Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Love’s Way With God

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on April 28, 1996. Series: Love: The Way to Grow Up. Scripture: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel and Life. 1 Corinthians 13 is one of the most well-known chapters in the entire Bible because it is read at so many weddings. The passage is familiar to many people for how it describes love as patient and kind, and that it keeps no record of wrongs. But these verses are not meant to be used as a checklist for good behavior. Today, Tim Keller looks at the deeper meaning of this passage and shows how it points us not to moral perfection, but to Christ and the transforming power of His story. love. Let me read to you the passage on which our teaching space this morning. It's printed in your

bulletin. It's 1 Corinthians 13, 1 to 13. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol. 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. If I give all I possess to the poor and surround the world, and I have the world, and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love. I gain nothing. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease. Where there are tongues, they will be stilled, and where there is knowledge it will pass away, for we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, and when I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection is in a mirror. Then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain, faith, hope, and love.

But the greatest of these is love. Fortunately, this great passage we're looking at for a number of weeks, and today I really think I only have time to make one more point in our series of looking at this, but it's an extremely important point. We said that this is a very famous passage, one of the most famous passages in all of literature, And it's almost always read as a standalone thing. And as a result, we think of it as inspirational. If you find this passage inspirational, you have never heard it.

If you understand who it was written to and why it was written, if you put it in its context, as we've been trying to do, you'll begin to see that Paul gives us a series of bombs in here that go off and are absolutely devastating. This is not inspirational. Let me show you. We said, verses 1 to 6. three, let me remind you what the first bomb was. Paul was writing a group of Christians, the church at Corinth. It was a brilliant church. It was a gifted church. It was a growing church. It was a talented church. And the people in this church were receiving revelations from God and doing tremendous miracles. So it was quite exciting and it was growing rapidly. Paul says in verses 1 to 3, it is possible to do miracles, to have great gifts of preaching and teaching.

to have incredible spiritual power, gifts, and abilities and not be a Christian at all. You can have this kind of power and have nothing, be nothing, be not a Christian at all. And we said, and we've been looking at this, that spiritual gifts, gifts of power, do not operate out of the inherent change in the heart that comes when the Spirit of God takes up its residence there. When the Spirit of God takes up his residence, when God himself comes in love, moves into your heart and actually changes it supernaturally, the Spirit of God brings that inherent change. Grace in the heart, the Bible calls it. But spiritual gifts do not necessarily operate out of that at all, and therefore gifts are no sign that you're really a Christian at all. Well, then, of course,

what is the sign? What is the infallible proof that there's really a supernatural work going on in your heart? Well, when you read verses 1 to 3 right away, you see what Paul says. It's love. Ah, love. But wait a minute. What is the love that Paul says is the mark of a supernatural change in the heart? Is Paul simply talking about when he says, da-da-da-da-da-da, but have not love? When he says love, is he just talking about a set of behaviors? If he is, that would be perfectly unfair because that wouldn't be a sign, because lots and lots of people who don't believe in Christianity, they don't believe in God at all. Lots and lots of people who aren't believers are very loving, and they certainly are capable of the loving behaviors that you see at the beginning of verses four to seven. They can be patient, they can be

kind, they can be courteous, they can be forgiving, and so on. But when Paul says there is a love that is the characteristic, that is the sign of a real change of grace, supernatural grace in the heart, he is not talking simply about a behavioral list. And as you go through, if you take verses 4 to 7, and this is the second bomb, and this is the one I want to tell you about today, if you start out thinking that this is a checklist for behavior, if you think Paul is now saying in verse 4 to 7, let me tell you what love is, you're right. But if you think when he goes in verses 4 to 7 and tells you that love is a set of behaviors, you will be most unhappy.

You see, for years, and as a matter of fact, and here's time for me to confess my sins, I preached through this chapter 20 years ago, and I got those notes out, and I preached verses 4 to 7 as if it was a behavioral checklist primarily. I went through and said, now, if you're a Christian, you need to be loving, which is true. And if you want to be a Christian, you have to have the love here that Paul is talking about in your heart, and that's true too. And then I went on through, and I started saying, therefore, if you're a Christian, you should be patient. Okay. And we all say, yep, I could do better at that. I can do that. We should be kind. I should be better at that. I can do that. We should not be rude. Okay. We're moving on down.

And suddenly we get to verse 6, and it starts to get kind of fuzzy. Rejoices not an evil, but rejoices with the truth. But then verse 7, and suddenly Paul says, Love always bears up. We'll get to that in a second. Love bears all things. Love always protects. Always trusts, always hopes, always endures. Love never fails.

