“THE PERMANENCE OF LOVE”

(1 Corinthians 13:8-10)

      The story of a missionary from Uganda, who had difficulties working with a coworkers; began to read 1 Corinthians once a day and did so for a year.  The results in her life were so remarkable that even those who were unsaved around commented concerning the difference in her life.  Read together and apply together in our reading.

      How would you describe Christian love? It cannot be defined in a single statement.  It is a active thing and that is why the next paragraph, verses 4-7 contain fifteen verbs. No one loves who is not active in this way.  Here are the activities of love: suffers long and is kind.  One is more passive, the other more active.

      And then there are five statements of self denial.  Charity envieth not, vauteth not itself (is not puffed up); doth not behave itself unseemly; seeketh not her own. And then here are the three refusals; charity refuses to be provoked; thinketh no evil, does not reckon up the evil that it has suffered at the hands of others. Notice this third refusal with both a postive and a negative side: charity 6Rejoiceth not in iniquity (not even when it is found in an enemy), but rejoiceth in the truth; 

The four great universals: Charity…7Beareth (covers) all things, believeth all things (takes people at their word), hopeth all things, always nourishes in its heart positive expecation of people even when they have disappointed it from time to time; charity  endureth all things.

And now the passage, the paragraph that we are going to be dealing with tonight concerning the permanence of Christian love.  Verse 8: “8Charity never faileth: but (by contrast) whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.”

      “9For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. 10But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.  11When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.   12For now we see through a glass, darkly (in a riddle, in an enigma; many bewildering things to us); but then (someday) face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.  13And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”  Chapter 14, verse 1: “Follow after charity, pursue it.”

      Here is an outstanding statement on the permanence, the eternality of Christian love.  This statement that is made at the beginning of verse 8 is obviously intended to bring the whole preceeding paragraph to its climactic expression: “love never fails.”  The word “fail” is a word that has reference to something falling to the ground because it has decayed and dead.  Or something that is falling out of line, like a soldier who has fallen and is exhausted and cannot go on any longer.  Love never does that.  Love never falls to the ground.

      That means two things: first, love never deserts its object. It will never let down someone whom it it loves.  It is unfailing in its loyalty to its object. A letter was written in the last several years by a president of a Christian school. His wife suffered from Alsheimer’s disease, which caused him to step down from the office of president; and when he did so in March of 1990, he wrote his resignation and letter:

        “My dear wife Muriel has been in failing mental health for the last eight years.  So far I have been able to carry both her ever-growing needs and my leadership responsibilities at the college, but recently it has become apparent that Muriel is contented most of the time that she is with me and almost none of the time when I am away from her.  It is not just discontent; she is filled with fear, even terror that she has lost me and she always goes in search of me when I leave home.  Then she may be full of anger when she cannot get to me, so it is clear to me that she needs me full time.

        Perhaps it would help you to understand if I shared with you what I shared at the time of my resignation at chapel.  The decision was made in a way 42 years ago when I promised to care for her in sickness and in health till death do us part. So as I told the students and faculty, as a man of my word, integrity has something to do with this decision, but so does fairness.  She has cared for me fully and sacrificially all these years. If I cared for her the next forty years, I would not be out of debt.

        Duty, however, can be grim and stoic, so there is more. I love Muriel.  She is a delight to me.  Her child-like dependence and confidence in me; her warm love; her occassional flashes of the wit that I used to relish. Her happy spirit and tough resilience in the face of her continual distressing frustation.  I do not have to care for her; I get to. It is a high honor to care for so wonderful a person.

Love never fails; never deserts the objects of its intentions. The second thing that this means, and in the conext, this is the primary meaning, and that is that love never comes to an end. It is everlasting.  Not only is love unfailing in its loyalty, but it is unfailing eternally. It will not die.  That is the primary thing that the apostle is saying in this passage as he moves on now in the remainder in the remainder of verse and down to verse 12 and he contrasts love with the exercise of spiritual gifts in Christian ministry.

