Old Testament Scripture Reading: Malachi 3:6 – 7 (KJV)
Mal 3:6 “For I, the LORD, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.
Mal 3:7 “From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from My statutes and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD of hosts. “But you say, ‘How shall we return?’
New Testament Scripture Reading: 1Corinthians 13:1 – 13 (NASB)
1Co 13:1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
1Co 13:2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
1Co 13:3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
1Co 13:4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant,
1Co 13:5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,
1Co 13:6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
1Co 13:7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
1Co 13:8 Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.
1Co 13:9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part;
1Co 13:10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.
1Co 13:11 When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.
1Co 13:12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.
1Co 13:13 But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.
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Transforming Power Statements:
1) Even the Old Covenant (Testament) must be understood as a “Covenant of Grace” in that even when the Law of God was in effect, it was never perfectly carried out by any of the people who were under it, therefore, it provided a sacrificial system requiring the shedding of innocent blood as a payment for the inadequacies of the guilty sinners which was allowed by the Grace of God, and was a fore-shadowing of the coming sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
2) Mankind under the “Law” was never able to keep it, but God made a system of kindness toward them even though they fell further away and lost all affection toward God, and began to become calloused and complacent about the teachings of the Law as in the days of Malachi, therefore, God pled with them to love Him as He had loved them!
3) Paul describes the Character of true love in the midst of his explanation of the misuse of Spiritual gifts being done by some of the members of the Church at Corinth, where the Holy Spirit of God was being falsified and true love was the required answer needed for the intended outcome of the phenomenon of these gifts, and also serves us today as we weigh our actions by the real standard of this true type of love!