First Corinthians 13:1-13 Love and Spritual Gifts

Well, why don't we have a word of prayer and we'll start. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for our time today. We thank you for the blessings we have in our Savior, the Lord Jesus. Thank you for your word. We especially thank you for this really rich section of your word that talks about your love that emanates from you, Lord. And we pray you'd help us to understand it and help us just to believe it and what you've told us. In Christ's name, amen. So I've titled this Spiritual Gifts in Christ's Love.

You know, as we start into chapter 13, chapter 13, you know, if you go into the Christian stores, or actually into many stores, you'll see placards with the first eight verses of 1 Corinthians 13 there. I mean it is a very well known passage to many many people but I'm not sure many people have thought what's the connection between why did Paul put chapter 13 where he did? Why did he do it? And I think hopefully I'll be able to explain that.

So spiritual gifts and Christ's love. So let's kind of start off. We're going to backtrack into chapter 12 a little bit. So spiritual gifts. And Schaeffer says the gifts from chapter 12 in a spiritual sense means the Holy Spirit is doing particular work through the believer and using the believer to do it. So Paul gave us an order back in verse 28 of chapter 12. He gave us an order of the spiritual gifts. But we have to remember that these gifts he's addressing here are the gifts that were available to believers in the church at Corinth in that time period.

So the list is much longer than the list the believer would have today. And the reason for that is that God, the account of Scripture was not complete yet. So he had other gifts that were in place, including apostles, the gift of apostleship, which no longer exists. We no longer have any apostles. An apostle had to personally meet the Lord Jesus. And so some people might claim that today, that's really not the case.

So here are the lists of the church in Corinth. And we're going to need this list, Paul is going to refer to this list in the discussion, the first three verses in chapter 13. So it says, verse 28 says, and God has appointed, or set in place, in the church, in the church of Corinth, first apostles, and that would be Paul, or it could be others, could be Peter, but in this case it would be Paul. Second, prophets.

We don't have those by name necessarily, but if you think about it, Paul is, you know, it's believed that you study his life, he probably had all the gifts. So he was not only an apostle, but he was a prophet. He was speaking forth the mind of God. He certainly was a teacher. He performed miracles right. He raised people from the dead. The gift of healing, he healed people. Helps, ministrations, he probably did a little bit of that too.

And then lastly, various kinds of tongues. And we're gonna see that Paul said, you know, I spoke in tongues more than all of you. But notice the list. We have the teaching gifts or the gifts of edification at the top of the list and then toward the bottom of the list we have tongues are the more flamboyant gifts, the more miraculous gifts.

So keep that in mind as we go through here. So let's go to verse 20, verse 31, excuse me. So verse 31 really has two parts. It's two sentences. The first part talks about this desire for the greater gifts. And the second part talks about I show you a more excellent way. And the excellent way we're gonna find out is what's gonna be described in chapter 13. So, but earnestly desire the greater gifts.

So the verb here is implied you. You earnestly desire, and this comes from the word zello, or it's literally zealous. So this is a zealous desire. So the key part here is identifying who the you is. So it's present tense, so this is a continual desire that's to be in play. It's a command, imperative. The subject is performing the action, so you. So the question is, who is you?

Well, I think by the second person plural, that helps us a lot. And Merriman shares here that verse 31, speaks of the church at Corinth, not individual members. But you'll find if you do some reading on this, you'll find not everyone agrees with that. And I, you know, after looking at it and looking at what Merriman said, I said it just seems like that makes sense.

So the idea is that the church, as a body of believers, you should be interested in the greater gifts. So the question is, what are the greater gifts? Okay, what are they? Okay, so I just kind of restated the verse, putting in the idea of the body of believers. You as a body of believers are to desire the greater gifts. So I believe in the context, and Merriman says here, the gifts brought the greatest edification to the bodies were the greater gifts.

So that list we had, it would be the ones toward the top that were for edification. Those are what we'd call the greater gifts. So let's kind of carry on with more ideas about greater gifts. The greatest gift are at the top of the list, I've already kind of said that. So first apostles, second prophets, then teachers. So chapter 14 is going to expand on that, it's going to contrast these greater gifts with the more spectacular gifts and it's going to say basically that the greater gifts are where you should be as a body of believers.

So what is a believer to realize? So basically I think this verse here, which Mike covered back a week or so ago, but now God has placed the members of each of them in the body just as he's desired. So as amazing as it might seem, the body of believers in a local church are composed of who God desires to be there. and it's his doing, it's by his doing, and I think our part as members of a body, a local body, is to recognize those who are the gifted men and women in that body of believers.

