If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.
Corinth prized showy things: fluent speech, the gift of tongues, public display. Paul answers by pointing to a way that outranks every gift, and he asks what the finest speech is worth when love is missing.
One commentator warns against a common mistake. The better way Paul points to is not a better route to gifts:
At the same time Paul tells the saints to desire the greater gifts eagerly, but these gifts were for building up, not for show. And yet he points them to a far better way. It is not merely a way, however good, to get these gifts, as some suppose. It is a way for souls to feel and think, to walk and worship, beyond all gifts. It is the way of love, and he opens it out in the next chapter.
To prove the supreme value of love, the Apostle names three things the Corinthian believers were boasting about: their eloquent speech, their spiritual possessions, and their activities. They may try to lift themselves up by these things. But he shows that these things count for nothing in God's sight if love is not the motive.
Notice that Paul says "I." He does not point at anyone. And the speech he imagines is not bad speech:
Older English Bibles read "charity" here, which today suggests giving money away. The Greek word is the same one used elsewhere for God's own love:
Today people usually take the word "charity" to mean kind feelings toward others, or gifts of money to the poor. But that is not what the Greek word agapee means, the word Paul uses all through this chapter. The Revised Version and all good modern versions translate it "love." In 1 John 4:7-12 this same word agapee appears several times, and there too it is translated "love." To say "God is charity" (the same word) instead of "God is love" would shock our ears, and rightly so.
A cymbal was made of metal plates struck together:
Ancient musical instruments, made of metal plates struck together. On their own they made no tuneful sound, and they could only be played alongside other instruments… In Corinthians the cymbal is a picture of someone making a show in speaking without love in the heart.
Applied to a meeting, that means volume without result:
Whatever the estimate of the value of tongues in modern days, the apostle rates them, whether of men or of angels, to be, in the absence of love, no more than "a mere instrument of sound without sense, dead, mechanical, devoid of moral worth." There is much clangour and clatter, but no true ministry of the Spirit bearing witness to the spirits of the saints. No edification results, for it is love that builds up, while tongues like knowledge puff up.
The verse does not say the words become noise. It says I become noise. One writer pictures the scene:
A brother stands up in the meeting and speaks words of rare sweetness and thrill, though we cannot understand a word of them. We find that he has given a message from God in a language of heaven, one that angels use. How wonderful! How we would stare at him! Yes. But if he has done this without love, he might as well have brought an old brass pan into the meeting and hit it with a poker. That is all the good he has done for the Lord's interests in the assembly.
Not every Christian has a gift. But one writer points out what every Christian can do:
Love is what God is. If I do not have it, I am not born of God, and so I do not share His nature… You say, I have no gift. Maybe so, but you can love. Every Christian can do that. And it is worth more than the brightest gift, because love is the nature of God and seeks the blessing of others. It thinks of everybody but itself.
- Setting — The better way is not a way to get gifts. It is a way of feeling, walking and worshipping that stands above every gift.
- Motive — The three tests of verses 1–3 target Corinth's boasts: speech, possessions, activity. Without love as the motive, none of them counts with God.
- Word — "Charity" in older versions is the same word used for God's own love; "love" is the accurate rendering.
- Sound — Cymbals made no melody on their own. That is the picture of a person making a show in speaking with no love in the heart — clatter, but nothing built up.
- Reach — Gift is given to some; love is open to all, and is worth more than the brightest gift, because love is what God is.
And if I have prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
Paul has just pointed a gift-obsessed church to something better than the gifts they were competing over. Now he tests the three biggest — prophecy, total understanding, mountain-moving faith — and each one, without love, leaves the man himself nothing.
The contrast in this chapter is not between a big gift and a small one.
Still, there was something more excellent than all gifts. Gifts were the displays of the power of God and of the mysteries of His wisdom; love was the display of His nature itself.
That is why the chapter follows straight on from Paul's teaching about gifts in the assembly.
As this is what 1 Corinthians 12 sets before us, so the apostle goes on to remind the Corinthians that there was one thing even better than gifts. This was love. Looking at God's nature, He is certainly Light, but what is the energy of that nature? It is love. It is love that actively comes to us from God and blesses us. Love is the energy of the divine nature. It is what Christ showed us God to be, and what the Spirit would now work in us.
The faith in this verse is not the faith that saves a person.
Of course, "all faith" in this verse has nothing to do with believing in the Son of God, for whoever believes has everlasting life. It means only faith as a miraculous power, which a man who is not born again might have (Matthew 7:22-23).
So what can this faith do?
The Apostle is not speaking of faith in Christ, for this faith works by love. He is speaking instead of faith which enables people to overcome great obstacles and do great exploits. And he says it is possible to have such faith without love.
The word "mysteries" here does not mean puzzles too deep to grasp. In Scripture it means truths God once kept back and has now told out.
God's mysteries mean those secret things which are now revealed, in contrast with what Israel had of old (Deuteronomy 29:29). They are not, as most people suppose, things too deep to understand. They are truths God kept back in Old Testament times, now displayed in Christ on high and made known by the Spirit in the New Testament.
So Paul is picturing a man with the fullest possible grasp of revealed truth — and still weighing him at zero.
Scripture already had examples of real spiritual power in people whose hearts were far from God. Balaam prophesied for money. Saul was Israel's first king. Caiaphas was the high priest who wanted Jesus dead. Judas was one of the twelve.
Saul the king could prophesy too. Balaam the prophet prophesied while loving the wages of unrighteousness. Caiaphas the priest prophesied while he was thirsting for innocent blood. Judas the apostle worked miracles while he carried the heart of a traitor. Each of them had received a new heart, or "another heart," as a gift for office, and in the Spirit they prophesied or worked miracles. But all this tells us that it is not gifts that make us what we should be, and that nothing will do if the heart is not with God.
