Passages · 1 Corinthians 13:1-13
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1 Corinthians 13 sits in the middle of an argument about spiritual gifts. Chapters 12 and 14 address a church competing over tongues, prophecy, and knowledge; at 12:31 Paul breaks off with a promise to show "a most excellent way," and at 14:1 he resumes the gifts discussion. The love chapter is what falls between. Agapē here is not wedding sentiment — it is the standard by which every gift the Corinthians prized gets measured, described in fifteen verbs to people whose conduct did not match. Read in place, the chapter is a correction, delivered to a congregation that was fighting.
13:1 If I speak with the languages of men and of angels, but don't have love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 13:2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but don't have love, I am nothing. 13:3 If I give away all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but don't have love, it profits me nothing. 13:4 Love is patient. Love is kind. Love doesn't envy. Love doesn't brag. Love is not arrogant. 13:5 Love doesn't behave itself inappropriately. Love doesn't seek its own. Love is not provoked. Love doesn't take account of evil. 13:6 Love doesn't rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth. 13:7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. 13:8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will be done away with. Where there are various languages, they will cease. Where there is knowledge, it will be done away with. 13:9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part; 13:10 but when that which is complete has come, then that which is partial will be done away with. 13:11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things. 13:12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, even as I was also fully known. 13:13 But now faith, hope, and love remain — these three. The greatest of these is love.
13:1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 13:2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 13:3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. 13:4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 13:5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; 13:6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; 13:7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. 13:8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. 13:9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. 13:10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. 13:11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 13:12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 13:13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
The Corinthian church Paul is writing to was divided on nearly every front the letter touches: which leader was best (1:12), whose knowledge about idol meat was correct (8:1-13), whose conduct at the shared meal was acceptable (11:17-22), and — in the chapters surrounding this one — whose spiritual gifts were more impressive (12:14-30). Chapter 13 interrupts that last dispute deliberately: the interruption is the point. Love is not one more gift in the list; it is the criterion for evaluating all of them, and every worship instruction in chapter 14 assumes it.
"They will be done away with" (13:8) — the verb is katargeō, to render inoperative, to abolish. Paul applies it to prophecy, tongues, and knowledge — precisely the gifts the Corinthians were competing over. The force is not dismissive but points to the end: the gifts are real and valuable, yet they belong to the partial, and the partial will not survive the arrival of the complete. Love is what remains.
"Love" (seven times in thirteen verses) — agapē, a word the Greek Old Testament uses sparingly. In 13:4-7 it is the subject of fifteen verbs: is patient, is kind, does not envy, does not brag, bears, believes, hopes, endures. Love in this passage is not a feeling to be mustered; it acts. The description gives a reader a way to see where their own actions do not match — which is exactly what a fighting church needed.
"Doesn't seek its own" (13:5) — ou zētei ta heautēs. The phrase is not new in the letter. At 10:24 Paul wrote, "Let no one seek his own, but each his neighbor's good," settling the practical dispute about idol meat. The rule he used to resolve one Corinthian fight is here named as an attribute of love itself — the chapter is stitched into the letter's arguments, not floating above them.
"Is patient" (13:4) — makrothymei, the first verb in the whole description. In the Greek Old Testament at Exodus 34:6, God's covenantal self-description names makrothymos — slow to anger — among the first of God's own attributes. What Paul places first in the love description is what God places first in his own.
"In a mirror, dimly" (13:12) — literally "in a riddle," en ainigmati. The phrase echoes Numbers 12:8, where God speaks to ordinary prophets in riddles but to Moses "mouth to mouth, clearly." Paul places the whole community — its gifted prophets included — in the pre-Mosaic seeing-position, with face-to-face clarity promised to all in the age to come. A chapter correcting status competition quietly levels the statuses.
This is the context Derekh — Hebrew for “the way” — holds for every passage in all 66 books, and where it stops and asks what you see.
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