Fashions Fading to Fallacies
I Corinthians 13:8–13
“Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
Paeans to love abound in the current Western culture and in many religious thought, so much so that the idea gets blurred on the edges and appears to encompasses even contradictory meanings. Although a lot of these do touch on the truth if it isn’t mangled with so much mystical baggage, in bliss we are created, in bliss we are sustained, and in bliss we shall return says in one of the Vedas, we can use the word “love” instead, it is interchangeable according to some gurus. However just because a glimpse of truth can be deciphered in some traditions it doesn’t make the entire tradition the correct worldview. It is akin to the limited reflection the Apostle Paul talks about (v. 12). And we are indeed created in perfect love where there is eternal bliss in the inherent relationship of the triune God, in His image we were created (Gen 1:26). We are also similarly sustained by Christ in whom all things consist (Col 1:17), and finally, we return to a union with Christ in eternal life (John 17:23–24). The irony here is that the big difference is love itself, that is God, that is Christ. Only Christ, in His grace, that this is possible (John 10:9, John 14:6). Ravi Zacharias described Eastern mysticism as having a spurious glitter, it sounds good, somehow because it touches on some truths and that makes it popular and fashionable but fundamentally, it is flawed. When fashions fade into fallacies, not only love endures, but that it is necessarily the love of God that endures, it is once more, άγάπη (agape), not merely a vague emotive platonic force hovering over the material and chemical composition of our hearts and minds, but the Son of the Living God Himself (I John 4:8) with us (Isa 7:14) and in us (John 14:20). At the very end, we can have faith or trust that “love never fails” (v. 8), because God never fails (Psa 136:2), we have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek (Heb 6:19–20).
“Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
Paeans to love abound in the current Western culture and in many religious thought, so much so that the idea gets blurred on the edges and appears to encompasses even contradictory meanings. Although a lot of these do touch on the truth if it isn’t mangled with so much mystical baggage, in bliss we are created, in bliss we are sustained, and in bliss we shall return says in one of the Vedas, we can use the word “love” instead, it is interchangeable according to some gurus. However just because a glimpse of truth can be deciphered in some traditions it doesn’t make the entire tradition the correct worldview. It is akin to the limited reflection the Apostle Paul talks about (v. 12). And we are indeed created in perfect love where there is eternal bliss in the inherent relationship of the triune God, in His image we were created (Gen 1:26). We are also similarly sustained by Christ in whom all things consist (Col 1:17), and finally, we return to a union with Christ in eternal life (John 17:23–24). The irony here is that the big difference is love itself, that is God, that is Christ. Only Christ, in His grace, that this is possible (John 10:9, John 14:6). Ravi Zacharias described Eastern mysticism as having a spurious glitter, it sounds good, somehow because it touches on some truths and that makes it popular and fashionable but fundamentally, it is flawed. When fashions fade into fallacies, not only love endures, but that it is necessarily the love of God that endures, it is once more, άγάπη (agape), not merely a vague emotive platonic force hovering over the material and chemical composition of our hearts and minds, but the Son of the Living God Himself (I John 4:8) with us (Isa 7:14) and in us (John 14:20). At the very end, we can have faith or trust that “love never fails” (v. 8), because God never fails (Psa 136:2), we have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek (Heb 6:19–20).
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