I still haven’t given up on one particular person. This man seldom treats me with this love we’ve been studying. He isn’t long-suffering with me. In fact, he’s rather impatient with me. I wouldn’t say that he is consistently kind to me. He certainly keeps records of my wrongs and I know for a fact that he does not believe the best about me. He doesn’t seem to care when I do something right, but he gets quite worked up whenever I do something wrong. Even with all of that, I still haven’t given up on person. I am talking, of course, about myself.
My thoughts about myself don’t always run along the lines of 1 Corinthians 13. In fact, if another man spoke to me the way that I sometimes speak to myself about myself I would confront him quickly or maybe find a safe distance. You might treat yourself the same way. You might recognize that you treat others better than you treat yourself or maybe you treat others as poorly as you treat yourself. Only you know what goes on in your own mind, and each of us is different.
I dare say however your mind works that you hold out hope for yourself. Even if you feel as if your life has become a dead end, you wish it were different. You want something better for yourself. You want to be better. You keep thinking that you might change. You hold out hope for yourself no matter how poorly you treat yourself.
What would it look like to apply that same sort of hope to others? What would it look like to apply that to people whom you think will never change? What would it look like to apply that to people who don’t treat you with 1 Corinthians 13 love? What could happen in this church if we all extended such hope to one another?
You want people to be hopeful about you. Be hopeful about everyone. Love is hopeful about everyone. That is the claim of this sermon: love is hopeful about everyone.
We will study this in two points. First: conditional hope. Second: unconditional hope. First, we will consider hope that is conditional. Second, we will consider hope that is unconditional, as in love always hopes.
First: conditional hope. I think the vast majority of people hold out hope for others. They believe that others can change. There are, of course, those who don’t hold out hope for others. They are disappointed with humanity in general and the people they encounter in specific. They don’t believe that others can or will change. I think such people make up a small fraction of the population. I think the vast majority of us hold out hope for others, albeit with conditions.
We tend to hope and keep hoping provided certain conditions are met. Conditional hope continues as long as the other person will change. When it becomes clear the other person will not change, conditional hope begins to wane. Imagine a wife who makes very foolish financial choices. Her husband has been long-suffering with her on this matter. She refuses to acknowledge the problem and continues her ways. He speaks with her again and again. He sets up an appointment for a Dave Ramsey course, but she will have none of it. He begins to lose hope. “[This] Love [on the other hand] hopes for the best, even when disappointed by repeated personal abuse, hoping against hope,” says DA Carson about the 1 Corinthians 13 love. Love keeps hoping when the other person will not change. It always hopes.
Conditional hope continues as long as it seems the other person can change. When it becomes clear that the other person might not be able to change, conditional hope stops. Imagine a husband who is habitually depressed. This depression disrupts the family’s life in any number of ways. He seemingly cannot change. His wife begins to lose hope. 1 Corinthians 13 calls her to hope for change even when it seems that her husband can’t change. It always hopes.
Conditional hope doesn’t give credit to progress it deems insufficient. Imagine that you have a coworker who is rather rude to you. She makes catty comments a good deal of the time. As you continue to work with her, you come to recognize that she grew up in an extraordinarily broken home. Her dad is always between jobs and you’ve overheard her mother screaming and swearing in telephone conversations that you did your best not to overhear. Your coworker has a little plaque on her desk that says, “treat others the way that you want to be treated.” Now remember, she treats you quite rudely. Are you going to understand that plaque as her desire to change and grow or are you going to consider that plaque an act of hypocrisy because she doesn’t treat you the way that she would like to be treated? In other words, are you going to give her credit for her apparent desire to change even though her progress is insufficient to keep her from being rude to you? Conditional hope doesn’t give credit to progress it deems insufficient. Love gives credit.
Conditional hope also dismisses others by saying, “that’s just the way he is.” Imagine a man who thinks he is quite funny. His brand of humor comes at the expense of others. He loves cutting people down and he gets a lot of laughs as he does it. One day you find yourself his target. Afterwards a friend of yours can see that you are downcast. This friend says, “don’t take it personally. That’s just the way he is.” There is wisdom in that statement, but please notice that there is also an assumption that this funny man cannot change. Change is no longer expected because, “that is just the way he is.” That statement is rather insulting to the sinner in question because it is a way of saying, “he can’t change. I no longer hope that he will change.” Conditional hope dismisses others by saying, “that’s just the way he is.” Love doesn’t.
