Love is the Greatest

1 Corinthians 13:1-13 (ESV)

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. 2 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. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 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. 12 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.

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13 is a familiar chapter of the Bible to many Christians, especially verses 4-7. Love is patient and kind is written on signs and hung up in homes. We write it on wedding cards and recite it as wedding vows. Sometimes with familiar passages, the tendency is to skim over them or read through them quickly, not really pausing to look closely at the words and phrases. With this passage, I wonder if we stop to really consider what is being said if we will see it in a new light.

In order to dig into this chapter, we should first look at the context. 1 Corinthians is a letter written by Paul to the Christian church in Corinth. The Christians in Corinth were struggling to follow Christ. The Christians there were arguing. Instead of being unified, they were divided, following specific leaders instead of following Christ (1 Corinthians 1:10-17). These Christians were not acting godly, they were acting like the world. They were full of pride and acting immorally (1 Corinthians 3:3,18). All through this long letter, Paul, full of the Holy Spirit, is directing the people to not live like the world, but to follow the example of Christ. Then, starting around chapter 11 through chapter 14, Paul lays out the proper ways for worship to be conducted in church. Chapter 13 is part of that instruction.

The first three verses say: 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. 2 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. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Since this passage is part of that greater lesson that God wants to teach through Paul, we must view this in that context. That means that within the context of corporate worship, everything the people are doing must be done from a place of love. If the Corinthian church was gathering together and speaking in tongues, giving words of prophecy, reading scripture, giving their possessions to the poor and even risking death by meeting together, but yet they were doing these things without love, then it is meaningless.

Really? If they don’t have love in their hearts, then they would gain nothing by doing all those things? That is what scripture is saying. This passage has given me pause, for it is hard to do everything from a place of love, isn’t it? Sometimes I begrudgingly do things I know I should do. I don’t always feel loving toward people. Sometimes I feel resentment or dislike for tasks or people. If you’ve ever been on staff at a church or volunteered to help out at a church in some way, you might know what I’m talking about. For those of us in home churches, this is no different. We still need to set up music stands, mop the floor, pick out the music and practice. Does this chapter of Corinthians mean that if I’m not doing all these things with love, then it’s all for nothing?

In order to understand this passage, we first must define what love is and what love is not. It will be no help to us to look at the world’s definitions of love. Our world is grossly wrong in defining love. This passage tells us exactly how God defines love. Verses 4-7 define love as this: “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.”

By that definition, love is not an emotion. Love is not a feeling. Love is an action. It is patient and kind. That means love keeps control of emotions when it’s easier to snap out in frustration and anger. Love does not envy or boast. That means love keeps us from tearing down someone else, and keeps us from boasting pridefully about ourselves. Love is not arrogant or rude. That means love keeps us from being proud and pushy. As verse 5 explains, “It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful.”

Verse 6 further defines love by saying, “it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.” Even rejoicing is a verb. It is an action. Love rejoices with truth and does not rejoice at wrongdoing. In chapter 5, Paul brings up a specific situation in that church, where a man was behaving immorally, and rather than correcting this man, Paul exclaims, “And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this?” (1 Corinthians 5:2). They were rejoicing at this wrongdoing. The man's bad behavior was not corrected because they did not love truth and were not doing the right thing. They were not actually loving that man “so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord,” as 1 Corinthians 5:5 says. The loving thing to do would have been to help this man, not celebrate his sinning. Love celebrates and delights in truth, love does not rejoice at wrongdoing.

Finally, verse 7 says, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Ellicott’s Commentary explains that “love silently endures whatever it has to suffer.” That means love does not whine and complain or moan and throw a fit. Love has grit.

That verse also said love believes and hopes all things, which means that love assumes the best, not the worst, about people. Love is not waiting for someone to mess up so they can be condemned. Love wants the best for other people. That means until proven otherwise, love believes the other person’s intentions were good. An example of what this means is illustrated by America’s justice system, which, when working properly, holds to the belief that people are innocent until proven guilty. Love does not condemn someone without ample evidence.

All of those characteristics of love, if applied in the context of a church, would create a church that was truly loving to its members. People would not be selfish, grumble, delight in wrongdoing, spread rumors, or cut in line at coffee hour. People would behave lovingly toward one another. And did you notice, none of that has to do with emotions, beyond keeping one’s emotions in check. Despite what the world tells us, love is not a feeling.

Interestingly enough, I’ve found that when I behave lovingly towards a group of people or an individual, eventually I feel love toward that group or person. Love begets love; my loving actions will result in feelings of love within me. The more I serve someone and set myself aside, the more I feel love welling up in my heart. The opposite is true as well. If I give in to feelings of anger or resentment and I snub someone or act stingy or insist on my way, or if I slander someone or speak in anger, then my emotions grow even colder to that group or person. That is because our actions are tied to our emotions.

These Corinthian Christians are no different from us. We, too, must do everything with love. If we are trying to follow Jesus and keep all the commandments, but we do not love, then everything we are doing is gaining us nothing. Without love, the spiritual things we are doing are actually meaningless. If our church is having a pancake breakfast to feed the homeless but the church members are fighting, gossiping, and snapping at each other, what kind of witness will that be to the community and the people the church is trying to reach with the Gospel? If the Church is fighting amongst its members, how will the world know we are following Jesus? Why would they want to join us?

