Alan J. Huth shares a heartfelt story of divine intervention and transformation, detailing the harrowing experience that set him on the path of daily Bible reading devotion. We also look into complementary scriptures from 1 John chapter 4, providing a comprehensive biblical understanding of love. Whether you’re a long-time listener or tuning in for the first time, this episode is a compelling reminder of the power and importance of love, faith, and personal testimony in shaping our spiritual journeys.
00:00:08 Introduction to AdBible and Daily Devotion
00:00:23 1 Corinthians Chapter 13: The Love Chapter
Welcome to Add Bible, an audio daily devotion from the Ezra Project. Allen J. Huth shares a Bible passage with comments from over 35 years of his personal Bible reading journals and applies the Word of God to our daily lives.
SPEAKER 03 :
Today brings us to 1 Corinthians chapter 13, the love chapter. And I’m going to read the 13 verses of 1 Corinthians chapter 13. 1 Corinthians 13. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have and I deliver up my body to be burned, but I have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away. But we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. for now we see in a mirror dimly but then face to face now i know in part then i shall know fully even as if i had been fully known so now faith hope and love abide these three but the greatest of these is love Concerning the love chapter, in 1994, I wrote, love is not provoked, does not seek its own. And I wrote, we only know in part. And I finished with, I need faith, hope, and love operating in my life daily, but mostly love. Ten years later, in 2004, I wrote, love does not take into account a wrong suffered. I do, so I need to let things go, not get hurt when wronged. I have more faith and hope than love. Need to keep working on this. And in 2015, 11 years after that, I wrote, Love does not insist on its own way. We can only manifest any or all of these gifts partially because we are flawed, sinful human beings. Help me love. What sets up the love chapter? We have to go back to chapter 12, the final few verses, when Paul was describing the gifts. So let’s go back to chapter 12, verse 27 to set up chapter 13. Chapter 12, verse 27 says, Now you are the body of Christ, and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administration, and various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? but earnestly desire the higher gifts, and I will show you still a more excellent way. So Paul had described various gifts, but then he said, but desire higher gifts, a more excellent way. And that’s what leads us in to the love chapter, chapter 13. And as he begins chapter 13, he refers back to some of those other gifts. That’s why he says, if I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. So Paul is referring back to that list of gifts in chapter 12. Then he turns to those higher gifts, the more excellent way, as he defines love, starting with verse 4. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. In verses 4 through 8, I count 16 aspects Paul uses to define love. So I want to go over those 16, and I want you to think about these and rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 5 on these aspects of love. And we’re going to come up with your love quotient. As I read them off, think between 1 and 5, 5 being the highest and 1 being the lowest quotient. Rate yourself. I don’t know if you can tabulate these as you go, but let’s see what your love quotient is.
SPEAKER 02 :
First of all, love is patient, kind, does not envy, does not boast, is not arrogant, is not rude, does not insist on its own way, is not irritable, is not resentful, Does not rejoice at wrongdoing. Rejoices with the truth. Bears all things. Believes all things.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hopes all things. Endures all things. And lastly, love never ends. So those were the 16 aspects of love. I wondered if you scaled yourself from 1 to 5. I did. And the maximum love score here would be 80. 16 times 5. I didn’t get anywhere close to 80. My love quotient is a 60. My highest numbers were love does not rejoice at wrongdoing and rejoices with the truth and hopes all things. I think I do pretty good at those three. My lowest score was love does not insist on its own way. Gave myself a 2. After you score yourself, you might have your loved one, your spouse, or your real good friend score you on the same scale to see if your perspective of your love quotient and your significant other’s perspective of your love quotient is the same. 1 Corinthians 13 is a great chapter on love, but there’s another chapter on love I want to refer to, and that’s 1 John chapter 4. In 1 John chapter 4, between verses 7 and 19, there are wonderful definitions of love. To balance out what we’re learning in 1 Corinthians 13, let’s look here at 1 John chapter 4 in these verses 7 through 19. There, the Word of God says, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. And then I jump down to verse 18. