It is not a hard chapter to analyze. I think it is a hard chapter to preach on simply because it is so profound. There is a preface in the New International Version, which is carried over from the last chapter and printed properly with this one. Paul says, “Now I am going to show you a more excellent way.” Then he has three points which are easy to follow. He talks about the importance of love in verses 1-3. Then he talks secondly about love’s nature in verses 4-7. The third point is love’s permanence, which you have in verses 8-12. Finally, he wraps it all up with the very last verse about faith, hope, and love.
It is not a hard chapter to analyze. I think it is a hard chapter to preach on simply because it is so profound. There is a preface in the New International Version, which is carried over from the last chapter and printed properly with this one. Paul says, “Now I am going to show you a more excellent way.” Then he has three points which are easy to follow. He talks about the importance of love in verses 1-3. Then he talks secondly about love’s nature in verses 4-7. The third point is love’s permanence, which you have in verses 8-12. Finally, he wraps it all up with the very last verse about faith, hope, and love.
Sometime during the last half of the nineteenth century, a Scottish author and evangelist by the name of Henry Drummond wrote a classic sermon called “The Greatest Thing in the World.” It was about love and was based on 1 Corinthians 13, which is certainly viewed as one of the greatest chapters in the Bible. If people know anything at all about the book of 1 Corinthians, this is probably the chapter that comes most to their mind. In any collection of great chapters, this is one that must necessarily be included.
Let me make three applications. The first is to be content with what you have been given. If you are not content, what are you telling God? You are telling God that you know better than He does. The second is not to exalt one of God’s servants over another. If there is anything we are guilty of in the Church of Jesus Christ, it is that. What do we have but what we have been given? If God gives us talents that put us in a place where people see it, well, it is all from God. And if God gives us talents that put us in a job where nobody sees us, that, too, is from God. Let us not exalt one Christian over another.
When he talks about the body having many parts, we remember that in Pauline theology (and you find it very strongly in the book of Ephesians) the body is not simply the church as if it were our body collectively considered, but the body of Jesus Christ, with Christ Himself as the head. By this image he links it all together. What gift we have, and how we use it, matters because in all our diversity we together belong to Jesus Christ.
So, if you are concerned about your gift, and thinking about what it is, the place to start is with these lists. Look over them and ask yourself what gift you have. Pray and ask God to show you what your gift is. And when you come to know this, remember that your gift is needed in the particular church where you are.
As we look at chapters 12 through 14, if we approach them with the idea that what Paul is dealing with here is chiefly, or perhaps exclusively, the matter of speaking in tongues, what we are going to do is miss something which really should apply to every one of us. It may be that someone here or there is given this gift of tongues; but that is a minority, I would think, by the very fact of the multiplicity of the gifts. What we fail to see is that Paul is actually dealing with gifts, not just the gift of tongues.
He lists the gifts at the very end of this twelfth chapter, and every time he does that, whether here or elsewhere where he mentions tongues, he always puts tongues at the end of the list. That is a subtle way of communicating what he goes on to say as he gets to the very end of the chapter about desiring the better gifts. Paul is saying that if God gives you tongues, that is fine. It is a gift and should be used. But if you are concerned for anything, let your concern be for love, which is what he is going to talk about in chapter 13.
Canadian Committee of The Bible Study Hour
PO Box 24087, RPO Josephine
North Bay, ON, P1B 0C7
