Now we come
to the final part of our series my friends and readers. Paul now wraps up his exposition, starting
his conclusion this way:
“Love never
faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away; whether
there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall be
done away." (1Co 13:8)
“Love never
faileth.” The Greek word here is ἐκπίπτω (G1601).
The verb is in the present active indicative. So in modern English that would be “Love
doesn’t fail.” Thayers Lexicon states it
to signify in this verse the thought of “to fall from a place from which one
cannot keep”. However, one other occurrence
of this word my shed more light on what Paul means here since it comes from
another one of his writings. That would
be his use of it at Romans 9:6, where we read:
“But it is
not as though the word of God hath come to nought. For they are not all Israel,
that are of Israel” (Rom 9:6)
Here Paul
uses the word to express the thought that God’s word never goes forth without
result, in other words what God wills always takes place. As a studious Jew Paul was well aware of God’s
pronouncement on the matter in Isaiah:
“For as the
rain cometh down and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but
watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, and giveth seed to the
sower and bread to the eater; so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my
mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I
please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” (Isa 55:10-11)
This is
precisely the thought expressed in Romans and it is our belief that Paul was
expressing something much like it in 1 Corinthians. God is love (1 John 4:8) therefore everything
he does is an expression of his love, even his justice. So our love cannot fail to have results if we
cultivate and use it to the fullest extent possible. Love is powerful. And this is most appropriate considering where
Paul goes next.
Paul tells
us that the gifts of the Spirit the brethren were so proud of there in Ancient
Corinth would end. The brethren had a
problem back then in the way they saw things because of the nature of the gifts
given back then. They were miracles and
some more spectacular than others. The
problem was that those with the more spectacular gifts seemed to have more
prestige than those with others. This
chapter is part of an exposition refuting their thinking which started back in
chapter twelve and continues to chapter fourteen, where Paul tells them to
adjust their thinking and seek out the more important gifts while they could. That was because a time would come when those
gifts would cease, but when?
“For we know
in part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is come, that
which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I
felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put
away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to
face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully
known.”
(1Co
13:9-12)
Simply put
the day would come when the Church would grow up in the knowledge of God and
his plan. At the time the Church had an
incomplete knowledge of divine things.
Scrolls of the scriptures were expensive and not easy to come by. And the word of God wasn’t complete as Paul
and several others were in the process of writing down what God intended. Even after the biblical canon was established
it wouldn’t become widely available to the world, and the members of the Church
until the invention of the printing press made cheap publication of it, and
knowledge gleaned from it, possible.
So at the
time Paul wrote the Church needed a little something extra to give them what
they needed to make their calling sure, and some of the gifts provided that
extra boost, which was why Paul counsels to seek those particular gifts out in
the next chapter of his letter. But
after that, and especially in the “last days,” when knowledge would increase,
including in matters of truth, those gifts would not be needed (Dan. 12:4; 1
Cor. 13:10). So God would no longer give
them out. That leads us to the question
of what we’re left with if we don’t have those gifts. Paul answers that question for us in one of
his most famous verses:
“But now
abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”
(1Co 13:13)
We are left
with faith, hope and love. These are not
only the things which will carry us over the finish line successfully, but will
also identify us as God’s true Church.
But the most important of those is love, the love we discussed in this
series on First Corinthians chapter thirteen.
We hope that
you, my readers, received not one, but several blessings from this study on genuine
Christian love. We not only examined why
it is important, but what it is and is not.
We now know how that love acts and can see why both our lives and the
lives of those around us would benefit from our cultivating this most important
quality and acting on it.
I hope you
have a blessed day my dear readers.
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