When supernatural gifts will no longer be needed.

1 Corinthians 13.7-13.

I grew up among Christians who loved to use this passage of 1 Corinthians to make the claim God turned off the miracles. He never did, but a number of Christians claim he did, because they’re entirely sure they never saw a miracle, and consider their experiences the norm. Plus they subscribe to certain End Times theories which kinda require the miracles to be deactivated till the tribulation hits.

So when Paul and Sosthenes wrote the following, they put a cessationist spin on it. Here, I’ll quote it in their favorite translation (and, often, mine) the King James Version.

1 Corinthians 13.8-10 KJV

8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. 9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

The passage is about love (Greek ἀγάπη/agápi, KJV “charity”) and how we oughta see it in supernatural gifts. That when it’s not there, the gifts are undermined. Pulling a verse from this passage and claiming there are no such gifts anymore, doesn’t just take the verse out of context, but flips its meaning 180 degrees. Just the sort of thing the devil might do, but I don’t blame Satan for cessationism; I blame Christianism. I blame people who claim to believe in God, and love the trappings of church and faith, but don’t know him at all, and think he’s far away instead of near.

When the apostles refer to “that which is perfect” in verse 10, these cessationists claim they mean the bible. Even though this passage is in no way talking about bible; it’s about love. It’s about how love exists forever, but certain supernatural gifts come to an end—at the End, when we interact with Jesus face to face, 1Co 13.12 and there’ll be no reason to receive these things supernaturally when Jesus can just tell us this stuff naturally.

But cessationists insist they came to an end already, once the bible was complete. In the 50s when Paul wrote his letters, the New Testament was still under construction, and wouldn’t be complete till John wrote Revelation decades later—so the apostles still needed prophecy and supernatural knowledge, ’cause they couldn’t write bible without it. But once the NT was complete, and God decided it was “that which is perfect,” the supernatural abilities would fail, cease, and vanish away. Gone till the End Times, ’cause Revelation describes a world where miracles happen (duh), so cessationists figure God’ll have to bring ’em back at that time. But not till then.

The love we oughta see in supernatural gifts.

1 Corinthians 13.4-8.

When Christians write the about the bit from 1 Corinthians 13 which defines love, we almost universally take it out of context.

Myself included. ’Tain’t necessarily a bad thing: We quote it when we’re defining love. It states what love is, as opposed to what popular culture, and sometimes even popular Christian culture, claims it is. The apostles defined it properly, and we need to adjust our concept of ἀγάπη/agápi (KJV “charity”) accordingly.

But in context, the apostles defined it because they were correcting the Corinthians’ misperceptions about the supernatural. If you’re gonna strive for greater gifts, the only valid way to pursue them and do them is in love. If you’re not doing ’em in love, you’re doing ’em wrong.

And if you’re not entirely certain what the apostles meant by this “love” concept, permit ’em to straighten you out a bit.

1 Corinthians 13.4-8 KWL

4 Love has patience. Love behaves kindly. It doesn’t act with uncontrolled emotion.

It doesn’t draw attention to how great it is. It doesn’t exaggerate.

5 It doesn’t ignore others’ considerations. It doesn’t look out for itself. It doesn’t provoke behavior.

It doesn’t plot evil. 6 It doesn’t delight in doing wrong: It delights in truth.

7 It puts up with everything, puts trust in everything,

puts hope in everything, survives everything. 8A Love never falls down.

This is the mindset we must have when we act in, or strive for, supernatural gifts. With love. Like this. Know any prophets, faith-healers, tongues-speakers, and teachers who act in love? I surely hope so. I do.

Now, d’you know any wonder-workers who act the opposite of all this? Likely you do. I sure do. Let’s play an irritating little game of “Spot the loveless”:

• Impatient. If you aren’t healed immediately, or can’t accept their prophecy or teaching, you’re to blame. Not the (supposedly) spiritually mature miracle-worker.
• Unkind. Rude, dismissive, condescending, needlessly harsh.
• Do act with out-of-control emotion. In other words, not gentle.
• Do draw attention to their greatness. They do love those titles.
• Exaggerate all the time. They only tell the big success stories… even though not even the bible tells only the big success stories. Some of our failures are teachable moments; some of our little successes can be more profound than the big ones. But for them, everything’s gotta be huge.
• Ignores others’ considerations. Are you offended by something they said? Tough.
• Looks out for themselves. It’s about their convenience; they’re busy people.
• Provokes behavior. And is actually quite proud of doing so. Sometimes teaches the Holy Spirit wants to be provocative… not restorative.
• Plots evil; delights in wrongdoing. And we’re not just talking about extreme cases of hypocrisy. Some hypocrites never commit big sins, but their lives are full of little trespasses. White lies, petty thefts, small cheats, sins of omission. They do add up though.
• Doesn’t delight in truth. If truth is embarrassing or inconvenient, phooey on truth.
• Puts up with nothing. Trusts no one. Hopes for little. Falls apart easily.

Fleshly supernatural.

1 Corinthians 13.1-3.

When Paul and Sosthenes wrote 1 Corinthians, specifically the parts about the supernatural, y’might notice they didn’t write about fake supernatural. They didn’t write about frauds, like people who pretend to be faith healers but actually do nothing, or “miracle workers” who are only doing impressive stage magic tricks, or “prophets” who are really practicing mentalism. Certainly they could’ve written about such people, because there have always been such people. Just about every religion in the Roman Empire had one—because their worshipers expected the supernatural, so the priests had to show ’em something. There are two particularly famous stories of frauds in the apocrypha’s extra chapters of Daniel, and you can read it here.

But the apostles didn’t write about the fake stuff. They only wrote about the real stuff. Their main concern was the Corinthians were doing ’em wrong. Because that’s what we Christians do: The real stuff, wrong.

