This passage has been called “one of the most strikingly original things Paul ever wrote.” It may be the greatest chapter in all of Scripture. Listen for God’s word to you from 1 Corinthians 13…
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13 is often read completely out of context. It is often so read at weddings and funerals. Now, of course, this chapter is a beautiful statement about love even when read out of context. But today we are continuing our study of 1 Corinthians as a whole letter and we want to see how this chapter fits in with the rest. To do that we must remember how chapter 12 ended. It ended with these words… “Now eagerly desire the greater gifts. And yet I will show you the most excellent way.”
Paul has been talking about spiritual gifts and what he wants to show us is that all spiritual gifts operating apart from love are meaningless. That leads us to Paul’s first major point in 1 Corinthians 13. He talks about the absence of love in verses 1 to 3.
The Absence of Love
Paul specifically mentions four of the spiritual gifts in the first three verses of chapter 13. He mentions the gifts of tongues, prophecy, knowledge, and faith. The first thing Paul says is that tongues without love makes him only a resounding gong or clanging cymbal. The gong and the cymbal were common instruments used in the mystery religions of ancient Greece. Glossolalia, speaking in tongues, was also common in the mystery religions. Apparently, the Corinthians prided themselves on speaking in tongues. They thought of this gift as the ability to speak in an angelic language. Paul says even if that is so, it is an empty exercise, a hollow experience, without love.
In verse 2 Paul goes on to speak of three other spiritual gifts: prophecy, knowledge, and faith. Prophecy, as we saw last week, is the ability to both foretell the future and to forth-tell the word of God. “Fathoming all mysteries” may be a reference to the gift of wisdom. The gift of faith involves trusting God to accomplish great things—in this case—moving mountains. The latter statement appears to be a reference to Matthew 17:20 where Jesus says …
Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.
The great missionary, William Carey, once said, “Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.”
But Paul says even if I exercise all these gifts (tongues, prophecy, knowledge, wisdom, and faith) but do not have love, I am nothing. I can add all these skills to my LinkedIn profile but without love, these talents add precisely nothing to my curriculum vitae. As someone once said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
Paul goes on in verse 3 to say, “If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.” Think of it. Paul says that even all the vows of poverty that monks and nuns have made through the centuries, all the money that philanthropists have given to the poor, all of it means nothing apart from love.
Paul talks about giving over his body to hardship that he may boast. Some manuscripts have Paul talking here about giving his body to the flames. Thus, this may be a reference to martyrdom.
I have mentioned before the great Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer. He was the man who wrote the beautiful words of the Book of Common Prayer. He was put on trial for his Protestant faith. At first, he recanted. But then later, he recanted his recantation. And when the authorities took him to Broad Street in Oxford where he was to be burnt at the stake, after exhorting the crowd and confessing his faith in Christ he said, “And forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, therefore my hand shall first be punished.” Then he thrust his right hand into the flame first.
Paul suggests that even such great acts of martyrdom like that of Thomas Cranmer gain us nothing in the sight of heaven if we do not have love. If all the spiritual gifts we have read about so far in 1 Corinthians, and even all that are spoken of in all of Scripture, were somehow taken away from the Church, I imagine we would make do somehow. But if there is no love, then the Church is dead, finished, fit only for the garbage heap of the world.
I like what Michael Green says about this… “We will not, in the end, be judged by our gifts or our learning, but by our love, by our likeness to Christ.”
The Nature of Love
Paul goes on in verses 4 through 7 to talk about the nature of love. The word for love that Paul uses in this chapter is one we have talked about before: ἀγάπη. Denis de Rougement, in his classic book, Love in the Western World, says that “Classical Greek used at least sixteen different terms to designate love in all its forms.” I wish de Rougement had spelled out what all sixteen Greek words for love were. I am familiar with four words for love in Greek. Erosmeans what we would call “falling in love” and leads, usually, to sexual love. The Bible, so far as I know, never uses the word eros. Philia is the word that denotes a friendly kind of love. This word is used in the New Testament. From it we get the word, Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. Then there is another Greek word for love that is not used in the Bible, storge, which refers to affection such as the affection of a parent for a child and vice versa. The writers of the New Testament were not content to use any of these words to describe God’s kind of love. So, they picked up a little-used Greek word, agape, and filled that word with their own meaning.
