1 Corinthians 13:1-3

Butler's Comments

SECTION 1

Giftedness Without Love (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

1 Corinthians 13:1 Is Heedless: 1 Corinthians 12:31 b of chapter 12 should be 1 Corinthians 13:1 of chapter 13. There the Greek word huperbole (English hyperbole) is translated more excellent. Literally, the Greek word means a throwing beyonda surpassing. Paul is going to show (in chapter 13) a way to unity in diversity that surpasses all other ways, and that way is agape-love. There are four words in the Greek language for lovestorge, affection (e.g. familial love); phileo, friendship (e.g. fraternal); eros, passion, desire (e.g. sexual love); and agape, self-sacrificing, caring (God-like love). Only phileo and agape appear in the New Testament. Paul uses only agape in this chapter.

Agape-love is not only commanded, but motivated by God and Christ. We love, because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19; see also 1 John 4:10). God created man with an intellect, a will and emotions, Man has the ability or faculties to love. God demonstrated love in Christ and commands us to love, but he will not force us to love.

Love is the only thing man really has to give. Agape-love is a deliberate choice of the will. It is the absorption of every part of our being (intellect, will and emotions) in an obsession to care. It is definitely not physical or circumstantial. It is love which deliberately, by an act of will, chooses its object, and through all circumstances or in spite of them, goes on loving continually. C. S. Lewis, in The Four Loves, says it is a love that enables man to love what is not naturally lovable; lepers, criminals, enemies, morons, the sulky, the superior and the sneering. It is a love that demands complete self-denial. It is always used when the will is involved. It is the word Jesus used when he commanded, Thou shalt love thine enemy.. Agape-love is the one thing that is completely indestructible; while other things pass away, love lasts. It is not dependent on anything outside itself; it is not affected by the worthiness or unworthiness of the one to be loved. If this love really grips our whole being, our Christian experience will be utterly revolutionized.

Professor Donald Nash, in the Kentucky Christian College bulletin's Word Pictures, has written this definition of Love:

Almost every Christian with a cursory knowledge of the Bible is cognizant of the fact that there are two Greek words for love in the New Testament, but few know their basic connotations. Valuable insights can be gained by delineating between them.

Agape is a love called out by a realization of the value of the object loved. It is not an emotion or passion, since it can be and is commanded in the scriptures. It has been defined as intelligent good will toward all men. Christianity took the word from pagan uses and enlarged, ennobled and inspired it. Because it is used of the love God had for the world in Christ it has something of the idea of sacrificial devotion to others in which self is forgotten.

Phileo is a love called out by an appreciation or pleasure in the object loved. This is an emotion. It suggests friendship and affection. It cannot be commanded and is not in the scriptures since it is spontaneous. It needs intercommunication between the lover and the object loved. It suggests love between two people with common interests.

So, I am as a Christian to love all men with agape love, for I realize the intrinsic soul's value of everyone as God's creation. I should be willing to make sacrifices of personal desires and interests for all. But I am not commanded to love everyone phileo, since this is impossible. It comes from a common bond of fellowship.

For this reason Jesus is said to love the whole world agape. He recognized the worth of all and died for all (John 3:16). But he loves only Christians phileo (John 16:27), since only between Christians and the Father is the mutual bond of a common interest in righteousness, the common bond of prayer, and same spirit of friendship.

Sometimes it is said that agape is divine love and phileo human love; that agape is the higher love and phileo the lower. This is not exactly the case. God loves both ways, so one could not be human and the other divine. Phileo is actually the love of close, intimate relationship, and so Peter sought for Jesus to affirm this in him (John 21:15-19). I love the world agape, but my family and close friends phileo.

Agape is the higher, divine love only in the sense it calls for the type of sacrifice Christ manifested on the cross. It can only be truly produced in us by surrender to Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22). It is demonstrated in those great virtues so beautifully and powerfully portrayed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, which only the true Christian possesses in the Biblical sense.

The Corinthians were gauging holiness by possession of miraculous gifts (especially by possession of the more spectacular gifts such as speaking in languages), and not by the love expressed in practical living. No matter what gifts (miraculous or non-miraculous) a Christian has, the fruit of the Spirit lived out in his lifei.e., his spiritual characteris the real yardstick by which to measure his holiness. There is a directs relationship between one's sanctification and the love he expresses. There is no relation whatsoever between sanctification and the possession of miraculous or non-miraculous gifts. The proof is in these Corinthians! They had all the miraculous gifts available (1 Corinthians 1:7), but still they ended up as the most carnal church described in the New Testament. Gifts serve their purpose only when they are governed by agape-love.

