Dear friends,
Should you read 1 Corinthians 13 at your wedding? And should we translate 1 Corinthians 13 as ‘charity’ or ‘love’? Today’s episode will answer both of these questions.
One of the best known and most popular passages of the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, is the topic of our podcast this week. The good news is, we are talking about it; bad news is, we cannot do it justice. Nevertheless, we hope you enjoy our discussion. Do take a moment to subscribe, and take every opportunity to share this podcast with your friends.
Yours,
Phillip
Phillip Jensen: In today’s episode, we will look at one of the greatest chapters of the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13. It’s a chapter which people read at weddings, because although it wasn’t written by Paul for these occasions, it speaks of the great truths of God. But to understand it, as usual we need to pay attention to the context. Before we read chapter 13, however, we will start further back with 1 Corinthians 12:27.
Peter Jensen: Paul certainly didn’t write in chapters and verses, so that’s a good idea.
1 Corinthians 12:27–13:13
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts.
And I will show you a still more excellent way.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Phillip: Paul continues in 1 Corinthians 14:1, “Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.” 1 Corinthians 13 is such a marvellous piece of writing—leaving aside the fact that it’s divinely inspired—that rises to the great climax at the end of 13:13, “but the greatest of these is love.” Yet it’s part of this controversy about the use of gifts. Ever since you and I have been in public ministry in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, this is a subject that has come up for us over and over again. Even though 1 Corinthians 12–14 teaches about unity, it has become a subject of controversy and division. That’s why chapter 13 is so important, because it talks not so much about unity, but about the way of unity: its reason and basis, which has to do with love. Chapter 13 is also an example of the typical way in which Paul argues. That is, he introduces the presenting issue and gives some answers to it. But before he comes to the real conclusion, he takes us back to great fundamental truths.
For instance, in chapter 7 when we look at the issues the Corinthians raised about sex and marriage, he begins by answering a lot of their questions, until 7:17 when he suddenly brings up contentment. At that point, you think he’s changed the subject, but after those few verses on contentment he returns to the subject of marriage. You see the same pattern in chapters 8–10, where he talks about food offered to idols; he answers the question in chapter 8, then talks in chapter 9 about giving up his rights and freedoms for the sake of other people’s salvation, before he returns in chapter 10 to demonstrate how that sacrifice informs his view of idolatry. Similarly, Paul has dealt with the presenting issue in chapter 12, but before he comes to the issue of prophecy and tongues in chapter 14, he lays out for us the great fundamental principle of love.
Remind us how we got to this point in the argument, where a chapter on love is going to resolve some of the issues that we’re talking about.
Peter: I like that approach, because we need it. That is to say, we get ourselves twisted into knots about precise things, and that’s okay, because they are often very important. But Paul models for us what we also need to do, which is to go back to the fundamentals out of which the argument comes. I remember the Lord doing exactly the same when he was asked about divorce. Divorce was allowed under the Mosaic law, but he drew people back to the unity of marriage in Genesis 1–2. So we don’t just make the New Testament into a set of rules; we see the reason for it. Here, as you pointed out, is a wonderful illustration of exactly that with this chapter on love. In fact, you only need to look at 12:27–30, the beginning of the passage that I read, to see this.
Paul has spoken in chapter 12 of the necessity of all the gifts: both the spectacular gifts which are obvious to everybody, and the hidden gifts. He criticises the attitude that says, “I don’t belong—all I do is get the morning tea, nobody cares,” and the inverse, which says, “I don’t need you. I’m the most important member of the church.” He criticises both attitudes because of the importance of unity. Then he moves on to this chapter.
That said, 12:27–30 always strikes me as odd given his words, “first apostles, second prophets, third teachers,” which outlines a rank of those who are especially important. He also calls on us to earnestly desire the higher gifts. This seems to cut across the commands he’s given in chapter 12. Are all the gifts of the same value and worth, or aren’t they? And if they’re of the same value, how can he call upon us to eagerly desire the higher gifts?