And the main way we do ’em wrong is by being the sort of people who produce bad fruit—the works of the flesh. Yep, there are such creatures as fleshly Christians. Either they’re new to Jesus and still have a lot of growing up to do, or they’re longtime Christians who never did grow up, ’cause they think other things are more important. Or ’cause they learned how to make all their fleshly behavior sound like it’s really fruit.

Christians naïvely assume if God’s gonna empower us with gifts of the Spirit, he’s only gonna do it when we’re good. We imagine the supernatural gifts are like the hammer Mjölnir in the Thor movies, and if we’re not worthy like Thor, the gifts won’t come when summoned. But that’s not even how grace works. God grants us supernatural gifts because we need them, not because we’re worthy. If somebody needs to be cured of a dire illness, God empowers the miracle regardless of how good or evil the petitioner, and the recipient, might be. The supernatural is not God’s endorsement. It’s his grace.

But like I said, Christians naïvely assume otherwise. We think it’s all about karma. If we’ve racked up enough points in God’s great big MMORPG of life, we get a power upgrade! So if Christians can exhibit supernatural powers, it must mean God highly favors them, ’cause they’re good people… or when they’re clearly not good people, ’cause they’ve gained his favor in some other way. Learned a lot of bible trivia, maybe. Worked in ministry for 10 years with low pay, so God owes them one and gave ’em the power to prophesy. Something like that.

And it’s nothing like that. Sometimes the Holy Spirit empowers fleshly Christians.

Seriously? He trusts fleshly Christians with that kind of power? Well no he doesn’t, because he always controls the power, and always will. But yes, he’ll actually work with and through fleshly Christians. Like I said, that’s the whole point of Paul and Sosthenes writing these 1 Corinthians passages: Fleshly Christians were doing supernatural things, and doing ’em wrong, and the apostles had to set them straight!

So right after the bit about striving for greater supernatural gifts, 1Co 12.31 the apostles mention an outstanding way to do it, and then started talking about love. Because it’s the preeminent fruit of the Spirit. It’s the fruit which arguably generates all the other fruit. God is love, so it’s a character trait God’s kids absolutely should exhibit. And if we don’t, we gotta wonder whether these are even God’s kids at all; for anyone who doesn’t love, doesn’t know God. 1Jn 4.8

Many Christians, cessationists in particular, tend to pull “the love chapter” out of context and only focus on how it defines love. We forget it’s all about supernaturla gifts, and how love has to be part of their practice. Has to. It’s how the whole chapter begins.

1 Corinthians 13.1-3 KWL

1 When I speak in human and angelic tongues:

When I have no love, I’ve become the sound of a gong, a clanging symbol.

2 When I have a prophecy—“I knew the whole mystery! I know everything!”—

when I have all the faith necessary to move mountains:

When I have no love, I’m nobody.

3 Might I give away everything I possess?

Perhaps submit my body so I could be praised for my sacrifice?

When I have no love, I benefit nobody.

When I have supernatural abilities—tongues, prophecy, enough wonder-working power to shove literal mountains around with a word—but there’s no love in it, there’s no love in me, I’m doing it for the power, authority, prestige, acclaim, and maybe donors will send a whole lot of cash my way. But really I’m a noise. I’m nobody. I benefit nobody.

And while Christians might pay particular attention to the “I’m nobody” parts—“See, you gotta minister in love!”—we too often forget this hypothetical loveless apostle… is still doing the supernatural acts. ’Cause the Holy Spirit still lets ’em do it.

Immature prophets.

Every Christian can hear God. This being the case, every Christian can share God’s messages with others: We can prophesy. We can become prophets. It’s why the Holy Spirit was given to us Christians in the first place: So we can hear and share God. Ac 2.17-18 Now, whether every Christian listens, hears God accurately, and prophesies accurately, is a whole other deal.

See, Christians are at all different levels of maturity. Some of us call it “spiritual maturity,” but there’s no functional difference between intellectual, emotional, and spiritual maturity. If we‘re one, we’re automatically one of the others. Too many Christians presume our knowledge makes us mature, instead of puffing us up like a bratty child prodigy. Likewise too many Christians presume if we’re fruitful, we needn’t be knowledgeable—which means we’re not wise, which means we ain’t all that fruity.

No matter which kind of immaturity we’re talking about, immature people are gonna do dumb. They don’t know any better. And an immature human is always gonna be an immature Christian. We need to recognize this, and not move immature Christians of any sort into any positions of responsibility. 1Ti 3.6 Since I’m writing on prophecy today, obviously this includes letting people speak on God’s behalf. New prophets need supervision!

Y’see, to the person who’s brand-new at listening to God, they may not realize every voice in their head sounds exactly the same. We weed out which spirits are God’s (or the Holy Spirit himself) by learning what he sounds like by reading our bibles. Newbies are new to the bible: They might’ve read it, but they don’t yet get it. They can’t tell the difference between God’s voice, their own voice, some other spirit’s voice, or even a devil’s voice: They all sound alike!

You know the devil’s totally gonna take advantage of this.

Some of these wannabe prophets never do learn the difference. Fr’instance cessationists presume every voice in their head is their own, and every clever idea they get is their idea. Even if it comes from the Holy Spirit. Or Satan. And if they don’t like the idea—even if it’s totally a God-idea!—they assume it’s their own personal crazy idea, which they dismiss out of hand, never share it, never obey it, don’t grow, and don’t grow others.

Now to the other extreme: We got Christians who for the rest of their life presume their own voice is God’s. And whattaya know: He likes what they like! He thinks like they do! He shares every single one of their wants, desires, and opinions! How handy. Hence some of ’em proclaim their various wants, desires, and opinions as if they came from God, because they’re entirely sure they and God are on the same wavelength. They pass for authentic prophets ’cause they sound so certain… and they are certain. But they’re false prophets ’cause that’s their voice, not God’s.