That's our job. God has designed it such that he has in mind what he wants for that body. And it's in accordance with his word. So here's a paraphrase of that from the Amplified, kind of using the picture of a human body. But as it is, God has placed and arranged the limbs and organs in the body, each one, particular one of them, just as he wished and saw fit and with the best adaptation.

And that's kind of a miraculous thing, and we take it by faith. To us, it seems like, from our perspective, we're kind of doing it. Well, hey, I go in and do this at church, I do that at church, I help with this, I do Sunday school, I teach. Well, from our perspective, it seems like we're doing it all, but in reality, we're to trust the Lord that he's doing it, and our job is to recognize those gifted people.

I can remember, oh, Another church I was at, a lady showed up one time and said, I have a gift from a puppet ministry. And so, that was interesting. We let her do our puppet ministry, but I don't know, it didn't, I don't think it ended well, in my recollection. So, I would say, don't show up at church and say, here's my gift, people, here what I am.

No, you should just do your gift, be the person that God has made you to be. If that's the desire of your heart, teach, the desire of your heart is to serve, just do it. And people will recognize, hey, that's the person that ought to be doing that. So spiritual gifts are not to be something mysterious. God gifts the body as he sees fit.

So now the second part, and I show you still a more excellent way. Okay, so Wiest has this, and yet I point out a super, he even adds another superlative to it, a super excellent way. So if you notice here, if you notice in the first part of the verse, he talked about you, talking about the body of believers in Corinth, but he switches, he switches persons here, he switches to the first person. And that's gonna continue on through chapter 13.

He's gonna use himself as an example. And boy, that's something I didn't pick up, you know, I've read these verses, I never picked up that before, and you know, as you look through, Macaulay pointed it out, it's first person. Paul's using himself as the example here. He speaks, he's speaking in the first person here. So Paul uses himself as an example, points out or to show or to make known a way, metaphorically a way is a course of action, a path, that's how you conduct yourself.

He's showing us a way the believer is to conduct himself. A way is described as super excellent or beyond comparison. Let me just see here. And a few more points about the more excellent way. So 13, chapter 13, will show us the necessity of love in use of spiritual gifts. It's gonna say some things. It's gonna say some miraculous things. It's gonna say, Paul's gonna say, you know, I had all these gifts, but without love, they're a big zero. They're nothing. They count for nothing. And you think, this is the apostle Paul saying that? So it's pretty amazing what he's gonna share here.

Spiritual gifts should be in subordination to love. I'm gonna use the word agape love, which is the word, you know, if you look at your King James, they have the word charity. And I looked at that a little bit, and there's a history to that, why they use charity. But the original word is agape. So a student that's serious about God's word will say, well, wait a minute, they're using agape.

That's a love that describes Christ's love for man, his death on the cross. It's God's love, it's not man's love. You know, I was reading, one author said, the highest that man's love can come to is phileo love. That's the highest that we can get to. And that's brotherly love. Man cannot even, you know, he cannot attain to agape love. That's a superhuman, that's beyond brotherly love. It's beyond that. Man can get to the top of phileo love, and I was a little disappointed. I said, oh boy, I thought I could do better than that, but no, you can't. Without God's love, phileo love is as far as you can go, which I thought was kind of interesting.

Paul will use himself in chapter 13 to tell us that we are to continually have this attitude of agape love. Since tongues were a major issue in Corinth, he will tell us that any usage of tongues must be in subordination to love. It's not, you know, and here's another kind of date, it's not like, well, I got a gift and I got love, and which one do I use today? I'm gonna talk to person X, Y, or Z. No, they're to be integrated, they're to be married. Agape love, God's love, has to be part of the way you conduct your spiritual gift. Otherwise, it's a zero.

Okay, so here's some kind of overview of chapter 13. Spiritual gifts and their perspective relative to usage. Spiritual gifts are to be used relatively to love. The chapter gives us some of the attitudes that love is to display. And that's what Jim read. He read the, I think by count, it's about 15, 15 attitudes. And you know, if you're honest about those 15 descriptions of God's love, it just blows you away.

You say, wait a minute, I can't go there. I can't do that. If you're honest with yourself, you cannot do those 15 descriptions of God's or Christ's love. You cannot attain to it. You just cannot do it. So you have to depend upon You have to depend upon God to work through you and to express that through you. So it's just, you know, every time I read those 15 descriptions, I just, I scratch my head and say, wow, I'm so short of that.