Now, what do you do? My friends, if you get inspired, you say, yes, that's what I want to do. You're not listening. What do you do? If you're really listening to this, you're saying, if this is a checklist, it's an utter failure, it's not a checklist. This is what Paul's trying to say. Paul says, here's what makes a real Christian.

Before love is a behavior in a Christian. Love is an experience for the Christian. Love is something you meet before you do it. What makes a Christian a Christian is you've met love. That's the reason why Paul, who is not poetic, he's very prosa. in his style. He's not writing an essay. He's writing a letter. That's the reason why Paul does not say, we must be patient, we must be kind, we must be courteous, nor does he say, you must be patient, you must be. No, he says, love must be. He personifies love. What? What is he talking about?

Because before love is a behavior to a Christian, love is an experience, you have to meet love before you can ever do it. And it's in verse seven. What am I talking about? Let me show you what a Christian is. all just gets it right up. In verse 7, it shows us a love that shatters us, then captures us, then empowers us. And you're not a Christian, if love hasn't done that to you. If love to you is a behavioral checklist, you're not a Christian. Lots of people can go down the list. What is a Christian? A Christian is somebody who has met love, and love has shattered them, then captured them, and now empowers them. Before it ever becomes a behavioral checklist, it's got to be those three things. Let me show you. Let's, let's, first of all, look at love. Look at

Love, look at verse 7 the way it's supposed to. The first time anybody really listens to what verse 7 is telling you about love, you do not get inspired, you are devastated. It puts you in the dust. Look at what it says. Verse 7 has the four pontas. You know what a ponta is? Panta is a Greek word.

Panta means everything, all things. We have it in English, pan this, pan that means everything. And literally what it says is love Panta. It says, love bears all things, believes all things. all things, hopes all things, endures all things, love never fails. Let's get into it and see what Paul's saying. Paul says, let me tell you what real love is. Let me tell you what true love is. First of all, true love bears all things. Now, it's translated in there, always protects. And actually, it's a word there that means to cover an offense. And doesn't mean that love always covers up. No, no, no,

here's what it means. Paul says, no matter what the person you love does, no matter how offense of that person is. To you, you always forgive. No matter how offensive that person is, to others, you always protect. You bear anything offensive in the loved one. Real love never stops just because the loved one has flaws or sins or offenses. Real love bears all things, covers all sins. Loves in spite of, goes around no matter what the loved one does, your love doesn't stop. You But that's just the beginning. The second thing Paul says is not just that love bears all things, always protects, but secondly, love always trusts. Now, to trust, what does it mean to trust?

To trust is to put your weight on something. If I trust a chair, I'm invested in it. What do I mean by that? I'm committed to it. What do I mean by that? I'm vulnerable to it. What do I mean by that? It means if the chair falls, I fall.

And if I find a chair falling, I might take my investment out real quick. I might say, I see that the chair is falling. I want to disengage so that I will not fall with it. I don't want to be vulnerable. I don't want to have my prospects tied up with its prospects. I don't want to trust it anymore, so I jump up. But Paul says, when it comes to love, you never, ever do that. Real love always stays committed, never disengages, no matter how costly, no matter what the cost.

You bind your prospects up with that other person's prospects, and no matter what happens, you never give up on that person. You never disengage. You never stay away. I mean, that's love. I mean, you know, unfortunately, I think the first Terminator movie was a good movie. A lot of you don't. But there's a quintessential arch type at the end. You know, when the heroine who's in love with the hero, you know, and he's dying. And a terminator's after both of them. And he's continually saying, you know, If you keep on trying to stay with me, if you keep holding my hand, if you keep your prospects bound and my prospects, you're going to die, leave me. And what does she keep saying? On your feet, soldier. In other words, she refuses to disengage. Real love always trusts, always commits, always

covers, but it gets even more. Then it says, always hopes. Now why? This is not the same thing. Hope in the Bible goes, is another thing besides faith. in the Bible hope is always so often bound up with the word joy in fact I was doing a study on this this week just trying to figure out what does the Bible say about hope and hope and joy are always put together all not always but so often in Romans three times it says rejoicing in hope hoping in your joy your hope is that which your heart delights in for itself now the best way I can get in the main point of this sermon down is to give you an illustration that I think will bring it out and it's a conversation that as I tell you about it, you'll immediately see it could never happen, and yet you'll still find it helpful.

