What does "We know in part and we prophesy in part" mean in 1 Corinthians 13:9?

(Vv. 8-13). Having depicted the nature of love, the Apostle declares its permanence. Love never fails. Prophecies will be done away; their fulfilment will bring them to an end. Tongues will cease with the present divided condition of the nations. Knowledge, or the partial knowledge that we have at the present time, will be done away. Such knowledge as we now possess is not full knowledge, but rather something that we are ever acquiring, and therefore only a proof of our ignorance. It is only knowledge “in part”. In the perfect condition of heaven this knowledge in part will for ever have passed away. There may be blessed unfoldings of truth in that heavenly scene, but whatever is presented there will be fully known, in contrast to our present condition in which, though truth is fully revealed, it is yet only partially apprehended. However much we may enter into the truth down here, it ever remains knowledge “in part”. To set forth our present partial knowledge, the Apostle uses the figure of a child, who can only think, speak and reason as a child. When the child becomes a man, the childish condition is left behind. So we, while in these bodies, are compelled very largely to think of spiritual things in natural terms in accord with our present condition. Thus, as to the truth, we only see through a glass darkly. At present we are like one looking at objects through some semi-transparent medium that obscures the vision. In the perfect state we shall see face to face; there will be no medium between us and that upon which we gaze. Then we shall know as we are known. We shall fully know the truth as a whole, not merely in part, even as we are fully known.

In that which is said of love in this chapter we find the reproduction of the divine nature, except that what is said is but the negative of the selfishness of the flesh in us. Now the divine nature changes not and never ceases; love therefore abides ever. Communications from God; the means by which they are made; knowledge, as attained here below, according to which we apprehend the truth in part only, although the whole truth is revealed to us (for we apprehend it in detail, so that we have never the whole at once, the character of our knowledge being to lay hold of different truths singly); all that is characterised by being in part — passes away. Love will not pass away. A child learns; he rejoices too in things that amuse him; when he becomes a man, he requires things in accordance with his intelligence as a man. It was thus with tongues and the edification of the assembly. The time however was coming when they should know even as they were known, not by communications of truths to a capacity that apprehended the truth in its different parts, but they should understand it as a whole in its unity.

Knowledge also, in the way in which we gain it today, shall be done away. It is not that we shall no longer be intelligent, but that at present there is constant exercise necessary in gradually gathering the knowledge of spiritual things, learning from the viewpoint of our own imperfect, partial knowledge. Not one of us can see things totally objectively, from the viewpoint of the perfect, overall knowledge of God. And our prophesying too is "in part." It should humble us always to remember this, so that we do not dare to make the ministry of any man a set standard for doctrine or practice. We are only servants, limited to a very small sphere.

But when, in the presence of the Lord, we have reached the state of perfection, or of full maturity, then all that is merely partial will have fulfilled its purpose, and therefore be no longer necessary.

When we speak of "a truth" (and it is a common but, I think, wrong way of speaking, as though we had grasped a something independent in itself) the tendency is to puff us up. This is not the case when we view what we know as only a part of one great whole, which exists for us in the mind of God. To attempt to pass the little we know of as all, and to feel superior to others on account of it, is folly and assumption. "For we know in part, and we prophesy in part."

Here is the reasoning of the apostle: "We know in part … when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away." There is a partial knowledge which belongs to the Church here below. This knowledge will be perfect above.

Divine knowledge now possessed is imperfect. "We know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. … Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." (1 Cor. 13:9-12.) However much we may know, how little it is at the most! Many cannot fail to be sensible in themselves of a sorrowful immaturity of knowledge of Christ and of God His Father. "The measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13) is not yet reached by us. We look on the unseen as through a window of dulled glass; the character of the glory is not in our full view, Here we are learners in the school of God; there we shall stand in the fulness of the adoption, with our lessons learned and the liberty of full age come.

It is with reference to this state, we see at once, that the apostle says of "knowledge," that "it shall vanish away," or rather "be made void" Cor. 13:8). The next verse gives us the reason, "for we know in part, … but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away," or made void. It is of the slow, toilsome and imperfect processes of acquiring knowledge (of "knowing") that he is speaking, and which will necessarily be made void, when the spirit is no longer confined to the attainment of the spiritual by means of groping (for the most part) amid material things. The things known will still remain known; but the knowing of things, in the partial way now necessitated, will be done away, in the perfect apprehension of spiritual knowledge.