Inbetween we got prophets who do actually hear God. But they can likewise bollix their own prophecies for one rather obvious reason: They think their prophetic ability is fruit. Yep, they confused supernatural gifts with fruit. They think the power to do stuff takes priority, or even takes the place, of love, kindness, patience, grace, and gentleness. And since they’ve not grown that fruit, they’re not yet ready to speak for God. Because—

1 Corinthians 13.1-3 KWL

1 When I speak in human and angelic tongues:

When I have no love, I’ve become the sound of a gong, a clanging cymbal.

2 When I have a prophecy—“I knew the whole mystery! I know everything!”—

when I have all the faith necessary to move mountains:

When I have no love, I’m nobody.

3 Might I give away everything I possess?

Perhaps submit my body so I could be praised for my sacrifice?

When I have no love, I benefit nobody.

—they’re noise. They’re nobody. They benefit nobody. They will someday. Just not just yet.

But lemme remind you these immature Christians aren’t ready to speak for God… but do actually hear him. I’m not at all saying they don’t. Nor am I saying they’re frauds, nor malicious, nor bad Christians. They might not be! But because they lack fruit, they’re functionally just as error-plagued and destructive as any false prophet.

So I warn you about ’em now. Watch out for them. Don’t become one of them.

“Love is a verb.”

From time to time you’re gonna hear a preacher claim love isn’t a noun, but a verb.

dc Talk singing “Luv Is a Verb.” Yeah, this was the state of Christian hip hop in the ’90s. Sad. dc Talk

Largely I blame dc Talk’s 1992 song “Luv Is a Verb,” in which they looked up love in a dictionary and were apparently gobsmacked to discover yep, it’s a verb.

Pullin’ out my big black book

’Cause when I need a word defined, that’s where I look

So I move to the L’s quick, fast, in a hurry

Threw on my specs; thought my vision was blurry

I looked again but to my dismay

It was black and white with no room for gray

Ya see, a big V stood beyond my word

And yo, that’s when it hit me, that luv is a verb

Lots to pick apart there.

• Other Christian songs can talk about the death and resurrection of Christ, the atonement of humanity, the forgiveness of sins, and salvation itself, in one verse. But dc Talk needed the entire first verse to talk about using a dictionary. It’s not a deep song, yo.
• Seeing as dictionaries list many common definitions of the word “love,” there’s plenty of room for gray. So what is there to be dismayed about?
• Didn’t hit him that love is a verb till he saw the V, meaning “verb,” in its listing. So… he never used the word as a verb before? As in “I love this audience”? “I’d love another taco”? “I love Jesus yes I do, I love Jesus, how ’bout you”?
• Apparently the dictionary’s the absolute authority when it comes to parts of speech. Not so much spelling; they kept using “luv.”

But enough mocking a 28-year-old Christian hip hop oldie. The song’s about how love is a verb, and we Christians oughta exercise Jesus-type love. But nowhere in the song does it say, “Love’s a verb, not a noun.” It never denies the nounhood of “love.” It only reminds us the word’s also a verb, and therefore oughta be practiced.

Leaping from “Love is a verb” to “Love is a verb, not a noun” is adding an idea to the song which isn’t there. You know, like we Christians too often do with bible verses. Next we wind up defending our additional ideas instead of the original text, utterly lose the point of the original text… and forget to be Christlike while we’re at it, which is a whole other article.

Yes, love is a verb. And a noun. It’s both. Elevate both.

You’re gonna see both in the bible.

Those of us who’ve studied biblical Greek, as well as those of us who’ve maybe cracked open a Strong’s concordance and dictionary, know Greek has both noun and verb forms of the word.

• The noun, you’ve likely heard of. It’s ἀγάπη/aghápi (which Americans tend to transliterate agape). It appears 116 times in the New Testament.
• The verb is ἀγαπάω/aghapáo, “to love,” which appears 143 times (142 in the Textus Receptus).

Basic grammar review: A noun is a person, place, object, or concept. Jesus is a person, the airport is a place, robots are objects, strength is a concept. Now, none of those four items are passive. Jesus, the airport, robots, and strength, all act. As does love. Love has patience; love behaves kindly. 1Co 13.4 Still a noun though.

When Paul and Sosthenes wrote 1 Corinthians, they used the verb aghapáo twice, but the noun aghápi 14 times. Nine of those times are in chapter 13, where they defined it:

1 Corinthians 13.4-8 KWL

4 Love has patience. Love behaves kindly. It doesn’t act with uncontrolled emotion.

It doesn’t draw attention to how great it is. It doesn’t exaggerate.

5 It doesn’t ignore others’ considerations. It doesn’t look out for itself. It doesn’t provoke behavior.

It doesn’t plot evil. 6 It doesn’t delight in doing wrong: It delights in truth.

7 It puts up with everything, puts trust in everything,

puts hope in everything, survives everything. 8A Love never falls down.

Note they defined love using verbs, not adjectives: How it behaves, not what its characteristics are. English translations tend to use adjectives, like the NIV’s “Love is patient, love is kind,” 1Co 13.4 NIV because English doesn’t have convenient one-word verbs for μακροθυμεῖ/makrothymeí, “has patience” and χρηστεύεται/hristévete, “behaves kindly.” My translation tried to avoid adjectives because the apostles didn’t use ’em.

And again: Just because we define aghápi with verbs, doesn’t make it a verb. Same as defining a noun with adjectives doesn’t turn it into an adjective.

Preachers wanna emphasize the active nature of love. As we should. But come on people, “love” is also a noun.

Love gone askew.

Whenever we claim love’s not a noun, we reveal two things.

First, and the most problematic of the two: We’re letting pop songs determine our belief systems.