It is character, not charisma that counts. It is goodness, not giftedness that really matters. God supplies gifts, talents, blessings to all men and women (even to pagan unbelievers), but God has so made his creatures that they may give or withhold their love. Giftedness without love shrivels character and thwarts God's will for the possessor of such giftedness. God gives gifts to men for the building of character through the expression of love. But in the ultimate analysis, men are free to love God or despise him, and, in this sense, therefore, responsible for their own character. When time ends and Jesus comes again, men will go right on being in character what they have chosen to be, as John wrote in Revelation, Let the evildoer still do evil. and the righteous still do right. (Revelation 22:10-11).

Even if a Christian had supernatural power to talk in the language of angels, predict the future, know and understand everything there is to know, have miraculous power to remove all obstacles, give away all his earthly goods and become a martyr, but did not have agape-love, what would he be? He would be only a noise (Gr. chalkos echone kumbalon alalazon, brass sounding or cymbal tinkling). Eloquence, erudition and oratory may command admiration, but only love really communicates to the heart. Men with miraculous gifts but without love will embitter the lives of other people because without love there is the inevitable self-centeredness which produces exploitation, cruelty, envy, hatred, and fighting. Love is the tie that binds all other virtues of the human personality together in harmony and stability. The loveless person is a spiritually unbalanced person. The church at Ephesus (about 100 A.D.) was a shocking picture of busyness, patience, discernment, toil, endurance, but absolutely without the one thing that mattersagape love, (Revelation 2:2-4). Regardless of everything else the Ephesian church was, she was without the power to meet the soon to come to pass waves of persecution, tribulation, false teaching and carnality of the pagan Roman empire (100-300 A.D.).

1 Corinthians 13:2 Is Hollow: The Greek word kumbalon, cymbal, means, literally, hollow. Giftedness without love is vain and empty. There really is no value in having any gift without having love. Without love life is lost! He that selfishly saves himself (love only himself) will lose his life for life has being only as it emanates agape-love (cf. Matthew 10:39; Matthew 16:25; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:24). The man without agape-love is nothing (Gr. outhen, nil, not anything). He is lost!

1 Corinthians 13:3 Is Hellish: Man without agape-love is of no profit (Gr. opheloumai, no gain, profitless, useless). He is like saltless salt, fit only for the dung-heap. Without love a person does not gather with Christ but joins the devil in scattering (see Matthew 12:30). That is what these Corinthians, possessed of miraculous gifts without love, were doing. Someone has analyzed 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 as follows: Thought, purpose, logic, industriousness, but without the radiance of love. Isn-'t that an accurate description of Satan? Even the demons believed, and shuddered (James 2:19). They were gifted but they had no love.

What makes love so great? All gifts, sacrifices and services are hypocrisy without it (Matthew 6:1-18). Motivation is important. God is not interested in empty works of merit. He is evidently not impressed with our gifts as much as with the way we use them. Love is the one thing all men understand. Love may be communicated without language. Love never fails to glorify God. Love never fails to improve the character, both of the lover and the loved. Agape-love does not have to wait upon a feeling to be activated.

Applebury's Comments

Text

1 Corinthians 13:1-3. If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. 2 And 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 have not love, I am nothing. 3 And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.

Commentary
Necessity of the Most Excellent Way (1-3)

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels.Chapter thirteen is an essential part of the discussion of spiritual gifts. It is not to be taken as a separate exposition of the subject of love. In chapter twelve, Paul had indicated that schism had entered the church over these gifts. In chapter thirteen, he shows that this must be prevented by following the way of love, whether the problem be the misuse of the gift of speaking in a foreign language or the gift of prophecy or the gift of knowledge or even such things as benevolence and martyrdom. In chapter fourteen, he shows how the gift of tongues was to be made equal with prophecy in its benefit to the church. By translation, the message spoken in a foreign language could be understood by the whole church. Thus love is the controlling factor in the use of all these gifts; interpretation (translation) of tongues was the necessary accompanying gift that was designed to make the gift of tongues of equal benefit with prophecy and to keep it from becoming a source of strife and jealousy in the church.

