Sermon Tone Analysis

*Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.

*(13:8)

*Fails* (from /piptō/) has the basic meaning of falling, especially the idea of final falling, and was used of a flower or leaf that falls to the ground, withers, and decays.

*Never* refers to time, not to frequency, and the idea is that at no time will divine *love* ever fall, wither, and decay.

By nature it is permanent.

It is never abolished.

Love cannot fail because it shares God’s nature and God’s eternity.

In heaven we not only will have no more need for faith and hope, but no more need for the gifts of teaching, preaching, helps, prophecy, discernment, knowledge, wisdom, tongues, miracles, healings, faith, mercy, or leadership.

None of those gifts will have a purpose or place in heaven.

Yet love is, and forever will be, the very air of heaven.

It is important to note that *never fails* does not refer to success.

Love is not a magic key that Christians use to unlock every opportunity and guarantee every endeavor.

Love is not a spiritual formula that, faithfully applied, automatically fulfills our desires and produces human success.

Love does not always win, at least not in the usual sense.

Jesus Christ was love incarnate, yet He did not by His perfect love succeed in winning every person to Himself.

He was ridiculed, maligned, denied, rejected, and crucified.

Paul could be called the apostle of love, yet he did not leave a trail of perfect successes wherever he ministered.

He was persecuted, arrested, beaten, imprisoned, and, like his Lord, put to death because of what he said and did in love.

On the other hand, whenever and wherever Christians /are/ successful in their living and ministering, it will always be through love.

Because love does not overpower human will, we cannot always accomplish our purposes, no matter how loving, spiritual, and self-less we may be.

But no godly work can be accomplished without love.

Success will not always be a part of love, but love will always be a part of true spiritual success

 

 

Paul, however, is not speaking of love’s successes or failures, but of its lastingness, its permanence as a divine quality.

*Love never fails* in the sense that it outlasts any failures.

For the Christian, love is life, and both are eternal.

Love is the supreme characteristic of the life God gives, because love is the supreme characteristic of God Himself.

“God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16).

That is Paul’s point, the truth he hoped the Corinthians somehow could understand, accept, and follow He wanted them to be successful in love, successful in being like God.

Paul strengthens his emphasis on the supreme nature of love by comparing love’s permanence to the impermanence of three spiritual gifts: *prophecy, tongues*, and *knowledge*.

Each of those gifts eventually will fall and disappear, but love will continue.

Though we are told here that all three gifts would someday cease to exist, two different verbs are used to indicate their cessation.

*Prophecy* and *knowledge* will be *done away*, whereas *tongues* will *cease*.

*Done away* is from /katargeō/, which means “to reduce to inactivity,” or “to abolish.”

The gifts of prophecy and knowledge one day will be made inoperative.

Both forms of this verb in verse 8, as well as its form in verse 10, are passive; that is, something or someone will cause them to stop.

As will be discussed below, that something is the coming of “the perfect” (v. 10).

*Cease* is from /pauō/, which means “to stop, to come to an end.”

Unlike /katargeō/, this verb is here used in the Greek middle voice, which, when used of persons.

indicates intentional, voluntary action upon oneself.

Used of inanimate objects it indicates reflexive, self–causing action.

The cause comes from within; it is built in.

God gave the gift of *tongues* a built–in stopping place.

“That gift will stop by itself,” Paul says.

Like a battery, it had a limited energy supply and a limited life-span.

When its limits were reached, its activity automatically ended.

Prophecy and knowledge will be stopped by something outside themselves, but the gift of tongues will stop by itself.

This distinction in terms is unarguable.

The question remains as to /when/ and /how/ these gifts will end.

Prophecy and knowledge are said to end “when the perfect comes” (vv.

9–10), and we will discuss the what and the when of “perfect” when we come to those verses.

The cessation of *tongues*, however, is not mentioned in relation to the coming of the perfect.

They will have ceased at an earlier time.

That is why they are not stopped by the same thing that stops the other two gifts.

As was discussed in some detail under 12:8–10, I believe that gift ended with the apostolic age.

In the first place, tongues was a sign gift and, as with the gifts of healing and miracles, it ceased to operate when the New Testament was completed.

God has never ceased to perform miracles, and He continues today to heal miraculously and to work in other supernatural ways according to His sovereign will.

But the Bible records only three periods of history in which human beings were given the gift of performing miracles.

