We have spent fifteen chapters walking through what love does and what love does not do. Now Paul turns. He has finished describing love. The closing six verses of the chapter are not another attribute. They are an answer to a question every honest reader has been quietly asking: Why? Why is this love the one Paul says is the most excellent way? Why does this love deserve the weight he has just placed on it? And Paul answers in one short sentence at the head of the section, before he has explained anything: Love never fails. Whatever else has been said, whatever else can be said, the love I have just described is the one thing that will not pass away. It outlasts the gifts. It outlasts the partial. It outlasts the very age the gifts were given for. Love never fails is the closing argument of the whole chapter.
This last chapter of the book takes up that closing argument carefully, because it requires the reader to think about three things at once: what the gifts were, what the perfect is, and why love is greater than either faith or hope at the end.
Love never fails
The Greek verb is piptei, a common word meaning falls — falls down, fails, collapses, drops away. Paul says of love that it does not. Whatever else falls — kingdoms fall, men fall, gifts fall — love does not. It stands. It continues. It is not the kind of thing that ends.
This sentence is also a verdict on everything Paul has been writing for fifteen chapters. The Corinthian church had been chasing the gifts. They had been ranking themselves by the gifts. They had been turning their worship services into competitions over the gifts. And Paul has told them, in three verses at the head of chapter 13, that the most impressive gift exercised without love is nothing. Now he tells them why. The gifts are temporary. Love is not. The believer who has been chasing the temporary, at the cost of the permanent, has been chasing the wrong thing — and love never fails is the sentence that settles it.
The gifts will be done away
Paul names three of the gifts the Corinthians had prized most:
…if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.
1 Corinthians 13:8 (NASB)
Three gifts. Three verbs of removal. Prophecy — the speaking-forth of God’s word — will be done away. Tongues — the speaking in languages the speaker had not learned — will cease. Knowledge — supernaturally given understanding of God’s mysteries — will be done away. These were the headline gifts of the apostolic age. The Corinthians had been wearing them as badges. Paul tells them that the badges have an expiration date. Whatever spiritual stature the Corinthian gift-holders had been claiming on the basis of their gifts was a stature with a built-in end. The gifts were temporary. The love is not.
Why were the gifts temporary? Paul says it plainly in the next two verses:
For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.
1 Corinthians 13:9–10 (NASB)
The reason the gifts were temporary is that the gifts were partial. They gave the church some of the knowledge of God, some of the word of God, some of the understanding of God’s mysteries — but not all of it. They were the means by which the Spirit gave the early church what it needed to live by, before the complete thing was finished. The gifts were the scaffolding around the building. Once the building was finished, the scaffolding came down.
What is the complete thing? The Greek word is teleios — complete, mature, finished, brought to its full end. And the question of what Paul means by the perfect is one every careful reader of this passage has rightly asked, because the answer matters.
The Christian reader has often defaulted to assuming Paul meant the return of Christ — the eschaton, the day we will see Christ face to face. There is a real sense in which the eschaton is in view here, because Paul will move shortly to language of seeing face to face and knowing fully, and that language reaches its highest fulfillment at Christ’s return. But the partial gifts that the perfect replaces in 13:9–10 are partial means of revelation — prophecy, tongues, knowledge. They were the gifts by which God was making His mind known to the early church before His mind had been made fully known in the completed Word. The perfect that replaces these partial means is naturally read as the completed revelation of God in the New Testament Scriptures. When the canon was complete, the partial means by which the Spirit had been revealing God’s mind to the early church were no longer needed. The church had the whole Word in its hands. The scaffolding came down.
That reading is supported by the language of the next verse:
When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.
1 Corinthians 13:11 (NASB)
Paul’s comparison is not between this life and the next life. His comparison is between the church’s infancy and the church’s maturity. The infant church spoke and thought and reasoned with the partial gifts because the infant church did not yet have the full Word. The mature church speaks and thinks and reasons by the Word that has now been completely given. The infant church needed prophecy because the prophetic word was still being added to the canon. The mature church does not need prophecy because the prophetic word is now finished and sealed in the pages of the New Testament. The infant church needed tongues because the gospel had to be confirmed by signs as it spread into new languages. The mature church does not need tongues because the gospel, in those languages, has long since been preached and confirmed and written down. The infant church needed supernatural knowledge because not all the mysteries of God had yet been disclosed. The mature church does not need that knowledge because the mysteries have now been disclosed in the completed apostolic teaching.
