1 Corinthians — Chapter 13

Authorship & Background

Deep Dive

Setting: Paul writes from Ephesus in about AD 53–55. This famous chapter is often read at weddings, but Paul wrote it to a quarreling church. It sits in the middle of his answer about spiritual gifts (chapters 12–14). The Corinthians prized dramatic gifts, especially tongues, and used them to rank one another. Chapter 12 ended, "I will show you a still more excellent way." Chapter 13 is that way. Almost every line holds up a mirror to Corinth: the church that was envious, boastful, "puffed up," self-seeking and quick to take offense is shown what love looks like. Then chapter 14 applies it to worship. The chapter moves in three steps: without love, everything is nothing (vv1–3); what love does (vv4–7); and love outlasts everything (vv8–13).

The Way of Love (vv1–13)

• "Love" (v1). The Greek word is agapē. It was not a common word in ordinary Greek before the Bible. The Greek translation of the Old Testament used it often, and the New Testament filled it with meaning from the cross: "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom 5:8). Greek had other words for love, such as erōs (desire) and philia (friendship), but agapē is the word Paul uses for a love that seeks the other person's good at cost to itself. Older English Bibles render it "charity," which in 1611 meant love, not just giving to the poor. People sometimes say agapē always means God's kind of love, but the word itself does not guarantee that. Jesus uses the verb for loving darkness (John 3:19), and Paul for loving this present world (2 Tim 4:10). Its meaning in this chapter comes from how Paul describes it.
• "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels" (v1). Paul starts with the gift the Corinthians valued most. "Tongues of angels" may reflect what some of them believed their tongues were. A Jewish work from around this time, the Testament of Job, describes Job's daughters speaking in the language of angels. Paul uses "I" throughout vv1–3, putting himself in the picture rather than pointing a finger.
• "A noisy gong or a clanging cymbal" (v1). "Gong" is literally "echoing bronze." Corinth was famous for its bronze work. Pagan worship, especially in the cults of Dionysus and Cybele, used loud gongs and clashing cymbals to work up a frenzy. Some scholars also note that bronze sounding jars were placed in ancient theaters to amplify voices. Either way, the picture is noise without meaning. Tongues without love sound to God like the din of a pagan festival.
• "Prophetic powers… all mysteries and all knowledge… all faith, so as to remove mountains" (v2). Paul piles up gifts from 12:8–10 and inflates each one to its maximum: all mysteries, all knowledge, all faith. Even at full strength, without love, "I am nothing." Not "I have nothing" but "I am nothing." Jesus warned of people who prophesied and did mighty works in his name whom he never knew (Matt 7:22–23).
• "If I give away all I have" (v3). The verb pictures handing out food bit by bit, as one spoons food to a child. Giving away everything, one mouthful at a time, can still be done for one's own glory (Matt 6:2).
• "If I deliver up my body to be burned" (v3). Here the manuscripts differ by a single Greek letter. Some read kauthēsomai, "that I may be burned," and others kauchēsōmai, "that I may boast." The ESV follows "burned" and gives "boast" in its footnote. Many recent translations prefer "boast" or "glory," because the earliest manuscripts mostly have it. With "boast," Paul means handing oneself over to hardship or even slavery to have something to boast about. With "burned," he means martyrdom by fire, which was rare when he wrote, though Daniel's three friends were known examples (Dan 3). Either way the point stands: the greatest self-sacrifice, done without love, gains nothing.
• "Love is patient and kind" (v4). Paul now describes love by what it does. Every item in vv4–7 is a verb in Greek, not an adjective. Love is not a feeling here but a way of acting. "Patient" (makrothymeō) is literally "long-tempered," slow to boil over at people who wrong you. God himself is "slow to anger" (Exod 34:6). "Kind" (chrēsteuomai) appears only here in the New Testament. It is the active side of patience: not just putting up with people but doing them good.
• "Love does not envy" (v4). The Greek word (zēloō) can mean "be zealous" in a good sense (12:31) or "be jealous." Envy had already split Corinth: "while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh?" (3:3). Envy resents another person's gift. Love is glad for it (12:26).
• "Or boast; it is not arrogant" (v4). "Boast" (perpereuomai) means to brag, to play the windbag. "Arrogant" is physioō, to be "puffed up," a word Paul has already used of the Corinthians six times (4:6, 18, 19; 5:2; 8:1). "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up" (8:1).
• "Or rude" (v5). The verb (aschēmoneō) means to behave disgracefully or without decency. It is used in 7:36 of behaving improperly. It may point to the disorder in their worship and at the Lord's Supper (chapter 11).
• "It does not insist on its own way" (v5). Literally "it does not seek its own things," exactly the phrase of 10:24 and 10:33. This is the heart of chapters 8–10: giving up one's rights for another's good.
• "It is not irritable or resentful" (v5). "Irritable" means easily provoked, touchy. "Resentful" is literally "it does not reckon the evil." The verb (logizomai) is a bookkeeping word, the same word Paul uses for God "counting" righteousness to believers and not counting their sins against them (Rom 4:8; 2 Cor 5:19). Love does not keep a ledger of wrongs to bring out later.
• "It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth" (v6). The Corinthians had been proud while a man in their church lived in open sin (5:1–2, 6). Love is not glad when evil is excused, or when another person falls. Love and truth stand together (Eph 4:15).
