Quinquagesima—Blindness and the Love That Suffers Long
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Love is patient. Love suffers long. Love is kind. Love does not envy. Love isn't jealous. Love does not parade itself, is not puffed up. Love does not brag or boast of its vast knowledge or goodness. Love isn't arrogant. Love doesn't get conceited. Love does not behave rudely. Love doesn't behave indecently. Love does not seek its own. Love isn't selfish or self-obsessed. Love is not provoked to wrath. Love is not irritable or touchy. Love doesn't get angry. Love thinks no evil. Love does not keep a record of wrongs against itself. Love doesn't plan to hurt anyone. Love does not hold grudges and will hardly even notice when others do it wrong. Love does not rejoice in iniquity or evil, but rejoices and is happy in the truth. Love is never glad about injustice, even if it is done to an enemy, but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:4–7)
That's 1 Corinthians 13:4–7. And of this passage, our Confessions say this. This passage of Paul, 1 Corinthians 13, requires love. We, Lutherans, also require this, for we have said above that renewal and beginning to fulfill the Law must exist in us. According to Jeremiah 31:33, “I will put My Law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” (Jeremiah 31:33) If anyone should cast away love, even though he has great faith, he does not keep his faith, for he does not keep the Holy Spirit.
Nor indeed does Paul in this passage talk about the way of justification. Instead, he writes to those who, after they have been justified, should be urged to bring forth good fruit, lest they lose the Holy Spirit.
In our Gospel this morning, Jesus once again tells His disciples that He is going to Jerusalem and everything that was spoken of Him in the Law and the Prophets will be fulfilled. (Luke 18:31) He will be betrayed to the chief priests and to the scribes, His own people, and they will condemn Him to death. He will be delivered to the Gentiles and will be mocked and insulted and spat upon. They will scourge Him, they will crucify Him, they will murder Him, and the third day He will rise again. (Luke 18:32–33)
The disciples understood the literal words. “Do you understand the words coming out of my mouth?” They understood the noises. That's why Peter, as their representative, at another time when Jesus tells them that this is gonna happen, starts to rebuke Jesus and says, “Far be it from You, Lord. This shall not happen to You.” (Matthew 16:22)
It's also why, as they're going up to Jerusalem, this final time, that in Mark's telling of it, the same situation that we heard from the Gospel of Luke this morning, in Mark's telling of it, he gives us an added detail. He says, “They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was going before them; and they were amazed. And as they followed, they were afraid.” (Mark 10:32)
They understood the noises coming out of Jesus' mouth. They were afraid. They rebuked Him and said, “Far be it from You, Lord, to do this, to have this happen to You.” They understood the sounds coming out of Jesus' mouth, but they understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not know the things which were spoken. (Luke 18:34) They were blind to it.
They were blind to what it really meant for Jesus to be the Messiah, the Son of God. There is a certain blindness. It can even creep up in those of us who have been justified by faith, a certain blindness in our sinful flesh when we hear passages like 1 Corinthians 13.
Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself, is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:4–7)
Even in us who have been justified by faith, apart from works of the Law, for the sake of Jesus' blood on the cross, we can have a certain blindness creep in. (Romans 3:28) We can just see the beauty of the sounds, the words that Paul has written here by the Holy Spirit. And it's why we pick this passage all the time for weddings, makes us all feel warm and fuzzy inside.
We understand the sounds, but we can get a little blind to what he's trying to tell us. We can think of how others in our life fail to be patient and kind, envious or pompous or full of themselves, how others are rude to us, how they slight us, how through no fault of our own, they have been mean to us, how others seem to speak and think of themselves way too much, how easily others seem to get irritated and angry with us, how others seem to think evil and devise plans and to hold grudges against us no matter what we do, how others rejoice when bad things happen to us or when we fall into sin, how others fail to bear with us, believe us, hope for the best for us and endure us.
We also might be blind to think that love is a feeling, that we just show people, we convince them that we really do love them through emotion or through lofty words, or that love is shown by doing for and to others what brings us pleasure or what makes us comfortable, a misunderstanding of “do unto others as we would have them do unto you.” (Luke 6:31)
I want you to consider that passage when you think about if you've ever been in this situation in life, a relationship with your beloved. Maybe you never got married to them or maybe you think of your beloved who you have married, but think about the relationship before marriage. What you want in that relationship at times versus what you owe to your beloved in that state in life.
You can misunderstand “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and think, well, I would love it if my beloved would do certain things for me and to me, even though we're not married. And so you try to do them to and for them. That isn't love. It is not love at all. It is hatred. It is hatred.
