Great chapters in the Bible can be considered great because they are well-known and loved, because of their great content, or because both of these are true. The great chapter we will consider in this installment qualifies for the latter reason. It is a well known and loved chapter, and the content of the chapter is great. It is 1 Corinthians 13, affectionally known as the love chapter.
This chapter is often quoted at weddings and other occasions, but to understand it, we need to see it in its context. 1 Corinthians 13 is in the context of chapters 12-14 in the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians. The focus of 1 Corinthians 12-14 is on spiritual gifts. The Corinthian church was struggling with the misuse and the misunderstanding of spiritual gifts, especially the supernatural gifts. Paul writes to help them understand and experience the awesome power of spiritual gifts given by God to the church for the advancement of the gospel. We notice in chapter 12 that Paul shows how spiritual gifts provide unity to the church as the body of Christ and how all spiritual gifts are needed and necessary for the body to function properly. The Corinthians seem to have put the supernatural gifts on a higher plane and considered the other gifts to be secondary. This was a serious threat to the unity of the church. Paul then makes the case in chapter 13 that spiritual gifts must be exercised in love for them to be effective as God designed them to be. And finally, in chapter 14, Paul outlines the proper function and order for using spiritual gifts in the church.
We find in 1 Corinthians 13 three sections in the flow of Paul’s argument. First, we see in verses 1-3 how some of the supernatural gifts would look without love. Second, verses 4-7 show us what love is all about. Third, we see in verses 8-13 that love is supreme because it is eternal, while spiritual gifts are necessary but merely temporary.
Power without Love
Paul shows us the ugly picture of raw power without love in verses 1-3. Great things seemingly done for God and the good of people are nothing more than displays of human self-aggrandizement. Speaking in human or heavenly languages without love is nothing more than noise. The heights and depths of spiritual insights and the faith to bring about impossible achievements are actually nothing if not done with love. And likewise, any display of extreme generosity or the self-sacrifice of martyrdom without love profits a person nothing. All the impressive accomplishments that humans can do without God’s empowering love amount to nothing in the work of God in the world. “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but I have not love, I gain nothing.”
The Picture of Love
What is love? That should be a question that anybody could easily answer because we’ve all experienced it. Yet, people grapple with the right way to describe it. Paul describes love both accurately and beautifully with positive and negative attributes (31:4-7). He shows us what love looks like, lived out with divine impact in a broken world. Notice the depth and breadth of each of these attributes. It would be profitable to think deeply about each of these attributes with extended meditation. “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” The nature of this God-given love is not self-centered, but God-centered and others-focused. It cares about people as those created in God’s image and redeemed by Christ’s blood. Love also cares about the will of God and the glory of God. It is a love with strength of character. It is a humble love.
Eternal Love
The final section (13:8-13) closes the chapter, showing the permanence of love. True love comes from God and goes back to God. It never ends. All spiritual gifts end. They were designed to flourish in the limited space of time. Earth is their home. The intention of spiritual gifts was to help the people of God navigate the struggles of the world to accomplish the purposes of God. They have God-given limitations. Paul compares the limitations of spiritual gifts in this life with being a child with all the ways of a child. But childhood is not the end or the ultimate goal. It leads to adulthood. Adulthood is compared to the perfect and the complete, to living in the face-to-face presence of God. We cannot see everything clearly in this life, but in the next life, we will know as we have been fully known. “Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, But then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love.” The temporal passes away, but the eternal is forever. What remains eternally are faith, hope, and love. But of these three eternal realities, love is the greatest.
Conclusion
When we read and think about 1 Corinthians 13, we encounter a beautiful, even poetic, expression of the inspired heart of the apostle Paul. And when we encounter Paul’s heart, we encounter God’s heart for his people and the world. Love, rightly and biblically understood, is the essence of God’s plan for the kingdom of God. Love is the demand of God for the Christian way of life. We are to live by love. The problem is that we often fail at this. And when we do, God calls us back again and again to love. We do so by the empowering presence of God in the Holy Spirit. When we love like God calls us to love in 1 Corinthians 13, we are living more and more like the greatest man of love in all of human history, Jesus Christ. Let us follow Jesus in genuine love.
Beautiful!