The childish things were not foolish things. They were not bad things. They were the things the church needed at the age the church was. And when the church grew up — when the teleios came in the form of the completed Word of God — the childish things were done away. The same Spirit who had been giving them removed them, because the work they had been doing was finished.
This reading takes Paul’s own metaphor seriously. The child who has become a man does not still speak in his childhood babble. He has the full vocabulary of the mature man. The church that has been given the full vocabulary of the New Testament does not still need the partial speech-forms of the apostolic age. When the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. The perfect came. The partial was done away. That is the apostolic verdict on the question.
Mirror dimly, face to face
Paul then turns to a second image:
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.
1 Corinthians 13:12 (NASB)
This sentence is reaching further than the verse before it. The mirror image is not about the New Testament canon; it is about the difference between knowing God in this life and knowing God in the next. In Paul’s day a mirror was a polished piece of metal — its reflection was real but it was dim, imperfect, partial. The believer in this life sees God through such a mirror. Through the Word. Through creation. Through the Spirit’s work in his heart. Through the body of believers around him. The seeing is real but it is partial. He does not yet see God face to face.
When the believer dies — and at the resurrection still more — the mirror is set aside. The believer sees the Lord directly. He knows the Lord directly. The partial knowing of this life — even the knowing made possible by the completed Word — gives way to a fuller knowing that the completed Word itself promised. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. The “then” of that sentence is the believer’s “then” in glory. The full knowing has been promised. The believer is walking toward it.
So the chapter is doing two things at once. When the perfect comes is about the completion of God’s revelation, which happened with the closing of the apostolic canon. Face to face and I will know fully are about the believer’s eternal seeing of the Lord, which is still ahead. Both are true. The first explains why the partial gifts were temporary. The second explains why even the completed Word, as glorious as it is, is itself a kind of partial knowing compared with what is coming. The believer is meant to hold both. The gifts that confirmed the message in the apostolic age were temporary, and they have ceased. The believer’s knowing in this life is also temporary, in a different sense, because the believer’s knowing in the next life will be a vastly fuller knowing than anything the believer can achieve now, even with the whole Bible open in his lap.
When will miraculous gifts be done away?
The question has now been answered. The miraculous gifts of prophecy, tongues, and supernatural knowledge were done away when the perfect came — when the revelation of God in the New Testament Scriptures was complete. The last of the apostles wrote his last book under the inspiration of the Spirit, the canon was closed, and the partial means of revelation were no longer needed. The scaffolding came down.
This answer matters because you are going to run into people — on social media, at conferences, in books, in conversations with friends — who claim to have new messages from God, direct words from the Spirit, or miraculous signs confirming a teaching not found in the Bible. Paul’s answer in 1 Corinthians 13:10 gives you a steady place to stand. You do not need to chase signs when you already have the complete story. The Bible open in your lap is everything the Spirit needs to make you mature (2 Timothy 3:16–17; Ephesians 4:11–16). What was given for the church’s infancy was taken away when the church grew up. The right place for your energy is not the chasing of gifts that ceased. The right place is the love that never fails.
Why love is the greatest of the three
Paul closes the chapter with the sentence the whole book has been building toward:
But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:13 (NASB)
Faith, hope, love. These three. The trio that Paul names elsewhere as the three abiding virtues of the Christian life (1 Thessalonians 1:3; Colossians 1:4–5). All three remain when the gifts have passed. All three are the substance of the mature Christian’s daily walk with the Lord — believing what He has said, hoping for what He has promised, loving the One who has loved him and the brothers He has placed around him.
But the greatest of these is love. Why? Paul does not stop to explain. He does not need to. The whole chapter has been the explanation. But the believer who has walked through the book can see the reasons stacked in the closing sentence even without Paul stopping to name them.
Faith is great. Faith is the means by which the believer was saved — for by grace you have been saved through faith (Ephesians 2:8, NASB). Faith is the means by which the believer walks with the Lord through this life — we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7, NASB). Faith is essential. Faith is unmissable. But faith has a horizon. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1, NASB). When the things are seen — when the believer stands before the Lord he has believed in — faith will have become sight. The work of faith will have been completed. The believer in eternity will not be exercising faith in the same way he is now, because what he has been believing he will now see.