I.    THE CONTRAST BETWEEN LOVE AND SPIRITUAL GIFTS

Let’s look at this together.  In the remainder of verse 8, in this section contrasting love with spiritual gifts, Paul predicts that someday spritual gifts will pass away.  A little background on this: every beleiver is given by the Holy Spirit some gracious ability; a gracious bestowal that he might be able to profit the rest of the believers in the body of Christ.  This is a gracious bestowal by God to enable to literally do things that build up others in the faith so that there are eternal consequences to my life.  These are called spiritual gifts; there are nineteen or twenty of them listed in five passages in the New Testament.  There are either nineteen or twenty because it depends on whether you refer to celibacy as a spiritual gift, which it may be.

As you know, the Corinthian church did not fail in any of these gifts.  All of them were present in their assembly; the apostle refers to this in chapter 1, and they evidently existed in this assembly in some degree of excellence.  But these people were not exercising these gifts so that they were building up the body; they were actually exercising them for self-gratification. And so, in chapters 12, 13 and 14, we have the most extended discussion in the Word of God on spiritual gifts.

The apostle, right in the middle of that discussion, is concerned that to show the Corinthians what he calls in the end of chapter 12, verse 31, the “excellent way,” the superlative Christian behavior. In other words, what he is saying is that there is even something beyond our exercising our gifts in service to one another; there is something even more superlative than that and that is this thing that he calls love.

Paul is going to argue for that thesis, as he points out in this paragraph that the gifts are temporary; they are going to pass away.  But love never will.  Love never faileth. Love is eternal; it will never die.  So, in verse 8, he takes by way of example, three of the spiritual gifts and the three with which the Corinthians seem to have been most occupied and he says this about them, he makes this prediction about their passing.  He says, “Let’s take prophecies—they are going to fail.”  Literally, they shall be done.

What about tongues—the gift with which the Corinthian church was most enamored? Tongues will cease.  Or knowledge, also, just like prophecy shall be done away.

      We need to take a few moments to drop out of the explanation of these verses and the theme of Christian love and make some reference to the current phenomenon, the charismatic movement and its particular emphasis upon the gift of tongues, so that we can see exactly what this verse and the succeeding verses are teaching concerning the ceasing of tongues and the passing away of other gifts.  So let’s by way of an extended footnote give a teaching of this passage.  We are going to have to be somewhat technical, because some important questions are going to be raised by these next few verses, and the grammar of these verses is extremely important to rightly understanding what Paul is saying concerning the gift of tongues.

      Notice verse 8:  three gifts are mentioned, but he says two different things about their passing.  The words “they shall fail” (you may want to underline) when it refers to prophecies, and the last four words of verse 8, “it shall vanish away,” referring to knowledge.  These two phrases are exactly the same word in the language in which the New Testament was written. It is one word, translated two different ways.  In the margin of your Bible, you might want to write these four words “shall be done away.”  Prophecies shall be done away. Knowledge shall be done away.  The reason that these two phrases can legitimately be translated this way is that this verb occurs one more time in the passage, at the end of verse 10.  What are the last four words of verse 10? Shall be done away. It is the same verb, in exactly the same form.  If you keep the translation consistent, it will be easier to understand, and the third way that it is translated will probably help us to understand the concepts more easily.

      One other thing that we need to do.  Notice that concerning this third spiritual gift in verse 8, you have a different word, and it is translated a different way.  Of tongues, it says, “they shall cease.”  You might want to underline that phrase and write out in the edge of the margin of your Bible this translation of what that phrase means, “shall cease themselves.”  Or you could put, “they shall cease of themselves,” all on their own—is the idea.

      Let’s talk for a moment about English grammar.  A very dull subject.  But there is some excitement when you understand what is going on.  In a couple of weeks, we will have the World Series, so maybe we can put it in that context to liven things up some.  If I am a batter, I am going to have a very good night if I am active with the bat in hitting the ball.  If I hit the ball, I have been the actor, I was active, I hit the ball.  That is an active verb.  But I am going to have a real bad night if the pitcher hits me with the ball.  I am just standing there minding my business with the bat at the home plate, and I was hit by the ball.  Now I am not active, I am passive.  If that ball hits me hard enough in my head and deranges me, I may show that I have totally lost it by walking around hitting myself. Now, I am both active and passive.  I am in the middle. I am doing the action and I am receiving action. In English grammar, we have active verbs, where I am doing the action; we have passive verbs, where I am receiving the action, and we have middle verbs where I am both doing and receiving the action.