I see that the higher gifts he mentions are apostles, prophets and teachers. I personally think that Ephesians 4 throws light on this, for here he gives the same list. You’ll notice that these are the gifts of people: apostles, prophets, evangelists, teachers, pastors; therefore it seems as though in that passage, he is referring to people rather than gifts as such.
Phillip: Yes, he refers to people specifically, rather than the activity. It’s “apostles, prophets, teachers,” not “prophecy and teaching.” Everybody can prophesy—and in fact, in chapter 14, everybody’s encouraged to prophesy—but only some people are prophets.
Peter: That’s an important insight. Furthermore, in Ephesians 4, they’re not called the gifts of the Holy Spirit; they’re called the gifts of Christ to his church.
Phillip: Yes, because it’s the spirit of Christ who gives the gifts. To distinguish the Spirit from Christ is nearly always a mistake, for the Spirit didn’t die on the cross for us, but Christ did. These are different persons with different functions. But they are the same in terms of one God, and the Spirit is known as the Spirit of Jesus. So when the gifts are given, this is not a distinctive activity of the Holy Spirit. The distinctive activity of the Holy Spirit has much more to do with regeneration, and the fruit of the Spirit pushing us in holiness within our lives. In this passage, the gifts are of God the Father. In Ephesians 4, they’re the gifts of Christ. Earlier in chapter 12, they’re the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Peter: Returning to Ephesians 4 now, as the gifted ones exercise their gifts, so the church flourishes. In Ephesians 2:20, the church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone,” and it is the exercising of these gifts which enables everybody in the church to serve and to minister to each other, including in speech. In Ephesians 4:15 he talks about “speaking the truth in love.” In short, I take it that the apostles in 1 Corinthians are referring to the apostles designated in Ephesians 2, with the prophets as foundational to the church, and I presume that all churches must have apostles and prophets in their midst. That is, we must have the scriptures as the way in which the Lord is speaking to us through his apostles and prophets. That is one of the marks of a true church: the teachers are meant to teach God’s truth. In that way, these are the higher gifts because they set in process the gifts of others as well. If that is the case, I presume he means that we are to eagerly look for these gifts in our community; we are to test our community and ask ourselves, “Are the apostles and prophets present in their words, and are the teachers teaching the apostolic word?” That’s my speculation about this. What do you think?
Phillip: I like it, but there are other aspects that cause us confusion. That is, we have a confusion in our society today about what it means to be equal. Egalitarianism is a philosophy of social life which is almost sacred within our community, but it’s frequently confused with sameness. To have people treated equally is not to have people treated the same. In what way are we equal? To be equal before the law and to be equal in height are two very different things. To say everyone is equal in height is untrue, but to say everyone is equal before the law refers to a way of treating people which sounds very good, right, and just.
Furthermore, there’s a confusion in non-Christian values about importance, because we treat people as being important in ways that seem to me to be unhelpful. We treat some people as important by giving them large salaries, as opposed to other people to whom we give small salaries, when they’re both working just as hard for the value of our society. Likewise, we give certain people titles. We clergy are as much a problem here as anybody else. I have all kinds of titles, and you used to have even more titles. It’s a daft idea to distinguish people by salaries and titles, because the Bible’s sense of greatness is found in service and slavery. Gifts are about service, but people think about gifts in terms of identity, confidence and pride. We think of ourselves as an engineer or a doctor or a clergyman. Within a congregation, we do the same; we say, “I’m the music director,” or “I’m the Sunday school teacher.” We think that these gifts are our identity and our importance within the gathering of the congregation. Though some services are, as you’ve been saying, more fundamentally important than others in part because of their effect. They are foundational to the very nature of the church and Christ’s appointment of them.
I also want to add that there are some things that have a greater effect than others. For many years, I’ve noticed that the real health in our community is not created by surgeons, but by plumbers. But within our society, we give titles and deference to people who are surgeons who do very little for the health of the community as a whole. They do a lot for the health of old, fat, white males. Plumbers give us clean water and get rid of sewage, therefore they are the ones who create health in the community. Society, then, should give more honour to plumbers.