tongues of men and of angels.This suggests that there are two levels of language, human and angelic. Language is a means of communicating an intelligible message to intelligent beings. By tongues of men, Paul means the languages spoken by menforeign languages in this context. By tongues of angels, he refers to angelic communication. Just what this is, we, of course, cannot say with certainty. Paul gives two suggestions: (1) In Romans 8:26, he says that the Holy Spirit makes intercession for us with groanings or sighs that cannot be uttered. They are incapable of being expressed in human language; (2) In 2 Corinthians 12:4, he speaks of having been caught up into Paradise where he heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. This only suggests that there is a level of intelligent communication that is above the human. In chapter fourteen, he also suggests that there is a level of communication that is lower than human speechthat which is communicated by such things as the bugle.

We can be sure that the gift of tongues was not tongues of angels for it was the ability to speak in a foreign language without previous study or knowledge. This was plainly seen on the Day of Pentecost when each one heard the message that is recorded in Acts 2:1-47 in his own native language. Neither can it be the pagan pretense that consisted in uttering speech-like sounds in ecstasy, for that was not communication. Neither is there any good evidence that the Corinthian gift of tongues was like this pagan thing, for it was the gift the Holy Spirit distributed for the benefit of the whole church. Paul used the gift and said to the church, I would have all of you speak in tonguesforeign languages.

but have not love.This, then, is the point of his message: to use the gift of speaking in a foreign language or even in angelic language without being controlled by the principle of love as defined in this chapter would result in becoming as meaningless as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. Brass or copper was the metal used to make the echoing gong or other instrument to make noise. It has the ability to repeat the sound without giving an intelligible message. Without love, this gift of the Spirit of God would become just so much noise. Clanging is the sound of men rushing to battle; it is the shout of many voices but without a message. Preaching without love is just so much noise.

Jealousy and faction in the church at Corinth over the use of the gift of tongues was effectively nullifying the message of the gospel which taught, among other things, that all in one spirit had been baptized into one bodythe body of Christ.
There are two important New Testament words that are translated love. One has to do with feelings; the otherthe one that Paul uses in this Chapter while expressing feelings, can respond to the will. For example, Paul says that love is kind. We as human beings are capable of responding to God's command to be kind to one another. The first is the love of friendship; the second is the love that can include enemies. We can be kind to those who persecute us. Jesus didn-'t require the impossible when He said, Love your enemies. This love was to be expressed in doing good for them. It is in this sense that God loved the world and demonstrated it by sending His Son to Calvary. This does not imply that one can have the same feeling for an enemy as for a friend, but it may indicate that by loving the enemy he might even be changed into the kind of person for whom one could have a feeling of friendship.

And if I have the gift of prophecy.Prophecy was speaking for God under the direction of the Holy Spirit in the language of the people, hence, no translating was necessary. Speaking in tonguesforeign languageshad to be translated for all except the foreigner who, of course, understood his own language. But to use the gift of prophecy or the other gifts mentioned in the text without love would simply mean, as the apostle put it, that I am nothing. Where is the boasting over miraculous powers if the body of Christ is split and torn by faction rather than having its oneness preserved for the benefit of a lost world by the most excellent way of love?

know all mysteries.A mystery, as used in the New Testament, was the message which God revealed through His inspired apostles. It would have remained a mystery forever if He had not revealed it. See comment on chapter 1 Corinthians 2:6-10.

Faith to remove mountains.See comment on 1 Corinthians 12:9. Jesus used the expression, faith as a grain of mustard seed to remind His disciples that the least amount of faith in connection with the performing of miracles would enable them to move a mountain or uproot the sycamine tree. See Matthew 17:19-20 and Luke 17:5-6.

Faith to remove mountains does not mean mountains of trouble. It means real mountains and explains the limitless power of God that was given by the Spirit through the apostles to enable the early church to perform miracles, speak in tongues, heal the sick, and perform other acts by which the Word of God was being established (Hebrews 2:3-4).

We should not confuse this with the loving trust in God and in His promises that enables the faithful Christian to victoriously face the trials of this life.

I am nothing.The conclusions of Paul's three arguments stated in the form of conditions are significant. Without love, he says, I am a gong, a cymbal. Without love, I am nothing. Without love, I gain nothing. Why should the Corinthians create strife in the church for nothing?