Notice what Paul does not say. He does not say the prophecy is worthless or the knowledge false.
He not only reaches the heart of divine things; through his gift of prophecy he can also tell others what he knows. He also has faith of an almost miraculous power. Yet he has not love! We are not told that he is like a clanging piece of brass. It is possible that we may gain some help and understanding from what he says, and some inspiration from his remarkable faith. What we are told is that he himself is nothing. If we are unspiritual ourselves, we might imagine him to be a giant. Really he is less than a pygmy. He is nothing.
This verse deals with what a person has, and the emptiness traces back to motive.
Verse 1 deals with what I speak; verse 2 with what I have; and verse 3 with what I do. Where love is missing, the motive for using the gift is selfish; it is not genuine concern for others, or for the glory of God. So in my every effort to be something, "I am nothing."
- Nature. Gifts display God's power; love displays His nature. That is why love ranks above every gift.
- Gift. The "all faith" here is a gift of miraculous power, not saving faith. Saving faith works by love, so it could never be loveless.
- Reach. Prophecy, all mysteries, all knowledge — that is the widest grasp of truth anyone could hold. Without love, Paul rates it at zero.
- Proof. Balaam, Saul, Caiaphas and Judas show that power in the Spirit is no evidence of a heart with God.
- Verdict. Paul does not say the gift is nothing; he says I am nothing. Others may profit from what I say; God sees a nobody. Every effort to be something ends there.
And if I shall dole out all my goods in food, and if I deliver up my body that I may be burned, but have not love, I profit nothing.
Paul has already said that fine speech and deep knowledge are worthless without love. Now he raises the cost: if giving away everything you own, and even dying as a martyr, can leave you with nothing, what is he really measuring?
Older translations use the word "charity" here. Today that word means generous giving, and this verse shows the two are not the same.
This word appears often in the Authorised Version where the word "love" would be much better, and indeed the same Greek word is often translated "love." 1 Corinthians 13:3 shows that a person may be very charitable or benevolent but have no love.
Verses 1 and 2 weighed what a person says and what he knows. Verse 3 turns to what he does.
We may readily admit that a man can talk well without love, and boast in his spiritual knowledge without love. We may tell such a person to talk a little less and do a little more. But the apostle further warns us that it is also possible to do much without love. He says a man's good works may rise so high that he gives all his goods to feed the poor, and gives his body as a martyr to be burned. Yet the motive may not be love, and so all his activities profit him nothing.
Nobody can fault the acts themselves. So the test falls on why a person gives. A generous act can hide an ungenerous reason.
A philanthropist may give only to draw attention to how generous he is. Another may give freely to quiet a bad conscience, troubled because he did not gain his wealth honestly. But let the believer always be moved by love toward the Lord, and toward others.
Dying for a cause looks like final proof of faith. It is not, and the cause a person dies for may even be false.
Neither almsgiving nor self-sacrifice necessarily implies a living faith. Even the most lavish spending on causes that look "charitable" may spring from motives quite foreign to the life of God. In the same way, blind fanatical zeal may lead a person to die for a lie against the truth.
The same writer adds the positive side:
The lesson here is not that active zeal is a bad thing. It is that growing in divine love matters more than any single act.
The deed may still do real good to others. The loss falls on the person who did it.
So God may use words without love, knowledge without love and activities without love to do His own work. Yet they add nothing to the one who speaks and acts this way. Without love he will be nothing and profit nothing, whatever his words, his possessions and his activities.
So what is this love? It is not warm feeling or a generous temperament.
Love was conformity to the nature of God. It was the living expression of what He is, and the evidence that a person has been made a partaker of His nature. It was acting and feeling according to His likeness. This love develops in relation to others; but others are not the motive, though they are the object. Its source is within. Its strength does not depend on the people it is occupied with. So it can act where circumstances would stir irritation or jealousy in the human heart.
If love is the one thing that counts, why not simply work it up? Because love aimed at winning something is not love at all.
Love must be the driving power, or nothing counts. But we cannot love in order to gain something for ourselves by it. There is only one way to get it: as flame lights flame. So love alone kindles love: "We love because he first loved us."
One more note on the wording. Some old Greek copies read "that I may boast" in place of "to be burned." The two words differ by a single letter. Kelly keeps "burned": if the motive were already boasting, Paul's clause about not having love would add nothing (William Kelly).
- The deed — Giving away everything and dying as a martyr are the costliest acts named. Paul says both are possible without love.
- The motive — The acts are beyond criticism, so the test falls on the reason behind them: reputation, a guilty conscience, or zeal for a lie.
- The source — This love is a share in God's own nature, not a feeling worked up. It catches like flame from flame, because He loved us first.
- The profit — God may still use a loveless act to help others. It adds nothing to the person who did it.
- The aim — Zeal is not the problem. Growing in divine love comes ahead of any single act, however costly.
Love has long patience, is kind; love is not emulous [of others]; love is not insolent and rash, is not puffed up,
Paul has just said that gifts, knowledge and faith count for nothing without love; now he turns to what love looks like. The verse names two things love does, then a run of things love refuses to do — and the question is why.
The verse does not tell us what love is in the abstract. It shows how love behaves in a world like ours.
Next we come, not to a definition of love, but to its qualities as they appear in this world. They are described for our instruction. Here we see what Christ was on earth: active in love as well as patient under suffering, rising above evil… Patience in the middle of trial is the first mark of love mentioned. Love even shows real kindness instead of holding on to a wish for revenge.
The first mark is staying power. Love outlasts what the commentators call "the flesh" — our natural self left to itself.
"Love is patient." The flesh is always impatient. Love can bear long with others and wait for God's time. The flesh soon runs out of endurance. Love does not wear out.
Patience on its own could still be sullen. Kindness is added because the standard behind the words is God's own dealing with people.
