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.