Love would be regardless of how I feel, I'm gonna treat this person as my brother or my sister until we're married and hug them or kiss them the way I would hug or kiss my sister or my brother until we're married. That's what love does. Just in that example.
Consider your relationship with your beloved before you joined in marriage and think about that. What you owe in love versus what you might want. Consider what you owe your neighbor and especially your enemy or someone who has wronged you as you perceive it unjustly or even justly, offended you in some way.
What you think has been done, your part in it, what the truth actually is and what love you owe, no matter the truth, no matter what actually is true. And don't sit here for a second and think you know the truth completely about whatever perceived wrong you have suffered. And even if it were true, don't for a second think that you owe anything else to that person who has wronged you than love as it's described in 1 Corinthians 13. (1 Corinthians 13:4–7)
Anything else is blindness.
You can emote all you want. You can assure people with words that you love them, that they can trust you.
But as Luther often said concerning the idea that works justify and a particular memorable point was a sermon on James, “Faith without works is dead.” (James 2:17) He basically said, I can bring a donkey into this church. I can shave the top of its head so it looks like a monk. I can put a robe on it and put a censer around it. And I can beat the brakes off of that donkey and make it cry. I can make it brave the songs. It's still a jackass. It's still an animal and knows nothing of what those sounds actually mean and don't know what love is. It's an animal, a brute. It's all just noise. That's not faith. It's blindness.
The disciples understood the sounds coming out of Jesus' mouth, but they were blind to the true meaning. They wanted their way. They wanted the earthly kingdom restored to Israel. (Acts 1:6)
They wanted to call down fire on those men who were casting out demons in Jesus' name, but they made the God-awful mistake to not follow the disciples and do it exactly the way the disciples thought they should. And so they wanted to rain down fire on them for a good work. (Luke 9:49–54)
They wanted a Son of David who would take the throne away from the foreign occupiers by force and rule the people of Israel and the world with an iron fist.
Just like we want Jesus to come down and give us the right liturgy and everyone else to march in line. We want everyone else to do the things that we think ought to be done. We want them to speak and act and think exactly the way we think they should speak and act and think.
And if they don't, how dare they do that to me? We want them to be satisfied with what our version of love is. Not the love we actually owe them according to God's Word, whether they are friend or foe, whether they have truly sinned against us or we just think they've sinned against us, but really they just did something that we don't agree with.
We understand the words, the noises: “I, a poor, miserable sinner.” We said them this morning. We understand the noises, but in the heart, do we believe it about ourselves?
In your speech and conduct, do you demonstrate that true grasp of reality of what you and I really are before God in love, humility, and mercy? If you rejoice and revel in how wrong other people are, if you are constantly looking around and judging or even prejudging people by appearances and what you think to be the case, there is a blindness in that.
In not knowing what the Prophets said about the Messiah, the Son of David, how He must suffer, how He must die, how He must put away sins, your sins, how He will rule.
There's also this blindness of walking around with beans in the place of eyes in this, because you do not need to think, in forgiveness, you ought to think that the Lord has put away your enemy's sins. But when you think you've been wronged, you need to remember that the Lord Jesus is there, went there for your sins. Think on your sins. Think of the part you played in whatever situation plagues you and hurts your pride.
The disciples didn't see the fact that their King would rule as the One who suffers and gives His flesh for the life of the world in the form of a slave, that He will exercise His almighty power and manifest His divine glory by being nailed to a cross, suffering intense physical pain, a shameful and public humiliating death in nakedness, pure agony for all to pass by and laugh at, and eternal wrath for the sins of the world from His heavenly Father when He knew no sin Himself.
They are blind to the fact that their almighty King and Lord's kingdom is not of this world, that He didn't come to restore the earthly kingdom to Israel or help you achieve your political plan for the Synod or this congregation or your workplace. (John 18:36)
Jesus came and still comes to us to deliver the benefits of this. He came once for all to offer Himself as a sacrifice for your sins. (Hebrews 10:10)
For those people that you hate or the people that you tell me you don't hate, but you don't really think about them at all. You're indifferent as if that's okay. As long as you don't hate them, you can give a crap about them or less, but as long as you don't hate them, He came to die for them too. He came to die for them too.
He came to show you mercy. He came to show perfect love, not only what perfect love looks like so that we would follow His example, follow His example pure like our hymn of the day. Not only that, but more than that, to show each of you, show it to you and give it to you, perfect love in taking away your sin and blindness, that it would no longer damn you and enslave you.
