The greatest of these is love 

Call To Prayer 

Title: The greatest of these is love 

By: Njuacha Hubert 

Date: 08.06.2024 

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13: 13 

Our anchor verse above is Saint Paul’s conclusion after teaching the church of Corinth about the different gifts the Spirit of God gives to different individuals in the body of Christ and how they are to be used to serve one another (See Corinthians 11-13). So, after talking about these marvellous gifts like prophecy, healing power, teaching grace and so on, he concluded that without love all those will be in vain. Love is the greatest. But we need to really understand why love is the greatest.  

Love is the only command that Jesus explicitly gave us. That’s because the one that loves will fulfil all righteousness. As described in 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7, Love is not self-seeking, love seeks to honour others, love does not keep records of wrongs, love is kind and so on. If you love, will you steal from your neighbour? Can you truly love your spouse, and cheat on your spouse? Remember love cares about others not just yourself. Love is our compass such that at any time if we ask ourselves if we are walking in love we will ascertain if we have derailed from Christ or are walking in His footsteps because His path is the way of Love.

God is love. We show ourselves to be the children of God when we love (1 John 4:7-12). Likewise, we disapprove that we know God when we don’t love. Not forgetting that each one will be rewarded according to what they have done (Romans 2:6, Revelation 22:12, Matthew 25:40).

Now that we know that love is the greatest and most important commandment of God and the most important way by which we identify as God’s children. What must we do? We must desire to walk and grow in love. We must practice that love because grace to increase in anything comes to the one who is practising (John 15:2, Matthew 13:12, Luke 6:38). We must be motivated by love, not fear, pride or anything else.  Let’s not be those who profess love only with the mouth, but our actions are far from it.  

Prayer Point:  

Let’s thank Jesus for dying for us to obtain eternal life and become the sons of God. Let’s pray for the grace to demonstrate our sonship by practising His commandment to love as He has loved us.