Belton, Texas – Daniel McAfee, Director of Baptist Student Ministries at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, led chapel services on Wednesday, February 19. Less then a week removed from Valentine's Day, McAfee focused his lesson on the concept of love in all its forms.
“The idea of love dominated our culture for a few days,” McAfee said. “I was struck, as I was thinking through love and messages we get around love in our culture, how rare it is that we can really truly define or describe it in helpful ways.”
McAfee lead his audience through the 1 Corinthians 13. In it, Paul the Apostle is counseling the church in Corinth.
“They were divided. They were struggling with their relationships with one another.” McAfee said, “so this is context that prompts Paul to say, ‘These people need to be reminded what love is.’”
The passage reads, “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 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 do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”
“If you are operating apart from love,” McAfee said. “It’s not going to benefit you.”
McAfee tied this idea of love to the grace and mercy that Christians receive from God. Paul himself was a perfect example of this, having received God’s forgiveness for the acts of violence he perpetrated against the early church before his salvation and transformation.