That’s not a new problem; it’s a very old one. Music, especially for people who love music, gets into our heads really easily. As do the lyrics. People are regularly surprised to discover they actually know all the lyrics to pop songs—they can even sing along to it!—even years later. Those words managed to worm their way into our subconscious.

Sometimes that’s neat… and sometimes that’s disturbing, because there are a lot of things in our subconscious which we’ve grown to unthinkingly accept. Advertisers definitely take advantage of this, and try to make sure we’ve heard their slogans and catchphrases so they can influence us to buy their product.

When a Christian pop musicians write a bit of fluff, hoping it’ll get played on K-LOVE and sell a bunch of downloads, they’re generally hoping the same thing: They want the music and lyrics to be catchy, and make you want to listen to it even more, and buy it and play it on your phone or iPod all day long. And you might. But same as any pop song, those words’ll get in you… and influence you in unexpected ways.

I’ve already written on problematic worship music. I needn’t go into that again. I should just remind you to take those subconsciously-memorized lyrics out of your subconscious and take a good hard look at them: What are the musicians saying? And is it good stuff?—or is it really bad theology, which needs correction before it leads you in the wrong directions?

Second, and importantly: In our haste to talk about how love is active, we’re a little too quick to dismiss other things which are also love. It’s important for love to be a noun.

Certain teachings from the scriptures, from Jesus himself, require us to possess love, and hold onto it ’cause it’s important:

• “The love you have with one another will prove to the world you’re my disciples.” Jn 13.35
• “Remain in my love.” Jn 15.9
• The Holy Spirit fills our hearts with God’s love. Ro 5.5
• Nothing is meant to separate us from God’s love. Ro 8.35, 39
• Our love oughta be sincere, Ro 12.9 do no evil, Ro 13.10 and build people up. 1Co 8.1
• We should pursue love! 1Co 14.1

When we don’t possess love, we might perform some of the same acts which love does. It’s possible to act patiently, or pursue truth, even when there’s no love involved. But here’s the problem: When we act without love, we botch things. 1Co 13.1-3 We do ’em for corrupt, self-centered reasons. Like a criminal patiently waiting for his evil plans to unfold. Or a person researching the truth so she can use it as a weapon. Reducing love to a verb doesn’t take our motives into account, and our motives can be totally depraved. We need to possess love in order to act in love.

Lastly, God himself is love. 1Jn 4.8, 16 And God may be almighty, but he’s no verb.

The eight loves.

One of my previous pastors likes to use Foreigner’s 1984 song, “I Want to Know What Love Is,” as an example of how our wider American culture really doesn’t know what love is. (Plus he likes the song itself.)

He’s not wrong. When we hear English-speakers talk about love—whether in our movies, songs, talk shows, books, even academically—they’re using about eight different definitions of love. Only one of these definitions is the one Paul and Sosthenes used in 1 Corinthians. The rest comes from the culture. Other languages, other cultures, might have even more than eight.

I mention eight different definitions to people, and they usually nod their heads: Yep, we define “love” at least that many different ways. But every once in a while some Christian wants to correct me, and tell me there are four loves, not eight. ’Cause they’ve read (or at least heard about) C.S. Lewis’s 1960 book The Four Loves, so there y’go: There are four loves. Where’d I come up with another four?

Um… from a dictionary. You know how dictionaries have definitions in them?

Why’d Lewis say there were only four? Well he didn’t. His book’s about four words in ancient Greek, which English-speakers translate “love”: Στοργή/storghí, φίλος/fílos, ἔρος/éros, and ἀγάπη/aghápi. (Only two of ’em are used in the New Testament.) There are other ancient Greek words which get translated “love,” like ἐραστεύω/erastévo, πόθος/póthos, and ξενία/xenía; and of course all the words used as metaphors. Lewis wasn’t trying to be comprehensive. He simply used the four words as a jumping-off point to analyze his personal thoughts about love… and frankly, Lewis was a rather bookish introvert who’d read more poetry than gone on dates. I expect his book would’ve been way different after he married.

The dictionary I used, actually listed more than eight concepts. But some of them were mighty similar, so I condensed ’em to eight.

1. AFFECTION (storgí). The “natural love” we feel towards familiar people: How people feel towards relatives, childhood friends feel for one another, people feel towards friendly neighbors and coworkers, owners feel towards pets.
2. FRIENDSHIP (fílos). The “love” we feel for people who share common interests with us. We like doing certain things with them, and like them because of it.
3. ROMANCE (éros). “Being in love”: The intense pleasure taken in another person. Ranges from harmless crushes, to the extreme cases of lust and obsession—which see #8.
4. CHARITY (aghápi). Unconditional, benevolent, self-sacrificing, gracious love. The sort of love God is, 1Jn 4.8, 16 the sort of love the Spirit grows in us, Ga 5.22 the love Paul describes. 1Co 13.4-8 “Biblical love.”
5. HOSPITALITY (xenía). Conditional love. Looks exactly like charity, but it expects to be reciprocal, and compensated—with gratitude at the least, profit at the most.
6. FAVORITISM. Our love for favorite things: Beloved foods, clothes, TV shows, cities we visit, sports, songs, musicians, politicians, etc.
7. NARCISSISM. The love we have for ourselves, which comes from our self-preservation instinct. Can be used as a helpful gauge for how much we oughta love others, Lv 19.18 but more often than not turns into pure selfishness.
8. INFATUATION. Lust or obsessive love. Whenever any of the above escalates into the jealous desire to possess the one they love. By this point outsiders, disturbed by how it looks, try to call this anything but love, but the infatuated person insists it’s love.

Your own dictionary and thesaurus will no doubt list more than these eight. You may even look at my categories and figure I could’ve lumped them together even more. (Or less.) That’s fair. There’s lots of overlap. Debate it all you like. My point is to show you the many things we English-speakers mean by “love.”

Defining aghápi.