First comes a positive feature. Love is patient and kind. Nothing can surpass the long patience and kindness of God's dealings with rebellious people. God is love. So the more we show the divine nature, the more we will show long patience and kindness — to everyone, and to our brothers and sisters.
The verse spends more words on what love avoids than on what it does. There is a reason for that.
The description is not so much of what love does as of what it does not do. That shows that the heart of love is self-denial and self-forgetting. How easy it is to take up active, demanding service instead of suffering. Yet the first thing mentioned is, "Love is patient and kind." We hate to suffer at the hands of others. We are quick to hit back.
The faults listed are not random. One thread ties them together.
Love has none of the ugly deformities of character and behaviour that come naturally to us in the flesh… (1) Envy of others. (2) Boasting about oneself, or vainglory, or as some translate it, being "insolent and rash." (3) Being puffed up, or swollen with one's own importance… The string that runs right through these eight things is love of self.
Envy is no small weakness. It has a long and dark history.
Love comes from God; envy comes from Satan. Envy was a main part of the first sin, and it drove Cain's murderous hatred of his brother… Envy can find no place in God's presence, though it often waits at the door of the place of worship. Moses was meeker than his helper Joshua, because Moses spoke with God, while Joshua only spoke with Moses. When the disciples argued over who was greatest, they did it behind the Master's back.
Where envy is gone, someone else's gain becomes a joy instead of a wound.
The flesh always wants a place above others. It is jealous when favour or position goes to someone else instead of to self. Love can delight, without a thought of envy, in honours given to another.
Commentators differ on the third phrase. Some translate it "does not boast," others "is not insolent and rash." Either way it names the outward push to be seen. "Puffed up" names the pride inside that feeds it.
Self-importance is the inside version of self-display. Both are foreign to a love that forgets itself. It grows best where people know themselves least, and that is why there was so much of it at Corinth… Love is not like this. Love flows most freely from a heart that truth has first broken and then healed… Its best cure is to turn and look again at Him in the place His love has chosen for our sakes.
Paul uses "puffed up" again and again in this letter.
Four times the apostle speaks of the Corinthian believers as being "puffed up." In 1 Corinthians 4:6 he says they are "puffed up for one against another." In verses 18 and 19 of the same chapter he points to people puffed up in their speech, it seems against the apostle himself. In 1 Corinthians 5:2 he has to rebuke them for being puffed up when they should have mourned over what was going on among them.
These traits appear here and there across Scripture. Only one life held them all together.
Some of the beautiful traits of love have marked God's people in every age. We see the kindness of God in men like Joseph and David. We see unselfishness and meekness in Moses and Paul, and patience and endurance in men like Job… But Jesus showed every feature of love in perfection, blended together and expressed in everything He did.
- Root — Love's patience and kindness start in God's own dealings with rebellious people, and grow in us as far as His nature shows.
- Reach — Our own endurance soon runs out. Love does not wear out, and it waits without turning sour.
- Rival — Envy comes from Satan. It drove Cain, and it set the disciples arguing over who was greatest. Love can delight in honours given to someone else.
- Reputation — Self-display outside and self-importance inside are one disease. The cure is to look again at the place His love chose for our sakes.
- Reflection — Joseph, Moses, Job and Paul each showed a piece of this love. Jesus held all of it in one life.
does not behave in an unseemly manner, does not seek what is its own, is not quickly provoked, does not impute evil,
Paul has just told the Corinthians about a way better than any gift. Here he describes that way by four things love will not do: rude behaviour, self-seeking, a quick temper, and keeping score of wrongs. The writers quoted below use older translations, so their wording of these clauses differs from the ESV.
The problem at Corinth was not a shortage of ability but the use of ability to advertise itself.
Gift is something we may rightly desire. Even so, we can easily abuse gifts. Like the believers at Corinth, we can use them to exalt ourselves. So we are told there is a more excellent way of serving one another.
The first clause is about behaviour that offends decency. It cuts across the assumption that breeding or education produces good manners.
Love "does not behave in an improper way." The flesh can be rude and ill-mannered, even in people high in society. Love will lead the highest by birth, as well as the lowest, to be courteous.
Being outspoken is no excuse either, since love has its own sense of what is fitting.
Sincerity never shows off. Truth has its own sense of what is fitting, and love knows this well and never breaks it. Its boldness is not shamelessness.
The next clause goes to motive. It shows where this love comes from, and what must be true of the heart before it is possible.
"Seeks not her own." But nature does. This single attribute is enough to declare the origin of love. By this the inseparable connection between faith and love can also be clearly seen. The heart must have a satisfying portion of its own in Christ. Without that, this self-forgetting love is impossible. Self-seeking may often show itself in acts that look like works of love. Christ sought neither His own will nor His own glory; but, as the self-sacrificing Shepherd, He both seeks and finds His sheep.
Self and love cannot share one heart.
If a man once makes self the whole of his aim, farewell to loving others or praying for them. Love cannot live in a house as narrow as the self-lover's heart. Indeed it is the opposite of it: "Love seeks not her own."
The test comes in small everyday moments.
Love "is not easily provoked." It is not touchy. Love will put the best construction on what is questionable. For instance, you meet a brother in the Lord in the street. He takes no notice. Love would not take offence at what looked like a snub. It would believe that the brother had not seen you, and would not have acted that way if he had.
Love still feels anger at wrong. A short fuse is a different thing.
"Is not easily provoked." Love knows how hard its work is, and it expects both difficulties and obstacles. But its labour is not for itself, so personal disappointment does not ruffle it. Just indignation may go well with love; irritability does not. Jesus could feel the former on occasion, the latter never.
The last clause is often read as though love never has an evil thought. Kelly ties it instead to a real wrong that someone has done.
