WWUTT 1598 The Greatest of These is Love (1 Corinthians 13:7-13)

The Apostle Paul on Love That Bears, Believes, Hopes, and Endures

In 1 Corinthians 13, 12, the Apostle Paul says, now I 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 when we understand the text.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. We're back to our study in 1 Corinthians. Chapter 13 is where we've been this week. And I'm reading out of the Legacy Standard Bible. I'm gonna pick up in verse four and go to the end of the chapter.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, does not brag, is not puffed up. It does not act unbecomingly, does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered.

It does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 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. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child.

When I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I also have been fully known. But now abide, faith, hope, love.

These three, but the greatest of these is love. We're picking up today in verse seven, where Paul says that love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Now there's a saying out there.

I've heard some preachers use this, and you've probably heard this saying before. This is a saying that annoys me to no end. I can't stand it. But nonetheless, it perseveres. The saying goes like this, all means all, and that's all all means.

You ever heard that before? Now, generally that saying is used in the context of everyone whom God loves or everyone whom Jesus has died for. Whenever we see the word all, that God loves all, that means all.

It doesn't mean some kinds of people. It means every single person, okay? That's generally the way that saying is used. But it's a ridiculous saying because it's just not true. All does not always mean all, and that's all all means.

Rather, all always has a context. We read the word all in the context of the words that are around it, just like we read any word that's in the Bible. And this verse right here, 1 Corinthians 13, 7, is a good exercise in that because, what do we read here?

Love bears all things, believes all things. Now, is that true? Does love believe all things? If all means all, and that's all all means, does love believe everything? No, no, of course it doesn't. You should not believe false teachers.

I don't believe Joel Osteen. Actually knows what the gospel is. I don't believe that Benny Hinn has ever healed anybody. I don't believe Ed Litton actually wrote his own sermon. So you get what I mean here?

I mean, we just don't believe all things. We don't take everything at face value, and that's charitably how we have to be until we're shown otherwise. That's not what's being said here. So what is the context then?

When Paul says that love bears all things, what is it that is meant here? What does Paul mean when he says that love bears all things? It's all things in the will of God. It's everything that we know that God is doing by his will.

We bear all things. We will go through all things, knowing that this is ultimately all working out for God's glory, right? Romans 8, 28. For those who love God, this is in the context of love, remember?

For those who love God, all things work together for good. For those whom he's called according to his purpose. So it's in love that we bear all things because we know that even this trial, even this circumstance that we're going through, God is still in control and still working this out for his glory.

So in love, we bear all things. Now, in the context of the church here, remember that we're talking about spiritual gifts. That was in chapter 12. Paul is talking about ministry in the church, how we are to care for and minister to one another, the love that we show for each other.

So when it comes to our commitment to the church, remember I yesterday was talking about how the statement love is patient. First Corinthians 13, four, love is patient. There's an undertone of commitment there.

We're committed to the church. We're committed to this body of brothers and sisters in the Lord. And when we're committed to this work that God is doing through his church, then we bear all things. We bear with one another in all things that we may continue to build one another up in Christ likeness, in holiness.

So in this way, in our commitment to Christ and to his church, we bear all things. We believe all things. We believe what God is doing, this work that he is doing through his church. We believe what Christ said in Matthew chapter 16, where he said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

All that comes from the word of God that he is accomplishing through this word, even our sanctification and the growth of his church. We believe that God is doing it. We believe all things. We hope all things.

In other words, we know this is leading somewhere. Like it's not just in the moment there's something meaningful that's happening. It's not just that God has done this in the past, but there is even a future for us all who are in Christ Jesus.

Paul put it this way with the Romans. Romans chapter five, beginning in verse one. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand.

And we boast in hope of the glory of God. And not only this, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction brings about perseverance and perseverance, proven character and proven character, hope.

And hope does not put us to shame because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. So we have that hope that the Holy Spirit has given to us that in the midst of these trials and circumstances, we persevere through, we know that ultimately God is working this out for his glory, for our good, for his glory, where we will be with Christ forever in his eternal kingdom.

So we hope, we hope all things, we endure all things. That's that perseverance statement again. There from Romans chapter five, we are persevering in the midst of this because it is in our perseverance that we are becoming more like Christ.

We put our trust and our hope in him all the more and we endure all things. Verse eight, love never fails. Now I can't remember if this is the ESV. Hang on, I'll pull this up. Verse eight, love never ends.

So there you go. In the English standard version, it's translated love never ends. Love never fails, love never ends. It means the same thing. And Paul will even come back to this at the end of the chapter where he says, now abide faith, hope, and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love.

Why is love the greatest? Because love never ends, it never fails. We have faith and hope only for this life, only for the present. We will not need faith and hope when we are with Christ forever in glory.

