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.