1 Corinthians 13:1-13

What is this passage talking about in context?

Paul is informing the Corinthians about the different members in the body. These members have different gifts that have been given by the Holy Spirit, and they are in different positions of life. Yet we are all one body in Christ, and thus we operate as such.

These gifts are incomplete without LOVE. On the flip side Love is completed by the gifts given by the Spirit.

So what is Love?

Love is Patient

what does it look like to be patient? It looks like not being rude, not being easily prone to anger, and not resenting others.

love is kind

How are we kind?

χρηστεύομαι - obliging, willing to help or assist

love is not envious - so love is Grateful or content with satisfaction.

Love does not brag - or Love is humble and submitting

love is not puffed up - more humility

“puffed up ~ used in the NT figuratively of pride or self–conceit”

love is not rude - love is slow to speak, a listener, or patient

Rude or Rudeness ~ To behave in an ugly, indecent, unseemly or unbecoming manner.

love is not self-serving - love serves others above themselves

Love is not easily angered - love is longsuffering and looking rather for the good

“It means to provoke or rouse to anger or indignation”

Love is not resentful - rather it forgives

Does not count up evil, or stack up evil, or credit sin

Love is not joyed at injustice - rather it rejoices in truth

Love bears all things

Meaning to conceal with, love hides the faults of others or covers them up.

to hold out, forebear, bear with, endure

Love believes all things - Love is innocent

Love hopes all things - Love longs for what is true and right

Love endures all things - love outlasts evil and pervades that what is unloving

what is love’s position to the Gifts

Well Verse 8 says love never ends. Part of this is because Love is a characteristic of God in HIs triune Essence. Prophecy, tongues, and knowledge can be as something that God gives to man, but its not found inherently as a part of His nature.

His omniscience is a higher sense of knowledge. God is all knowing all encompassing in his knowledge. Now he teaches us with knowledge, and that knowledge will be set aside instead to dwell in Love.

This is primarily because we know in part, and prophecy in part - Verse 9

Perfect knowledge and prophecy will be realized when it is no loner necessary because mystery will be revealed. Love will continue as something that will live with.

Known

When we are a child, we talk like a child, when we are a child we think like a child. When we grow then we set aside these ways of thinking. In the same way, one day we will no longer look in the mirror indirectly. Rather we will look in the mirror face to face.

Its interesting language because in John 1:18 it says, “The only one, himself God, who is in closest fellowship with the Father, has made God known. This statement could be seen as “which is in the bosom of the Father”. this thought encapsulates the closeness of the father and the son. We are outside of this as we look through a mirror.

This is having to do with the knowledge of the Father. We will not be made like God, rather we will be made whole in a relationship we where designed to have with God knowing fully just as we have already been known.