1 Corinthians 13:1-13 Commentary

Have you ever wondered why Paul calls love the “greatest [meizon*] of these” (13:13)? Why did the Spirit inspire him to refer to the gift of love as even greater than the great gifts of faith and hope? After all, while love is great, faith is God’s great gift that equips us to receive God’s amazing grace. What’s more, hope is God’s great gift that sustains Jesus Christ’s friends from the moment of our conception until the moment of our death.

Since preachers have proclaimed 1 Corinthians 13’s love song in many ways in almost countless settings, it may not seem to offer much new ground for preachers to “plow.” Our CEP website, in fact, includes several commentaries on this Sunday’s famous and beloved Epistolary Lesson.

But one possible new “ramp” on which the Spirit might lead preacher onto a proclamation of this text might be Paul’s reference to love as “the greatest of these.” We might invite our hearers to wonder with us about the end of his lyrical praise of Christ-like love in which he calls love what The Message paraphrases as “the best of” the great triumvirate of faith, hope and love.

When the apostle is all said and done writing about great graces, he writes of love as literally the “greatest,” “largest,” or the most encompassing of all the Christ-like virtues. Meizon is, in fact the root of the adjective meizona (“greater”) that he attaches to “gifts” in 12:31. Paul, it seems, is summoning Jesus’ followers to at least two kinds of greatness.

Love is also what he calls in 1 Corinthians 12:31b “the most excellent [hyperbolen] way [hodon].” The Message paraphrases this as Paul telling Corinth’s Christians, “I want to lay out a far better way for you.” While the apostle doesn’t identify to what “way” he’s referring, it seems clear that he’s speaking of the “most excellent way” to live. He professes that a life of love is the best way to live. It’s the way not of exclusion, self-centeredness or arrogance, but of lasting self-giving and even sacrifice.

But what is it that makes love “the greatest,” greater, in fact, than even equally durable faith and hope? Preachers might consider asking the Spirit to help them organize a message around the answers 1 Corinthians 13 offers to that question. After all, that approach allows us to systematically explore this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson.

Before doing anything else, however, preachers should explore the character of the love Paul praises in 1 Corinthians 13. Love, writes the apostle in verses 4-7, is “patient [makrothymei] … kind [chresteuetai] [and] rejoices [synchairei] with the truth [aletheia]. It always protects [stegei panta] … trusts [pisteuei panta] … hopes [elpizei panta] [and] perseveres [hypomenei].”

Among other things, these verses make it clear that the love to which Paul summons Jesus’ friends is not first of all an emotion or even feeling. Paul is not inviting his readers to like people. He’s summoning us to a Spirit-fueled decision and attitude that views and treats others not the way we assume they deserve, but as God’s image-bearers for whom God desires the very best.

Verses 4-7’s list of characteristics that love is not also reflects that grace. Love “does not,” Paul writes there, “envy [zeloi] [or] boast [perpereuetai]. [I]t is not proud [physioutai] … It does not dishonor [aschemonei] others, is not self-seeking [zetei ta heautes], it is not easily angered [paroxynetai], it keeps no record of wrong [logizetai to kakon].

So many things could be and have been said and written about this beautiful list of love’s characteristics. But preachers might call attention to the way Paul sees love not as reactive, but proactive. Love doesn’t ignore circumstances or challenges. Yet it doesn’t grow out of others’ words or actions, but out of the Spirit’s leading. The apostle’s repeated use of the adjective panta (“always”) and adverb ou (“not”) points to the unconditional as well as enduring nature of love.

Preachers might also point out that part of love’s surpassing greatness is its theocentric motivation. Christians don’t love because the beloved is so lovable or because our circumstances are so lovely. We love, instead, because the living and loving God whom we worship in Jesus Christ both summons and equips us to love.