      Greek verbs are the same way.  In this verse, the verb that we are translating “shall be done away” is passive.  What this is literally teaching is that one of these days that prophecy, which is the gift not only of teaching future things as some of the Biblical prophets did, but it was also the gift of just simply standing up and proclaiming the things that God has given.  Is this gift still in existence in the Christian church today? Yes, absolutely.  It is gift that is being exercised whenever any one gives the word of God, even musically, 1 Chronicles 25 uses this word this way.  It even uses it of those who are ministering on instruments, where there are no real words involved—it is called prophesying, provided it is God’s music.  It is still in exercise today, but prophecy and knowledge, and knowledge that seems to give people an ability to learn and retain biblical truth—one of these days, both the gifts of knowledge and prophecy are going to be going about their way, edifying the church, and all of a sudden, some actor outside the church is going to come along and to do them away. They will be quite passive about it; but something happens to them and they will be done away.

      But with tongues, it is different.  The verb that is used with tongues is a different verb, and it is a middle voice verb, and that is why I suggested that you translate it, “they shall cease themselves.”  Paul said that day was coming when tongues, all of themselves, would just stop themselves.  It is similar to the difference between your turning off the engine, because you did it, or the timing belt breaking on the engine, which is something that is outside the engine that caused it to stop of itself.  Tongues are different than the other two gifts used in the illustration.  Paul was saying that the day will come will tongues will of themselves just stop.

      We need to understanding that there evidently would be a day before the doing away of prophecy and knowledge, that tongues would cease of themselves, on their own.  How do we know it is before, because tongues are not still existing when the other two are done away; they will stop themselves.

      The obvious question that everyone asks when you say it this way is, “If they are  going to cease themselves, ‘When?”’

      The New Testament does not definitely state that; because if it did, none of us would ask “when?”  But a realistic and conservative possibility and suggestion is that they came to an end with the apostolic era.  As the apostles died and went to be with the Lord, and as that founding of the church was finished—the apostles were the ones who laid that foundation—the Scriptures says, that with the dying of the apostles and that apostolic era, you not only saw the ending of tongues, but several others of the gifts that seem that to have been temporary for that one period of time in church history.

      In the New Testament, tongues are only mentioned in seven chapters.  There are two hundred and sixty New Testament and only seven of them mention tongues. Obviously, it is not something that is pervasive in the New Testament.  They are mentioned the first time in Mark 16 where it is predicted that they would come.  Mentioned three times in Acts where you can see that they did come.  And then they are mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14 where their coming is interpreted.  So you have their coming predicted, their coming shown, and you have their coming interpreted.  There are seven chapters: Mark 16, Acts 2, Acts 10, 19, 1 Corinthians 12,13, 14—that is all that we are given concerning tongues in the New Testament.

      If you go back to Acts, you will find that tongues are given to God’s people who are given the ability to speak in known dialects, that they have never studied or learned.  And there are always unbelieving Jews that are present.  When people in Acts 2 speak in a number of foreign languages that they have never learned, and when they speak in those languages, they do so for the purpose of proclaiming the glory of God for people who need to hear. You have the same thing in Acts chapter 10.  Peter says that Gentiles have the same thing that we received at Pentecost—the ability to speak in known foreign dialect. It is not ecstatic gibberish, and it is not some kind of heavenly language.  It is not angelic speech. You go to Acts 19 and you find that there were some followers of John the Baptist that received it and that is all you have—so in the first 30 years of church history—how many times do you have recorded people speaking in tongues—three times; not that it only occurred three times; it may have happened more often, but tongues are only recorded in these three instances.  This passage makes clear that at some point tongues will cease of themselves and as you study this historically, you see no documented occurences of people speaking foreign dialects that they never learned.  You have it in the New Testament, but you do not have it after that.

