1950 This Means Everlasting Life - A2Z.org

LOVE ESSENTIAL TO ETERNAL LIFE 175
third heaven and to paradise? Did he utter and
record many important prophecies, writing more
of the Christian Greek Scriptures than any other
inspired writer? Yes! But listen : "If I speak in
the tongues of men and of angels but do not have
love, I have become a sounding piece of brass or
a clashing cymbal . And if I have the gift of
prophesying and understand all the sacred secrets
and all knowledge, and if I have all the faith so
as to transplant mountains, but do not have love,
I am nothing . And if I give all my belongings to
feed others, and if I hand over my body, that I
may boast, but do not have love, I am not profited
at all ." 1 Corinthians 13 :1-3, NW Though he
had all these things to his credit, yet if he did not
have pure love in exercising these miraculous
gifts and if his motive was not that of love in
doing charitable and self-sacrificing works, it
would not profit him at all toward gaining eternal
life in God's favor . He would be nothing in God's
estimation .
6
God can read the heart and the motive it has .
He can discern whether the exercise of these gifts
and the performing of charitable, self-sacrificing
acts is really cultivating perfect love in the very
fiber of the individual . If the individual is not doing
so, but is acting for a selfish motive, he has
his reward in this life, the reward he was after .
He is not growing godlike but deepening his own
selfishness . Such a self-seeking person with ulterior
motives would be a danger to God's universe
6. Why would the user of gifts without love be nothing
to God?