"Thinks no evil" does not quite express the clause. It means not keeping the evil in the mind and on the tongue. Here it is an actual evil done. It would breed resentment if love were not there — love, which is always above evil, always free and always holy.
Read that way, the clause is a daily one, and it does not ask us to pretend sin is not sin.
"Does not impute evil," for its business is to hide sins rather than expose them. God in His righteousness did not do this to us, so we who are sinners should not do it to one another. And this virtue will never sit idle for lack of opportunity. Not a day can pass without some call on it. Besides the many real offences, there are unclear cases that constantly tempt us to criticise. But where a choice is possible, love chooses the favourable side. It does not shut its eyes to sin, but openly rebukes it as God's witness, while freely forgiving all that is against itself.
- Gift — Corinth used real gifts to show itself off. Love is better than any ability.
- Manners — self shows first in behaviour. Rank and education do not cure rudeness; love does.
- Motive — self shows next in aim; a heart that has no satisfying portion in Christ cannot stop seeking its own.
- Temper — self shows in reaction; love is not touchy because it was never working for itself. Indignation at wrong is another matter.
- Mind — self shows last in the score we keep against others. Love hides sins instead of exposing them, and forgives all that is against itself.
does not rejoice at iniquity but rejoices with the truth,
This chapter has been listing what love refuses to do. Here it names what love enjoys. Two delights stand side by side: pleasure in wrongdoing and pleasure in truth. Which one does your heart run to when you hear news about someone else?
Delight in wrongdoing rarely looks like delight. It can wear the face of moral outrage.
The religious teachers and Pharisees in John chapter 8 were very moral, religious people. They were shocked when they found this poor woman caught in open sin, and very angry with her. Justice and the law of Moses, they thought, demanded that she be made an example of — it was not right that such a sinner should live. It comforts and quiets the corrupt heart of man if he can only find a person worse than himself. He thinks that another's greater sin excuses his own; and while he accuses and fiercely blames another, he forgets his own evil. In this way he rejoices in iniquity.
Love is not neutral about sin — it grieves. But it refuses the work of hunting sin out in other people.
Love does no wrong to its neighbour, so it cannot rejoice in what goes against its own nature. Being itself the child of goodness, it can only grieve when evil acts and prospers. Its only interest in wrongdoing is to help and befriend its victims. What hate hunts out, love will not see. It waits for no one to stumble, and twists no one's words. It does not say, "That is just how we wanted it," when the righteous fall.
This verse bites hardest in ordinary conversation. One writer puts the weight on the person who listens, not only on the person who talks.
Someone hears a report. It seems true, so they pass it on. Yet if anyone had taken the trouble to check it, they might have found it false. Christians above all should be careful here. Refuse every report that harms another person's name, unless proof you cannot doubt stands behind it. So the responsibility falls on the hearer as well as on the person who repeats the report. If people remembered this, they would stop many a slander at the start, expose many a gossip, and prevent many a break in fellowship. The cure is that love which thinks no evil, takes no pleasure in wrongdoing, and rejoices with the truth.
The margin reading noted below is the wording the ESV now uses. So what does rejoicing with the truth look like in practice?
"Rejoicing with the truth," as the margin reads. It is in the truth, no doubt. The truth is there, and I rejoice with it and take delight in it. Suppose the truth is being preached; my heart goes with it and is delighted.
Affection can be warm and still be careless about what is true. Real love will not buy peace at that price.
God's love in His people must either droop or rejoice along with the truth. That truth gave this love its life, and truth is its proper voice. Natural affection may use flattery, and often shows a practical indifference to truth. But love that is real hates both of these things. Its delight is in God, and therefore in the truth.
Love and softness are not the same thing. Where truth is attacked, love has an edge.
It is one of the marks of divine love that it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Divine love does not always say smooth things. It is always angry, and rightly so, when people trample truth in the dust and lift error up.
Where does the appetite for evil come from? One writer names it — "the flesh," our sinful nature.
Love "rejoices with the truth." The flesh is unholy and can find pleasure in being occupied with evil. Love is holy and finds its joy in being occupied with the truth. So love is not blind, for it knows and values the truth.
- Two delights. Love shows what it is by what pleases it. Wrongdoing gives it no pleasure. Truth does.
- The hidden motive. Enjoying another's sin is self-defence. A worse sinner makes me feel excused, and while I blame him I forget my own evil.
- The daily test. Passing on a story you have not checked is where this verse bites. The hearer carries responsibility, not just the talker.
- Not flattery. Warm feeling that flatters and stays quiet about truth is natural fondness, not love. Love delights in God, and so in the truth.
- Not blindness. Love's joy is tied to truth, so it sees evil clearly and can speak sharply. It just refuses to enjoy the evil it sees.
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Paul has just listed what love does not do, and verse 7 turns to four things love does, each stretched to "all things." Commentators ask how far that "all" reaches: is love simply gullible, or do these four clauses give a believer strength to carry through real evil?
The verse changes direction. Every clause before it hangs on the word "not." Every clause here hangs on the word "all."
The negative qualities show the patient endurance of love. Notice the word 'not'. The positive ones show love in action, and that action leaves nothing out. Notice the word 'all'.
One writer sees these last four as the supply that keeps a believer standing where the world is against him: "The last four qualities set forth the positive energy of love, whereby its possessor is sustained in the middle of a hostile world."
The first clause sets love against how little we put up with before we react.
Love "bears all things". Our natural self can bear very little without showing resentment. Love can bear all things, and often in silence.
The word also means to cover. That shapes what love does with what it knows about others.
Love bears, or covers, all things. Of course it never approves of wrong. But it takes no pleasure in spreading news of what other people have done wrong.
Believing all things is the opposite of a suspicious mind. One writer traces it back to the way the Lord Jesus lived among people.
