Chosen Yet Needing Love

Scripture today joins outward chosenness with the inward measure by which all gifts stand or fall. Saul appears as a man set apart in stature and promise. Tertullian notes “how that He had most fitly chosen him as being at that moment the choicest man, so that (as He says) there was not his fellow among the children of Israel.” Yet Paul teaches that distinction, strength, eloquence, knowledge, and even great acts of sacrifice are empty if love is absent. A man may be marked out before others and still fail in the one thing God requires.

This is a warning to the church. One may be honored, entrusted, learned in divine things, liberal to the poor, strict in fasting, or bold in suffering; but if he is harsh, envious, swollen with his own importance, easily provoked, or glad to hear evil of another, he has not yet learned Christ rightly. Love is not an ornament added to religion. It is the form of obedience itself: patient in insult, truthful in speech, steadfast under injury, ready to bear another’s burden without display.

Therefore let no one rest in appearances, whether beauty, office, reputation, or conspicuous zeal. God, who appoints, also weighs. And the weighing is severe. Not what place a man has, nor what powers he shows, but whether he keeps the more excellent way. As Chrysostom says, “For if I bestow my goods to feed the poor, and give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profits me nothing, 1 Corinthians 13:3 says he.” Let us then seek not to seem great, but to become useful: truthful, meek, forbearing, and constant in good works.