Let us allow Paul to define agape for us. He gives us no less than fifteen descriptors. First, he says, love is patient. Literally, agape love suffers long. What an interesting description to begin with! It is hard to think about any other kind of love being “longsuffering”. Eros wants instant gratification. Friendships come and go. Even affection can wane. But agape is longsuffering.
Secondly, Paul says agape love is kind. This word means “to be full of service to others”. The root word is χρηστός which was a common slave name in the Greco-Roman world. Agape love shows kindness through service, even to the point of being a slave to others.
Third, Paul says agape love is not envious. Paul begins by describing agape love with two positive terms (patience and kindness) but then he provides 8 descriptors of what agape love is not. And the first thing it is not is envious. Agape love is not jealous of what others have or are able to do. There is a contentment about the person who is full of agape love. This contentment enables the person filled with agape love to give and keep on giving delightedly.
Fourth, agape love is not boastful. Our world today is full of boasting. Social media is rife with it. We all want to call attention to ourselves. Agape love does not do this. It does not call attention to itself. Agape love quietly serves. It politely goes about finding needs and filling them with no expectation of congratulation.
Fifth, agape love is not proud. This word means “to be puffed up”. It goes along with being boastful. The person who is puffed up walks around with their chest stuck out saying to the world “look at me”. The prideful person enters the room and says, “Here I am.” By contrast, the person filled with agape love enters the room and says, “There you are.”
Sixth, agape love is not dishonoring of others. Agape love does not act in an unbecoming or unseemly manner. So much of the world’s proud, boastful action is unbecoming, unseemly. It seems that some people want to out-do one another by performing actions that draw attention for their very unseemliness. I think of what happened at the Oscar awards this year. Chris Rock joked about Jada Pinkett Smith’s baldness. That was unseemly. And then her husband, Will Smith, did something unseemly, unbecoming, when he went up on stage and slapped Chris Rock. We all heard about that. It drew the attention of the world. What fewer people have heard about is how Denzel Washington, who is a Christian, prayed with Will Smith after this incident. That was agape love in action.
Paul says agape love is not self-seeking. Self-seeking goes along with boastfulness and pride. Agape love is not directed to the self. It is directed toward God and others. And how can that be so? It can be so because the person who loves with agape love has already experienced such love from the heart of God. And so, the person filled with agape love can easily give away what they have received. They give out of a fullness supplied by our heavenly Father.
My friend, Tim Hansel, used to use an object lesson in talks that he gave about Christian service. He had a pitcher from which he would pour out water throughout his talk. He would use it as an illustration of how the Christian pours out service. And then we all get to the point where we don’t think we have anything more to give. And Tim would turn the pitcher upside down and let the last drops of water fall out. He would go on talking, and then a few minutes later he would pick up the pitcher and pour out more water. It was a great illustration of how God is always replenishing us with his agape love so that we have love to give away to others. The trick of Tim’s pitcher was that it had a secret compartment with even more water in it. Jesus supplies us with just such a secret compartment of agape love.
Paul says agape love is not easily angered. The word that is used here literally refers to paroxysms of anger pouring forth from a person. Some people are like powder kegs, just waiting for a match to be tossed in their direction. The Christian should not be like that. We don’t have to be like that, because we have a heavenly Father who meets all our needs.
John Maxwell says we all walk around with a bucket in each hand. One is filled with water. The other is filled with gasoline. The question is, which bucket will you use to throw on the emotional fires around you? Do you tamp down the fires by throwing water? Or do you inflame situations by throwing gasoline on the fires, roundabout?
Paul says agape love keeps no record of wrongs. I heard of a clergy person recently who actually told his staff about keeping a record of wrongs. I guess he was like Santa Claus, keeping a mental record of who was naughty and who was nice toward him. We all tend to do this, perhaps sometimes unconsciously. But I cannot imagine admitting this as though it were OK or normal. Keeping a record of wrongs is simply not an emotionally healthy thing to do. Keep a record of wrongs and you will grow bitter, not better. Such bitterness will eventually warp and distort your whole life. The person who is filled with agape love does not keep a record of wrongs. Rather, they forgive, as God forgives us. They let go.
