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 It will never be out of date.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.