Children’s Sermon

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

The Greatest Is Love

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1 Corinthians 13:1-13

The Greatest Is Love

By Lois Parker Edstrom

Our lesson for today is from one of the best known chapters of the Bible – I Corinthians 13. It is the chapter that is often read at weddings and it teaches us about love. That is a big idea!

Perhaps you would help me with this lesson. I think one of the ways we learn about love is by receiving it from others. Would you be willing to share a story or tell of a time when something happened that made you feel especially loved?

I’ll begin. When I was a little girl, and it was a particularly cold morning, my mother warmed my clothes by the stove before I put them on. All these years later I remember and still feel that love.

There are many ways others show their love for us. Parents do things every day that are acts of love – things that keep us warm and safe. Teachers, friends, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles all have different ways of showing their love. Let’s share some of those things now. (It might be helpful to list what the children volunteer on a poster or blackboard.) Love is often shown to us through the things people do.

The Bible reminds us that if we speak or act without love it is like “sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal” (13:1). (Demonstrate this if you have access to a percussion instrument and are brave!)

When love is present, we know it and feel it. It is like listening to a lovely orchestra where all the musical instruments fit together and make music that causes our hearts to sing.

Today’s lesson also says: “But now faith, hope, and love remain—these three. The greatest of these is love” (13:13). This verse teaches us that our faith in God and our hope for the future stay with us and the greatest gift that is with us always, is love.

Scripture quotations from the World English Bible

Copyright 2012, Richard Niell Donovan