1 Corinthians 13:1-7 – The way of love

In the last verse of the previous chapter, Paul encouraged the Corinthians to seek for gifts to edify the whole body. Here in Chapter 13, he called on them to pursue love in the exercising of the gifts. He calls it the more excellent way. So in verses 1-3, he began by showing why exercising gifts with love is so needful.   

When the God-given ability to speak languages is exercised without love, it produces nothing but meaningless noise. It doesn’t matter whether the language is that of men or angels. Gong was used to refer to an orator’s meaningless speech. Clanging cymbal refers to a pagan cult worship in Corinth where cymbals were clashed to attract the attentions of their gods and to drive away demons. When that was done, the worshippers would get into a frenzy with meaningless ecstatic utterances. Hence to exercise the gift of speaking in languages without love makes believers no different from the meaningless practices of those pagans.

In verse 2 Paul mentioned three gifts: prophecy, knowledge and faith. Paul cautioned against being self-inflated by those three gifts. Some of the Corinthians were indeed behaving that way. So Paul told them that to exercise those gifts without love would yield the opposite of what they wished it to communicate. Notice Paul did not say the gifts are nothing but that the person exercising would be nothing.

In verse 3, Paul said that one could exercise the gift of generosity to the point of even being totally sacrificial. But if it is done without love, it has no benefit to the one making the sacrifice. Spiritual activities, unless motivated by love, would be merely going through the motion without the real goal in mind.  

What kind of love was Paul talking about?  In verses 4-7, he defined the kind of love he meant. We call this agape love. There are essentially two broad characteristics of love. Paul first defined what love is. He said it is patient and kind. In other words, this love is not only self-restraint but also considerate.  Furthermore, it rejoices with the truth and it bears all thing, hopes all things and endures all things. This kind of love doesn’t seek to trip people up but instead thinks the best of people and brings the best out of people with great perseverance. In his description of love, Paul also showed what love is not. He said it is not jealous; not boastful; not arrogant; does not act unbecomingly; is not self-seeking; is not easily provoked; does not hold on to an offence; and it does not rejoice in unrighteousness.

When we look through the description of love Paul gave here, we see the personification of love. We see the character of Jesus. He is the epitome of love. Let’s heed the call of 1 John 4:7-8, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”