Conditional hope puts certain sins beyond the reach of grace. Conditional hope holds out hope for people living in respectable sins like irritability, impatience, or prayerlessness. It holds out less hope for people living in apparently serious sins like worldliness or deceitfulness. It holds out almost no hope for people living in taboo sins like homosexuality or atheism. Conditional hope puts certain sins beyond the reach of grace. Love doesn’t.
Conditional hope also imagines that there is a point of no return. It believes that as long as a man does not cross that point, he is salvageable. If he does cross that point, he is ruined. We evangelical Christians tend to do this with virginity. We rightly encourage intimacy within and only within marriage, but we often unwittingly communicate that crossing one line makes a woman unsalvageable. I choose the phrase, “makes a woman unsalvageable,” purposefully because we tend to have a rather glaring double standard when it comes to women and men in this regard.
Jesus would disagree just as he would disagree with all these aspects of conditional hope. He made clear that the only sin that makes a woman or man unsalvageable is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. That sin isn’t something you do once. It is a continual opposition to the power of the Spirit to change you. It is the only sin that is ultimately hopeless because it is the definition of hopelessness. It is a refusal to repent.
Conditional hope continues as long as the other person will change. Conditional hope continues as long as it seems that another person can change. Conditional hope doesn’t give credit to progress it deems insufficient. Conditional hope puts certain sins beyond the reach of grace. Conditional hope imagines that there is a point of no return. Conditional hope finally comes to the point of pronouncing someone else to be hopeless.
Now we usually keep this judgment to ourselves. Sometimes, however, we do tell the man in question that we think he’s hopeless. Lord Randolf Churchill told his son that he was hopeless. Randolf had hopes for his son Winston. He hoped that Winston would follow him into politics. Now we will see tonight that Randolf didn’t show much, if any, love to his son. He certainly failed today’s mark of love by declaring his son to be hopeless.
When Winston failed his admissions test for a prestigious military regiment, Randolf sent him the following letter, “do not think that I am going to take the trouble of writing you long letters after every failure you commit and undergo… because I no longer attach the slightest weight to anything you may say about your own accomplishments and exploits… If you cannot prevent yourself from leading the idle, useless, unprofitable life you have had during your school days… you will become a mere social wastrel, one of the hundreds of public school failures, and you will degenerate into a shabby, unhappy and futile existence… you will have to bear all the blame for such misfortunes… your mother sends her love.”
You can be certain that Winston did not receive that pronouncement as love. Conditional hope is never received as love. Anything contrary to 1 Corinthians 13 is never experienced as love. You know that in what you have received. Recognize that in what you extend.
As with last week’s mark of love, this mark of love—love always hopes—looks different in God than it does in us. You must always hope because you don’t know the future. You must always hope because you don’t know the heart. You must always hope because you can’t change people. God does know the future. God does know the heart. God can change people. Therefore, it isn’t true to say that God always hopes in the same way that we must always hope.
So let’s think about what God wants because what God wants is very hopeful. Paul told Timothy that God, “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” Some interpret this as all types of people—ages, ethnicities, rich and poor. God wants all types of people to be saved. That makes sense in the context. It is also very possible that by saying that, “God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth,” Paul meant that God wants all people to be saved, but He also wants something else as well. Perhaps He wants all people to be saved but He also wants to make the sinfulness of sin clear by giving some people over to their sin. Perhaps He wants all people to be saved but He also wants to underline the mercy of salvation and that can only be done by leaving some people in sin. The idea that God wants everyone to be saved but has other desires as well fits with Ezekiel 18:32, ‘”For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone,” declares the Sovereign Lord. “Repent and live!”’
The idea that God does want all saved in this sense is a hopeful thought. Now God takes no pleasure in the death of anyone, you should find no pleasure in refusing to hold out hope for anyone. You should stop having conditional hope and start extending unconditional hope. We turn to this unconditional hope now in our second point.
To offer unconditional hope you first need to hope for change for the sake of the other person, not for your own peace of mind. Imagine a mother who hopes for the best for her son. He continues to get into trouble year after year. Every time he does a little bit of her dies. If she wants him to change for her own peace of mind eventually it will prove easier to stop hoping. For her to keep hoping she needs to hope for change for his sake. She needs to take herself out of the equation in a manner of speaking.
To offer unconditional hope you need to hope for change for the sake of the other person, not your own peace of mind. You also need to be born of the Spirit. You cannot have the sort of hope Paul has in mind without the Holy Spirit.
1 Corinthians 13 hope requires having hope in seemingly hopeless situations. Without the power of the Spirit, you will come to the end of yourself. You will eventually exhaust your own reasons for hope. You will not always hope. You can only continue to hope by submitting to the Holy Spirit who tells you that love always hopes. This is, in part, what GK Chesterton meant when he wrote that, “hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all… As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength.”
