Prophecy Without Love - Evangelical Caucus/Devotional

"If I have the gift of prophecy . . . but do not have love, I am nothing" (1 Cor. 13:2).

Love motivated God to communicate with fallen humanity. That must be your motivation too.

The word prophecy as used in 1 Corinthians 13:2 is the ability to publicly proclaim God's truth accurately and authoritatively. It's a greater gift than tongues because tongues were given as a sign to unbelieving Israel in the first century (1 Cor. 14:21-22), whereas prophecy instructs and edifies believers throughout the centuries. Paul said, "one who prophesies speaks to men for edification and exhortation and consolation [and] edifies the church (1 Cor. 14:3-4).

Prophecy has two aspects: revelation and reiteration. When an Old or New Testament prophet received new information directly from God, that was revelation. Whenever that information was repeated through preaching or teaching, it was reiteration. For example, the sermons of Peter and Paul combine new revelation with a reiteration of Old Testament truth. That's a common element in New Testament preaching.

With the close of the New Testament canon, direct revelation from God ceased. All preaching and teaching today is reiteration. New Testament prophets policed one another to ensure that every prophecy was truly from God (1 Cor. 14:32). Today, Scripture itself is the standard by which we test someone's message. As the prophet Isaiah said, "To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no [light]" (Isa. 8:20).

Paul is saying 1 Corinthians 13:2, "If I have the ability to speak direct revelation from God, or to reiterate divine truth forcefully and dramatically, but lack love, my ministry is meaningless." In its broadest sense, that principle applies to every believer because we all are proclaimers of God's Word. You might not teach a class or preach a sermon, but whenever you tell someone about Christ or share a biblical principle, you're reiterating divine truth. That's why you must always speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15). Then the Holy Spirit can empower your words to minister to others.

-Ask God to help you guard your words so that everything you say will be clothed in His love.

The above article invites a further exposition on the nature of God's love. The Koine Greek noun ἀγάπη (agapē,.pronounced ah-gah'-pay), or verb ἀγαπάω (agapaō. pronounced ah-gah-pah'-oh). used rarely in commercial communications, but profusely in the written New Testament autographs. It is a word adopted by the Christian writers and adapted by them to communicate the newly exhibited profound nature of a holy state or action of Spirit-born followers of the God-Anointed Lord Jesus, their ultimate Captain of The Faith, an activity bequeathed to them and only to them by their Savior and Redeemer.

Like many modern writers, especially in the English language, the word "love" can be and is very ambiguous, not well understood in its religious application. Here John MacArthur is a bit more definitive, but the the readers even so ought to be even more precisely separated from the worldly value assigned to it.

In my ninety years of religious involvement as a preachers son this was always ill-explained, until I heard the best ever message on this topic presented quite recently by a Baptist pastor and scholar, as follows in this link:

"The Holy Spirit Fruit Of Love"^{(click here)}

When you have heard this message through to the end, you will understand that this gift of "charity" from the Spirit of God is given and grasped only by those who also possess the gracious gift of having been redeemed and given the never-rescinded eternal existence on the basis of their full persuasion that the Biblical God and His Son Messiah exist, interact with mankind, and fulfill every promise they have made.

The application of that Godly love is fully explained by the definition as stated thusly:

"A sovereign preference of one above self and/or other.^{(persons, things)}"

This godly spiritual frame of mind and action is compared with the temporal worldly uses of "love" by another scholarly chart as follows:

Continuum of LOVE in The Koine Greek Language^{(click here)}

Now, what does that statement about the Christian use of ἀγάπη/ἀγαπάω mean?

Well, term by term, "preference" necessarily means that a choice--a permanent settlement of mind--must be made between at least two options; and "sovereign" indicates that when a persom makes a mental choice, no one else can change that choice without violating ones undividuality of a rational state of mind, ones existence as a person, not as a robot. Even God, Who created such individulitiess to be in His image with a separate self-activated intelligence. can overcome that state except by persuasion..

But the Mighty God, my Heavenly Father, DOES possess Sovereignty. But tho exercise a preferrence, a choice must be made. However, for Him, for His choice to be good, holy, and loving, that choice must be always right, wnich calls on an unbreachable more primary attribute--His Righteousness. And so, by that, His agape/agapao must always be Holy, and that which the true believer can only exercise it in a holy way under ihe Indwelt Holy Spirit's advisement.

There is another point to make, and that is the exercise of that love does not necessarily involve any emotional involvement, positive or negative. "Doing what is right" is not even meritorious, it just fulfils a logical requirement.; so when the sin-bent fallen human hears of God's promise as cited by Jesus to Nicodemus, and sovereignly makes an irreversible unreserved change of mind in agreement to place his/her soul and body in fuul convicted trust into the hands of The Living Jesus as Master and Friend, it will be by God The Father sovereignly, graciously, and instantaneously be fulfilled and put into practice.

So may John MacArthur's above meditation be more greatly appreciated.

Selah

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