Friday, July 7, 2006

"Love does not envy" (1 Corinthians 13:4).

IDEA: Envy focuses on differences, but not on people.

Do you think there are some sins that are more serious than others?

Where in the hierarchy of sins would you place envy?

I. Where does envy comes from? It comes from the differences among people and it fastens on those differences.

The U.S. Constitution says that all of us are created equal. Does that mean that all of us are created the same?

Envy was a problem in the Corinthian church. Why?

II. Why are love and envy incompatible?

We don’t see people; we see only differences.

Would you be willing to change places with the person you envy? It would mean that you’d have to make a complete exchange. That could be dangerous.

Edward Arlington Robinson captured this in his poem, “Richard Cory”:

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

 

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

‘Good morning,’ and he glittered when he walked.

 

And he was rich - yes, richer than a king–

And admirably schooled in every grace;

In fine we thought that he was everything     

To make us wish that we were in his place.

 

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

When you envy, you see only something about the person; the person himself is unknown. What God knows that person to be, you don’t know or care to know.

III. If you got down on your knees and asked God for that person, and you did it out of love, only then might you glimpse that person as God knows him. Only then might you see where she bleeds from the wounds of life.