• "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" (v7). Four lines, each with "all things." "Bears" is stegō, which first meant to cover, like a roof keeping out rain. The lexicon gives both "cover, keep secret" and "bear up under," so the word can mean that love covers others' faults instead of spreading them (1 Pet 4:8), or that it bears up under pressure. It is the same verb Paul used in 9:12: "we endure anything." "Believes all things" does not mean love is gullible. It means love does not assume the worst, and gives people the benefit of the doubt. "Hopes all things" means it does not give up on people. "Endures" (hypomenō) is to stand firm under a heavy load. Love keeps going.
• "Love never ends" (v8). Literally "love never falls." Gifts will be set aside. Love will not, because God is love (1 John 4:8).
• "Prophecies… pass away; tongues… cease; knowledge… pass away" (v8). Paul names three gifts, including the Corinthians' favorites. The verb for prophecy and knowledge (katargeō) means to be put out of use, rendered idle. For tongues he uses a different verb (pauō, to stop). Some have argued from this that tongues would stop on their own, earlier than the other gifts. Most scholars think Paul is simply varying his words, as writers do.
• "We know in part and we prophesy in part" (v9). Even true prophecy and true knowledge are partial. That is a humbling word for a church proud of its knowledge (8:2).
• "But when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away" (v10). "The perfect" is to teleion: the complete, the finished, what has reached its goal. What does Paul mean? Most interpreters through history, and nearly all today, take it to mean the end of the age, when Christ returns. Verse 12 explains it with "then face to face" and "then I shall know fully," which fits his coming far better than anything before it. Some cessationists read "the perfect" as the completed New Testament, after which revelatory gifts would cease. Many cessationists, though, agree that v10 means Christ's return and base their view on other passages instead (such as Eph 2:20).
• "When I was a child… When I became a man, I gave up childish ways" (v11). Paul has already called the Corinthians "infants in Christ" (3:1) and will say, "do not be children in your thinking" (14:20). A child's way of talking and thinking is right for a child. But a grown man who still talks and reasons like a child is a sad sight. The present gifts, good as they are, belong to the church's childhood compared with what is coming.
• "For now we see in a mirror dimly" (v12). Ancient mirrors were polished metal, and Corinth was well known for making bronze ones. Even a good one gave a dull, slightly warped image. "Dimly" is literally "in a riddle" (en ainigmati). The phrase echoes Numbers 12:8, where God says he speaks with Moses "mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles," and Moses beholds "the form of the LORD." The Greek Old Testament uses the very same word, ainigma, there. What Moses had in part, all God's people will have in full.
• "But then face to face" (v12). "Face to face" is how God spoke with Moses (Exod 33:11). The promise is that God's people will see him (Matt 5:8; 1 John 3:2; Rev 22:4).
• "Then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known" (v12). The deepest comfort in the chapter. Our knowledge of God is partial now, but his knowledge of us is already complete, and he loves us anyway. In 8:3 Paul wrote, "if anyone loves God, he is known by God." Being known by God comes first. Knowing him fully comes later.
• "So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three" (v13). "Now" may mean "now, in this age," in contrast to the future of v12, or it may simply mean "so then," as the conclusion of the argument. Faith, hope and love often appear together in Paul (1 Thess 1:3; 5:8; Col 1:4–5). Unlike the gifts, these three are given to every believer, and they last.
• "But the greatest of these is love" (v13). Why greatest? Faith will one day become sight (2 Cor 5:7), and hope will become possession (Rom 8:24). Love will not turn into something else. It is what heaven is made of. And love is the one of the three that describes God himself. God does not need to have faith or hope, but "God is love" (1 John 4:16). Some interpreters think faith and hope also "abide" forever in a sense, as ongoing trust and expectation toward God. Even then, love is the greatest.
• Commentators: All three read the chapter as a correction of Corinth's pride in gifts. Matthew Henry: "It is the charitable heart, not the voluble tongue, that is acceptable with God," and "a clear and deep head is of no signification, without a benevolent and charitable heart." On patience he writes that love "can endure evil, injury, and provocation, without being filled with resentment, indignation, or revenge." JFB calls tongues without love "sound without soul or feeling," and describes the ancient cymbals as making a "sharp and piercing" sound. JFB explains "bears" from a verb that pictures a vessel holding water tight. The lexicon supports both "cover" and "bear up under." Guzik gives the four Greek words for love and rightly warns against treating agapē as if it always meant God's love, since the New Testament also uses it of loving sin and the world. He notes both readings of v3, "burned" and "boast." On v10, Guzik firmly rejects the view that "the perfect" is the completed New Testament and takes it as Christ's return. JFB takes it as the completed state of glory, and Henry agrees: "When the end is once attained, the means will of course be abolished." On v12 Guzik, JFB and the Tyndale notes all describe the dim bronze mirrors, and JFB links "darkly," literally "in enigma," to Numbers 12:8. JFB adds that love ranks highest because faith without love is dead. Henry calls love "a permanent and perpetual grace, lasting as eternity."

