Original Meaning
MORE IMPORTANT than all the gifts is love (12:31b). First Corinthians 13:1–3 makes the point that without love the gifts are worthless. Verses 4–7 describe the nature of love, in language designed to point out how little the Corinthians are measuring up. Verses 8–13 highlight the temporary nature of all the gifts, contrasting with love’s permanence. The entire passage is quasi-poetic in nature, with an elaborate structure of symmetry and parallelism.1
Verses 1–3 drive home the same truth repeatedly by using five of the spiritual gifts as illustrations of the identical principle: without love the most exemplary use of a particular gift profits a believer nothing. In verse 1, Paul makes the point with reference to glossolalia. “Tongues of angels” probably refers to the Corinthians’ estimation of this gift. “A resounding gong” is perhaps better taken to refer to a large “acoustic vase” used for amplification in the Greek theaters. Combined with a “clanging cymbal,” Paul graphically highlights that tongues without love leave only a hollow reverberation.2
In verse 2, Paul uses the example of gifts of spiritual insight and of a faith to work miracles. Here he may be echoing the tradition of Jesus’ own words in Matthew 21:21, although the expression was proverbial for trusting God to perform great deeds. Verse 3 hammers home the point one more time with the most extreme example yet—seemingly total self-abandonment in exercising the gift of giving. The NIV footnote (“surrender my body that I may boast”) may actually be the more original reading, instead of “surrender my body to the flames.”3 In that case “giving up one’s body” could include self-immolation but might also refer to the ancient practice of selling oneself into slavery to raise funds for distribution to the poor.
The NIV’s translations of the various terms in verses 4–7 are generally quite good and self-explanatory. But we may add a few footnotes. “Patience” (v. 4) conveys the sense of “long-suffering.” “Boast” refers to the negative sense of “bragging about oneself.” “Proud” is more literally “puffed up.” “Rude” (v. 5) uses the same word translated as “unpresentable” in 12:23 and refers to activity “in defiance of social and moral standards, with resulting disgrace, embarrassment, and shame.”4 “Easily angered” translates a term from which our English “paroxysm” derives. “Protects” (v. 7) might instead mean “bears” or “puts up with annoyances”; it seems roughly synonymous with “endures.” “Trusts” is the common New Testament word for “believes.” Verse 7 thus forms a small chiasm (ABBA pattern), with the outside and inside pairs of verbs each meaning approximately the same thing. Taken together, verses 4–7 clearly portray love as selfless, seeking the good of the other first and foremost. “Love is what God in Christ has shown and done for ‘others’ in their helpless plight and hapless estate as sinners. In love we take God’s side, share his outlook and implement his designs; and we treat our neighbors as we know God has treated us (see Rom. 15:1–7).”5
Verse 8 states the thesis of verses 8–13. Again Paul makes the point with sample gifts that were of particular importance in Corinth. Whereas faith, hope, and love endure, spiritual gifts prove less permanent. The NIV renders the same verb katargeo (“to destroy or abolish”) four different ways in verses 8–11 (“cease” [v. 8a], “pass away” [v. 8c], “disappears” [v. 10], “put … behind” [v. 11]), but each of these captures an important nuance of the term. Paul uses a different verb (pauomai) with tongues (NIV “be stilled”—v. 8b) but probably just for stylistic variety (creating an ABA pattern for the three parallel elements of v. 8). Although it is a middle voice (sometimes translated as action done to, by, or for oneself), this particular verb has become a virtual deponent (a verb without active voice endings) in the Greek of the New Testament, so it is dangerous here to read anything much into this specific grammatical form.
Why will the gifts cease? It is because they are imperfect provisions for an imperfect world, rendered unnecessary when perfection comes (vv. 9–10). But to what does “perfection” refer? The other main biblical meaning of the word (Gk. teleios) is “maturity” (cf. the metaphor in v. 11), but neither perfection nor consistent maturity has yet come to the church of Jesus Christ.6 Although later interpreters have at times felt otherwise, nothing in Paul supports any consciousness of his writing near the end of an apostolic age or the close of a biblical canon. And the metaphors in verse 12 fit poorly with such interpretations. After the Bible was completed, Christians did not see God “face to face” (only “face to book”!) or know him to the degree that he knew them. When we recall that 1:7 pointed out the ongoing role of the gifts until the return of Christ, there can be only one possible interpretation of “perfection”—it is the life in the world to come after Jesus reappears on earth.
