1 Corinthians 13 · Love, Character, Spiritual Gifts, Eternity
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"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 up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing."
— 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (ESV)
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Paul wrote these words to a church that had lost its way. The Corinthian church was gifted — spectacularly gifted — and they knew it. They competed for the most impressive spiritual gifts. They used their knowledge to look down on the less sophisticated. They gathered for worship in ways that left some members humiliated and others gorged. They were, in Paul's extended metaphor, a body with every part trying to be the eye.
Into this context Paul places 1 Corinthians 13. It is not primarily a meditation on romantic love or a nice reading for weddings, though it is often used as one. It is a corrective — a rebuke aimed at a community that had all the spiritual equipment and none of the character.
Without Love, Nothing
The opening is devastating. Tongues of angels. Prophetic powers. All mysteries and all knowledge. Mountain-moving faith. Total self-sacrifice. Without love — nothing. A clanging cymbal. A zero. A gain of nothing.
The standard Paul sets is absolute. There is no spiritual accomplishment, no religious achievement, no dramatic act of sacrifice that has any worth apart from love. This is not a statement about God's valuation of good works generally — it's a statement about what the Christian life is actually for. Its entire purpose and substance is love. Everything else is in service of love, and without love, everything else is noise.
This should make us stop and take stock. Not of our spiritual accomplishments, but of our love. Not how much we know or how gifted we are, but whether we love.
What Love Is
Paul's definition of love is entirely behavioral. He doesn't define it as a feeling or an intention. He describes what love does.
Love is patient — it endures without breaking, without bitterness, without giving up on the person who is difficult to love.
Love is kind — it acts on behalf of others, doing good to them, not merely tolerating them.
Love does not envy — it does not resent the blessings of others or compete for attention.
Love does not boast, is not arrogant — it does not perform for an audience or think itself better than others.
Love is not rude, does not insist on its own way — it considers others, yields its preferences, gives up its rights.
Love is not irritable or resentful — it doesn't keep a running tally of wrongs received, doesn't let offenses accumulate into bitterness.
Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth — it is not entertained by the failures of others, but is genuinely gladdened by what is right and good.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things — it is not fragile. It doesn't give up on people. It extends generosity in its interpretations, maintains hope even when there is little evidence for it, and simply keeps going.
This is an extraordinarily demanding portrait. Reading it carefully, you realize that none of us loves like this consistently. We are impatient, we are proud, we keep score, we resent, we give up. This chapter is both a description of what we're called to and a revelation of how far short we fall.
But it is also a description of how Jesus loves us. Patient with our slowness. Kind in his acts toward us. Not keeping a record of our wrongs. Bearing with us. Enduring. Hoping.
1 Corinthians 13 is, in a sense, a portrait of the character of God — and a description of what we are being conformed into through the Holy Spirit's work in us.
Love Never Ends
"Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away."
Everything that seems so impressive and significant — prophecy, tongues, knowledge — is temporary. It belongs to this age. When the perfect comes, the partial will be done away with. When we see face to face, we won't need words of knowledge — we'll know fully, as we are fully known.
What remains is love. "So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."
Faith will give way to sight. Hope will give way to fulfillment. But love — love will simply continue, because love is the nature of God and the life of eternity. The new creation is not a place of faith-as-we-currently-experience-it; we will see God and know him directly. It is not a place of hope-as-we-currently-experience-it; all the promises will have been fulfilled. But it is most fully a place of love — unhindered, unimpeded, face-to-face love between God and his people.
The greatest of these is love. Not because faith and hope don't matter — they matter enormously — but because love is the very nature of God (1 John 4:8), the purpose of redemption, the shape of eternity.
And it begins now — imperfectly, partially, with effort and failure — in how we treat the people in front of us.
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