Let us turn together to 1 Corinthians 13, starting from verse 1, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” How can I speak with “the tongues of men and of angels” and have not “love” and be just “a sounding brass?” This is a difficult thing to hear but it is exactly what has happened to the church. I have heard some wonderful sermons, but the men who preach them are speaking from knowledge and from some other source rather than from the source God has ordained. We can use the gifts of the Spirit, which are given of God, and yet not have the “love of God” in us.
Let us look closer at this word translated as charity in the King James Bible. In the Greek language it is the word agape, which actually means “love measured by sacrifice.” It is love that is not concerned with itself, but wants to bless the other individual. It is not based on what the other one is like, but on who I am. This love is not like what they call love in the world. It is not the love you love chicken with and want to see it in the oven. Agape love is measured by your ability to lay down your life the same way as God laid down His life. God said, “I have loved (agape) the world from the very beginning.” Not that He would have loved the world the way it was. In reality, God didn’t have any reason to love the world. He didn’t love us in a sense of a delight. He didn’t have any reason for it. We were dead, wretched, and evil. But He loved us (agape). It means that He didn’t think of Himself, but He laid down His life for us. Paul said, “I would rather suffer hell if it helped some of you to obtain salvation.” This is “agape love.”
God is saying that you must have His love and if you don’t have it, you have become a “sounding brass” (“bong, bong, bong”). It is monotonous and terrible! All your achievements are nothing without having the “agape love.”
I have had an experience with a “sounding brass.” There was a man who was the bishop of one of the largest Pentecostal churches in Jamaica. Not only that he was the bishop, but he also had the greatest spirit of discernment I have ever seen function. The platform in his church was about four feet high. He would stand on it in the evening and anyone coming through the door of the church would be accosted. He would say, “Sister, stop right where you are! Why did you curse Mrs. Jones today?” The sister would begin to weep. He would then continue to say everything that happened to her. He brought the church under such a terror! Men and women were afraid to come in at night when he was manifesting in this mighty power of discernment.
There came a time when the bishop got the people to such a fear of God that they began to cry out to God for mercy and forgiveness of sins. Do you know what happened next? As the people praised God, the real Spirit of God came down, hit this brother off the platform and dropped him down on the concrete. He bawled like a pig! When he hollered, he said, “I am a sinner!” It turned out that he was a homosexual and had contaminated a lot of the ministry as well as the people in the church. As he started to confess, he began to call out names. He named out all the men who he had relationships with. They had to cover him up and take him out. When he was finished, the church throughout the West Indies was wiped out.
However, it made the people and the ministry afraid, so the Pentecostal church said, “No more prophecy!” One bishop told me, “Brother Ces, any time prophecy starts in your church, shut it down, because it is going to wreck the church!” What he was actually saying was that he did not care about the cleanliness of the church, but he cared about the numbers.
It turned out concerning this brother that the great manifestation of power was just a “sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.” That is why the scripture says that, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels,” but I do not have the love of God in my heart (the compassion of the living God dwelling within me), then I am nothing.
It continues on in verses 2 and 3, “And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not agape love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not agape love, it profiteth me nothing.”
I see many men working hard for God. They cannot sleep at night, nor can they rest. They have to do this and they have to do that. They have to go to the hospital on such-and-such a day, they have to go to the prison on such-and-such a day, they have to go to this place and they have to go to that place; they are so busy for God! Nevertheless, God said that if you are doing all this because of something else besides agape love, then “it profiteth you nothing.”
Sonlight Devotional 