"Believes all things" is not being suspicious. Love is quick to believe. It "hopes all things." It wishes no harm and does not think about evil. Evil tends to depress the soul, but God is above all that... Christ was here in the world with no suspicion in His mind. That is the spirit we should walk in. If you are always suspecting people, who will trust you?
Hope takes over where belief runs out of evidence. One writer applies it to the reports we hear about other people.
Love is not irritable or resentful. Love believes all things — not the evil things, but the good ones. Where it cannot believe all the good it would like, it at least hopes all things. It hopes the good report is true and the bad one false.
The four "alls" do not mean love believes anything anyone says. Commentators read them as limited by what Paul is writing about.
Love believes all the truth it can find. It hopes that whatever is missing will be supplied in time. Meanwhile it puts up with every lack. Clearly the phrase "all things," repeated four times, must be read within its context. Someone who believed "all things" without limit would end up in a swamp of uncertainty and deception.
Covering sin is not the same as ignoring it: "love does not necessarily expose sins, or gloat over the failure of others. If possible, love will deal with sins privately, so that they do not needlessly become public."
The last clause grows out of the one before it. Where hope dies, staying power dies with it.
Love "endures all things". The flesh, assuming the worst, has no hope, and when hope is gone there is no power to endure. Love hopes all things, and that hope gives strength to endure when opposition and discouragement come.
What love endures includes hostility from outside. The strength for it comes from God, not from a rosy view of people.
So love bears every annoyance. It believes all the good it can. It hopes for everything, even when evil is plain to see right now. It endures all things, whether persecution or suffering, knowing this is what we are here for. Seeing God in Christ lifts the heart above the crushing power of evil, and above suspicion too.
The description is not an ideal without an example. One Man has already lived out every clause.
Everything this wonderful chapter says love does, we have seen fully displayed in the Son of God. He bore all things and endured all. He put up with the weaknesses and failures of His disciples. He endured the hostility of sinners against Himself.
- Bears — love carries what our natural self cannot carry, often in silence, and takes no pleasure in making another person's failure public.
- Believes — it drops suspicion and believes the good, walking through the world in the spirit Christ Himself showed.
- Hopes — where the good cannot yet be believed, love still hopes the kind report is true and the ugly one false.
- Endures — hope supplies the staying power. Lose hope of good, and endurance under opposition collapses with it.
- All things — the four "alls" do not mean love believes anything, and they never excuse wrongdoing. They were displayed in full in the Son of God, who bore with His disciples and endured the hostility of sinners.
Love never fails; but whether prophecies, they shall be done away; or tongues, they shall cease; or knowledge, it shall be done away.
The verse just before this described what love does and does not do. Here love stands beside three spiritual gifts — prophecy, tongues, and knowledge — and only love lasts.
Commentators trace love's permanence back to its source. It lasts because of what it is, not because of how well anyone uses it.
"Love never fails." It cannot fail or stop. It is the very life of God. Those born of Him will live that life for ever in His presence, once everything holding it back is gone. It is a nature, not a gift — except that life itself is the gift of Him who is the life-giving Spirit. But special gifts and displays of the Spirit must cease with the occasion that called them forth.
The three things listed are not faulty. They simply match a situation that will not last.
Prophecies and knowledge will end. Tongues will stop. But love lasts. They suit the time we live in now. They are only partial. They do not fit the perfect state, where no evil exists and love is fully at work. Love belongs in glory. Partial, passing helps end when glory comes.
Prophecy answers a need. Remove the need, and the gift has nothing left to do.
Verses 8 to 13 now deal with love's permanence. It never fails. So it stands in contrast to prophecies, tongues, and knowledge. Prophecy is only for a condition in which people need building up, encouragement, and comfort. Even in the millennium, prophecy will no longer be necessary (Zech. 13:2-5).
Writers link the many languages of earth back to Babel. There God stopped one united human project by confusing their speech.
Tongues attract the worldly mind of fallen human nature. But they will stop. In the new creation, when all things have become new, there will be only one language. Tongues are a reminder of the pride of man, when he set out to build a city and a tower with its top reaching to heaven. But God stepped in and broke the power of man… by confusing their language, giving them tongues to weaken them.
Another writer draws the same line, adding what replaces the confusion: the differences between languages mark how far the nations stand from God, and "in heaven there are many voices, but one speech."
The hardest of the three to accept is that knowledge will pass. Writers explain that what disappears is not truth, but the partial way we hold it now.
Knowledge, or the partial knowledge that we have at the present time, will be done away. The knowledge we have now is not full knowledge. It is something we keep adding to. That alone proves how much we do not know. However much we take in of the truth here, it always stays knowledge "in part".
One writer pictures the change: our knowing and prophesying fade when perfection comes "just as the moon fails and vanishes away in the light of the sun."
The gifts that shine are the ones that pass. So what we prize shows where we stand.
The contrast is between the most shining gifts, which pass, and the lasting marks of divine life in believers. The more we live by our old nature, the more mere gifts dazzle us. The more we live by the Spirit, the more we value faith, hope, and love.
The one thing that lasts is not handed out to some and withheld from others. So this verse reaches the believer with no gift at all.
You say, I have no gift. Possibly so, but you can love. Every Christian can do that. And it is worth more than the brightest gift. Love is the nature of God. It seeks the good of others, and thinks of everybody but itself. What chapter 13 says of love is the divine nature showing itself again. It is the life of Jesus, and love abides for ever.
- Nature. Love does not fail because it is not a gift handed out but the very life of God in those born of Him.
- Prophecy. It serves souls who need building up and comfort; when that need is gone, the gift is finished.
- Tongues. Many languages mark a scattered race; they stop when the reason for the scattering stops.
- Knowledge. We know only "in part," which shows how little we know. That partial knowing ends when the full comes.
- Love. Everything fitted to the present state passes; love fits glory — so a believer with no gift already holds the one thing that lasts.