Pointing to Christ

Read vv4–7 with Jesus' name in place of "love," and every line fits. He was patient with slow disciples, kind to outcasts, free of envy and boasting, and did not insist on his own way: "not my will, but yours" (Luke 22:42). He kept no record of wrongs. From the cross he prayed for those who put him there, and he bore all things and endured all things for the joy set before him (Heb 12:2). Then read it with any believer's name, and the gap shows why this chapter is not only a standard but a gospel. The love Paul describes is first God's love for us in Christ, before it is ever ours for others (1 John 4:10, 19). And Christ is the face we will see "face to face," the one who has always known us fully.

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik examines the necessity, nature, and permanence of love — and its superiority over all spiritual gifts.
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871): blueletterbible.org A critical and explanatory commentary on the whole Bible, more concise than Matthew Henry and closer to the Hebrew and Greek, with attention to historical and geographical detail. Public domain.
• Matthew Henry's Exposition (1710): blueletterbible.org A devotional verse-by-verse commentary in the Puritan tradition, still among the most widely read three centuries on. Public domain.

Videos

Articles

• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org On the whole book: an overview of the book of 1 Corinthians -- who wrote it, when, why, and how it fits the rest of Scripture.

Links open on the publisher's own site. Nothing here is reproduced on this page.

Reflection

• Gifts Amount to Nothing Without Love (vv.1-3) — Paul says that even the most impressive gifts and sacrifices are worthless if love is absent. How does this challenge a tendency to value visible ability or achievement over actual love for people?
• Love Keeps No Record of Wrongs (v.5) — Paul describes love as something that doesn't keep track of offenses committed against it. Is there someone toward whom you're quietly keeping a mental ledger that love would call you to erase?
• Love Is Not Self-Seeking (v.5) — Paul says love does not insist on its own way. In your closest relationships, are you honestly more self-centered or other-centered in how you treat people?
• Love Outlasts Every Gift (v.8) — Paul contrasts spiritual gifts, which will pass away, with love, which never fails. What are you investing more of yourself in — temporary displays of ability, or lasting expressions of love?
• Seeing Only Partially For Now (v.12) — Paul acknowledges that present understanding is like looking through a dim reflection compared to the clarity to come. How does knowing your current perspective is limited produce more humility in what you're certain about and more patience with others?
• Love as the Greatest Virtue (v.13) — Paul concludes that of faith, hope, and love, love is the greatest. Would the people who know you best describe love as the defining characteristic of your life?