Here's a woman, and she has a man who says, I love you, I love you, and she says, why do you like me? Now imagine this conversation, I want to know why you like me, and what if the man was honest and stupid, and said, I like you because, because of your physical shape, you serve my sexual needs, and because of your skills, working with me in business, we're going to make an awful lot of money. That's why. Now, imagine the wife or the woman, let's say, imagine the woman is able to keep the conversation continuing. And imagine that she says, she says, oh, in other words, you like me because I bring you things. You like me because I bring you sexual pleasure and money. Why do you like sexual pleasure and money? Now, if the man is particularly insightful. I remember a very helpful little place in that old movie that never did very well.

Dads, remember with Ted Danson and Jack Lemon? As one place where someone asked Ted Dantin that, and he's very honest. And if this guy was honest, he would say, if she said, okay, you like me because I bring you money and sex. Well, why do you like money and sex? And he'd probably say, because it brings me power. Gives me a sense of power, which is what Ted Danson said. But finally, she would say, but why do you like power? And at some point, a person has to say, I like it, not because it brings me anything, but I like it for itself. I like power just because I like power. I delight in power for its own sake, not for what it brings me, but for just what it is. And you see, the point of the Bible is that everybody puts their hope in something or some

things. Your hope is that which you delight for itself. You can love. You can love. You can like certain things because they bring you other things, but eventually you have to have something that you rest in. The final resting place of your heart is when you delight in something just for what it is, not for what it brings you. Just for what it is, not for what it brings you. The Bible says, real love does not like somebody or love somebody for what it brings them, but delights in the loved one for who he is, who she is, who they are in themselves. Marriage is one of the most significant human relationships there is, but is also one of the most difficult and misunderstood. In the meaning of marriage, Tim and Kathy Keller offer biblical wisdom and insight that will help you understand God's vision for marriage.

Whether you're single, considering marriage, or have been married for a long time, the meaning of marriage will help you face the complexities of commitment with the wisdom of God. The meaning of marriage is our thank you for your gift this month to help gospel and life share the love of Christ with people all over. over the world. So request your copy today at gospelonlife.com slash give. That's gospelonlife.com slash give. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching. And that's the reason when you get to the fourth of the four pontas, you know, at this point, do you realize this is incredible? This is unbelievably brutal. At the end, Paul says, true love covers, bears all things, trust all things, believes all things, hopes all things, always trusts, always covers, always hopes,

and always endures and never fails. And here's why. Here's why. If your love is real, it will never ever fail. And if your love fails, it wasn't really love. Why? If you like somebody, if you love somebody for what they will bring you, then that love is conditional. That love will fail because if they stop bringing you those things that your heart is really invested in, you will drop them. If your love ever fails, because someone is no longer bringing you, no longer productive for your needs, that wasn't really love. Do you see what Paul is saying, I'm stuck, I want you to be stuck with me?

Paul is saying, if you ever give up on somebody, you never loved them to start with, never. You love something, and they were just a necessary commodity to get it. You had your hope in something else. If you really love someone, you will always forgive them. You will always bear. You will always trust. You will and you will delight in them from themselves. And if your love fails, it never was love.

And if your love is real, it will never fail. Now, where does this leave us? Anybody who thinks about this will start to say, God be merciful to me a sinner. And here's why. If there's anybody here who says that's unrealistic, that doesn't make me feel guilty, I would like to challenge you for a second. This is what you have been using to judge people with all of your life. Because this is the thing that you need, and this is the thing that you know you need.

Everybody in this room wants to be loved not for what you can bring, but for who you are. You don't want to be a tool. You don't want to therefore have any kind of conditional love. you want to be loved unconditionally for who you are. You need that, and when somebody fails to give that to you, you hurt and you judge them for it. All of your life, you have been demanding it from people. All of your life, you've been criticizing others for a failure for them to do it. And yet, when you actually see it, this is what we want, this is reasonable, because this is what we want, this is what we need, this is what we demand from everybody else, but we can't possibly

give it ourselves. Or two weeks, nobody can do this. You know, Woody Allen's movie, Bullet Over Broadway, I know somebody says, it's a movie sermon, Yeah, okay. In Bullets over Broadway, the main character is John Cusack, you know, and he's a downtown bohemian, you know, New York City, early part of the 20th century. And he's got a girlfriend, but he's got this possibility of an affair. So he talks to his friend, Sheldon, now that's played by Rob Reiner. And he talks to Sheldon, and he says to Sheldon, you know, I like to have this affair,

but I don't want to be, I feel guilty because I don't want to be unfaithful to my girlfriend. And what does Rob Reiner say? And I quote, Sheldon says this. he says guilt is petty bourgeois crap an artist he says creates his own moral universe all right remember that

about a few minutes later in the movie John Cusack has this affair doesn't tell his girlfriend but finds out that his girlfriend's having an affair and comes to her in a towering rage doesn't say anything about what he's doing but says how dare you do this how dare you lack this How dare you give up on me, be unfaithful to me? How dare you betray my confidence?