For we know in part, and we prophesy in part
Paul has just said that love never ends, while prophecies, tongues and knowledge come to an end. Verse 9 gives the reason. Our knowing and our prophesying reach only a part, and a part gives way when the whole arrives.
One writer sets love beside the gifts and shows why only love lasts.
This again proves how far love rises above the rest. It will never be out of date. Prophecies and knowledge will end, and tongues will stop. But love stays. The gifts suit our present state. They are only in part, and they do not fit the perfection where no evil exists and love is in fullest exercise. Love belongs to a state of glory. Passing, partial helps come to their natural end when glory arrives.
The limitation is not in the revelation but in the way we take it in — piece by piece, never the whole at once.
What God tells us, the means He uses, and knowledge as we gain it down here — all of it is only in part. We grasp the truth in part only, even though God has revealed the whole truth to us. We take it in detail, so we never have the whole at once; our knowing takes hold of different truths one at a time. Everything that is only in part passes away. Love will not pass away. But a time was coming when believers would know even as they were known. Truth would no longer come piece by piece to a mind that grasps parts. They would understand it as a whole, in its unity.
Paul does not use one single word for knowing here. The verb changes between verse 9 and verse 12.
ginōskō and epiginōskō appear together in 1 Corinthians 13. In verse 8 there is a knowledge (gnōsis) that will vanish away, and verse 9 explains it: "we know (gin.) in part." This knowledge is fragmentary now, so it differs from what will be "when the perfect comes" (verse 10). That leads to the contrast in verse 12: "Now I know (gin.) in part; then I shall know fully (epigin.), even as I have been fully known" (epigin.). The difference between the two words is the added force that the preposition epi gives to gnōsis, 'knowledge' (or its verb), making it 'a deeper and more intimate knowledge, and acquaintance.'
Some use this verse to argue that Scripture itself contains mistakes. Kelly answers that misuse.
One writer even claims that "the Scriptures themselves protest against the traditional view of the Gospels that they are absolutely true," and the passage he points to is 1 Corinthians 13:9 and the verse after it. But that passage only speaks of what is true as far as it goes. It covers nothing that is in any way false. It concerns what still remains unrevealed.
Paul writes "we." He includes his own prophesying.
Not one of us can see things as they truly are, from the viewpoint of God's perfect and complete knowledge. Our prophesying too is "in part." Remembering this should humble us, so that we never dare to make any man's ministry the set standard for doctrine or practice. We are only servants, limited to a very small sphere.
The same limit touches how we speak about what we know.
When we speak of "a truth" — a common way of speaking, but I think a wrong one, as though we had grasped something that stands on its own — it tends to puff us up. That does not happen when we see what we know as only part of one great whole, which exists for us in the mind of God. To pass off the little we know as the whole, and to feel superior to others because of it, is folly and pride.
Maturity does not lift anyone out of this.
Even if we become "Fathers" in the Christian family (1 John 2:13-14), we shall still be unable to understand down here as we shall in the Father's House. Full maturity can never be reached while we are on earth. There is always room for exercise and growth in the divine nature. Paul was mature in the things of God, and he received many wonderful revelations. Yet near the end of his journey here, he still desired one thing: "That I may know Him" (Philippians 3:10).
- Part, not flaw. What we know is true as far as it goes and contains nothing false. What is missing is only what God has not yet unveiled.
- Part, because piecemeal. God has revealed the whole truth, but we take hold of truths one at a time and never have the whole at once.
- Part, therefore temporary. Prophecy, tongues and knowledge fit our present state; love fits glory, so love is the one that remains.
- Part, so no standard. Paul includes his own prophesying in the "we." So no man's ministry is the fixed rule for doctrine or practice.
- Part, so no superiority. Treating our part as the whole puffs us up. Seeing it as one piece of what is complete in God's mind keeps us learners — as Paul was to the end.
but when that which is perfect has come, that which is in part shall be done away.
Paul has just said that prophecy, tongues and knowledge will not last. Everything here turns on two questions: what is "the perfect," and what is lost when the partial passes away?
Commentators take "the perfect" as the state of glory. One writer links it to the partial gifts Paul has just listed:
Love will go on in heaven, where there is no evil to think about. Prophecies will fail, tongues will cease, and knowledge will vanish away. "When the perfect comes" (v. 10) means the time of glory, when everything is perfect and these partial things will have ceased.
The perfect state is also full growth, and we do not reach it here:
We can never reach full maturity while we are on earth. There is always room for exercise and growth in the divine nature. Paul was mature in the things of God, and God gave him so many wonderful revelations. Yet near the end of his journey here he still desired "that I may know Him" (Phil. 3:10).
"Pass away" sounds like loss. But writers point out that nothing true is lost. What ends is the slow, piecemeal way we gather knowledge:
He is speaking about the slow, hard and imperfect process of gaining knowledge — of "knowing." That process must end when the spirit is no longer shut up to reaching spiritual things by groping, for the most part, among material things. The things known will still remain known. But the knowing of things, in the partial way we need now, will be done away in the perfect grasp of spiritual knowledge.
The partial ends the way a lesser light ends:
Before long, in both knowledge and prophecy, perfection will come. When it does, all that is partial will fail and vanish away, just as the moon fails and vanishes in the light of the sun.
The comparison is the point. Gifts match the world we live in now; love matches glory too:
They suit our present state in time. They are only in part, and they do not fit the perfection where no evil exists and love is in fullest exercise. Love fits a state of glory completely, while these passing, partial helps end when glory arrives.
Growth in nature is slow and steady. One writer says this change is not:
Nature completes itself by regular but slow stages. But the small beginnings of true knowledge will expand to perfection all at once, when the change from mortality to life takes place. Verse 11 shows this difference sharply. In nature a third state stands between infancy and manhood, and this account of spiritual growth takes no notice of it.