Jesus told His disciples in John 13:34-35, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” There was a popular Christian song in the 1970s or 80s and the refrain was, “They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love, they will know we are Christians by our love.” That sentiment is still true today. The world will know if we are following Christ, only if we love other people, and specifically, if we love other Christians. So love is the vehicle which drives people to Christ. Just as 1 John 4:19 says, “We love because He first loved us.”

Not only is love all those things, but as verse 8 says, “Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.” In eternity, we won’t need all the spiritual gifts Paul mentions. For as verses 9-12 explain, “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.”

This section of verses reminds me so much of what Paul wrote in Ephesians 4:11-16, which says, “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

Both passages are saying the same basic thing: God has given the body of Christ spiritual gifts so that we may all collectively mature in our faith. These gifts are to help us all grow in faith so we do not stay immature in our faith. These spiritual gifts and proper characteristics of a follower of Christ are all being held together by Jesus, but in this present time, we are not following or understanding everything perfectly. We are still growing and trying to understand, as if we are seeing through a dimly lit mirror. It is not until Jesus comes back that we will reach full maturity in Christ and understand everything clearly.

When Jesus comes back, and we see Him face to face, then we won’t need other teachers or evangelists. We won’t need the spiritual gifts of speaking in tongues or prophecy. For then we will know God fully. Those gifts and roles within the body of Christ won’t be needed anymore, and so they will not remain. Which is why verse 13 says, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

If it seems odd that Corinthians would say love is the greatest, I think that wording is a continuation of what chapter 12 says about all the spiritual gifts. 1 Corinthians 12:27-31 says, “Now you are Christ’s body, and individually parts of it. And God has appointed in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, and various kinds of tongues. All are not apostles, are they? All are not prophets, are they? All are not teachers, are they? All are not workers of miracles, are they? All do not have gifts of healings, do they? All do not speak with tongues, do they? All do not interpret, do they? But earnestly desire the greater gifts. And yet, I am going to show you a far better way.”

Of all the operational gifts within the church, only faith, hope and love will remain, and love is the greatest of the three. Love is the far better way. Honestly, I would have thought faith was the greatest. For as Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith, it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”

I wanted to look up what other authors had to say about this verse to help answer the question of why love is greater than faith and hope. As is often the case, the internet failed to help. Multiple articles about this verse all said the same thing: that faith and hope will cease when Jesus comes back and that only love will remain forever, and that is why it is more important than either faith or hope. I don’t understand why anyone would think faith and hope will end when this verse says explicitly that all three will abide.

Just as we defined love, to understand why love is greater, we should also define faith and hope. This text does not define those two things, but Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Faith is having confidence that what you are hoping for will happen. In this context, faith is believing that God is real. Even though we have not seen God, we are convinced He is real: that is faith.

Hope is different, even though hope was in the definition of faith from Hebrews. Hope is anticipation or expectation. Faith is certain that something will happen; hope wants something to happen. Romans 8:24b-25 defines hope like this: “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” So we see, faith and hope are two very different things. Faith has a confidence that hope doesn’t have. Hope says maybe, and faith is certain.

The articles I referenced earlier said faith and hope disappear when Jesus returns, for no longer will we need faith or hope. Those authors are not correct, first because they are contradicting what this verse clearly says. Second, because when Jesus returns, we will have faith and hope that are even greater than we could experience here on earth. For if faith is the assurance of things hoped for, then we will have the greatest of faith, for our assurance of God will be fully realized. If hope is the anticipation of something good, then in eternity, wouldn't that be the only thing present? All that we are hoping for will be what we are given. For surely there will be no disappointment or let down in God’s presence.

All these other practices, spiritual gifts, order of worship, when Jesus returns and creates the new heaven and earth, all of those things will pass away. All that will remain is faith, hope and love. And love is the greater, for as Ellicott’s Commentary said, “Yet love stands supreme; indeed, both faith and hope would perish without her.” Faith and hope would perish without love, for love is the driver of faith and hope.

I think this is understood only if we are careful to remember what love is. The world thinks that it knows what love is, but the world is upside down. The world celebrates sin and has defined love to mean the love of self. I even saw a coffee cup for sale at the grocery store that said, “Self love” on it. The world is obsessed with loving its self. But love is not love if it insists on getting its way. Love is not self-centered. Love is others centered. Love puts other people first. We only know what love is if we know God. 1 John 4:7-8 says, “7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” That verse clearly tells us that if we do not love, then we do not know God, for God is love. God is the ultimate definition of love. He has shown us what love is. Continuing in 1 John 4:9-10, “By this the love of God was revealed in us, that God has sent His only Son into the world so that we may live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

When 1 Corinthians states that love is the most important, it is simply echoing the refrain that is being sung all throughout Scripture. Jesus said the same thing in Matthew 22:34-40. We read, “But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?’ And [Jesus] said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.’”

If we truly love God and other people, then we will end up keeping all the other commandments. Love is the greatest of the gifts, and as Paul urged the Christians in Corinth, we too should “earnestly desire the greater gifts.” Let us ask the Holy Spirit to give us greater love so we can show a dying world evidence that the Savior is real.

Pray: Heavenly Father, we thank You for showing us what love truly is. Thank You for sending Jesus to die on the cross. Please help us by the Holy Spirit to love You and other people. Help us to embody all the characteristics of true love. Help us to be kind and patient. Help us not to be proud or rude, envious or mean. We ask for Your forgiveness for when we’ve failed to do this, and we look to You to help us. We need You, Lord, to continue to transform us with Your love, so we reflect more of You to those around us. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.