The first period was during the ministries of Moses and Joshua, the second during the ministries of Elijah and Elisha, and the third during the ministries of Jesus and the apostles.

Each period lasted only about 70 years and then abruptly ended.

The only other age of miracles will be in the millennial kingdom, and the sources of those miracles are described as “the powers of the age to come” (Heb.

6:5).

The last miracle recorded in the New Testament in which God worked directly through a human instrument occurred about the year 58 (Acts 28:8).

From that time until about 96, when John completed the writing of Revelation, not a single miracle of that sort is mentioned.

The New Testament miracle age was for the purpose of confirming the Word as given by Jesus and the apostles, of offering the kingdom to Israel, and of giving a taste, a sample, of the kingdom.

When Israel turned its back on Christ and His kingdom, it was “impossible to renew them again to repentance” (Heb.

6:6), and the gospel was then offered to the Gentiles.

The teaching of Christ and the apostles had been confirmed to Israel “both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit” (Heb.

2:3–4).

It is interesting that, though Hebrews was written as early as 67 or 68, the writer there speaks of this confirmation (/ebebaiōthē/, aor.

pass.

ind.) in the past tense, as if the signs, wonders, and miracles had ceased.

Those gifts were uniquely tied to the apostles (2 Cor.

12:12).

The second evidence that the gift of tongues ended with the apostles is that its purpose as a judicial sign of Israel’s judgment ceased to apply at that time.

Paul reminds the Corinthians that “In the Law it is written, ‘By men of strange tongues and by the lips of strangers I will speak to this people, and even so they will not listen to Me,’ says the Lord” (1 Cor.

14:21; cf. Isa.

28:11–12).

In other words, because Israel refused to listen and believe when God spoke to them in clear language, the prophet said the day would come when He would speak to them in a language they could not understand, as a testimony against their rejection of Him.

Tongues were not given as a sign to believers “but to unbelievers” (1 Cor.

14:22), specifically unbelieving Jews.

With the destruction of the Temple by the Roman general Titus in a.d. 70, Judaism ended except as a shadow religion.

When the Temple was destroyed, the sacrificial system was destroyed, and the need for a Jewish priesthood was destroyed.

From that day it has been impossible for the requirements of the Old Covenant to be fulfilled.

When that destruction occurred, some 15 years after Paul wrote this epistle, the need for tongues as a judicial sign to Israel had no further value.

There is no need today for a sign that God is moving from Israel to the world.

Third, tongues ceased because they were an inferior means of edification.

When properly interpreted, tongues had the ability to edify in a limited way (1 Cor.

14:5; 12–13; 27–28).

But the primary purpose of 1 Corinthians 14 is to show that tongues were an inferior means of communication (vv.

1–12), an inferior means of praise (vv.

13–19), and an inferior means of evangelism (vv.

20–25).

Tongues provided limited and inferior edification, whereas prophecy is far superior in every way (vv.

1, 3–6, 24, 29, 31, 39).

Five words spoken intelligently and intelligibly in ordinary language are of more value “than ten thousand words in a tongue” (v. 19).

Fourth, the gift of tongues has ceased because its purpose as a confirming sign of apostolic authority and doctrine ended when the New Testament was completed.

Genuine tongues–speaking involved direct revelation of God to the speaker, though it was veiled revelation that always needed translation or interpretation, often even to the speaker himself (1 Cor.

14:27–28).

Revelation of God’s Word was completed, however, when the New Testament was completed, and to that nothing is to be added or subtracted (Rev.

22:18–19).

The confirming purpose of tongues was completed.

Fifth, it is reasonable to believe that tongues have ceased because their use is mentioned only in the earlier New Testament books.

Most of the books, in fact, do not mention it.

Paul mentions it only in this one letter, and James, Peter, John, and Jude make no mention of it at all.

Nor does reference to it appear in the book of Acts after 19:6.

It seems clear from the New Testament record itself that tongues not only ceased to be an issue but ceased to be practiced well before the end of the apostolic age.

Nowhere in the epistles is it commanded or enjoined on believers as a responsibility or spiritual exercise.

Finally, the gift of tongues has evidently ceased because, since the apostolic age, it has reappeared only spasmodically and questionably throughout nineteen centuries of church history.

The gift of tongues is nowhere alluded to or found in any writings of the church Fathers.

Clement of Rome wrote a letter to the Corinthian church in the year 95, only about four decades after Paul wrote 1 Corinthians.