I'm 65. I've spent a lot of my life getting degrees, studying, trying to understand, then teaching, working, doing, gaining experience (personal knowledge of a relational and practical nature).
In a few years, it will all be gone, worm-eaten or worse (embalmed). Hard-earned, invaluable lessons, gone. Yes, I write, and teach, and something of that is passed on. But not that much, and especially after a few MORE years.
I believe in the resurrection of the body, and declare it every week, with the other faithful. What will that mean, for this knowledge?
St. Paul says ALL my knowledge, all OUR knowledge is "in part," at best. In the New Jerusalem, I would imagine, it will be like a pocket calculator on my desk, next to this terminal on which I write, tapped into the internet.
But acts of love ,for my Redeemer, and for others, for the sake of my Redeemer—these are eternal gestures. They cannot be repeated, nor deleted. They live in eternity.
I think you just kinda sorta said what many of my most recent posts have been trying to say. I have always loved those verses in 1 Corinthians 13 because, as you said, it's not about the love of a man for a woman and vice-versa. It's all about not being able in the flesh to understand the magnificent, unexplainable, unbounded, all-encompassing love of God for His creation, man. Of course, that is why the next verse deals with childish ways and seeing through a glass darkly, knowing only in part until we are reunited and in the state of being as our Creator always planned for us.
I think it is important to recall the end of the revelation:
“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…”
Thank God for this post. I have to share that I was beginning to wonder if I was in the right place with all this striving to know. I understand the desire because I was once on that journey but I now know that all that striving doesn't move the needle one notch in our desired direction. All it leaves us with is guesses, theories, hypotheses and more yearning. I meant what I said, that I am contented to leave the gaps in my knowledge on the subject of understanding God's love for me to what it now is and trust that when I meet Him face-to-face, that on that glorious, unimaginable day I will know Him and His love in full. I rejoice because He does love me.
Sacrament is the living out eternal love in real missional space fulfilling the Great Commission. The Church never wants to leave Jerusalem. We are the Church when we leave for Antioch. We hoard up Body and Cup for our own needs. Christ’s Body must be offered to others. Agape is self giving.
I am REALLY looking forward to that. To KNOW. I suspect I'll be slapping my forehead an saying Of Course! Its all so simple! Why didn't I see this before!
I see what Andrew means. But erotic love—the more-than-sexual-but-always-focused-on-the-merits-of-the-other love—it FAILS. It fails bad. Unless it is supported by agape love, in my sad-sack experience, it's just not enough to sustain a marriage, when life happens.
Is it a serendipity or a sledgehammer aimed at my thick head that I've encountered this in other forms all week? Anybody else here doing BSF? We studied John 17, Jesus' prayer over his disciples. Uncanny: glory, truth, word, unity, love...
Perhaps the problem is that Paul, Jesus, John and Peter used agape and phileo as synonyms throughout the New Testament. John Chrysostom treated them as synonymous, and no one has denied that he knew Greek.
“Let’s ask for the grace to be in awe of the God who, when he opened the door of his life to us, had this word consistently on his lips, remembering that even though we have no right to expect anything from him he is pleased to give us everything. He is pleased to open his heart and life to us precisely because he is the God of hesed.”
“Hesed is a defining characteristic of God. It is linked to his compassion and graciousness. It is expressed in his willingness to forgive wrongdoing and to take upon himself the sin, rebellion, and wrongdoing of his people. As an expression of his lovingkindness, God allows his people to experience the consequences of their sin, as he promised Moses in Exodus 34:7. Even this is an expression of his hesed. God can be approached boldly based on the confidence we have in this aspect of his revealed nature. He is amazingly kind and loving to his servants as well as to the ungrateful and wicked. He is delighted to show them kindness. Due to this, they marvel that no other god is like their God because of his hesed. The scope of hesed is expanded in the context of worship. It is most often sung, as our hearts resonate sympathetically to the One who created us in his lovingkindness. However, when the reciprocal nature of hesed has been violated we are encouraged in the imprecatory psalms to offer feelings of anger and outrage, trusting in the hesed of the One who knows our hearts and will stand in solidarity with us and act on behalf of the poor. When we are facing despair we can take confidence in all God’s former acts of lovingkindness. Hesed is a standard to which we can appeal. We understand that we can ask, beg, and expect to receive according to the standard of God’s hesed. In light of our inability to keep any of the covenants, God has graciously granted to us a new covenant, based solely on his faithfulness. That covenant came into effect and will be sustained by means of a person Jeremiah refers to as the “Righteous Branch.” He is the incarnation of hesed, full of grace and truth.”
