1 Corinthians 13:1-13

I am writing this as I am waiting to perform a wedding. As I am reflecting on the couple that I will be marrying, I can't but help think about how often this particular passage is used for the wedding ceremony. The couple that I am marrying have chosen this passage and through the counseling with them it is pertinent to their relationship. We often have difficulty focusing on what is love not only in the marital relationship but what is love for our community of faith and even for our society.
Often love can become a commodity. I will love if...fill in the blanks. Or I will be loved if ... fill in the blanks. As a therapist I could not count on both my hands, my feet, and the hands and feet of at least 20 other persons the number of times I heard that I no longer love so and so or I have fallen out of love with so and so. When I would probe, often the statement was that the feeling was no longer there as if there is any feeling that can be maintained over time. So the idea that love is a feeling creates for me a major concern. As a therapist and certainly as a pastor, I believe that Love is a choice. It is a matter of volition not emotion. That is not to say that there is not an emotional component to the choice that we make. But it is not the major component.
Paul states that love is a variety of things that we can only do partially. Yet, when everything else fails, love succeeds. Another reflection is if love is an emotion what would it mean to say that God loves us. Is that an emotion or is it a choice like what we read in John 3:16-17 that God so loved the world that he sent his son so that whoever believes in him shall have eternal life. For God did not send his son to condemn the world but to save the world through him. God has chosen us.
So when Paul sates that love is kind, patient, does not envy, boast, does not dishonor others, not self-seeking, not easily angered, and keeps no record of wrongs he means that these are the choices that we can make. So when we talk of love and that God is love we need to be aware of what we are saying. When Jesus states that the greatest commandments are to love God with all that we are and to love one another, God means that every day we need to make a choice and depend on how we feel that day or how we feel toward the other person.