When Christians talk about love, we refer to aghápi (KJV “charity”), which most of us spell “agape,” and sometimes mispronounce. That, we insist, is godly love.

Same as our culture, ancient Greek speakers had multiple definitions of the word. They used it all sorts of ways, and used many of the same eight definitions we do. Every once in a while you’ll hear some Christian claim aghápi and fílos are two entirely different kinds of love… but to your average ancient Greek speaker, no they weren’t; they were interchangeable synonyms.

The Corinthians had a bunch of definitions for aghápi. And they were entirely sure they knew what it meant. Corinth was the location of the biggest temple of Aphrodite, the Greek god of love. Corinthians presumed they, of all people, oughta know what aghápi is.

Hence Paul had to write out his definition in order to show ’em no, they really didn’t.

1 Corinthians 13.4-8 KWL

4 Love has patience. Love behaves kindly. It doesn’t act with uncontrolled emotion.

It doesn’t draw attention to how great it is. It doesn’t exaggerate.

5 It doesn’t ignore others’ considerations. It doesn’t look out for itself. It doesn’t provoke behavior.

It doesn’t plot evil. 6 It doesn’t delight in doing wrong: It delights in truth.

7 It puts up with everything, puts trust in everything,

puts hope in everything, survives everything. 8A Love never falls down.

In most translations this passage is rendered, “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude,” etc. 1Co 13.4-5 NRSV That’s not a bad translation, but using all these adjectives gives people the idea Paul described what love is. He didn’t; he used verbs. This is about what love does. Or doesn’t.

English lacks a single word for the verb μακροθυμεῖ/makrothymeí, “has patience”; or the verb χρηστεύεται/hristévete/“behaves kindly.” Hence all the English adjectives. Consequently we get the wrong idea that love is something, and not so much that it does something. Love is active, not passive.

Paul’s definition was corrective, ’cause the Corinthians, same as our culture, had the usual wrong ideas of love.

• “Love has patience”—whereas our culture can’t wait. It’s now or never.
• “Love behaves kindly”—we’ll do all sorts of rude and crude and thoughtless things in love’s name, and insist love means never having to say you’re sorry. And don’t get me started on “tough love.”
• “Love doesn’t act with uncontrolled emotion”—love is nothing but out-of-control emotion, wild and unstable, here today and gone tomorrow.
• “Love doesn’t draw attention to how great it is”—whereas just about every single one of our pop songs extols the greatness and glory of love.
• “Love doesn’t exaggerate”—whereas lovers offer to climb the highest mountains, swim the deadliest seas, and sacrifice their futures for love. And never really do.
• “Love doesn’t ignore others’ considerations”—whereas people in love will ignore all their friends, and sacrifice those relationships for their beloved.
• “Love doesn’t look out for itself”—of course it does.
• “Love doesn’t provoke behavior”—we’ll lie, cheat, and steal for it.
• “Love doesn’t plot evil”—we’ll ruin other people’s relationships and marriages for it.
• “Love doesn’t delight in doing wrong”—but “if loving you is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.”
• “Love delights in truth”—whereas people will tell their loved ones all sorts of lies, just to protect their feelings, just to keep the romance going.
• “Love puts up with everything”—until it doesn’t.
• “Love puts trust in everything”—until you realize your lover is a lying weasel, and you decide you can’t forgive ’em anymore.
• “Love puts hope in everything”—until reality sets in.
• “Love survives everything”—tell that to our divorce rate.
• “Love never falls down”—it wears off after a few years, and people end things because there’s just no hope of getting it back once it’s gone.

You see how our culture has love completely backwards? Corinth was no different. When you read the myths about Aphrodite, you discover she was flighty and unstable. She demanded ridiculous things for “love,” and her emotions turned on a dime. All throughout history, love’s been depicted the very same way. Even today. Watch any present-day romantic comedy.

And none of that is what Paul, or the scriptures, or God, means by love. God is love, and we define love by God’s character: Love isn’t temporary or unstable, because God isn’t temporary or unstable. Love has patience, behaves kindly, acts hopeful and faithful, because God has patience, behaves kindly, and acts hopeful and faithful. The reason true Christians produce the fruit of love is because God’s own character overflows into our lives, and produces the very same behavior.

Stick with Paul’s definition.

I’ve heard a lot of loopy sermons based on the idea of overlaying our culture’s ideas of love onto bible verses. Fr’instance one preacher claimed “Love your neighbor” Lv 19.18 means we need to pursue a close, intimate friendship with every single one of the people in our apartment buildings or housing developments. We should all be the bestest of best friends. With everyone.

Frankly this is nuts. We should love them—be patient with them, kind to them, look out for them—but develop close personal relationships with everyone on the block? Can’t be done. Even if we had that much time and put in that much effort: Some of them are self-centered jerks, and are never gonna do any more with us than use and abuse. They’re not trustworthy. They’re not safe. Don’t befriend them.

Yeah, Jesus befriended sinners. Lk 15.2 But he wasn’t close with them, for he knew what sort of people they were. Jn 2.24-25 We need to exercise the same sort of wisdom when it comes to certain people. It’s far easier for sinners to lead us astray, than for us to lead sinners aright.

“Love your enemy” Lk 6.35 exposes just how dumb this instruction is. Then we see the foolishness of trying to have warm fuzzy feelings towards them. (Although some have tried. Like I said, I’ve heard the sermons.)

So how do we love our neighbors, our enemies—basically everybody? Stick with Paul’s definition. Behave like love does. Impatient? That’s not love; don’t do that. Jealous? That’s not love; don’t do that. Overwhelmed by passion? That’s not love; don’t do that. Shouting from the rooftops? That’s not love; don’t do that.