But love abides on into eternity. So too probably do faith and hope (v. 13a), if faith is taken as belief in Jesus and faithful service to him, and if hope refers to the expectant anticipation of the good things God has in the future for us. Paul adds these other two virtues because the triad “faith, hope, and love” is a favorite of his (cf. 1 Thess. 1:3; 5:8; Col. 1:4–5; Eph. 1:15–18).7 But love remains the greatest (v. 13b) because it is the most foundational, essential and central to Paul’s understanding of the Christian ethic (cf., e.g., Gal. 5:6, 14, 22–23).
Bridging Contexts
IF IT IS MORE EXCELLENT than even the greater gifts, then love itself cannot be a spiritual gift. Rather it represents the cardinal Christian virtue, the first on the list of the “fruit” of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22), which must be present with all the gifts if they are to be used in ways that will please God and have eternal value. The key to understanding chapter 13, then, is to keep it in its context. Whatever inspiration it may have as a self-contained poem or hymn to love, Paul intended it to be used to help solve the specific problem of the destructive manner in which the Corinthians were using their spiritual gifts. So it is perfectly legitimate to substitute other gifts for tongues, prophecy, faith, and so on, in verses 1–3 and 8–9. So too there are no doubt other facets of love that could be added to the description of verses 4–7, but these appear because they were precisely the areas in which the Corinthians were most lacking.
To say that certain gifts benefit the people exercising them only when they do so in love does not mean that we wait to use them until we can do so flawlessly! Communicating messages to God’s people instructs them even if the manner in which that knowledge is imparted is less than perfect. Giving our goods to the needy certainly helps them regardless of our attitude! But this chapter presents the ideal for which we should always strive, even as we are painfully aware of how far we still have to go to measure up.
The term for love throughout 1 Corinthians 13, of course, is agape. But we must beware of overexegeting this term. It is not the word itself that conveys the sense of divine love but the context. In first-century Greek, agape was coming more and more into use, as the philia word-group (often used of “brotherly” or “friendship” love) increasingly came to mean “kiss” in certain contexts. Thus the verb agapao can be used interchangeably with phileo (e.g., in John 21:15–17), while in the LXX agapao can even refer to Amnon’s incestuous love/lust for his sister Tamar (2 Sam. 13:1)!8 But the way Paul unpacks the concept in 1 Corinthians is obviously quite different. We must also be careful not to divorce “love” from its larger theological context. It is the outgrowth of faith in Jesus (Gal. 5:6). In other settings (such as Galatians), Paul is equally concerned to stress that love, as the summary of the Law, is worthless without faith.
It has often been observed that one could substitute the word “Jesus” for “love” throughout verses 4–7. Indeed, as the only sinless person in human history, he provides the perfect model for helping us to understand what patience, kindness, lack of envy, and so on, are. In so doing, we also guard against misinterpreting these attributes. If Jesus was all-loving, but could clear the temple in righteous indignation (Mark 11:15–18) or unleash a torrential invective against the hypocrisy of the conservative religious leaders of his day (Matt. 23), then our concept of love must leave room for similar actions.