What we have in this passage is the way of love, which explains why prophecy is higher than tongues. Paul’s argument is not even that prophecy has the greater effect; his argument here is love.
Peter: Have you noticed how surprising that is? I am so lacking in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that I can remember reading this chapter for the first time and thinking, “What on earth has this got to do with what he’s talking about?”
Phillip: The truth is, it’s the very essence of what he’s talking about all the way along. That’s why, halfway through this discussion on tongues and prophecy and gifts, Paul seems to wander off into the subject of love. Love is not a gift, nor is it the higher gift. Love is the fruit of the Spirit. But all of the gifts must be ministered by the fruit of the Spirit, because the fruit is infinitely more important than the gifts. The fruit is of eternal significance. The gifts will pass away, but the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness—is the transformation of life that you have as a Christian. This is fundamental to the way we live, and it is the way the gifts are to be evaluated. I like the King James Version, which doesn’t translate the word as ‘love’, but ‘charity’.
Peter: Please don’t re-introduce the word ‘charity’. It’s so old-fashioned that all it means now is an organisation that gives you a bed for the night.
Phillip: Worse than that, I think it has the smell of class distinctions. Charity is what rich, upper-class people do for the poor, working-class or unemployed people with a sense of superiority. So I agree with you, but in some ways the word ‘charity’ is good because it refers to something specific. The word ‘love’ means so many different things to different people. Almost every time you preach on the word ‘love’, you’ve got to go through this little exercise of clarifying, “We’re not talking about romantic love.” It’s painful. The advantage of ‘charity’ is that it is about giving, and the love of the Bible is about giving. The gift of Christ in his death on the cross is the great example of what we mean by love. So ‘charity’ means giving for the benefit of the other person, not because they deserve it, but out of the grace of the giver.
Peter: It’s a bit like finding a person lying on the side of the road whom you don’t like, then stopping, picking him up, and taking him to hospital.
Phillip: Yes, that’s the generosity of the Good Samaritan, whose love becomes the byword. That’s the love of God. Without that sense of giving, that generosity, that concern for the other person, that other service of people, all gifts are irrelevant. 13:1, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” Prophetic powers without love are nothing. A faith that moves mountains is impressive, but without love, it’s a waste of time. Just leave the mountain where it was.
Peter: Even martyrdom without love is of no value. That is an astonishing thing to read in the Bible.
Phillip: Yes. If I lay down my life for the cause of the gospel, but I’m not doing it out of love, I can pride myself in it. I can hope to be saved because of it. I can think of myself as a great one because of it. But I’ve got to do it out of love for others and love for the Lord Jesus.
Peter: So love is at the centre of everything. Why?
Phillip: Because it’s the fruit of Christian living. The gospel comes out of the love of God and the love of the Lord Jesus Christ for us. John 13:35, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Peter: It may be good to ask yourself, “Do I exhibit this love in personal relationships?” Some of these relationships, of course, are very fraught and difficult. But 1 Corinthians 13:4–7
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Is that you? One person could answer that question: Jesus. I think, whether Paul intended this or not, it’s a description of Jesus. Since the whole purpose of our lives as Christians is to grow into the likeness of our Saviour, as these things grow in us by the power of God’s Spirit, we will grow more like Jesus. Or to use the other expression, this is the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. Not that we simply let go to have him do it, rather we aim for and practice these things. But every time we have any success, we give God thanks. We walk in step with the Spirit.
Phillip: You’ll see how this love is different to what the world is talking about. It doesn’t rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ‘Love’, in the sense that the world uses it, is just your emotional reaction to something, and it’s got no moral fibre or character to it. Love is seen as the moral fibre in character. But the love of the Bible, the love of God, doesn’t rejoice in wrongdoing, but only in the truth, in the right way of life. But he goes on here about the permanence of love. Everything else in life is part of the transitory nature of this world. But love never ends, and even these great things that we think are so important, such as prophecies, will pass away. Tongues and knowledge pass away. In fact, for some of us, knowledge passes away even while we’re alive.