What’s more, don’t justify such behavior, like pagans will: “But I’m doing it out of love.” That’s not love. Love is self-controlled. Love isn’t possessive. Love doesn’t demand undue attention or outrageous devotion. When you see these non-loving behaviors, recognize ’em for the carnal desires they are. Ask the Holy Spirit for help in weeding them out of your life.

I realize for some folks, they’ll have to do a complete 360-degree turn in their mindset about love. It won’t be easy. But once you get the hang of actual love, the other fruits of the Spirit come much, much faster. Paul likely listed love first Ga 5.22 because the other fruits are so dependent upon it. When we’re deficient in love, of course we’ll be deficient in the others. So make it a priority.

Faking the Spirit’s fruit.

So you know we Christians need to be fruity. If we’re following the Holy Spirit’s lead, his character’s gonna overflow into the rest of our lives, and out pours his fruit.

And you probably know lots of Christians who claim they’re producing this sort of fruit. And yet… there’s something just a bit off-putting about the sort of “fruit” they crank out.

The love? Not all that loving. Their joy is either too manic, or has a lot of sadness and resignation mixed in there. The patience feels like despair. The kindness is artificial—and skin-deep; turn your back and they’ll say some really awful things about the people they were just kind to a moment ago, and you can only imagine what they have to say about you.

Peace seems to only come about after an awful lot of strife. Forgiveness has tons of strings attached. Grace is only extended to popular people, not everyone.

What’s going on? Duh; fruitless Christians redefining fruit. If you don’t have any real fruit, substitute fakes. Paint those road apples red, claim they’re real apples, and see whether anyone takes a bite. See if anyone notices—and if everybody’s faking it, nobody ever will.

Because fake fruit is easier. It doesn’t require real change. It means we can look good enough for church, but outside the church building we can be the same [rhymes with “gas tolls”] we’ve always been. Hypocrisy is always the easier, more popular path, found among just about every Christianist.

No, it’s not a perfect simulation. When we aren’t practicing the real thing, there are plenty of cracks in the veneer. You should be able to identify the frauds… and if you can’t, here’s this article.

Gotta pretend to love.

Take a Christian who doesn’t have love. Paul and Sosthenes described love like so.

1 Corinthians 13.4-8 KWL

4 Love has patience. Love behaves kindly.

It’s not emotion out of control. It doesn’t draw attention to how great it is. It doesn’t exaggerate.

5 It doesn’t ignore others’ considerations. It doesn’t look out for itself. It doesn’t provoke behavior.

It doesn’t plot evil. 6 It doesn’t delight in doing wrong: It delights in truth.

7 It puts up with everything, puts trust in everything, puts hope in everything,

survives everything. 8A Love never falls down.

Naturally, fake love—the way ancient Corinth defined love, and the way popular culture misdefines it—lacks these characteristics entirely. Fake love behaves impatiently and unkindly. It’s wild, self-promoting, exaggerated, dismissive of anyone or anything else as lesser, provocative, scheming and conniving, willing and ready to shatter existing relationships and break every law. Over time, sometimes very little time, it fades away, and doesn’t persevere. Fake love rarely lasts without a strong helping of denial. Or liquor.

Among hypocrites, the absence of actual love produces people who don’t look at our fellow human beings as creatures to love. Just resources to tap. We’ll care about our friends and family, and be very loyal to them (although not always), but that’s largely because we think of them as extensions of ourselves, or possessions. But we won’t give a crap about strangers or neighbors. Depending on our politics, either the poor are nothing but a societal burden, or the rich are nothing but societal parasites. Either way, other people are inconvenient… till we need something from them.

Works the same way in relationships. We don’t date or marry people because we wanna self-sacrificially care for them. Oh, we’ll do that to a point. But we have ulterior motives: We want to bang them. We like the comfort and security of knowing they (or their wallets) will be there for us… even though we don’t guarantee we’ll be there in return. If we do stuff for them, they’ll owe us, and we can extract payment in all sorts of fun ways. And every time they object, we’ll claim, “But I love you”—and that makes everything all right, doesn’t it?… till we fall out of love, or find someone else to tap, and bail on them altogether.

Works the same way with parents or kids. If they do for us, we love ’em. If not—if the “but I’m your kid, and I love you” con won’t work anymore; we disown them. Maybe not in words, but we’ll just never be around any longer.

We won’t care to know the other people in our churches. At best it’ll be on a superficial level, and at worst the same parasitic relationship we have with our significant others. Always take, take, take. If someone in the church is too poor, too needy, has too many problems, we’ll unfriend ’em, and use the excuse, “He just can’t get his life together; it’s gotta be because of sin, and I can’t be around that.” That usually works. Successful people must be good Christians, right?—and they’re the only people worth knowing, so we’ll stick to those cliques.

Quite often you’ll see hatred. Hypocrites hate sin—so we claim. So we hate anything which has any whiff of sin to it—and that’s pretty much everything. Everything’s tainted. Anything other people enjoy, anything popular in the secular world? We’ll find something wrong with it. Anything popular in the Christian culture? We’ll find something wrong with that too. There’s nothing good under the sun, nothing. Especially when it outrages us personally. Depending on our politics, we’ll hate liberals and Democrats, or we’ll hate social Darwinists and Republicans. We’ll complain way too much about our least favorite sinners, and absolutely hate Satan. (What, you thought true Christians get to make an exception for the devil? No. Any hate corrodes the hater.)

Redefine every fruit.

INSTEAD OF JOY. Joy is actual happiness and optimism and hope. Those who fake joy will instead be unhappy, pessimistic (or “just being realistic,” we’ll claim), and hopeless.

We’ll claim it’s okay we’re joyless: Apparently joy in the bible doesn’t really mean joy. It means being content, despite our rotten circumstances. It means tolerance. I have joy because I put up with you and all your crap. Isn’t that magnanimous of me?

