from that pride, and so does boasting. It makes... Envy makes us hate blessings given to others. Arrogant boasting is clearly rooted in pride. It makes us worship ourselves and despise others. Think about Nebuchadnezzar walking on the palace of his roof there in Babylon in Daniel Chapter 4. And he's walking there and he's so filled with pride and says, “Is this not the great Babylon I have built as a display of my own power and glory and for the...” Or whatever. I mean, all of this boastfulness coming, filling his heart. And while he's speaking, an angel of the Lord struck him down and turned his mind into the mind of an animal.

Now, our daily boasting is a little less grandiose than Nebuchadnezzar's on the palace of his roof in Babylon, but it's similar. Someone tells a story, and as you're listening to that story, you can't wait to tell your own. You've got the trump card. You think that's something, wait till you hear my story. And we play that trump card. And it happens every time. We're listening and we can't wait to tell our story and trump the other person's story. We use our words to elevate ourselves and lower others. And we tell stories in which we are the hero and others are the villains. If we do some act of service we wanna be noticed and praised. Noticed and praised. Noticed and thanked. It's so selfish. And we talk about it, we find ways within the Christian community to talk about the things we've done, so that people notice the things we've done, so that they will praise us and thank us. And that's... It's ugly and we don't wanna admit it, but that's actually what's going on. And we talk a lot about our virtues and we hide our vices. And again, we've forgotten that every single blessing we have, not only does it come from God, and not only is it contrary to what we deserve, it was given to us horizontally to flow out toward others, and bless them.

IV. Salvation is a Work of Humbling by the Holy Spirit

Salvation is the only answer to this problem. Unaided, the human heart cannot cure its own pride. If we did cure aspects of our pride, we will become proud about that. There's no way out for us. We need a savior. And Jesus Christ, the salvation that has come through Christ comes in and at the core it's meant to humble us. I mean to our core, he means to humble us. He wants to work in such a way that when we get to heaven, we will not boast in ourselves. We will not boast. As it says in 1 Corinthians 1:29, “so that no one may boast before him.” And then two verses later, “rather, as it is written, let him who boast, boast in the Lord.” Boasting in the Lord is called worship. We're gonna get up to heaven and we will be so free of self-worship and so filled with worship to God. In order to love then, we need to be humbled. We need to be genuinely humbled. 1 Corinthians 13 is about horizontal love. We need to be humbled toward each other so we can love them. And salvation is that work of humbling.

Truly humbled people know how lowly we are before God. We are doubly lowly. We are first lowly because we are creatures and God is the Creator. And there's an infinite gap between all creatures and God the Creator. The holy angels in heaven know this. It's why the seraphim cover their faces, though they've never sinned. They understand the infinite gap, the holiness of God. He is infinitely above all archangels and holy angels though they've never done anything wrong. A beautiful verse for this... I didn't even know this verse was in there teaching this, but you ought to look it up. Psalm 113:5-6, listen to what it says about almighty God, “Who is like the Lord our God, the one who sits enthroned on high [listen to this], who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth?” He has to lower himself to look at the highest archangel. That's the infinite gap there is between God and all creatures. So the holy angels are humbled in heaven, but we are even more humbled as creatures for we were created from the dust of the earth. We were created from the... We are lower. We are created from the dust of the earth. Isaiah 40:15 uses that, it says, “Surely the nations are a drop from the bucket,” listen to this; they're regarded as what? “Dust on the scales; he weighs the islands as though they were [what?] fine dust.” We're dust, and we're created from the dust of the earth.

"Truly humbled people know how lowly we are before God."

But not only so as... Not only is this so, we're doubly humbled because we have sinned. We have violated God's holy laws. We have rebelled against the most high God. We have joined Satan in rebellion against this Holy God, so we are humbled as creatures and we're doubly humbled as sinners. And every aspect of our salvation is meant to humble us so that we see things rightly. It's not a false picture; it's actually a true picture of ourselves, we are humbled by every step. We are humbled by eternal election and predestination. It's humbling. Before we were born or had done anything good or bad, in order that God's purpose and election might stand, not by works, but by God, the one who calls. That's humbling. We didn't do anything, we're chosen just because God chose us. And then we're humbled in justification by faith alone. We're humbled in needing a savior to save us. We're humbled by the fact that long before we were born, he completely worked redemption. We're humbled by the fact that the redemption involved his intense suffering under the wrath of God. And when you look at the crucifixion, we realize, we as sinners deserved that before God. That's humbling. And we're humbled by the imputation of his righteousness. His perfect righteousness is given to us wholesale as a gift, because we... Our righteousness is like filthy rags. That's humbling. There's enough humbling at the cross to last all eternity.

Justification is humbling. But so also is sanctification. Do you feel it brothers and sisters? Are you not humbled by 1 Corinthians 13? You look at it and it says... And you say, “Boy, I would love to be that person. Just the ones we're looking at today. I would love to never envy or boast or be prideful again the rest of my life. What kind of man, what kind of woman would I be?” But it's humbling. Every single day, we make holy resolutions and don't keep them. We fall into habitual sin patterns and the Holy Spirit restores us, forgives us when we confess our sins. And we make more resolutions. We keep some of them, but others, we don't keep. The very thing that we hate, we do. The thing we wanna do, we do not do. We do make some progress, the thing that we love, we do. The thing we hate, we don't do. And we make progress, but it is a long journey of humbling. Do you feel it? I feel it.