You might consider your marriage to be a lost cause. Well, “hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all.” You might consider the church in a decaying culture like ours to be a lost cause. Well, “hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all.” You might have decided that some people in your life will never change because that is just the way they are. Well, “hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all.”
You don’t have the power within you to always hope. You don’t have the power within you to love the way Paul describes love. If you don’t believe me, try this experiment. Make a table on a piece of paper. In the first horizontal row list all the descriptions of love in 1 Corinthians 13—love is patient, love is kind… In the first vertical column list the days of March and April starting with today, the 15th of March. Every time you make it through a day always believing the best about everyone, highlight that box in yellow. Every time you fail to do so, mark it red. Every time you make it through a day showing exactly the sort of kindness that Jesus showed you, mark it yellow. Every time you fall short of that goal, mark it red. You will quickly recognize your need for the power of the Spirit. Love only seems easy until you try it. Holding out hope for everyone always only seems easy until you try it. When you try it, you will recognize your need for the power of the Spirit and for more power from the Spirit.
If you don’t have the power of the Holy Spirit, you can. Perhaps you came here this morning steeped in moralism. You know your Bible backwards and forwards and you do your best to keep it so that you won’t need grace. You only have conditional hope for yourself; you believe that you are loved because you obey. It is possible for a man to be in church his whole life without ever being born of the Spirit. Remember, Jesus spoke the following words to a very religious man, “no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
Come to Jesus. Come to him and tell him that you can’t live his way. Tell him that the best you’ve done deserves God’s wrath. He will tell you that he suffered God’s wrath on the cross so that you could change. You will find yourself changed to live more and more like him until you see him face to face.
Or perhaps you came here this morning steeped in worldliness. You are allergic to churchiness, but you are listening because you want to believe there is something more than this world has to offer. You want life to be different. You want to change. You have tried everything that the world has to offer, or at least some of it, and it has all left you worse off than before. You are starting to wonder if you can change meaning that you have only conditional hope for your own soul.
The call to you is the same as to the man steeped in moralism. Come to Jesus. Come to him and tell him that you can’t live his way. Tell him that the best you’ve done deserves God’s wrath. He will tell you that he suffered God’s wrath on the cross so that you could change. You will find yourself changed to live more and more like him until you see him face to face.
To offer unconditional hope you need to check your heart to see if you want change for the sake of the other person, not for your own peace of mind. You need to be born of the Spirit. You also need to consider the nature of grace.
Grace loves you as you are, and grace loves you enough to change you. If grace finds you in sin this morning, it reminds you that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. It shows you that you are loved. It also loves you enough to call you out of sin.
Grace loves you as you are, and grace loves you enough to change you. Max Lucado wrote a children’s book to that effect entitled Hermie. It is a story of a caterpillar who wants to be more than a caterpillar. Over and over again God tells Hermie, “I love you just the way you are, but I’m not finished with you yet.” God loved Hermie as a caterpillar and God was turning Hermie into a butterfly. Consider the nature of grace when you consider yourself. Consider the nature of grace as you hold out hope for others. Love others as they are and hold out hope for what God might do in them. Don’t try to make that change happen yourself. You aren’t the Holy Spirit. You are called to love with the power of the Spirit and love always hopes.
To offer unconditional hope you need to check your heart to see if you want a change for the sake of the other person, not for your own peace of mind. You need to be born of the Spirit. You need to consider the nature of grace. You also need to consider Jesus.
Jesus invited people to change. He still does. He invites people to change because he knows that he can change them. He is far more hopeful than we are in this sense.
The question for you, then, is do you really want to change? You hope for change in yourself and in others, but do you really want to see it? Most people would rather die than change and so they do. Change is frightening. Think about the changes that happened to each of the disciples during their three years with Jesus. Think about the changes that happened to them at and after Pentecost.
We like to talk about change, but perhaps for you that is all it has become. It is talk. You want to be perceived as wanting change but you don’t really want to change. You don’t want to be changed because you know that would put your own life out of your control. That is why the disciples changed. Their lives were no longer in their own control. “If you cling to your life,” said their master, “you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it.”
Jesus can change you. That is a reason for hope. He can change anyone. That is a reason for hope. Is that the sort of hope that you have for yourself? Is that the sort of hope you have for everyone? Amen.
“31 But eagerly desire the greater gifts. And now I will show you the most excellent way. 1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient. Love is kind. it does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. 5 It is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. 6 It does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes...”