Gifts Passing, Love Eternal – 1 Corinthians 13:8-13

When I had only been a believer for a year or so I was confronted by the charismatic movement and speaking in tongues, and was put off by it.  I was willing to accept any argument against it.  I came across a view that 1 Corinthians 13:8-13 was talking about the ending of speaking in tongues when the Scriptures came (“the perfect”).  But when I did a real study of 1 Corinthians I realized this was not what “the perfect” was.  The “perfect” was the coming of the kingdom.  So there is no Scripture that says tongues cannot still be given, nor prophecy, nor the gift of knowledge.  That is up to God to determine.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 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.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.  (1 Corinthians 13:8-13, ESV)

Spiritual gifts and even personal sacrifices done without love accomplish nothing, make me nothing and earn me nothing.  Paul starts with tongues speaking and describes the most exaggerated possible form of that (or possibly the Corinthians actually claimed to be speaking in the languages of angels) and shows it uselessness without love, but he includes all the other gifts as well with faith and prophecy and knowledge.  Love thinks of the needs of others, not its own needs, so it doesn’t get boastful or angry and yearns to see others built up.

So, whereas, when the perfect, the kingdom of God, comes the need for spiritual gifts, and thus the gifts themselves, will end (because everyone will be what God rescued us to be), love will still be needed.  The Corinthians are still acting like children, not seeing that they need to grow in love more than they need to grow in giftedness.  Even the gifts do not give the perfect knowledge we will achieve when Jesus comes back to rule.  Seeing him face to face will transform us and we will know as fully as a finite being can know.  But we will be most mature in terms of love, wanting to see each other built up.  In the kingdom, faith and hope will be realized, and so, no longer needed.  But love will still be the rule of the eternal day.