Paul will delineate God's love in this chapter. So kind of a little overview of 13. One to three gives us the necessity of love and the exercise of spiritual gifts. four through seven, what Jim read for us, will give us the characteristics of God's love, how I recognize it. You know, I think, this is my kind of thought, if you put, and this is a favorite saying in Holly Hills, right, if you put that four through seven list of God's characteristics of love up in your refrigerator and you say, okay, first one's patience.

Well, I got a problem with that right off the bat. I already, I start with one, I'm already in trouble. You say, well, I'm gonna do those 15. No, I don't think that's the way. I think our job is to recognize, not necessarily in ourselves so much, but into others. You say, wow, that brother and sister, I saw Christ's love in him. And maybe you tell him that, or her, you know? But I don't think trying to say to yourself, okay, I'm doing a little bit better on patience, but boy, I don't know, I'm not doing so well on the other one. No, that's not where God would have us be, because he's gonna work that through us.

And then the last part, 8 through 13, shows the permanence of love in contrast to the temporality of the spiritual gifts. Because spiritual gifts, especially the ones at Corinth, were temporal in nature. And actually we're going to see that, we get down to verse 8, which we'll cover next week. Verse 8 talks about the temporality of the gifts.

Okay, so I'll just read these three verses again. If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all my possessions to feed the poor If I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. Pretty amazing verses.

If you're a fan of Dickens' Christmas Carol, we have like four or five versions of that. You know, some of the versions, they read this passage. And I forgot, it's like with Tiny Tim and his household. Maybe it was Tiny Tim that read this. I actually don't remember perfectly well. But they read this passage. And they read it in the King James. And they say, you know, I think they read it in the King James. They say charity.

I don't know. I have to go back and listen to it again. But anyway, it's pretty cool. All right, so let's get into it. So actually, Praise the Lord, you know, for men that have studied his word. And actually, I thought Macaulay just really hit a home run on this one.

So Macaulay divides up the first three verses in cycles. He has, there's cycle one, verse one is cycle one, verse two is cycle two, verse three is the same, it's the same cycle repeated three times. So I wanna utilize that, I thought it was just really good.

Okay, and he labels this section, one through three, the necessity of love. Okay, so the first cycle is, the assumed condition is that the believer is speaking in tongues, or actually Paul is saying, he's speaking to himself, I Paul, he's speaking in tongues.

But there's an absence, the assumed absence is agape love. The result of that is, it's only noise. Okay, cycle two. The assumed condition, there's a whole bunch here, you got four parts of it. The gift of prophecy, knowing all mysteries, all knowledge, and all faith. But again, the assumed absence is love.

The result of that is I'm a nothing, I'm a zero. So look at that. And this is Paul speaking, all those four things, you excel in, all prophecy, all knowledge. Well look at the word all, it means you have complete knowledge. With all that, without love, you take away love, and it's a zero. And then the third cycle, the assumed condition is, I give all my possessions, give my body to be burned, but there's no love, no agape love, it profits me nothing, I've gained nothing from that.

So pretty amazing, I could just stop right here, right? Done, finished for the day. But there's some neat things in the details. But I just thought that was an outstanding cycle that he recognized. Praise the Lord. Okay, so let's just go into it verse by verse.

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels. So Paul, this is what they call third class condition. Paul is assuming, and he probably will, do the following, and he wants to make a point here about love. I speak, Paul is speaking with, you know, I speak with the tongues of men.

So okay, so remember from our study of so far in tongues, they're real languages, they were real languages in the book of Acts when they spoke to these people. But interesting, they're the last in order of that list to the Corinthian church, right? They're the very last one.

So, and Paul says, I spoke in tongues more than all of you. So Paul was gifted in that area, but it wasn't, he didn't make that prominent. He didn't make that, he used that as necessary to complete what God had in mind. So that was a proper use. So he says, I speak with the tongues of men. Now we come to the interesting one. I speak with the tongues of angels, okay? Do angels have their own language? In studying this, what do you think, I was amazed, this is a Macaulay statement, he said, he said, Jewish scholars, what do you think Jewish scholars say that angels speak?

Any guesses? Hebrew. A little pride there, you think? I thought it was Hebrew. I was amazed that Jewish scholars were reading the New Testament. I said, whoa, that's interesting. Anyway, and the question is, but here's one thing. Here's one thing we do know.

The angel, do angels have their own language as a question mark? We don't have a lot of information on that. And do they even need to speak? When we go to heaven we need to speak, or we just, I don't know, there's a lot of things that aren't in scripture.

