When Love Becomes the Measure
The world loves to classify a person’s worth based on how excellent they are in a particular gifting. It elevates those who can entertain, make large amounts of money, or hold an entire room captive, hanging on their every word. The world loves eloquence. A person can be an absolute cad—someone you wouldn’t want staying in your home—yet still be elevated to sit on a board of trustees simply because they know how to make money. That is how the world determines the worth of a human being: by talent, not by character.
The church hasn’t done much better—we’ve just spiritualized it.
We elevate people with gifts that come from heaven. We categorize and evaluate a person’s worth based on their spiritual gifting, or even their platform. Someone is considered especially spiritual if they can do what we consider extraordinary. We may say that if a person can speak in tongues, they are obviously filled with the Holy Spirit. But if someone speaks in tongues and has no idea how to love people, they are like those loud morning people who talk before you’ve had your first cup of coffee—and all you really want is for them to be quiet.
A person might have the gift of prophecy. They seem to ascend into the heavenlies and receive special insight the average Christian doesn’t have. We sometimes put those people on pedestals, exalting their God-given ability to stand before an immovable thing and command it to move. People ooh and aah at the accomplishment. But if the person—even the one the mountains obey—is not loving, there is nothing special about them. They are simply someone God entrusted with a gift for His purposes, and they misused it, leaving wounded souls in their wake instead of convincing people of the love of God. There is nothing impressive about that.
There are also people who are deeply self-sacrificial. They live in absolute poverty for the bragging rights of saying they have sacrificed everything for the cause of Christ. They’ve even signed an organ donor card so someone else can live when they die. Yet those same people cannot be bothered to speak to a homeless person, because while their sacrifice is noble, that homeless person just made bad decisions—and that’s their problem. Make no mistake: this person gains nothing from their self-righteousness, not even the applause of Christ.
So the church errs by determining the worth of others using the same measuring stick as the world. And we don’t stop there—we turn it inward. We classify ourselves. If we don’t have the gifting we’ve elevated in our minds, we place ourselves at the bottom of the barrel. We do this because we value the wrong things.
We have to do better—both in how we assess others and how we assess ourselves. Otherwise, we are no different than the world.
The temptation here is strong. We can’t seem to help ourselves. So how does the church change the way it evaluates people? It’s simple: we make what God says is important the important thing—not what we think is important.
And what is that?
Love.
How well does a person love God and love people?
Jesus Himself elevated love above every command. He said the entire law of God could be summed up in one thing: love—love for God and love for others.
So what are the marks of someone who truly loves well? Because it isn’t just service. You can serve someone and not have an ounce of love in your heart.
Love is marked by patience, kindness, generosity, and humility. It behaves appropriately in every situation. It seeks the preference of others rather than its own. It cannot be provoked by what is said or done, and it keeps no record of past wrongs. Love rejoices when truth and justice win, regardless of what may be lost in that victory.
Love bears the weight of life’s messiness and the complexity of relationships. It believes the best, and it is marked by hope and endurance—especially when life gets hard. Love never quits. It chooses, again and again, to continue loving even in the most difficult circumstances.
This is why love must be elevated above every other spiritual gift: it is the one that will endure through the ages.
Prophecy will cease when we reach heaven, because there will be no need for it when the One we once prophesied about stands before us.
Tongues will become obsolete, because we will all speak one language. Even heavenly tongues will no longer be necessary when the enemy of our souls is forever destroyed, because there will be no need for praying in code.
Love, however, will continue.
It is the one thing that transfers into the heavenly realm. That is why we must perfect it here. It is the currency of heaven—and it is the one thing you *can take with you.
We once talked, thought, and reasoned like children. When we matured, we put childish ways behind us. We must grow up in this area, too.
On earth, this can feel difficult—like trying to see your reflection in a bathroom mirror with the lights turned off. But there will come a day when we look directly into the face of Jesus. In that moment, we will fully know Him, and we will be fully known.
In the end, three things remain. They are the gold standards of the Kingdom—the things we should elevate above all so-called accomplishments: faith, hope, and love.
But never forget: the greatest of these is love.
Judge yourself and others by that measure, and you will be judging as heaven does—through the eyes of love.