Love and the Spirit’s Gifts (1 Cor 12:31b–13:13)

April 19, 2023 at 8:00 am (1 Corinthians, Church, Holy Spirit)

posted by R. Fowler White

As we’ve said in two previous posts, the Holy Spirit unifies the church’s ministry-gifts and members as well as its message. Through Paul, God requires us to continue to be zealous for the Spirit’s gifts, especially His greater gifts (1 Cor 12:31a; cf. 14:1, 12). Zealous as we may be, we’re also to keep the Spirit’s gifts in proper perspective with God’s priority for fruitful church ministry.

Somewhat unexpectedly, the gifts of the Spirit are not God’s priority. Instead, the fruit of the Spirit, especially love, is His priority (12:31b). Love is His priority because, as Paul will say, it is the precondition for the effective use of the Spirit’s gifts in ministry. No matter how great the Spirit’s gifts may be, then, a congregation’s pursuit of love must be a higher priority than its pursuit of spiritual gifts. Yes, eagerness for spiritual gifts should be a trait of a congregation, but Paul would have us understand that its zeal for gifts must be subordinate to its zeal for love. Indeed, there is a way of congregational life that is more excellent than gifts or the status that may be associated with them. That way is expressed in none other than the Second Great Commandment: love of neighbor, that benevolent attitude and activity of placing ourselves at the service of others, not to improve our status with them, but to promote the common good in which together we are all built into a site of sacrifice pleasing to our God.

We might ask: what proof does Paul offer that love is God’s priority over gifts? He answers in 13:1-3: “Just look at what happens if love is absent when our gifts and our acts of self-denial are manifested at their highest level: those gifts and acts amount to nothing. There’s no benefit, no fruit, no witness to others when love is absent from the exercise of our gifts.” Love of neighbor is indispensable to our ministries because its presence in our lives is the precondition of fruitful ministry.

We might press the issue once more: what is it that makes love so indispensable? Paul argues: the indispensability of love comes from its properties, from its nature and actions (13:4-7). As he spells out what love does and does not do, Paul personifies it. No doubt, there’s a reason why he personifies love here: it’s because love is to be lived out; it is to be incarnated. It was gloriously lived out and incarnated in Christ our Lord. But there is even more here: the love Paul describes also becomes incarnated in the members of Christ’s body as the Spirit of Christ regenerates us and begins His work of forming Christ in us and conforming us to His image. To apply 13:4-7 to ourselves, we need only insert the pronoun I wherever Paul uses the word love. (Paul points us in this direction by putting himself before us in 13:1-3: if I speak … And if I have …  If I give away … and if I deliver up … .) By doing so, we’ll find out the degree to which God’s priority and love’s nature and actions are ours. Comparing ourselves to God’s standard, we see why love is so indispensable: it’s because love, in a word, is selfless. When love is present in us, we selflessly place ourselves at the service of others, not to improve our status with them, but to promote the common good in which we’re all being built together as a site of sacrifice pleasing to God.

Do we need more proof that love is God’s priority? The Apostle goes on to contrast the temporariness of gifts to the permanence of love (13:8-13). He reminds us that there’s a time coming when the partial, fragmentary state of the knowledge of divine things that we now gain through God’s gifts will pass away (13:9-11). As true as the present state of our knowledge may be, God’s gifts don’t provide us the full and final state of knowledge that will be ours when we see Him face to face (13:12). No, gifts and the knowledge we receive through them, though given by God, will be done away and are thus only provisional. Even faith and hope will give way to sight (Rom 8:24; 2 Cor 5:6-7). It is love that is forever; it is love that never fails. It is thus love that is greater than all gifts and even greater than faith and hope (13:13). Understandably, then, love is God’s priority, His way of congregational life, the very precondition for fruitful ministry with God’s gifts in this world.

Would we be fruitful in ministry as individual believers and as congregations? According to the Apostle, there is a path more excellent than even a zealous pursuit of the Spirit’s gifts. That path, that priority, that precondition is love of neighbor. Unlike the Spirit’s gifts, it is love that is indispensable, selfless, and everlasting. It’s indispensable in that we know what happens when love is absent: we amount to nothing spiritually. It’s selfless in that we know what happens when love is present: we place ourselves at the service of others to promote that common good in which together we’re built as a site of sacrifice pleasing to our God. It’s everlasting in that we know that, though gifts, faith, and hope are ours in this age, love is ours both in this age and in the age to come. No wonder, then, that the Apostle would have us affirm that the Spirit’s fruit of love is greater than His gifts.