Anyway, but angels do speak in man's language, and quite a few times actually, to Zechariah. It said, but the angel said to him, do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your petition has been heard, your wife Elizabeth will bear a son, and you will give him the name John. So it seems, and I like this, it seems best to think of it as hyperbole. And I was thinking of some examples, you know, we all use, how about this one, for parents. Johnny, if I've told you once, I've told you a million times not to do that. Have you really told him a million times? Will you ever tell him a million times? Do you have enough breath to tell him a million times? Or, let's say you're super hungry. I'm starved to death. Really?

So it seems like that this is, and I see it in the other verses here, Paul's just saying, well, if I speak with tongues of men, or even if I speak, angels speak, I'm way up here, and obviously angels are higher than men, they're up with the Lord, they speak in a language you wouldn't know about, it's a hyperbole, it's beyond, to get your attention.

So I think that's where it's at for this first part here. So what happens here? but do not have love. So I'm going to take a little bit of a segue here just for a few moments, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity just to, you know, there's actually, this is just, I'm cracking the door on looking at agape love.

You know, agape love is the word used mostly in the New Testament, speaking of God and His interaction with man. So there's just, there's, you know, well over 100 verses. Anyway, agape love is assumed to be absent in the exercise of the spiritual gift. So agape love is the characteristic word of Christianity, and since the Spirit of Revelation has used it to express ideas previously unknown, it, agape love, expresses the deep and constant love and interest of a perfect being toward an entirely unworthy object.

And this has all been from Vine. The last one is this love, producing and fostering a love in them, the believers, toward the giver God. And I thought about, you know, we love because He first loved us. God had to take the initiative. His love had to be the agent for us so that we could respond in love once we've accepted Him. Okay. Then I have a bunch here from Chafer. All Christian love According to scripture, it's a distinct manifestation of divine love operating through the human heart. So what we're gonna see in most of his things here is that it's God's love working in man and accomplishing what he has in mind.

So here's a familiar verse, Romans 5.8. And this is from, he quoted this verse. Because the love of God has been shed abroad or poured out in our hearts through as a product of or caused by the Holy Spirit which was given to us. This activity then is not the working of human affection, it is rather the direct manifestation of the love of God passing through the hearts of believers out from the indwelling spirit.

And then lastly, I thought this was really good, a human heart cannot produce divine love. but it can experience it. I thought that was so cool. So I'm thinking about the phileo love. So we can produce phileo love, but we can't produce divine love. But we can and we do experience God's love, which is agape love. Pretty amazing. So that's my little thing about agape love here. Okay, so if you read the verse, if I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, what happens?

I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. So the verb here is ginomai, to come into a new state of being. So it's the idea, it's really kind of, actually it's kind of sad. McCauley kind of brings across that the word have become, in the perfect tense, it refers to a settled or complete state. So Paul's saying, you know, if I'm exercising the gift of speaking in tongues without love, I'm in this state of just being noisy. That's basically it. A noisy glong or a clanging cymbal. So I thought this was good from Constable. Gongs and cymbals were common in some of the popular pagan culture of the time.

They made much noise, but no sense. So a lot of things have a lot, and if you go around to some of these, I think Vonnie was talking, you go into, sometimes you'll see a program and they'll, like a tour guide will be going into some, this or that temple, and there'll be just a lot of chanting and banging and all that kind of stuff, a lot of noise going on. Are they learning anything about the true God? They're not, they're just noise.

Tongues were a gift of the Holy Spirit, given to bring the good news to people of another language. But without God's agape love, it was not possible. Okay, so that's the first cycle. Speaking in tongues, but no agape love, you're just making noise. Okay, second one.

If I have the gift of prophecy, remember prophecy is the speaking forth of God's truth. So Paul, again, he's assuming the case. So prophecy is speaking forth the mind and counsel of God. Secondly, knows all mysteries. Mysteries typically in the New Testament were things that had not been previously revealed. That's the word mysterion.

Remember Verne's little moose bouncing all over the place? Okay, but here's the interesting thing. It has this little word, pos, all, for pos. And pos means, actually Roy was talking about this morning a little bit too, when all is there, it makes it inclusive, it makes it one level up. And this is why I almost think this is another hyperbole.

He's saying, you just don't know mysteries. I know the mysteries of God, but I know all the mysteries of God. And pos means there's no exclusions. Wow, so if you have that kind of gift, that's, you know, that's a super, super abundant. I have all, I know all supernatural amount of knowledge. Then he does it, mysteries, then he does it for knowledge. The gift of knowledge is a word of knowledge in 12.8 we saw earlier. Again, it has pas, supernatural amount of knowledge. You have all knowledge, all mysteries, all knowledge. He just keeps going up and up and up to show you that it doesn't matter, on one side it doesn't matter how much of the spiritual gift you have. You can have up to God's amount, but it doesn't do you any good without love.