How dare you betray a commitment? Who are you doing this with and why? And she says, with Sheldon? Sheldon? Yes, because Sheldon says an artist creates his own moral universe. And the point of the movie, the point that drives home is this. This is what's wrong with the human race. You can talk all you want about relativism.

You can talk your relativistic stuff. We create our own moral universe. Who's to say what's right? everybody in this room knows you need to be loved for who you are. You need unconditional love. You need a love that doesn't fail. And you demand it. You demand commitment from others.

You demand faithfulness from others. You demand it. You can't not demand it. You have to have it. You can't not require it, but you can't give it. We demand it from everybody. We can't not require it, no matter what we say. And yet we can't give it at all.

And this is what's wrong with the human race. A Christian is somebody who hasn't just said, I need to be more loving. A Christian is somebody who's met love. Love has shown a Christian that you are a helpless sinner. You see, friends, if you look at the laws, don't lie, don't steal, don't commit adultery, you see. You look at the laws, you can start to feel pretty good, but what's the laws, why are the laws the laws? Why is it wrong to lie? Because it's not love. Why is it wrong to steal? Because it's not love. Why is it wrong to kill? Why? What is the law getting after. It's getting after this. This is the center heart of the moral universe. Everybody

knows this is right. Everybody knows this is what we owe. Everybody knows this is what everybody should be giving to everybody else. And you can't do it. When you look at this, you have to say, I am a worthless sinner. I deserve to be cut off. If you haven't seen that, if you think you're a pretty good person, you've not met love. You can tell me, I can be a nice loving person. And you can do a great degree. Down at the bottom of verse 7, verse 4 to 7 is like a mountain. And at the bottom of the mountain, you have love his patient, love is kind, and you know how I can handle this, but then he gets on up, he gets on up, he gets on up. He pushes you toward the top. And he says, you know what love really is. And when you start to get up there and you start to get a nosebleed, you start

to say, I can never make it. I'm demanding everybody else to make it and I can't make it myself. God be merciful to me a sinner. See, a Christian is a person who's met love and he's been shattered by it or she's been shattered by it. But then secondly, A Christian is not just somebody who's been shattered by love, but who's been ravished. You know why? This love, not the love down at the bottom of the mountain, patient kind, love at the top, perfect love. Love for somebody, to love somebody, not for what they bring you, but just for who they are. Love for somebody unconditionally.

Love for somebody in spite of our sins. Love for somebody in spite of the cost. Do you know that this incredible nosebleed love? This love that when you see it just shatters you, that this love actually happened. I think that's the reason why Paul doesn't say, we must be patient, we must be kind. He personifies love, very unlikely. You never see any place where Paul ever personifies faith and talk about faith as if it's a person. You never see a place where he talks about hope as if he's a person.

What's he doing here? He's pointing us to the fact that love was a person. Yeah, the perfect love. It happened. It happened in time and space. And a Christian is somebody who's seen that too. Do you realize that when Jesus Christ came into the garden, God threw everything at him, literally. This is the only person who has ever had to love and literally endure everything. First of all, he comes to his disciples. He says, you know, I'm about to die for you. How about staying awake with me? Three times they fall asleep in his hour of greatest need. Will his love be? Will his love be? be able to endure that? Will his love be able to cover that? Will his love be able to bear that? Somebody once said, if anybody could actually see one percent of their sin, one percent of their cowardice, one percent of their cowardice, one percent of their selfishers, occasionally we get a glimpse and it disgust us. But if you could actually see one percent, you dropped dead from the horror. Jesus saw it all, and he did drop dead. Jesus saw us at our worst and his love

endured it. It covered it. But not only that. Jesus in the garden knew that the wrath of God was coming. If he was going to cover our sins, the omnipotent weight of the eternal justice that all sin and all injustice deserves. The wrath, the eternal cosmic wrath,

omnipotence. How heavy is omnipotence? It was on its way. Jesus was in the garden, and he knew it was on his way. As Jonathan Edwards put it, the bow of eternal justice was bent. the arrow was fitted into the string. No, the arrow has been let fly. It's on its way.