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. And lastly, verse 19 says, we love because he first loved us. So when we add 1 John chapter 4 to 1 Corinthians chapter 13, we get a pretty comprehensive view of love as defined in the scriptures. By the way, if you’re listening to the podcast and you wish you could have written all that down, you don’t have to. As a member of Club 365, you get the transcripts. So you could have all this in writing and you could refer back to it. Or you could take the survey with your spouse or with someone else. To learn how to become a member of Club 365, just visit EzraProject.net and join today so you can get this transcript. After Paul defines love, he goes back to those gifts as he closes out chapter 13. When he finishes with, So again, he’s sandwiching the love chapter in between the chapters on spiritual gifts. And then he talks about a level of maturity. When he says, when I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. So he’s saying to the Corinthians, don’t argue about the spiritual gifts. Focus on the higher gifts, the more excellent way. And he finishes with verse 13. So now faith, hope, and love abide. These three, but the greatest of these is love. Well, I didn’t score very well on the love quotient, and I didn’t score very well in my journals either, if you remember what I said. I need to work on this, and it’s 10, 20, 30 years have gone by, and I still need to work on love and being more loving. Maybe you do too, so let’s pray. Father, we thank you for spiritual gifts. We thank you for the gifts that you give us. But then you tell us there’s a more excellent way, and that’s faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is even love. So help us, Lord, if our love quotient is not as high as we’d like it to be, that we could focus on some of these 16 aspects of love and work on some of these things and become more loving toward others. Lord, we also thank you for your expression of love in 1 John chapter 4. You say, God is love, and you demonstrated your love toward us by sending your Son to die for us. That is the ultimate gift of love, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. Though we’re flawed, sinful human beings, help us to love like you loved. Stretch us to love you better and love our fellow man better. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Thanks for listening to AdBible today. You might wonder how I became a daily Bible reader. When I was 15 years old, a buddy and me stole his father’s car. We could steal his father’s car because his father was in Vietnam, serving in the war. So he was never home. So we took the car that day, Neither one of us with a driver’s license, and we took off out east of Colorado Springs on a dirt road. We were flying down this dirt road at 60 miles an hour, and he lost control of the car. We began to spin, and we were going down the road, fishtailing, and he spun the wheel of the car 60 miles an hour. The car tumbled, crushed the top, tucked the wheels under, totaled the car. I was on a dirt road. I don’t know if I was thrown out of the car or crawled out of the car, but I looked at that car, and I thought, am I even alive? Am I broken? Am I bleeding everywhere? And I began to pat myself down, and I felt like I was okay. So I stood up, and I was uninjured, amazingly. The sheriff came to draw up the accident. He said, it’s a miracle you guys are alive. I got home that night, went down into my bedroom. My mother came to me and said, you ought to thank God you’re alive. I was laying on my bed, and I was thinking about the day’s activities. And I just thought, wow, I could have been dead today. I wasn’t the driver. I was the passenger. I wasn’t in control. But God was. At that moment, I figured out at 15 years old, God could take my life any time. He could have that day. So as I laid there, I thought, okay, you could take my life any day. So you saved my life today for a reason. For whatever reason that is, I’m going to live for you and that reason. As I said that, I heard a voice say to me, there’s a Bible on your bookshelf. Get it down and read it. I must have heard something, because I got up, I went over to the bookshelf, and I pulled down a Bible. I opened it to the first page, just like I would any other book, and I began to read God’s Word. I read Genesis chapter 1. The next day I read Genesis chapter 2. The next day I read Genesis chapter 3. And a chapter a day, I began to read God’s Word at 15 years old. If you do that, by the way, it’ll take you about three and a half years to finish reading the Bible a chapter a day. And that’s a good plan. So that’s how I became a daily Bible reader. And when I finished going through the Bible the first time, at 18 years or so, I just started over because I thought that’s what Christians did, was read their Bibles every day. So that’s how I became a daily Bible reader.