Lewis Smedes outlines this approach in his excellent study of this chapter. Among other insights, he notes that God has limits to his patience, and so must we, but “when I turn off suffering for the sake of my pleasure, I turn it off too soon.”9 Neither does patience include the toleration of evil. Kindness is both intelligent and tough; “without wisdom and honesty,” it “easily becomes mere pity, bound to hurt more people than it helps.”10 Agape transcends jealousy without destroying it; it is right, for example, to be upset when someone runs off with your spouse! “Love does not move us to seek justice for ourselves,” but it should “drive us to move heaven and earth to seek justice for others.”11 Agape does not disguise or unleash anger; it does not remove irritants from our lives or reduce irritability by forbidding anger. Rather it meets our deepest needs, enabling us to respond differently to enraging circumstances, reduces the potential for frustration, gives us the power to communicate anger appropriately, and increases our gratitude for the way God has worked in our lives.12
The antithesis in verse 6 between evil and truth is striking. One would have expected evil and good to be paired, or truth and falsehood. But Christian truth and goodness are each both cognitive and volitional. Much lovelessness is based on the loss of one or the other of these aspects. In Ephesians 4:15, Paul commands us to speak the truth in love. Christians do no one a favor if they remain pleasant but fail to communicate important truths which others neglect at their peril. But all the truth in the world, when not transmitted in a spirit of sensitivity and compassion, is likely to fall on deaf ears.
A major theological error that follows from the misinterpretation of verses 8–13 is the belief that any or all of the gifts of the Spirit have already ceased. As we have already seen, this violates every sensible reading of verse 12, and it has to distort the actual record of events throughout church history. Neither tongues nor prophecy nor miracles ceased at the end of the first-century; they continued at least into the third century and have recurred sporadically if not consistently ever since. The relative disappearance of these gifts during the later Patristic period can be attributed largely to their abuse in certain sectarian circles.13 Worse still, the cessationist view of the gifts is forced to attribute many apparently powerful works of the Spirit during the past century to human manufacture at best and diabolical counterfeit at worst.
It remains equally inappropriate, however, to see the “resumption” of these gifts during the last hundred years as the sign of anything having to do with the end times. If the gifts never entirely ceased, and if they were squelched for centuries by an overpowering and unbiblical institutionalization of the church, then their revival may in general be a sign that a certain health and balance is returning to Christianity, but not that some final generation or period of history prior to Christ’s return is necessarily present. In every era of church history, “we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror”; only when Christ returns will we “see face to face.” This reminder should inspire humility in our personal relationships, our intellectual endeavors, and the spiritual claims that we make for ourselves.
Love as the centerpiece of the Christian ethic must remain believers’ focus in every era and culture. But it must be taken in conjunction with other major biblical themes. A correct reading of Old and New Testaments does not permit a radical contrast between law in the Old and love in the New. The double love-command (Deut. 6:4–5; Lev. 19:18) is Jesus’ own summary of the Law (see Mark 12:29–31 and parallels), while Paul himself echoes the second half of Jesus’ words in Galatians 5:14. And in this letter, we have already been reminded that the Christian ethic is not without its own “law of Christ” (9:21).
Similarly, John enunciates three parallel tests of life, each defined in terms of the other two: belief in Jesus as the God-man, obedience to the commandments, and love (1 John 3:23–24, and throughout the letter). Theologians have rightly stressed that love and justice jointly sum up God’s “communicable attributes,” that is, those in which his people should strive to be like him. But ultimately there remains an asymmetry even here, as love, like mercy, triumphs over judgment (James 2:13). If that were not true, none of us could ever be saved.
Contemporary Significance
THE NEED FOR GENUINE, Christ-like love remains as great today as ever. Yet one of our greatest problems is defining love. Popular culture—in literature, music, advertising, and the visual arts—uses the word to mean just about everything except what the Bible means by it. So even Christians are easily misled into thinking love is primarily a feeling, something you fall in or out of. We equate it with lust or sexual intercourse itself, speaking of one’s “lover” (unless one is properly married, when the term actually would be appropriate) or of “making love.” But in this chapter, as throughout Scripture, love is first of all an action, an unconditional commitment, a promise that is never broken.14
We too face the problems against which Paul warns in verses 1–3. Some tongues-speakers insist that everyone must imitate them, a most unloving action toward those whom God has not so gifted. Many who proclaim God’s Word seem to think that preaching requires a change of tone and volume which shouts more than exuding compassion. Many intellectuals, including Christians, destroy their opponents’ arguments in person and in print, in a style indistinguishable from that of the hardened cynic. Some of our greatest philanthropists substitute giving for faith, as do civic and fraternal organizations that pride themselves on charitable causes into which they often throw money without the costly, loving personal involvement of the majority of their members. Liberal and liberationist “Christians” sometimes substitute social action for the authentic Christian love that flows from the assurance of salvation. Modern-day warfare has seen thousands of young people sacrifice their lives in battle and in terrorism, often in the name of religion, and sometimes, as in Islam, in hopes of quick passage to heaven. Tragically, without the foundation of genuine Christian love, any such martyrs only speed up their trip to hell.