That's kind of his point. And then the fourth point is, if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains. Again, he's assuming that he does. Apostle again, he has all faith, so it's just not faith, this is to remove mountains. This is this thing that was called, they translated wonder working faith back in 129. It was translated and amplified that way. Wonder working faith.

So I thought of this when Jesus was talking to his disciples. Jesus answered and said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, if you have faith and no doubt, if you say to this mountain, be taken up and cast into the sea, it will happen. So I was thinking, you know, I don't think of a case, and maybe somebody can tell me afterwards, I can't think of a case where we see an example of that wonder-working faith used and a mountain was really cast into the sea. Maybe there is one, so tell me afterwards. Anyway, but this seems like another case of where it's just, this wonder-working faith is a one-up beyond what we can imagine, but he wants to make his point.

But do not have love. The absence of gapi love. I am nothing. So it's I am nothing, emi is the verb, the state in which something continuously exists. So here he's saying, And it's described by nothing. So I am nothing. I am a zero. Several different words. Uden is a Greek word. It means nothing or not a thing. So you could render it, I'm a nothing. I'm a useless nobody. So from the height of all this, I have all this knowledge, all this profit, all this stuff, but I don't have love. I'm reduced to a nothing. Uselessness.

OK, the third one. Okay, the first part is, if I give all my possessions to feed the poor. So Amplified had it here. Even if I dole out all that I have to the poor in providing food. Secondly, if I surrender my body to be burned. If I surrender my body to be burned. And this one had like a little caveat that seemed like there's a textual thing here.

It could possibly be in order that I may glory, but not have love. Agape love is absent. Again, it profits. In this case, it's being profited. Do I gain something? Because it's a passive voice we're going to see here. I'm being profited in not even one thing. So the word, the verb here is I'm being profited, to receive help or to arrive a profit.

So think about this. So you have, you've given your life, you've given all your possessions, all these things that by man's standard would be, this is amazing. But you didn't do it in God's love, in agape love, it's not, you don't gain anything. in no way, in no respect. So here's a verse so you would say, it profits me nothing in no way, in no respect.

Then here's this word is used of this woman who had an issue of blood. I kind of break into the middle here. It says, and had endured, the woman had endured much at the hands of many physicians and spent all that she had and was not helped at all. but rather had grown worse. I think of going to the doctor sometimes in our world. Sometimes they don't help. But many times they do.

Praise the Lord for that. That's great. But the idea is that this description here is that this doesn't help. This doesn't advance you in the kingdom of God. Giving all your possessions, feeding the poor, surrendering your body to be burned, all that without his love, divine love, it profits me nothing. Okay, final thoughts. Just a few, okay. And this is from Chafer.

The Apostle Paul contends that love is supreme and the gift is to be desired above all others. And it is proper that love should be named as the first among the elements which comprise the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, and so on. And actually, just diverging here just a little bit, remember last week, not last week, the last time I taught, we talked about the relationship between the fruit of the Spirit and these gifts of the Spirit. And one, the fruits of the Spirit are kind of inward, whereas the gifts of the Spirit are outward in terms of service, but they both have love as a preeminence in them.

Likewise, the supreme character of divine love is readily apparent. Not only is such love agape, beyond human capacity, but it is as far removed from the quality of human affection as the heaven is higher than the earth. So I've got one point across to you here, is that this agape love, God's love, is something, don't go home and try to reproduce it. Don't try to reproduce it right after the service.

Trust God that he has given it to us, and we're gonna go through what's, next week I'm gonna endeavor to go through all 15. You may fall asleep, but, We'll see. The 15 characteristics of his love, patience, and so on. Patience starts the list. Which I have a problem with off the bat. Anyway.

But I just believe it's for us to recognize. Why would he describe this love that he produces through us? You think, well, wait a minute, just produce it, Lord. Don't have to tell me about it. Just do it, do it, do it to get it done. No, he tells us for a reason so that we'll be able to recognize that love. That's the only reason I can think. Why would he give us this week this, when Jim read through that list, you say, wow, I cannot, Can I be that loving? Can I relate to my brother and sister, my wife, to my children? I mean, whoa, that's just beyond.

But God gives us that for a reason. And we trust him that he will carry out his purposes and his love through us. Okay, let's close. Dear Father, we thank you so much, Lord, for this time. Thank you for your word. Thank you for this beautiful description of your love that came from you the love that our Lord Jesus had for us when we went to the cross, and the love that we're to display as we walk in the Christian life. We ask it in his name, amen.