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 so, 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 isn't primarily a meditation on romantic love, or a nice reading for weddings, though it's often used as one. It's 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, none of it amounts to anything. A clanging cymbal. A zero. A gain of nothing.
The standard Paul sets is absolute. There's no spiritual accomplishment, no religious achievement, no dramatic act of sacrifice that has any worth apart from love. This isn't 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 serves love, and without love, everything else is just noise.
That 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's difficult to love.
Love is kind. It acts on behalf of others, doing good to them rather than merely tolerating them.
Love doesn't envy. It doesn't resent the blessings of others or compete for attention.
Love doesn't boast and isn't arrogant. It doesn't perform for an audience or think itself better than others.
Love isn't rude and doesn't insist on its own way. It considers others, yields its preferences, gives up its rights.
Love isn't irritable or resentful. It doesn't keep a running tally of wrongs received, doesn't let offenses accumulate into bitterness.
Love doesn't rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It isn't entertained by the failures of others; it's genuinely gladdened by what's right and good.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. It isn't fragile. It doesn't give up on people. It extends generosity in its interpretations, maintains hope even when there's little evidence for it, and simply keeps going.
This is an extraordinarily demanding portrait. Read it carefully and you realize none of us loves like this consistently. We're impatient, we're 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's 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're 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're 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 will simply continue, because love is the nature of God and the life of eternity. The new creation isn't a place of faith as we currently experience it; we'll see God and know him directly. It isn't a place of hope as we currently experience it; all the promises will have been fulfilled. But it's 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.