A More Excellent Way: Learning to Walk in the Way of Love

1 Corinthians 13 (ESV)

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.

Love is more important than . . .

1. What I or how I . (v. 1)
2. What I . (v. 2a)
3. The strength of my . (v. 2b)
4. How much I . (v. 3a)
5. The I make. (v. 3b)

Nothing is more important than love!

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.

What Love Does and Does not Do

Seldom=1   Sometimes=3   Often=5

1. Am I ?
2. Am I ?
3. Am I envious? 
4. Do I boast? 
5. Am I arrogant? 
6. Am I rude? 
7. Do I insist on my own way? 
8. Am I irritable? 
9. Am I resentful? 
10. Do I rejoice with wrongdoing? 
11. Do I rejoice with the ? 
12. Do I bear all things? 
13. Do I believe all things? 
14. Do I hope all things? 
15. Do I 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.

Unlike the other spiritual gifts, love will . (vv. 8-10)

Love is an indicator of spiritual . (vv. 11-12)

¹³ So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Love is the of all who follow Jesus.

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. ³⁵ By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35, ESV)