Michael Card, Inexpressible: Hesed and the Mystery of God's Lovingkindness
Yes, Drew of the cast Klavanon conspiracy, First Corinthians 13 is a favorite at weddings.
However, at my mother’s funeral service over which two ministers presided, the visiting pastor’s selected reading was this agape chapter from the Corinthian Epistle. The minister chose it because he felt it described Mama’s character. As touching as that was, I was amazed when the other minister stepped up with the reading he had chosen independently, only to say, that the other pastor had already read it, the passage being the same chapter 13.
I was questioning and seeking at that time, independent from my mother’s illness, but the search was made more difficult because I didn’t want to worry her by discussing. Yet even in the midst of my confusion, that service amazed me.
Agape love is, in effect, not so much a feeling as a way of seeing across that bridge, of knowing what we can’t know by entering the beauty of God and one another.
With love comes true and intimate knowing of the person loved, which knowledge makes the person more lovable, which in turn brings more knowledge which makes the person more lovable. This cycle of love and knowing, delight in intimacy, is truly heaven itself. Since God is infinite Love, He can be infinitely known and infinitely loved by us, and we will, likewise be known and loved infinitely, for all of eternity. The clearest the dark glass gets for us humans to seeing the face of God, other than moments given in a rapturous vision, is the best moments in marriage of beholding the beloved. Agape is the connection between creature and Creator. Since that Creator, though, is more than meer maker, but rather, Love itself, when we choose to allow ourselves to love with agape, we allow ourselves to be connected in a loving and knowing embrace, one in which we start to see others as they truly are. And even further than that, that even such love we have for others and God can't even come from us, but that we are some kind of mysterious vessels of knowledge and love that flow into us from God Himself, and we are given the choice of how much we will be filled.
I'm 65. I've spent a lot of my life getting degrees, studying, trying to understand, then teaching, working, doing, gaining experience (personal knowledge of a relational and practical nature).
In a few years, it will all be gone, worm-eaten or worse (embalmed). Hard-earned, invaluable lessons, gone. Yes, I write, and teach, and something of that is passed on. But not that much, and especially after a few MORE years.
I believe in the resurrection of the body, and declare it every week, with the other faithful. What will that mean, for this knowledge?
St. Paul says ALL my knowledge, all OUR knowledge is "in part," at best. In the New Jerusalem, I would imagine, it will be like a pocket calculator on my desk, next to this terminal on which I write, tapped into the internet.
But acts of love ,for my Redeemer, and for others, for the sake of my Redeemer—these are eternal gestures. They cannot be repeated, nor deleted. They live in eternity.
I think you just kinda sorta said what many of my most recent posts have been trying to say. I have always loved those verses in 1 Corinthians 13 because, as you said, it's not about the love of a man for a woman and vice-versa. It's all about not being able in the flesh to understand the magnificent, unexplainable, unbounded, all-encompassing love of God for His creation, man. Of course, that is why the next verse deals with childish ways and seeing through a glass darkly, knowing only in part until we are reunited and in the state of being as our Creator always planned for us.
I think it is important to recall the end of the revelation:
“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…”
Prophesies pass, ramblings cease, knowledge passes, the partial passes, childish ways end…
Thank God for this post. I have to share that I was beginning to wonder if I was in the right place with all this striving to know. I understand the desire because I was once on that journey but I now know that all that striving doesn't move the needle one notch in our desired direction. All it leaves us with is guesses, theories, hypotheses and more yearning. I meant what I said, that I am contented to leave the gaps in my knowledge on the subject of understanding God's love for me to what it now is and trust that when I meet Him face-to-face, that on that glorious, unimaginable day I will know Him and His love in full. I rejoice because He does love me.
Sacrament is the living out eternal love in real missional space fulfilling the Great Commission. The Church never wants to leave Jerusalem. We are the Church when we leave for Antioch. We hoard up Body and Cup for our own needs. Christ’s Body must be offered to others. Agape is self giving.
Someday I’ll know, as I am known. We all yearn with everything in us to be known, to be SEEN.
I am REALLY looking forward to that. To KNOW. I suspect I'll be slapping my forehead an saying Of Course! Its all so simple! Why didn't I see this before!
First thing I want to ask is , “What happened to Jon Benet?”
You'll know then. I hope/pray she is in heaven.