If the joyless have any sense of humor, it’s bent; it’s all about mocking and slamming others. Our so-called realism cynically dismisses any of the good in the world, as we only fixate on evil. We’re quick to find problems—in our families, churches, jobs, in the government, in society. We nitpick, not because we care, or are trying to improve things, but because that’s just what we do. We never expect anything, including our own lives, to get any better. Any Christians who do, we mock as naïve or idealistic—or of loving the world too much.

INSTEAD OF PEACE. Ever notice how many paranoid Christians there are? They constantly worry about what the devil’s up to. Not to mention its minions in the media, big business, the press, the government, other religions… We’re especially fond of conspiracy theories and End Times stuff. Any sign can mean the great tribulation is coming. So we’re fret about gun control, our constitutional rights, our personal data existing in any computer anywhere, or about other groups gaining on us. We’re scared.

And we make trouble: We like to create drama around us. Hey, life is boring when people aren’t fighting. So we’ll hang around fights, or pick one. We like to debate. We love apologetics and politics. If there’s an issue we can either fight over or forgive, we’ll never, ever pick forgiveness.

What about peace? Oh, we doubt it exists. Any time someone tries to make peace, we’re pretty sure that’s what’s fake.

INSTEAD OF PATIENCE. Impatience. We’ll complain whenever a worship chorus gets sung more than three times. We’ll give dirty looks to a parent who has a crying child in the service. We’ll get really angry when the pastor doesn’t get to the point, and the service cuts into lunchtime. We prefer quick fixes, easily summed-up theology, ideas easy to grasp, and people who don’t waste our time. We take it as a personal insult when people violate any of these things. We offer little grace. We don’t forgive or forget.

INSTEAD OF KINDNESS. Rudeness. There are two kinds of rude: Those who treat others like scum are obvious enough. Then there are those who are politely rude—the folks who don’t really care what people have to say, and just impose ourselves. These’d be the brainiacs in the bible studies, who never catch the leader’s hints to shut up and give someone else a turn. These’d be the people who drag people forward for prayer, without asking if they want or need prayer—or, just as bad, they ask, but never wait for an answer.

INSTEAD OF GOODNESS. Some Christians won’t even try to be good, but take full advantage of God’s grace. And full advantage of the Christians who extend us grace. We justify all our evil: We undertip and blame the waiter, or a society which expects us to tip all the time. We steal office supplies and blame the boss for underpaying us. We’re undependable, untrustworthy, unsympathetic, uninterested, ungenerous… we’re irreligious, and unchristian.

INSTEAD OF GENTLENESS. Out-of-control emotion. When we’re happy, upset, anxious, ecstatic, sad, whatever, you’re gonna know it. We don’t contain ourselves. We claim we can’t—“It’s just the way I am,” or “That’s just my personality,” or “That’s just my behavior quirk.” No, it’s not because we’re suffering from serious psychological problems, and we’re wandering the streets instead of being institutionalized or heavily medicated: We’re trying to rework the emotional environment around us in order to suit our mood swings. And because people don’t understand psychology (or what “gentleness” even means) they let us get away with it.

INSTEAD OF SELF-CONTROL. No control. Our lives are a mess and we don’t lift a finger to sort them out. We won’t grow as Christians because we refuse to give up sinful habits and minor idols. We figure one day we’ll magically wake up all better. Or since all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory, Ro 3.23 it’s too late to seek improvement—so we’ll try to not commit any of the mortal sins. But there’s grace, right?

Perhaps we oughta follow the Spirit.

Where’d I get these descriptions? Simple: My own misbehavior. I used to be an awful hypocrite. Now I’m concentrating on being fruity. I still have a way to go. As do we all. Once we recognize these failings in ourselves, we can concentrate on letting the Holy Spirit get rid of them.

What I find works best is confession. I admit my past misbehavior—like the things I listed above. I talk about my less-than-noble motives for doing such things. I tell people it was sinful. I condemn it. And I ask ’em to call me on it if I repeat these old habits.

What if they’re practicing these things, ’cause they’re trying to fake the Spirit’s fruit instead of legitimately producing it? Well, some of ’em get convicted, and repent. And some of ’em pretend they would never, and praise me for being so transparent… and strive all the harder to hide their misbehaviors, ’cause they realize I’m on to them.

Every so often, a Christian has taken me aside and rebuked me for confessing. No, really. “You need to be careful who you confess this stuff to. You realize people might use it against you.” Um… how? I’ve already told on myself. It’s impossible to blackmail someone who’s publicly confessed the crime! The pure paranoid irrationality of their concern, exposes it for what it really is: They have sins to confess, and are terrified if they do, it’ll ruin them. So I need to stop it, lest my example ever become the norm. Darkness hates light.

If other people are doing the same things, and happen to be personally convicted because of my confession, that’s fine. I don’t try to figure out what sins other people are committing, nor customize my confessions to convict them. (I don’t bother with passive-aggressive behavior; I just go straight to aggressive.) I talk about myself, call a spade a spade, and confess I was self-centered instead of Jesus-focused. If they repent, great. If not, oh well; it’s between them and the Spirit.

But as for me, I’m gonna grow the Spirit’s fruit. I’m not gonna swap it for vastly inferior knock-offs.

How not to rebuke someone over the internet.

Questions? Comments? Email. But remember, my feedback policy means I can post it. Maybe even make fun of it.

Y’might notice on some of the older TXAB articles, the Disqus comments have closed. I put an expiration date on posting comments on the article itself. It’s just weird when someone comments on something years later. It’s weird when they do it on YouTube (and super annoying when it’s something inane, like “Hey, who else is watching this video in 2019?”); it’s weird when they do it anywhere. So I prevented it on this site.

But nothing can stop you from throwing me an email, so people will do that.