The perpetuity of love, in contrast with means of present testimony or blessing by the way, is next urged. "Love never fails; but whether prophecies, they shall be done away; whether tongues, they shall cease; whether knowledge, it shall be done away. For in part we know, and in part we prophesy; but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away." (Vers. 8-10.) Evidently this again proves the immense superiority of love. It will never be out of date. Prophecies, knowledge, shall be done away, and tongues cease; but love abides. They are suited to our time-state, they are but in part, and do not square with the perfection where no evil exists and love is in fullest exercise. Love is thoroughly in keeping with a condition of glory, while incidental and partial agencies as naturally terminate with its arrival.

Verses 9-11. "For we know in part," etc. To know God in Christ is our calling, and already the apostle has declared that the Spirit has been given to believers, to enable them to prosper in this knowledge. But that Spirit is all-searching, even to the depths of God;2 while to know Christ, and the power of His resurrection, is the avowed aim of the runner in the race of. faith. And how vast a measure of divine knowledge is even here below attainable, through grace, Paul is himself our witness.3 Yet all this knowledge, though in its quality divine, and raised in its measure to the height of ecstasy, is to pass away. Nor is there anything incredible in this. For knowledge is in its nature limited by capacity, and we are little in the presence of infinity. Speech, and thought, and comprehension are, in the present life, according to the quality and power of our natural organism. Alive, by grace, to God, but in natural bodies, our perception and enjoyment of pure truth is, through the enabling power of the Spirit, real, and its measure capable of indefinite increase. Joy is the reflection of true knowledge, and joy may even here be full, yea, far beyond utterance, through the rich disclosure to our faith of the treasures of Christ's fulness. Yet the contentment of a Christ-fed soul proves, not its perfection of knowledge, but its comparative littleness of apprehension. God is to be known hereafter by His children, but as yet the sum of our knowledge is that we are "known of God."4

Both knowledge, then, and prophecy, which is its highest present utterance, are partial, though progressive. And whatever is progressive must eventually distance and lose sight of its beginning. "When that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away." Now, although the Spirit's things are constantly analagous to those of nature, they differ widely, not in kind only, but in the order and manner of their consummation. Nature fulfils itself by regular but slow degrees. But the scanty beginnings of true knowledge will be suddenly expanded to perfection, when the change from mortality to life takes place. And this difference is pointedly illustrated in verse 11. Between infancy and manhood there intervenes in nature a third state, of which no account is taken in this estimate of spiritual growth. The speech, and understanding, and imaginations of a child are outgrown and forgotten by the full-grown man. But the child's language is a just expression of his thoughts; and if the changeful emotions of his heart are little, they are true. So is it, and so will it be with the believer as a new-born babe of grace. The light into which he is already brought is marvellous.5 He knows by name, and in a measure also experimentally, what it is to be, through faith, an heir of God, and a joint-heir with Christ. But what we are to be, not even the bosom friend of Christ could know while in the body.6 And when the time of change shall really come, and conformity to the image of the Firstborn shall be no more an aspiration but a fact, the joys which they now taste, who with a godly diligence add knowledge to their faith, will seem, in the retrospect, no better than an indistinct though pleasant memory of childhood.

The apostle proceeds to illustrate the present and the future by the childhood and full growth of a man as follows. "When I was a child, I talked as a child, I thought as a child, I reckoned as a child; when I am become a man, I have done away with the things of the child. For we see now through a mirror in a dark form, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall fully know, even as I also was fully known. But now abides faith, hope, love, these three; but [the] greater of these [is] love." (Vers. 11-13.) Clearly the drift of the passage is not to cast uncertainty on our present measure of knowledge, but to set forth its partial character, as compared with the fulness in glory. He confirms the difference by another similitude, the reflection of a mirror with no more than a dim shape seen thereby, and seeing face to face. The medium, or rather our seeing now, is necessarily imperfect, and the result more or less dark. By-and-by it will be immediate vision, and I shall know fully as I was also fully known. It is a difference not merely of measure but of manner too. Our very learning now, no matter how much we have learnt, proves our ignorance. It will not be so then. The state which needs to grow, as well as the means which contribute to growth, will have passed away. Truth will be fully known as a whole in that day, not learnt piecemeal as now.