      Could God, if God wanted to, give some missionary in some backwaters of some foreign culture, could God give Him for some specific evangelistic opportunity—could God give Him some gift for that purpose?  The answer is yes.

      But as widely distributed gift, as something that is normal part of the church, we do not have record of this until after the apostolic era.  We have record of a lot of people trying it, but it comes out as gibberish. Today in America, there are an estimated 35-40 million charismatics. One quarter of those are Roman Catholic people, who for the most part think that they are going to be saved by the offering of the mass in their church along with the other six sacraments.  A number of these people are attempting to duplicate the gift of tongues. With a population of about 250 million, this is a significant number of people. Most are probably saved people. But the problem is a matter of emphasis. These people are emphasizing the wrong apsects of the Christian life.

      All of this is a sidelight. The major point that Paul is making is that love is superior ot the spiritual gifts, even to the gift of prophecy, which he says is the most beneficial of all of the gifts to a church (the forthtelling of the Word); even by contrast with prophecy, love is still greater because it will last forever, because all of these gifts will either cease on their own, or some point will be done away.

      Why is that? Why is there at some point going to be a cessation of gifts? Why will there be a concluding or a termination of the gifts?

II.  THE CONCLUDING (TERMINATION) OF SPIRITUAL GIFTS

      The explanation is given in verses 9 and 10: “9For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. 10But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.”  Paul is going to deal with the termination of knowledge and prophecy. Why just those two? Because tongues will cease of themselves, they will be done away.  But when it comes to knowledge and prophecy, we know in part and we prophecy in part.  Do you see the repetition of those two words? The words literally mean “partial knowledge” or “partial.”  Our knowledge is partial; our prophesying is partial.  What does that mean? It does not mean “biased.”  No matter how much you know, you will never know all that you need to know about spiritual knowledge.

      Though we would give a lifetime to our study of the Scripture, and our walk with the Lord, we are going to die with just a fragment of the knowledge about God and spiritual things.  All of our knowledge is just partial.

      What about our prophecying, our forhtelling of the word? What human tongue can even begin approach completeneness in the proclamation of spiriutal things?  Who is possibly to extol Christ as He ought to be magnified? Or somehow with the wealth imagery to paint a picture of what heaven will be like, or any of these truths?  All of our knowledge about God, all of our prophesying is partial and is incomplete.  So, verse 10, because of that, when that which is perfect is come, then that which is partial (the exercise of these gifts) shall be done away.

      Here is the principle, the perfect will replace the partial.  Someday something is coming that is perfect, that is completley mature, that is complete in every respect, and when that thing is comes, then everything that is partial will be done away.  There is no point in having something that is partial when you have the whole deal.

III. ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE PASSING OF SPIRITUAL GIFTS (vv. 11-12)

      Now the obvious question is, “What is that perfect thing and when is it coming? Let’s read on.  He has predicted explained, and now he is going to illustration.  Two illustrations: verse 11: 11When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”  When I was a child, I talked as a little child, and my thinking was a little child’s thinking and my understanding was a little child’s understanding. Remember the day that you literally asked your Dad if the moon really was made out of cheese, and was there really man in the moon? And did he know him?  Cannot we all relate the illustration, that there is a point in our spiritual life when a man is very immature in his thinking.  Someone asks, “How long does that last?” It will last as long as you live on this earth, compared to what there is to know. And compared to what you are going to be. You are always going to be somewhat immature and childish in this life.  When I was a child, this was the way it was.  It illustrates the point that when the perfect is come, the partial will be put away.

      Second illustration will actually explain when this is going to happen.  12For now  (right now) we see through a glass (by means of mirror), darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

      Right now everything that you know and hear about God comes in seeing the reflection of God in a mirror.  Two cross references:  2 Corinthians 3:18: “18But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”  Where is the glass in which you see the glory of the Lord? The second picture answers that question: James 1:23: “3For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: 24For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.”