In an age in which demanding one’s rights is considered a virtue, we must read again and again that love “is not self-seeking” (v. 5). At the same time, when we understand love’s limits, we will avoid co-dependency. The most loving thing to do for the repeatedly abusive, perennially alcoholic husband is not to cover-up for him or to believe his empty promises of reform, but to insist that he seek professional help and to refuse to carry on with “business as usual” if he does not.15
“Love” without an objective grounding in the living, Triune God of the universe runs rampant. John’s affirmation that God is love (1 John 4:16) has been inverted in the popular slogan, “Where there is love, there is God.” Whereas Paul insists that love “rejoices with the truth” (v. 6), contemporary pluralism avoids discussing the competing truth claims of incompatible religions and ideologies, in the name of preserving “love.” Modern people “delight in evil” in all kinds of ways. Smedes notes four in particular—monistic philosophies that have to redefine evil as actually good within some larger framework, theological systems that blur the distinction between God tolerating evil and actually causing it (contra James 1:13), civil religion that accords the state (or a particular region, culture, or ethnic group) honor due to God alone, often in the name of patriotism or loyalty to kin, and the widespread personal glee that we exhibit when enemies suffer, leaders fall, and others in general fare worse than ourselves.16 Other examples could be added, particularly in the sexual arena, as the media portrays as desirable virtually every conceivable form of homosexual and heterosexual sin, while regularly refusing to portray or even acknowledge the existence of positive married life and family relationships, particularly those based on Christian convictions.
Verses 8–12 caution us against ever rashly labeling apparent manifestations of the Spirit as something other than that, on the basis that certain gifts are no longer with us. This is particularly sobering when we recall that the one sin Christ identified as unforgivable was the allegation by certain Jewish leaders that signs of the Spirit’s presence were actually the work of the devil (Mark 3:29–30). But these verses also make plain the imperfection of all current exercise of the gifts. So we should be quick to reject all claims that exalt alleged prophecy, tongues, and the like, above Scripture, or which give them even equal value. The so-called neo-prophetic movement often seems in danger of crossing these boundaries, even while occasionally offering disclaimers. The contemporary signs and wonders movement seldom exceeds a five percent success rate in attempted healings.17 So it would seem that its claims to spiritual giftedness are at least exceedingly inflated.
As Paul ends his chapter by associating love with faith and hope, so it is appropriate to conclude this discussion with a comment on love’s role in the future, as believers today wonder what the coming days will hold in store. So long as we live between Christ’s first and second comings, between the inauguration and the consummation of God’s kingdom or reign, we should maintain a realistic optimism about our potential, through the Spirit, to love our neighbors and create good in our world. We can believe that history is going somewhere, whether or not the pundits who constantly revise their interpretations of prophecy to fit current events are right that this is the final generation. We can believe that the bleak events of our contemporary world—warfare, famine, ecological disaster or anti-Christian hostility—have their God-ordained limits. We can cautiously hope, pray, and work for the implementing of God’s standards in society, realizing that sometimes we will fail and other times we will succeed. Neither the overly optimistic triumphalism of certain forms of postmillennialism (most notably, reconstructionism) nor the overly pessimistic defeatism of certain forms of premillennialism (most notably, classic dispensationalism) are justified. God is at work in history, through fallen human beings and governments. Our generation has seen the unthinkable in the fall of much of communism throughout the world and of apartheid in South Africa, but we have also seen the horrors of ancient ethnic rivalries revive attempted genocide in Eastern Europe and Eastern Africa. Neither should be quite so surprising when we understand the power of God and the depths of evil, but we look forward to the ultimate triumph, after Christ’s return, of the power of God in the love of Christ.18