It is only now that we hope, for as Paul said with the Romans, who hopes for what he sees? We hope for what we do not see. And faith is described in Hebrews 11, one, as the substance for things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

So we have faith and hope in what we do not see, but then one day we will see. Even as Paul says here in 1 Corinthians 13, we see as though through a glass darkly, someday we'll see face to face. And on that day, we won't need faith and hope anymore.

As Horatio Spafford wrote, and it is well with my soul, Lord haste the day when my faith shall be sight. And then on that day, we won't need faith anymore, but love will endure always. We will always be in the love of God forever.

We're in his love now through Jesus Christ, and we will be in his love forevermore when we are with him forever in glory. So that's why the greatest of these is love. So here, verse eight, start of verse eight, love never fails, love never ends.

But if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away. Now that doesn't mean that they will fail, right? Because the word fail, again, the context of the word fail in verse eight is that love never ends.

So where Paul says, where there are gifts of prophecy, it doesn't mean that prophecy will fail. It just means that prophecy at some point is gonna come to an end. There are tongues, if there are tongues, they will cease.

The gift of tongues even will eventually come to an end. If there is knowledge, it will be done away. All that we know and all that we are knowing will not even be needed anymore. This is, again, that concept of faith shall be sight because on that day that we see, then we will know fully, just as we are fully known, that's 1 John 3, 2.

So a day is coming in which that knowledge, that pursuit of knowledge, that growth of knowledge, the knowledge that we have that's good for the present in the world and in the time and space in which we live, it's good for now, but it's not going to be forever.

There's a different kind of knowledge we possess when we're actually in the presence, when we actually know God in his very presence forever. That's gonna be a different kind of knowledge than the knowledge that we possess now.

So if there is knowledge, it will be done away. The knowledge of the world, the knowledge of the transient, the knowledge of this dimension in which we live right now will eventually come to an end. There are prophecies that will end, tongues that will end, knowledge that will end.

Now, some will use this verse, verse eight, and will use it to make an argument for cessationism. So cessationism is the idea that the apostolic gifts, those things that we've talked about as we've been going through 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14 here, the miraculous sign gifts, gifts of healing, miracles, the gift of tongues even, raising somebody from the dead, whatever those apostolic gifts might happen to be, everything that's tied into what Paul calls in 2 Corinthians 12, 12 as the signs of apostleship.

Some will take this verse, 1 Corinthians 13, eight, and they will use it for cessationism to show that this verse is saying those apostolic sign gifts are gonna come to an end. I think that Hebrews one and two is a better argument for that.

I don't think 1 Corinthians 13, eight can be made, you can't take this verse and make it an argument for cessationism. It's very easy to disagree with is the thing because where Paul says, if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away, well, a continuous will even believe that.

A person who believes that the apostolic gifts are continuing even in the present, we can still do gifts of healing, we can still raise the dead, we can still speak in tongues, things like that, that the continuous or the charismatics or the Pentecostals believe.

So they'll even say, yeah, I believe that prophecy is gonna come to an end and tongues are gonna come to an end when Jesus returns, right? So this verse does not put a time on when those miraculous sign gifts are going to cease.

It doesn't say that they will cease at the end of the apostolic age. The argument is made stronger in Hebrews 2. So I think, again, that's the verse that I go to when it comes to arguing that the miraculous sign gifts have indeed ceased.

They were used for the purpose of authenticating that the message of the apostles was truly from God. Those gifts are not needed anymore because we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed as Peter puts it in 2 Peter 1.

So those miraculous sign gifts, if God by his will does something miraculous, and I do think that he will, it's still extremely rare. That's why it's a miracle. It's not being done with any kind of regularity in the church today as it was being done in the first century, or at least as we see it being done according to the book of Acts.

So this is not a good argument. 1 Corinthians 13 .8 is not a good argument for cessationism because again, you could just take what it's saying here to mean, well, when Christ returns, all those things are gonna come to an end.

Certainly when it comes to knowledge, that would be the case, right? Knowledge that's mentioned here in verse eight, that's not a miraculous sign gift. It's knowledge. And Paul has been talking about knowledge since the very beginning of the letter.

You have been enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge. That was in verse five of chapter one. And then 1 Corinthians 8 .1, all of us possess knowledge. This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up, right?

So the knowledge that we have now is needed for the moment, but it's a different kind of knowledge that we possess when we come into Christ's presence in his eternal kingdom forever. And Paul says in verse nine, for we know in part and we prophesy in part.

Even at the present, we still prophesy. It's not that God is giving us any new revelation, but the very fact that we read the word of God and it's preached every Sunday in his church, all of that is prophetic.