In verse 8 Paul says prophecy and knowledge will "pass away," but tongues will "cease." Commentators differ on whether that change of word matters. One writer builds a case from the wording of verse 9:
But Paul does not mention tongues in this connection. He says we prophesy in part and we know in part, but he does not say we speak in tongues "in part." Why does he change the wording? It must mean something. Does it not teach that the gift of tongues would lapse in the assembly's life as soon as the wisdom of God saw that the time had come when it was no longer needed?
Others hold that all three helps run on until the perfection of glory ends them.
Every teacher's grasp is partial. So no one's teaching is the final measure:
It should humble us to remember this always. Then we will not dare to make any man's ministry a set standard for doctrine or practice. We are only servants, limited to a very small area.
- Part — our knowing and prophesying are fragments; even the greatest teacher's ministry is a piece, never the standard.
- Perfect — "the perfect" is the state of glory and full maturity, which no growth on earth reaches.
- Passing — what ends is the slow, groping way of learning, not the truth learned; the partial fades as the moon fades in sunlight.
- Sudden — the move from part to perfect skips nature's long middle stage; it happens at the change from mortality to life.
- Permanent — gifts fit a world of evil and testimony and end with it; love fits glory too, and so love is the greater.
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I reasoned as a child; when I became a man, I had done with what belonged to the child.
Paul has just said that prophecy, tongues and knowledge are all "in part." Now he pictures it from a life everyone knows: the distance between a child and a grown man. So what are the "childish ways" he gives up? The believer's whole present condition, or the immaturity the Corinthians were showing off in their meetings?
The comparison works because a child's speech and reasoning are not wrong so much as small. They fit the size of what he has taken in.
Verse 11 pictures our present, immature condition as childhood. A child's viewpoint is completely different from a man's. It is limited to the small circle of what he has seen or been taught. He speaks as a child, and perhaps rightly so, in line with his knowledge. But that knowledge is very limited — and so is our own ministry of the Word of God. Yet just as a growing adult puts away childish ways, so in glory we will leave such limits behind.
The three verbs Paul lists are not repetition. The same limit shows up in how a child talks, how he thinks, and how he reaches conclusions.
A child must speak as a child, think as a child, reason as a child. In fact a child has to do plenty of reasoning, and no one would make light of its imperfect condition. But it is imperfect, as we know.
The verse does not cast doubt on what Christians know now. It compares how we know now with what is coming.
The point of the passage is not to cast doubt on how much we know now. It is to show that our knowledge is only partial, compared with the fullness in glory... Our very learning now, no matter how much we have learnt, proves our ignorance. It will not be so then. The state that needs to grow, and the means that help it grow, will both have passed away. In that day we will know truth as a whole, not piece by piece as now.
The child's side of the picture says the same thing. A child studies, and a child plays. A man's needs match a man's mind.
A child learns. He also delights in things that amuse him. When he becomes a man, he needs things that match a man's intelligence. It was thus with tongues and the edification of the assembly.
Commentators differ on where the emphasis of the verse falls. Some read it as our present state compared with glory. Others hear a rebuke aimed at the Corinthians themselves.
People ask whether the contrast here between the child and the man means the difference between the believer's condition now and his condition when perfected in glory. We judge that it points instead to the childish way the Corinthians were priding themselves on the spiritual displays among them, and on the use of gifts like tongues, which tended to lift those who had them in other people's eyes.
The childishness in view is a love of display.
In their fondness for the use of tongues, the Corinthians were acting as children, who delight in anything that makes a show. The Apostle urges them, and us, not to be children in understanding, but to be as innocent of all malice as a baby.
Paul draws the picture from nature, but it does not run like nature. In ordinary life a teenage stage stands between the child and the man. Paul skips it.
Nature completes itself by regular but slow stages. But the small beginnings of true knowledge will expand to perfection all at once, when the change from mortality to life takes place. Verse 11 shows this difference plainly. In nature a third stage stands between infancy and manhood, and this picture of spiritual growth takes no account of it.
One thing carries over unchanged. Love is the one thing a believer never outgrows.
Love is God's own nature. Everything else pales before it. It is that which will abide when not only prophecies, tongues, and knowledge are no more, but when faith and hope have given place to sight and realisation.
- Child: speech, thought and reasoning all shrink to the size of what a child has taken in — real, but small.
- Childish: the Corinthians turned that smallness into pride, showing off gifts like tongues.
- Change: we put away not truth but the piece-by-piece way of learning it. The growing state and the means of growth both go.
- Sudden: nature has an in-between stage; this picture has none. The leap to full knowledge comes with the change from mortality to life.
- Constant: love alone crosses from childhood to manhood untouched. It is God's own nature, and it abides.
For we see now through a dim window obscurely, but then face to face; now I know partially, but then I shall know according as I also have been known.
Paul compares two conditions: what we can take in now, and the fulness we will have in glory. So what limits our sight today, and what changes when we see "face to face"?
Seeing "in a mirror" means seeing a reflection, not the thing itself. That shapes how we learn spiritual things now.
At present we see as through a mirror, in a riddle, but then face to face. Spiritual things now are learned with the help of reflections, types and symbols. Faith must of course be at work, to discern as far as it can what all these teaching aids mean. It is not like seeing the object itself, but its reflection as in a mirror.
Some read the verse as if Paul were unsure of what he knew. Commentators say the opposite.
The point of the passage is not to cast doubt on how much we know now. It is to show that our knowledge is only partial, compared with the fulness in glory… The way we see now must be imperfect, so what we see is more or less dark. Later it will be direct sight, and I shall know fully, as I was also fully known. The difference is not only one of measure, but of manner too.
If we know only "in part" now, then learning itself belongs to this stage and not the next.
