8Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:1-13)
How could Paul say this? In his day hatred, selfishness, oppression, and many other evils prevailed as much or more than today. Paul experienced the sting of persecution and had administered it to others before his conversion. Certainly, he had heard of the Christians who were burned at the stake and thrown to the lions by the Romans. In A.D. 70 the Romans completely destroyed Jerusalem, plundering everyone and everything in the city. Would Paul have changed what he wrote if these things had taken place before this letter to the Corinthians? Certainly not!
God is love (1 John 4:8), and He never fails. In our single frame view, it may appear that God doesn’t always prevail, but that’s not so. For example, take the persecution of the Christians in Paul’s day. The 20/20 view of history shows us that many Romans embraced Christ and jumped into the theatre to die with the Christians who were being martyred. Christianity spread at a phenomenal rate under Roman persecution. In less than thirty years the Roman world was evangelized. In just three hundred years, the seemingly undefeatable Roman Empire was conquered by God’s love, and Christianity became the official religion.
God never fails, and His love never fails. Individuals may fail to respond to His love and thus bear the consequences, but love never fails. It will always prevail in the end. We just need to give it time. We need to walk in all its attributes of contentment, patience, endurance, rejoicing in truth, believing all things-The Lord doesn’t force everyone and everything into compliance because it isn’t time for that yet. Now is the time of mercy, when the Lord is long- suffering and gives everyone ample opportunity to repent (2 Peter 3:9-10). As we act in love, we use the strongest force in the universe. History has proven the power of love. If we just believe and exercise patience, love will never fail us.