And then glorification, that's humbling too. You'll be perfected in humility at glorification. Because in an instant God will do, in your life, what you tried your whole lifetime to do in partnership with the Holy Spirit, and you could never perfectly achieve. He will in an instant conform your soul, and you will be instantly perfectly righteous. And then when the resurrection happens, He'll instantly raise your body from the dead and make it like His glorious resurrection body in an instant, effortless. And then when you see God in all his glory, and you'll realize you're a creature and a redeemed sinner, you will be humbled.

Well, the more that we can be humble now the better. I spent many hours as I was working on this sermon thinking about one thing. I don't think it's my goal to confuse you in sermons, but sometimes that happens. “Thanks, pastor, I never realized what a hard verse that was, but now you've shown me how difficult it is to understand that verse.” So here's the thing, how does humbling before God produce love for other people? It's actually not intuitively obvious. The demons know that God's superior and they hate it. They seethe with rage over it. Jesus' enemies knew that he was superior, and they seethed with rage against him. The damned in hell know that God is infinitely above them and more powerful than them and they seethe with hatred. It's not intrinsically obvious that a vision of the greatness of God makes us loving. But what happens is, at redemption, the Holy Spirit transforms our heart so that we don't just see the infinite greatness of God, but we are actually attracted to him in all of his character, in his virtues, in his love. We are drawn toward him. We love him. And as we are drawn toward him, we start to swim in the sea of what he is. God is light, and in him there's no darkness at all. We want to be pure from sin. He draws us in to the fact that he is love. God is love straight through, and we delight in it. We see the beauty of it, and we yearn for it. So that humbling brings us into an ocean of love, and we are healed of these blockages, we're healed of envy. Envy becomes gone because of our humility. We're brought into this ocean of God and we see his wise, infinitely above us purposes. And who are we to question how much he gives to this person, how much he gives to that... Etcetera. Whatever God does is right. We see his greatness and we see his love, and we then are conformed to that and celebrate it.

And so this humbling draws us into an ocean of love that then flows out toward others. Boasting is gone. We realize if God has opened his hand and given you a gift... First of all, it's just 'cause he loves you and wants you to enjoy that good thing. So enjoy it. But he also wants you to bless others with it, not to be boastful toward it. Certainly not to create envy in another person, but rather that you would be a blessing to them as God has been a blessing to you. And again, when we get to heaven, this is gonna be perfectly consummated. We are gonna be so humble in heaven, we're gonna be liberated from this narrow, bitter, inward self-worship. You're gonna be set free from you. And I'm gonna be set free from me. And we're gonna just soar, enjoy. Delighting in the infinite greatness of God. Heaven is going to consist in a constant direct view of the glory of God. The entire universe will be illuminated in the glory of God, and of Christ. The new Jerusalem won't need the light of the sun or the moon, or the light of the lamp, but it's gonna shine with the glory of God. And all creatures in the heavenly world will be perfectly glorious, and we will see their glory. And we ourselves will be glorious. But unlike Satan, we won't be taken in with our own beauty. We won't be enamored with it. Nor will we try to worship other angels or other glorious beings. We will see other beings more glorious than us and we'll delight in their glory and celebrate it, because God worked it in them. And we will be set free. And other people who have more glory than us, we'll delight in that. And the people who have less glory than us, we will not be arrogant or boast over them. We will see all these things in light of God's wisdom and God's purpose. That's where we're heading. 

V. Applications

So applications. 1 Corinthians 13 is meant to be a mirror for you into your own circumstances. Look at yourself now. Do you love? Are you characterized by envy? Are you characterized by boasting? Do you see temporal blessings properly? Do you see them in another person's life properly? Do you see the temporal blessings in your own life properly? Are you characterized by envy toward another person's blessings? Are you characterized by arrogant boasting and pride toward your own blessings? Let me just start with your own salvation. Are you a Christian? Have you come to genuine faith in Christ?

You've probably heard the gospel many, many times. You've heard it again today, that God sent His son. He became incarnate by the Virgin Mary. He lived a sinless life. Worked a perfect righteousness that he wants to give you as a gift, because your righteousness is like filthy rags. And he died on the cross for your rebellions, which are more than the hairs of your head. Have you humbled yourself and come in faith to Christ, trusting in him for the full forgiveness of your sins? That's what you must do in order to begin a journey of truly loving others like God has loved you. Come to faith in Christ. Don't wait. You've heard this before. There's nothing new here for you. But maybe out of pride, you're holding back. Let today be for you the day of salvation.

Now, if you've been a Christian for many years, you know there's still so much work to do. Go over your heart. Go over your life. Go over your circumstances. Ask if you have any envy in your heart. Anything inside you that curdles your delight in your own blessings, because you're jealous of what somebody else has. Ask the Lord to drive that darkness out of your heart. Repent from that. Repent from that envy and ask him to work genuine love in your heart. Conversely, concerning pride, ask the Lord to give you a vision of the infinite greatness and the holiness of God, and the beauty of his love. God is love, it's not just God is loving, God is love. He's the source of all love. Draw close to him in humility, and allow his love to saturate your life and your being. Close with me if you would in prayer.

Father, we thank you for this incredible chapter. We thank you for how detailed it is, how powerful it is. We thank you for the way that it exposes us, but it needs to. We're under the scalpel of a skillful surgeon. The word of God is living and active like a sharp double-edged really... Scalpel; cutting out the tumor of envy and boasting and pride. Please do that work in us. Thank you for the gospel. I pray that any that began this live stream unconverted would not be unconverted now, but that they would trust in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins and the transformation of their hearts. And we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.