Knowledge now is in degree, "we know in part"; all that kind of learning will pass away. Learning is a proof of ignorance, and this will not be then. Even in divine things we learn, and all that is testimony to ignorance. It shows how small man is in that respect. All these partial means of communicating will end when I know as I am known: which is, I believe, God's way of knowing.
The phrase promises a knowledge modelled on God's knowledge of us. Commentators are careful about how far that promise reaches.
But our partial knowledge of the truth will give way to knowledge in the measure in which "I am known." This is in no way omniscience (knowing all things). It is knowing all that relates to my position and condition as a man, as God knows it. This of course involves far more than we see on the surface. Then we will see it all in perfect perspective, no longer shaped by our present limited, unbalanced condition.
A second limit lies in us, not in what is shown.
We shall yet know vastly better than we do know now but we shall still be finite. God cannot make us infinite, and only the infinite can comprehend deity.
We will also know our own past fully. One writer ties it to the moment believers stand before Christ in the light.
In our bodies of glory, we will not be able to feel anything like fear or unhappiness. But when we are shown in the light, we will have perfect knowledge, according to the mind of Christ, of every moment of our past history. We will know the value He sets on it, and the praise He gives… We will leave His judgment seat in wondering praise at the patience that bore with our ways in the wilderness, and brought us safely to glory.
Knowing in part does not dull the desire to know Him. It feeds it.
All who have eternal life "know Him." They know God, and Jesus Christ, whom God has sent — yes, even babes in Christ know Him. And yet the man who knew Him best could cry, Oh, "to know Him!"… Down here nothing will ever satisfy that craving. The better we know Him, the more we long to know Him better still.
- Mirror — Now we learn by reflection: types, symbols and pictures, read by faith. We never see the object itself.
- Part — The limit is in the way we see, not in the truth itself. Paul does not doubt what we know. He measures it against the fulness in glory.
- Then — "Face to face" means direct sight. Learning proves our ignorance, so learning ends when that ignorance ends.
- Known — We will know as God knows us: our whole position and condition, seen in perfect perspective. Yet we stay finite creatures.
- Wonder — Christ's light will show our whole past. The result is not fear but praise for the patience that carried us home.
And now abide faith, hope, love; these three things; and the greater of these [is] love.
The love chapter closes with a short list: three things remain when the showy gifts have run out. The verse raises two questions. What does "abide" mean here? And why does love rank above faith and hope?
The verses just before set the comparison. There Paul says prophecy, tongues and knowledge will end. One writer reads the closing line as a contrast with those short-lived gifts, not as a statement about eternity.
So the apostle concludes from it all: "Faith, hope and love abide." He is not speaking here of eternity. He is drawing a contrast with gifts that will come to an end once they have served their purpose. Love abides, for it is the divine nature. Faith is the evidence of things we cannot see. So it must pass away when we see everything, with the perfect knowledge the apostle has spoken of. Hope, too, implies the imperfection which counts upon God, but does not see. It too must pass away in full fruition; but love abides.
The writer gives two reasons: what happens to faith and hope when the future arrives, and where love comes from.
In the perfect state faith will change into sight, and so faith will have its end. Hope will end in fruition. Love alone will abide. Faith and hope make very good travelling companions, but we part company with them at the door of heaven. We go in with one thing, love. Even so, the verse speaks of the present condition, and tells us that even now love is the greater quality. It must be so, for love is the very nature of God, and therefore love is eternal.
There is also a plain, practical reason for the ranking. Faith and hope work inside a person; only love travels outward.
"Your faith has saved you," Christian! But what can it do for your brother? It does not reach him. It is a secret in your own breast. Its power is great, but it is the power of a root, not of a branch.
Each of the three fastens on something. Love fastens on the one you can shake hands with.
It is the nature of love to come out. Unless it acts, and acts on others, it cannot be. Love does not begin and end with the lover. Its essence is an outgoing. These three exercises of a human spirit have objects which they grasp, each its own. Faith fastens on Christ, hope on heaven, but love on humankind. It will not, it cannot leave the world alone. All the neighbours know it, feel it.
Ranking love highest does not set the three against each other. One writer pictures the chapter as a tree standing in a field, and shows why love is what you actually see.
At the bottom you find faith and hope, the nourishing root and the supporting stem. They are alive and life-giving, but small and almost hidden from view. Love springs up, spreads out on every side, and fills the eye of anyone looking.
The same writer answers a wrong conclusion: that praising love makes faith smaller.
Nor is there any cause for jealousy in this sisterhood of grace. To make love great — to make love greatest — does not make faith less. The more precious we find the ripened fruit, the more we value the only root that bears it.
The wording does not settle how long faith and hope last. Commentators differ on this. One takes "abide" as covering the present life only.
But Scripture cannot be broken. Faith is the evidence, or conviction, of things not seen. And hope that is seen is not hope. So faith and hope belong to the present state only. Love alone belongs to eternity as well as to the present. Of the three, love holds the first place. Not because it holds the root of the other two inside itself, but because they point and lead through Christ our Lord to love, as the end that has no end.
Another allows that faith and hope carry over in a changed form.
The greatest is love, for "God is love." Love, not faith and hope, will be the great mark of the eternal state. Faith will mostly turn into sight, and hope into glad realization. Yet even in heaven the believer will have full faith and happy hope that this scene of indescribable love goes on for ever.
- Root. Faith fastens on Christ and works underground; it is the power of a root, not a branch, and a secret in your own breast.
- Stem. Hope carries faith's certainty through the present. It ends when the thing hoped for finally arrives.
- Branches. Love is the only one of the three that goes out and touches other people; unless it acts on others, it is not love at all.
- Fruit. Love is greatest because it is the very nature of God. It has no beginning and no end, so it is greater now, not only later.
- Harvest. Faith and hope are good travelling companions, but we part with them at heaven's door and go in with one thing: love.