Peter: It does, but in this verse it is replaced by a deep and true nature.
Phillip: Yes—that is being known, which is even more important than what you know. We have a temporary life in an incomplete world, but the day will come when perfection comes. The word ‘perfect’ refers to completion, the end point to which everything is going. Different people have different ideas on what that means. Some would say this means the completion of the Bible, when the New Testament is finished. I would be surprised if Paul was referring to that. I think it has to do with the end of the world, when the Lord Jesus returns and this world finally comes to its completion. At that point, we won’t need prophecy, tongues, or knowledge anymore. We will be known at that time. But while these temporary things pass, love is not part of the temporary. 13:8, “Love never ends.” Love is not the only thing that’s not part of the temporary; I take it that things like hope and faith continue on. But what do you think about that?
Peter: Bear in mind that our knowledge passes, but it is replaced by our full knowledge, even as I’ve been fully known. 13:13, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” There’s a reason why people pluck this chapter out of its context, so to speak. It’s not a bad reason, because Paul, having made comments on the particular issue in Corinth, now goes to the fundamentals, to the point which is guiding what he’s saying. It doesn’t just guide what he’s saying in that particular situation; it deeply guides the whole of our lives. It feeds into the question of who we are as human beings, for we are relational.
One day we need to have a discussion on the AI problem, especially as it’s applied to education. I think that the mere fact of others being in the room with me is terribly important. When we have a discussion in class, it’s often another student who will say something that is important, from which I can learn.
Phillip: AI agrees with that, because in my contact and usage of it, it speaks as if it’s a person. Once, I asked it, “Why do you talk as a person when you’re not?” It responded, “Because people find it easier to learn in this kind of context.” This is both true and false at the same time.
Peter: Yes, it reminds me of the pandemic, when we had Zoom classes. The technology is so brilliant; it’s astonishing what you can do. To be able to have classes even while we were all sitting in isolation was brilliant, but it wasn’t the same as being in the same room, eating together, and building relationships. This is also the reason why we gather for church. The services online were great, but how much more would you rather be there with other people? We as human beings were made for relationships.
Phillip: Zoom singing didn’t work. You’ve got to be there together.
Peter: This passage feeds exactly into that discussion of Christian anthropology, in which 1 Corinthians 13 plays a vital part.
Phillip: In 14:1, having given us this great theological statement which goes beyond the context of Corinth, you come back to the context, which is that we must pursue love. Given what he said in chapter 13, that’s not a huge logical leap, but an obvious thing to say. So 14:1, “Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.” The word ‘gifts’ is not in the original text; it’s “earnestly desire the spirituals,” which is what he started with in chapter 12. That is, earnestly desire to live in the world of the Spirit, to live in the age and the realms of the Spirit; to be spiritual in the sense of the Holy Spirit, not the human spirit. But especially desire to prophesy. He doesn’t say that we should desire to be prophets, because not all are prophets, but we should desire to prophesy. Why is that so important? Because of love. That reminds us again of Ephesians 4 and its importance.
Peter: That is where the work of the pastor-teacher, and the work of the apostles and the prophets, turns into a church which is alive, which is awake, where all the members are building each other up. A significant part of that is speaking the truth in love to each other. That may be worth taking into account when we’re thinking of prophecy. It is the word of truth we speak to each other as we hear it in the light of our situation. Something like that may be building each other up.
Phillip: We’ll see that next week, but I want to say that he’s going to compare and contrast prophecy and tongue speaking, prophecy being the higher gift because it is more loving. But tune in next week to find out more.
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Links & Recommendations
For more on this topic, check out this talk given at a Church Weekend away called The Church: Love’s Spiritual Way.
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