Paul says that agape love doesn’t delight in evil. Literally this phrase means that agape love does not rejoice in unrighteousness. There is so much attention paid in our world today toward unrighteousness. We may not rejoice in unrighteousness, but we tend to fill our heads with it too much. It seems like most of the news on the 24-hour news cycle on whatever channel you watch is all negative, all bad news. We must find some way to counteract that in our lives, to focus more on the positive.
And that is what Paul does. He says that agape love rejoices with the truth. If we want to counteract all the bad news in the world, we must spend some time every day filling our mind with God’s truth. And we must spend some time daily in worship, rejoicing in the truth.
Finally, Paul says that agape love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Wow!
The word that is translated as “protects” means “to endure because shielded”. The Christian can endure because he or she is shielded by God. And in turn the Christian becomes a place of shielding, of protection, for others.
It is the nature of agape love to work together with faith/trust and hope. This means that agape love always looks for the best in others. Over the course of thirty plus years in ministry I have found that one of the key deal-breakers in relationship is the attributing of motive. So often as human beings we assume what the motive is of others when in reality we know nothing of the motives of others. Only God knows what our motives are. Rather than attribute motive, those who are directed by agape love trust, not only in God, but in other people, and they hope for the best in others. I like to say, “If you are going to attribute motive to another person, attribute the best motive possible.” That is the spirit of agape love working together with faith and hope.
Finally, it is the nature of agape love to always persevere. Another one of my favorite sayings is: “When all else fails, persevere!” Jesus is our model for perseverance, and he is the one who can help us in this arena for he persevered even on the cross.
As we contemplate the nature of agape love it raises a question. Can these qualities be said of you or me 100% of the time? It seems to me that the clear answer is “No.” But each of these qualities of agape love can be said of Jesus all the time. Put your name or my name in place of the word “love” everywhere that word appears in 1 Corinthians 13, and the passage no longer makes sense; it is no longer true. But put the name “Jesus” in place of the word “love” and the passage still stands, it still makes sense, it is still true in its entirety.
The Permanence of Love
In the final section of this chapter, verses 8 through 13, Paul focuses on the permanence of love. In our English translation Paul says, “Love never fails.” Literally, in Greek, it means that love never falls down prostrate, like a runner falling down in the middle of a race.
By implication this means that everything else fails, everything else falls down. Even the best spiritual gifts come to an end. Prophecies will one day cease. Tongues will one day be stilled. Knowledge will pass away.
Paul uses three evocative images to make his point. The first image is that of partial versus complete knowledge. All our knowledge in this life is partial. But one day we will be confronted with the complete, the perfect. On the day we see Jesus we won’t need the gifts of knowledge or prophecy anymore.
The second image Paul uses is like the first. It is the image of the child versus the adult. The speech, the thinking, and the reasoning of a child are all incomplete, all three fall short of the speech, the thinking, and the reasoning of an adult. When one becomes an adult, the thinking, the reasoning, and the ways of talking as a child are no longer needed and may be put away.
The final image that Paul uses is that of the mirror. Corinth was a city known for its manufacture of mirrors. But mirrors in the first century were not like mirrors today. They were like pieces of polished metal, and so one’s reflection would be very imperfect, very hazy. Paul suggests that our knowledge of God right now is like a poor reflection in a mirror. But a day is coming when we will see God face to face. Right now, we know God only in part. But one day we will know God fully, just as we are fully known by God right now.
In the meantime, three things remain, and will always remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. Faith, hope and love have often been called the three theological virtues. Later Christian thinkers added to these three theological virtues the four Platonic virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice, to make up the seven traditional cardinal virtues. But no matter how many theological tomes have been written about love, the greatest virtue, no theologian or philosopher has ever been able to match the brilliance of what Paul has said in 1 Corinthians 13. Nonetheless, I hope you will allow me to sum up my humble comment on Paul’s words by quoting the words of another poem that for me captures the essence of Paul’s meaning. It is written by the most prolific poet of all time… Anonymous…
Love is not passion, love is not pride,
Love is a journeying side by side
Not of the breezes, nor of the gale,
Love is the steady set of the sail.
Deeper than ecstasy, sweeter than light,
Born in the sunshine, born in the night,
Flaming in victory, stronger in loss,
Love is a sacrament made for a cross.
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