Dharius Daniels - What's Love Got to Do With It

Here’s the subject of today’s sermon: «What’s Love Got to Do With It?» I received about 13 amens there. What’s love got to do with it, family? In June of 1984, an amazingly and uniquely gifted, soulful, savvy sister named Tina Turner released one of her most notable and popular records entitled «What’s Love Got to Do With It.» There is a section of the song that is most salient for this sermon where she says, «What’s love got to do with it? What’s love but a secondhand emotion? What’s love got to do with it? Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?» I don’t know exactly what Miss Turner meant, and I won’t operate with assumptions that risk misrepresenting her sentiments. However, although I cannot answer the question for Miss Turner, I can answer it for those of us who are passionately pursuing life—not the culture’s way, not the church’s way, not the king’s way, but the king’s way. I can offer some insight to those of us who are intentionally trying to live in a manner that is not reflective of the way of the world or the way of religion, but is reflective of the way of the rabbi. I can answer the question for those of us who are not trying to live the first way, not trying to live the second way, but are trying to live the third way. For those of us, love has everything to do with everything. For the third way believer, watch this, family: you cannot get Christianity right if you’re getting love wrong. As a matter of fact, John, one of the original 12 disciples of Jesus, teaches us in John 3:16 that the motivation for the Incarnation was love. He says the motivation for God becoming a man was love: «For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.» Love isn’t just a part of the Christian faith; love is proof of the Christian faith. Jesus teaches that it is actually the dominant identifier for the Christian. It means that people should be able to know we are followers of Him—not by the church we attend, not by the cross we wear, not by the hoodie we purchase, not by the Instagram bio—but people should be able to know we are followers of the way of the rabbi by our love. How do you know? John records Jesus saying this in John 13:34. Jesus says to the disciples, «A new command I give you.» He says, «I know you’re familiar with the old covenant commands, all 613 of them. The first 10 of the 613 are called the Decalogue or the Ten Commandments.» See, the Ten Commandments weren’t all of the law; they’re just the first 10 out of 613. And Jesus said, «I’m going to make this real simple for you. I’m going to give you a new command.» He says, «As I have loved you, you must love one another.» Then He says, «By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another. By this, everyone will know that you’re My disciples.» What’s the «this»? Love for one another. In other words, are y’all following me here? In other words, family, love is actually the sign of our sanctification and our spiritual formation. It is a marker of spiritual maturity. Paul puts it this way in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 when he is speaking to individuals in an environment where there’s a proliferation of all sorts of spiritual gifts. These are individuals who had amazing worship gatherings with prophetic gifts and words of knowledge. He says to them in 1 Corinthians 13, which is couched between 1 Corinthians 12 and 14—a section where Paul talks about gifts—and Paul is saying, «Listen, you have a proliferation of spiritual gifts, but you have the absence of spiritual maturity.» He said, «Y’all have good church, but you’re bad Christians.» He says, «You have all of these gifts, but you’re carnal.» He says the reason I know you’re carnal is because of the struggles you’re having with interpersonal relationships. So, see, he says your spiritual maturity is not just going to show up personally; it’s going to show up interpersonally. He writes to them and says, «I ain’t even there, but I know you’re carnal because there are too many divisions among you. You’re petty, you’re catty, you’re cliquish, you’re in schisms, and you speak in tongues to God, but you don’t speak to each other.» So he says, «You’re immature.» He says, «You got all of the gifts.» He talks to them about them in 1 Corinthians 12 and then discusses them in 1 Corinthians 14, where he’s bringing order to the worship gathering. In 1 Corinthians 14, he was like, «All y’all just going out. You got a word, you got a word, you got a word, you got a word.» He says, «Listen, we got to bring some order to this.» So in 1 Corinthians 14, when he says, «Let all things be done decently and in order,» he’s talking about bringing order to the gifts in the worship gathering. And couched within the context of those two chapters is chapter 13, where he says to them, «I know you got gifts,» and he says, «but if I speak in the tongues of men (that’s different languages) or of angels (that’s glasa), but do not have love, I am just a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.» He says, «If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all…