It's on its way to Jesus' heart. And Jesus knows what the impact's going to be. And what does he say? Nevertheless. You see, when he's on the cross, God is beating him up, and he says, my God, his love for God endured. And when he's on the cross, we're beating him up, and he says, Father, forgive them.

I mean, there really was. one person who did this. Now, here's what it means to be a Christian. Why did Jesus Christ do it? Because Jesus Christ looked at you, and what did, dying on the cross, what did giving his life for you, what can you do for him? Nothing. You can't do anything for the Son of God.

No one has ever loved you for nothing. Really? You know, very often, you know, Kathy and I, parents, we often feel like we just, you give so much to our children and we get so little back. We just give and we get a lot. Just being parent. Listen, nobody's ever loved you for nothing. Nobody's ever loved you for yourself. Nobody's ever at the top of that mountain. But Jesus, Jesus loved you for nothing. Which means he loved you completely. It means he loved you for who you were. He loved you for you, not for what you brought him. Because you brought him nothing. What becomes, what is a Christian? A

is somebody who meets love, first it shatters us, and then secondly, when we see, finally, somebody loving us, not for what we bring, but for what we are, something happens to us. You know what a Christian is? People who do not, have never experienced the new birth, think that Christians, they see Christians praying and reading the Bible and trying to be good, and they think that we're doing it to earn our place in heaven. We're doing it so that God will hear us. Do you realize what that would mean? that would mean we weren't loving God at all. And that would mean as long as we were,

is there anybody here that's been trying to be good, trying to be religious, and when your life goes bad, you say, what good is it to be a Christian? You're not loving him at all. Your love is about to fail. You're loving him for what he brings you. You have not actually seen the absolute beauty of someone who loved you, not for what you brought him, but for who he was.

And when you see that, when that utterly humbles you and they utterly lifts you up, the love at the top of the mountain first smashes you and then saves you, the love that kills you and then the love that makes you alive. When you see what he did for you, it melts you, it changes you forever. When you finally see somebody who's loved you not for what you bring him, but for who you are, you will be able for the first time to love God, not for what he brings you, but for who he is.

Jonathan Edwards in his books that I've been reading about this passage, Jonathan Edwards in his great book, The Religious Affection says, here's the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian. He said, many non-Christians are religious. Here's the difference between a Christian and a moral person, a Christian and a religious person. Religious and moral people respect God, but they don't love God. Religious and moral people seek God for his benefits. But a Christian is somebody who's seen the love that shatters yet saves, and as a result,

finds a beauty in your heart, a sense of the loveliness of what he did. And you want to obey him simply because you want to please him. Your whole life has changed because you may have been of goody two shoes before you became a Christian. And now you become a Christian. And you find yourself to some degrees, if you were a goody person, you may find yourself looking at least at the person on the outside like you haven't changed very much, but you've been changed utterly. Because now the reason you're able to do what you do,

the reason you're able to grow, the reason you're able to change, the reason you're able to deal with temptation is because your joy is his joy. He doesn't bring you happiness. He is your happiness, and that happens. And that's the reason why let me close like this. St. Augustine lived a very licentious life, and he was really a sex addict. And if you read something of his life, you'll see that he was a sex addict. And then what happened to him? This is what he says. He says, what once I feared to lose was now a delight to dismiss. God, you turned them out and entered their place pleasanter than any pleasure, but not flesh and blood, brighter than all light, yet more inward than any secret recess, higher than any honor, but not to those who think

themselves sublime. My mind became free of status seeking and the itch and scratching the itch of lust, for I was now talking with you, Lord my God, my radiance, my wealth, my salvation. You have to meet love before you can do love. Before love becomes a behavior in you, it has to become a person to you. Love happened. Love was a person. And when love meets you like that, it changes your whole approach to God and therefore to self and everyone else. And we will continue to explore that.

Like Augustine, he says, a pleasure above all pleasures, a joy above all joys. My God, my radiance, my wealth, my salvation. Let's pray. Father, as we conclude, we ask that you would help us see this difference between religion and Christianity. He would see the difference between just simply trying to be a more loving person and meeting love, being shattered by it and then being saved by it and then being transformed by what it says to us. Father, help us to understand these things as we continue to look at these things during the weeks and make us people like your son who came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. In his name we pray. Amen.

Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel and Life podcast. If you'd like to see more people encouraged by the gospel-centered teaching and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel and Life monthly partner. Your partnership helps connect people all over the world. world with the life-giving power of Christ's love. To learn more, just visit gospelandlife.com slash partner. That website again is gospelinlife.com slash partner. Today's sermon was recorded in 1996. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.