I see erotic love and agape love cooperating in a marriage, so I don't see why the use of that verse in a wedding is dopey.
I concur.
I see what Andrew means. But erotic love—the more-than-sexual-but-always-focused-on-the-merits-of-the-other love—it FAILS. It fails bad. Unless it is supported by agape love, in my sad-sack experience, it's just not enough to sustain a marriage, when life happens.
Is it a serendipity or a sledgehammer aimed at my thick head that I've encountered this in other forms all week? Anybody else here doing BSF? We studied John 17, Jesus' prayer over his disciples. Uncanny: glory, truth, word, unity, love...
Karen, I’m in the study of John with BSF. I love it when the lessons come in layers. ♥️
Perhaps the problem is that Paul, Jesus, John and Peter used agape and phileo as synonyms throughout the New Testament. John Chrysostom treated them as synonymous, and no one has denied that he knew Greek.
God’s lovingkindness
“Hesed is a defining characteristic of God.”
“Let’s ask for the grace to be in awe of the God who, when he opened the door of his life to us, had this word consistently on his lips, remembering that even though we have no right to expect anything from him he is pleased to give us everything. He is pleased to open his heart and life to us precisely because he is the God of hesed.”
“Hesed is a defining characteristic of God. It is linked to his compassion and graciousness. It is expressed in his willingness to forgive wrongdoing and to take upon himself the sin, rebellion, and wrongdoing of his people. As an expression of his lovingkindness, God allows his people to experience the consequences of their sin, as he promised Moses in Exodus 34:7. Even this is an expression of his hesed. God can be approached boldly based on the confidence we have in this aspect of his revealed nature. He is amazingly kind and loving to his servants as well as to the ungrateful and wicked. He is delighted to show them kindness. Due to this, they marvel that no other god is like their God because of his hesed. The scope of hesed is expanded in the context of worship. It is most often sung, as our hearts resonate sympathetically to the One who created us in his lovingkindness. However, when the reciprocal nature of hesed has been violated we are encouraged in the imprecatory psalms to offer feelings of anger and outrage, trusting in the hesed of the One who knows our hearts and will stand in solidarity with us and act on behalf of the poor. When we are facing despair we can take confidence in all God’s former acts of lovingkindness. Hesed is a standard to which we can appeal. We understand that we can ask, beg, and expect to receive according to the standard of God’s hesed. In light of our inability to keep any of the covenants, God has graciously granted to us a new covenant, based solely on his faithfulness. That covenant came into effect and will be sustained by means of a person Jeremiah refers to as the “Righteous Branch.” He is the incarnation of hesed, full of grace and truth.”
Michael Card, Inexpressible: Hesed and the Mystery of God's Lovingkindness
Yes, Drew of the cast Klavanon conspiracy, First Corinthians 13 is a favorite at weddings.
However, at my mother’s funeral service over which two ministers presided, the visiting pastor’s selected reading was this agape chapter from the Corinthian Epistle. The minister chose it because he felt it described Mama’s character. As touching as that was, I was amazed when the other minister stepped up with the reading he had chosen independently, only to say, that the other pastor had already read it, the passage being the same chapter 13.
I was questioning and seeking at that time, independent from my mother’s illness, but the search was made more difficult because I didn’t want to worry her by discussing. Yet even in the midst of my confusion, that service amazed me.
So very good. The Klavan Humanity Test is becoming clearer.
Agape love is, in effect, not so much a feeling as a way of seeing across that bridge, of knowing what we can’t know by entering the beauty of God and one another.
With love comes true and intimate knowing of the person loved, which knowledge makes the person more lovable, which in turn brings more knowledge which makes the person more lovable. This cycle of love and knowing, delight in intimacy, is truly heaven itself. Since God is infinite Love, He can be infinitely known and infinitely loved by us, and we will, likewise be known and loved infinitely, for all of eternity. The clearest the dark glass gets for us humans to seeing the face of God, other than moments given in a rapturous vision, is the best moments in marriage of beholding the beloved. Agape is the connection between creature and Creator. Since that Creator, though, is more than meer maker, but rather, Love itself, when we choose to allow ourselves to love with agape, we allow ourselves to be connected in a loving and knowing embrace, one in which we start to see others as they truly are. And even further than that, that even such love we have for others and God can't even come from us, but that we are some kind of mysterious vessels of knowledge and love that flow into us from God Himself, and we are given the choice of how much we will be filled.