So I got feedback on my article, “The fear of phony peace.” Wasn’t positive. A lot of Christians believe the great tribulation is definitely gonna follow the rapture, and somehow my saying otherwise is doing people a disservice: Christians need to be prepared for… utterly escaping all the bad stuff?

Seems if we did need to be more prepared for anything, it’d be in case the rapture doesn’t precede tribulation, and we do have to live through 3½ to 7 years of suffering. In which case one of Jim Bakker’s buckets of End Times pizza would be looking pretty good pretty fast. But this person’s pretty sure my rejection of getting skyhooked out of suffering is “false doctrine.” I’ll let him say it.

So you’re saying that the antichrist wont make a peace treaty with Israel and break it after 3.5 years?

I had tremendous respect for your teaching until the fear article. You are the one deceived. I am gifted to discern right and wrong doctrine. And boy! You are wrong! No other way to say it.

I know you will try to persuade me further but don’t. I have done all the research and you are just wrong. Now you are accountable for spreading false doctrine. I admonish you to remove this garbage and get right with the Father once again. You can’t go doing that. You can’t.

Peace to you.

My response to him was, “Okay, you persuade me. Give me the scriptures.” But he didn’t respond. Likely he figured it’d be a frustrating waste of his time. Maybe so. When people are convinced we’re right (whether it’s him or me), someone who won’t accept this can get really aggravating. When he’s absolutely certain his reasoning is sound, yet I keep poking holes in it (as I was trained to)… well you can quickly see why ancient Athens decided to be rid of Socrates.

So this fellow rebuked me. Productively? Not unless you count this article, which I’m gonna use to show you how not to rebuke someone over the internet.

Certainty isn’t faith.

Certainty may come later. Till then, we have faith.

“I know this to be true, because I have faith.” I’ve heard more than one Christian say such a thing. It’s ’cause they don’t realize that’s a self-contradictory statement.

Hebrews 11.1 KWL

Faith is the solid basis of hope,

the proof of actions we’ve not seen.

Faith isn’t the solid basis of knowledge, but the solid basis of hope. Properly we hope certain things are true because we have faith. We don’t know yet. Gonna know eventually. But not yet.

So when I read in the scriptures God’s gonna resurrect me someday, I gotta admit: I don’t know he will. Because the basis of knowledge is experience, and I haven’t had the experience of being resurrected. Yet.

Now, Jesus did have the experience of being resurrected. He taught on, and believed in, the resurrection. Mt 22.29-32 He stated he’s the resurrection, and when we trust him, we’ll experience it. Jn 20.25-26 That’s why it’s an orthodox Christian belief. That’s why I have no problem with the belief, and believe it myself. But do I know I’ll be resurrected? Not till it happens. Till then, I just have to trust Jesus that it’ll happen. And I do. So I’m good.

To some Christians, that’s not good enough. Hope isn’t sufficient. Uncertainty isn’t acceptable. They wanna know. And they claim they do know. How? Well, they trust Jesus. That’s how they know.

Well wait: I trust Jesus too. Yet I recognize trusting Jesus doesn’t grant me knowledge; only hope. How’d they get knowledge?

They actually didn’t. But they think they have knowledge. They think they have certainty. They think a lot of things which have no basis in the scriptures. Namely that if they believe really hard, that’s the same as knowledge. Faith, they imagine, is the solid basis of knowledge. They know they’re getting resurrected.

Yeah, you realize what they’re doing: They wanna demonstrate their zealousness for God, their absolute trust in him, and in order to do this they’re gonna leapfrog hope and claim they know. That way the rest of us look like unbelievers in comparison. (In fact some of ’em even claim we are unbelievers. ’Cause we only hope. Whereas they know.)

Nah, they don’t really know. But boy, they sure think they do. So much so, they’ll even be self-righteous a--holes about it.

The Twelve and the miracles.

Mark 6.12-13, Luke 9.6.

Of Jesus’s students, he assigned 12 of them to be apostles, “one who’s been sent out,” and eventually he did send ’em out to preach the gospel, cure the sick, and exorcise unclean spirits.

And that’s exactly what they did.

Mark 6.12-13 KWL

12 Going out, the apostles preached that people should repent.

13 The apostles were throwing out many demons, anointing many sick people with olive oil—and they were curing them.

 

Luke 9.6 KWL

6 Coming out, the apostles passed through the villages,

evangelizing and curing the sick everywhere.

Yep, all of them. Even Judas Iscariot.

And here’s where we slam into a wall with a lot of Christians. Because they cannot fathom how these apostles went out and cured the sick and exorcised evil spirits.

They’ll grudgingly acknowledge that the apostles did it. The gospels totally say so, and who are they to doubt the gospels? But y’see, their hangups come from the fact they have a lot of theological baggage about how miracles work, how the Holy Spirit empowers people, when the Holy Spirit historically empowered people, and the fact miracles seem to have nothing to do with the apostles’ maturity level: Once they were done doing these mighty acts, they came back to follow Jesus, and seemed to be the same foolish kids they always were.

Oh, and we can’t leave out Judas Iscariot. Christians really don’t like the idea Judas was curing the sick and casting out devils. Since he was one of the Twelve, and since these verses imply he did as the others of the Twelve did, it means Judas did miracles. And this, many Christians cannot abide. I remember one movie in particular where Judas specifically did no miracles; he lacked faith, so Simon the Canaanite, whom Judas was paired up with, Mt 10.4 did ’em all. ’Cause later Judas turned traitor and appears to have gone apostate—so Christians don’t want him having power, and balk at the idea the Holy Spirit really entrusted him with any such thing. It violates their sense of karma.

First thing we gotta do is put down the baggage and accept the scriptures: Jesus sent out his apostles, young as they were, green as they were, to go do supernatural acts of power. Which they did. We can debate the how and the why, but none of this hashing out should violate the fact they did the stuff. If it does, we’re doing theology backwards, and wrong.