We're of course, reading revelation where things are talked about in revelation that have not yet come to pass. When we get to 1 Corinthians 15, there's prophecy there that has not yet come to pass. But when the word of God is prophesied, talking about the Bible, when it's proclaimed, it is having an effect on the people of God and we're being grown in sanctification.

When an evangelist goes out and shares the gospel, the word of God is being proclaimed and lost souls are being brought into the kingdom when they turn from their sin and put faith in Jesus Christ and believe.

The word of God is still accomplishing something. As Christ's church is growing in number and in maturity, the prophecy of God is being fulfilled when Christ said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

So in this way, we continue to prophesy. But when the perfect comes, Paul says in verse 10, the partial will be done away. And what we live in right now is the partial. We know in part, we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, when everything is done, when all things in heaven and on earth have been reconciled to Christ through the father who is reconciling all things through the person and work of his son, when that day comes, that's perfect.

That's perfection, we're done. That's it, boom. We're done with this life. We're on to being with Christ in the next age. It's this age and then the next age. There's no intermediate thing that's happening in the middle.

There's not yet another thousand year reign on the earth until we wait for the perfect to come. No, the perfect comes. When Christ comes, the perfect comes. We go from living in the transient to living in the eternal.

When the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. Christ doesn't come and enter back into the partial. He brings in the perfect. Glory, hallelujah. We'll be talking more about that when we get to chapter 15.

Paul says in verse 11, when I was a child, I used to speak like a child. I used to think like a child. I used to reason like a child. When I became a man, I did away with childish things. Remember back to what Paul said in chapter three.

I, brothers, was not able to speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to fleshly men, as infants in Christ. So again, this is a rebuke here in chapter 13 to say you need to grow up. You need to grow up spiritually and you're not growing up spiritually because you're still living in your flesh instead of living in the spirit.

Paul says, I myself, I was once a child. I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child. When I became a man, I did away with childish things. You know, when he was on that road to Damascus to round up Christians and persecute them, he was a child.

He was not a man of God. He thought he was. He thought he was being a man of God, but he was at enmity with God because he was acting as an enemy of Christ. And yet Christ had mercy on him and turned him from his wickedness to make him an apostle, an apostle to the Gentiles, going out with the gospel to the world.

Instead of being a rockstar Pharisee, now he's being persecuted by the Pharisees. Paul became a man and did away with childish things. And the Corinthians need to do the same. They need to grow up in their most holy faith into Christ.

Paul says, now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. Now, as I bring this lesson to an end today here, I've already explained verse 13.

I'll get to that here in a moment as we finish out, but let me explain this on verse 12. We often take this verse to mean that we see Christ in a mirror dimly, right? But then we will see him face to face.

That's usually the way that we interpret this verse. Is that what Paul is saying? Who do we look at in a mirror? We don't look at Christ in a mirror. We look at ourselves. Now I see myself in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.

What's Paul talking about here? He's talking about his fully sanctified self. Remember when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. So his fully sanctified self, he can kind of see it when he reads the word of God, when he's looking into the perfect word that we have here, we can see who we are meant to be in Christ because who we look at in the word is Christ.

And if we desire to be like Christ, then we're seeing the picture of Christ that we're supposed to be. We're being made into, we're being conformed to the image of Christ. That's Romans 8, 29. So God is conforming all of us to the image of his son.

And when we look at ourselves in the mirror, it's kind of dim. We can see a glimpse of what the fully sanctified self is gonna look like, but we can't quite make it out. A day is gonna come in which we will see exactly ourselves fully sanctified.

It will be that day when we are with Christ and his kingdom forever in glory. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as what, just as I also have been fully known. We don't see our fully sanctified selves.

Who does? God does, because he sees exactly what he is making us into. The glorification that he has predestined us for. Yeah, this is a passage of predestination right here. This is a passage of election in 1 Corinthians 13, 12.

What do we read in Romans 8, 28 and 29 and 30 once again? Okay, let me read these to you. We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose.

Because those whom he foreknew, he also predestined be conformed to the image of his son so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified.

And those whom he justified, he also glorified. God sees, he knows, he has foreknown the fully glorified selves that we are becoming. We don't see it, God does, but a day is coming in which we will see that person face to face.

We will look in the mirror and we will see the perfect because as it says in 1 John 3, 2, we will be made to be like him and we will see him as he is. That's what it is that Paul says is fully known and he's looking forward to the day when he gets to fully know it.

He gets to know that day when we are complete and perfect in the presence of God forever. And now verse 13, which again, I've already explained to you but here's how we conclude. But now faith, hope, and love, these three, but the greatest of these that we are in right now and will be in forever is love.

Amen.

You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book.

On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an Old Testament study When We Understand the Text.