You have peace with God and a hope that doesn't disappoint because the love of God has been poured into your heart by the Holy Spirit, which has been given to you. (Romans 5:1–5) That is what the Scriptures say. He has poured His love into your heart by the Spirit that you have been given.
Christ suffered long and was patient. God the Father set forth Christ Jesus, His beloved Son, as a propitiation by Christ's blood through faith to demonstrate His righteousness because in His forbearance and patience and long-suffering, God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:25–26)
And the Lord is not slack concerning His promise to return in glory to save us, as some count slackness, but He is even now long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9)
The Lord Jesus did not envy or parade Himself around or puff Himself up. He did not come to seek His own. He was not provoked to sinful anger as we so often are.
Rather, this is what the Scripture says of Him: “Behold! My Servant whom I have chosen, My Beloved in whom My soul is well pleased! I will put My Spirit upon Him, and He will declare justice to the Gentiles. He will not quarrel nor cry out, nor will anyone hear His voice in the streets. A bruised reed He will not break, and smoking flax He will not quench, till He sends forth justice to victory; and in His name Gentiles will trust.” (Matthew 12:18–21)
You and me, we will trust and be saved.
The Lord Jesus does not keep a record of wrongs against us. Praise God. He never did and He will rejoice not in sins that we commit or evil, even evil that befalls us for just reasons. He will not rejoice in that. He rejoices in our salvation.
Even when you were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ by forgiving us all our trespasses. God erased the record of debt brought against us by His legal demands. There is no grudge list for our Lord. The record that stood against us, He took it away by nailing it to the cross. After disarming the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them by triumphing over them. (Colossians 2:13–15)
And concerning us and our salvation, our Lord Jesus bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
When He was reviled, He did not revile in return. When He suffered, He did not threaten, but He committed Himself to Him who judges righteously, who Himself, Jesus bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we having died to sins might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. (1 Peter 2:23–25)
All that we can boast of of ourselves is blindness, self-love, self-pity, pomposity, hatred, and indifference toward our neighbor, especially when we are so deluded to think that they have wronged us and we cannot even entertain the part we play in it, or maybe that we've misunderstood why they did what they did.
A fake version of love that makes such grand promises but can't even manage to guard its tongue from speaking evil or from judging or prejudging another person. That's all we can boast of in ourselves, you and me. That's it.
But you Christians, you do not boast of yourselves. You boast in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, the true Son of David, the Messiah, the sinless One, the perfect lover of mankind, the perfect lover of you, me, and all mankind, who did not shy away from marching to Jerusalem to arrest, to condemnation from His own people, to mocking and scourging at the hands of pagans, to eternal wrath from His own heavenly Father, to a horrible and ignominious death in nakedness, shame, and agony, and a victorious resurrection from the dead that He now gives to us in the Means of Grace. He did not shy away from one bit of it. Not a single one of our sins made Him hesitate.
His disciples were afraid. They were blind at that time. They abandoned the Lord only hours after making grand assurances that even if they had to die with Him, they would not deny Him. And they abandoned Him.
But the Lord wasn't afraid. He did not shrink back. He set His face like flint toward Jerusalem, marching ahead of His disciples. (Isaiah 50:7)
He marched ahead with His face set like flint toward Jerusalem with you in His heart, without hesitation, with you individually in His heart. In His very being, He was not afraid. He was ready to suffer, not counting your sins against you, ready to suffer all things for you, to show you mercy, to take away your blindness, so that you could see very clearly His glorious face in His kingdom.
And now you do see Him. And then you will see Him face to face in the life to come. (1 Corinthians 13:12)
Without hesitation, He marches to Jerusalem to give that to you. And without hesitation, He comes this day to give that to you.
Let us pray. Lord Jesus, the blind man sitting on the way cries out and calls upon You, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy upon me.” (Luke 18:38) We poor sinful men and women are severely corrupt in body and soul and are unable to recognize or obtain the light of Your grace from our own powers. But because You are the Son of David, that is the promised blessed Seed, the true Redeemer and Messiah of the entire human race, with whom contrite and believing hearts have ever and always obtained comfort, counsel, and help. We, distressed as we are, also rush to You, boasting of no righteousness of our own, but availing ourselves solely of Your mercy. And even though the tumultuous world, the devil and our own flesh and blood murmur against our faith and prayer and do not willingly grant us to confess, learn, and call upon You, we nevertheless cry out to You all the more: “Oh, Son of David, have mercy upon us,” for You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one true God now and forever. Amen.
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