In verses 1-3 Paul points to love as a necessary ingredient of Christians’ use of our spiritual gifts, including some of the more spectacular ones. “If I speak [lalo] in the tongues [glossais] of men or of angels,” he writes there, “but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong [chalkos echon] or a clanging cymbal [kymbalon alalazon]. If I have gift of prophecy [propheteian] and can fathom [eido] all mysteries [mysteria] and all knowledge [gnosin], and if I have the faith [pistin] to move [methistanai] mountains [ore], but have not love, I am nothing [outhen]. If I give [psomiso] all I possess [hyparchonta] to the poor and give over [parado] my body to hardship that I may boast [kauchesomai], but do not have love, I gain [opheloumai] nothing.”

It’s noteworthy that Paul includes in this list of gifts at least some of the spiritual gifts he has just listed and commended in 1 Corinthians 12. The use of those gifts that the Spirit seasons with love are in some cases spectacular and noticeable. The Spirit grants their proper use immense power to bless all kinds of people.

But the apostle insists if spiritual gifts don’t partner with love, they aren’t just negligible. A loveless use of those gifts may also, in fact, be as irritating as booming gong, clashing cymbals or, as The Message paraphrases verse 1, “a creaking gate.” So preachers might deduce that part of love’s surpassing greatness lies in its partnership with the exercise of our spiritual gifts. 1 Corinthians 13 at least suggests that love’s role in the use of spiritual gifts dictates that lovers always use those gifts in ways that are designed to enhance the wellness of the beloved.

In verses 8ff. Paul goes on to emphasize the temporary nature of even the most spectacular spiritual gifts. “Where there are prophecies [prophetetai],” he writes there, “they will cease [katargethesontai]; where there are tongues [glossai], they will be stilled [pausontai]; where there is knowledge [gnosis], it will pass away [katargethesetai].”

In verse 11 the apostle seems to make a similar point about life’s stages’ transitoriness: “When I was a child [nepios] I talked [elaloun] … thought [ephranoun] … [and] reasoned [elogizomen] like a child. When I became a man [aner], I put the ways of childhood [nepiou] behind me.”

In verse 12 Paul goes on to reflect on the incompleteness as well as temporariness of our current understanding, even that which the Spirit enhances through spiritual gifts. He writes there, “For now we see only a reflection [anigmati] as in a mirror [esoptrou]; then we shall see face to face [prosopon pros prosopon]. Now I know in part [en meros]; then I shall know fully [epignosomai], even as I am fully known [epegnosthen].”

There are things that seem not just spectacular, but also both complete and permanent. For example, the expansion of human knowledge has seemed to also enhance humanity’s ability to reason. The apostle, however, reminds us that while both may seem durable, they won’t last.

Knowledge and reasoning may, in fact, endure until the end of measured time. But as surely as baby talk and childish reasoning generally ends with adulthood, our adult knowledge and reasoning will be swallowed up in the glory of the new earth and heaven. There Jesus’ friends who have been saved by grace won’t have to hide anything or claim to know everything. We will both know and be known fully.

That’s the context into which Paul proclaims verse 13’s great news: “These three remain [menei]: faith [pistis], hope [elpis] and love [agape].” While things like prophesying, speaking in tongues and knowing are temporary, faith, hope and love endure. While life’s stages such as childlikeness and even adulthood are ultimately temporary, faith, hope and love endure. But while faith, hope and love are all both durable and great, the most permanent and greatest of them all is love.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In his remarkable book, One Lost Soul: Richard Nixon’s Search for Salvation, Daniel Silliman (Eerdmans, 2024) describes President Nixon’s desperate longing to be loved. It at least suggests yet another reason why Paul called love “the greatest of these.”

Nixon, writes Silliman, “could not make peace with his own vulnerability. He could not accept his frailty and human need for empathy and grace. He could not accept responsibility for what he had done or be seen to be accepting responsibility. He could not believe that if people heard he was crying in the White House, trying to write his resignation letter, their hearts would go out to him. “‘Can you imagine,’ [Henry] Kissinger said, ‘what this man would have been had somebody loved him’?”

That suggests that love is great in part because it helps empower the beloved to flourish so that they may live as God intended before God and with their neighbor.