Hope is great. Hope is the settled expectation of what God has promised — the resurrection, the new heavens and new earth, the gathering of God’s people, the wiping away of every tear (Revelation 21:4). The believer is sustained in this life by the hope of what is coming. But hope, like faith, has a horizon. Hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? (Romans 8:24, NASB). When the believer is standing in the new heavens and new earth, the hoping will be done. The promises will have been kept. The hope will have arrived. Hope, like faith, was given to carry the believer across a particular kind of distance, and the distance will eventually have been crossed.
Love does not have that horizon. Love does not end. Love does not arrive at anything that completes it, because love itself is what eternity is for. God has been love from before the foundation of the world. God will be love into the everlasting future. The believer who has been learning love in this life has been learning what he will be doing forever. The love between the Father and the Son and the Spirit, the love that overflowed into the creation, the love that sent the Son to a cross, the love that has been at work in the believer through the Spirit who has been given to him — that love is the very nature of God Himself, and the very nature of God Himself does not pass away. God is love (1 John 4:8). What the believer has been practicing all the way through this book has been the very thing that will be the substance of his eternity.
That is why love is the greatest of the three. Faith will become sight. Hope will be fulfilled. Love will continue, because love is what God is, and what God is does not end.
What this means for the believer
The believer who has walked through this book has now been given two things at once. He has been given a description of the love God calls him into — fifteen attributes, walked through one at a time, with the Greek words named where they helped and the Corinthian failures named where they sharpened. And he has been given, in this closing chapter, the reason the whole walk has been worth taking. The love he has been learning is the love that lasts. Everything else in his Christian life — the gifts he has exercised, the knowledge he has accumulated, the ministries he has been part of — will, in one way or another, pass into the perfect, into the resurrection, into the eternity where the partial becomes the full and the dim becomes the face-to-face. Love alone keeps going. Love alone is the through-line of his eternity.
That is why Paul placed this chapter where he placed it. The Corinthians thought the gifts were the main thing. Paul corrected them. The main thing was the love by which the gifts were either built up into something useful or rendered into noise. The Corinthians thought the standing of a believer was measured by which teacher he followed. Paul corrected them. The standing of a believer is measured by the love he is being formed into. The Corinthians thought the impressive Christian was the one with the showy ministry. Paul corrected them. The impressive Christian is the one whose patience absorbs and whose kindness gives. He refuses to envy what God has given his brother. He keeps quiet about what God has given him, refuses to inflate the man underneath his mouth, and lives by the form that fits a saint. His life is no longer organized around himself. He has stopped flaring at every provocation, closed the ledger he used to keep on his brother, and traded the small pleasure of a brother’s downfall for the larger pleasure of standing with the truth. He bears the brother’s failures under his roof, believes the best until the evidence requires otherwise, hopes when the hoping has been hard, and stays under the weight when the weight has not been lifted. That believer is the believer the rest of eternity will recognize. The Lord Himself will recognize him, because the love this believer has been practicing is the love this believer’s Lord has been demonstrating from the day the world began.
The believer who has not yet obeyed the gospel
If you have read this book and have not yet obeyed the gospel, the closing chapter is doing one more thing on its way to your ear. It is reminding you that the time you have to make the decision is not unlimited.
The gifts had a time. The age of the apostles had a time. The earthly ministry of Christ had a time. The patience of God has a time. Every season has been ordained by God to do what He intended it to do, and every season comes to its end when God has decided the end has come. The season you are in right now — the season in which you can still hear the gospel, can still come to Christ, can still be brought into the family of God by obedience to the Good News — is a season too. It is not infinite. The Lord whose patience has been making room for you is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9, NASB). The patience is real. The patience is also bounded. The end of the patience is the end of the opportunity, and the end of the opportunity is the beginning of the verdict.
The gospel is good news exactly because the verdict has not yet come and the way to escape it has been laid before you. Christ died for our sins, was buried, and was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3–4). Hear it. Believe it. Repent of the life you have been living without Him. Confess Him as Lord. Be baptized into His death and raised to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3–4). Remain faithful to Him until death (Revelation 2:10). The Lord whose love never fails has been holding out that love to you for every year of your life so far, and the holding out is still going on right now. The right response is not to wait. The right response is to obey. Appendix A walks the pattern of the gospel response in one place; if you have any uncertainty about what obeying the gospel means, the appendix gathers the New Testament’s own pattern carefully.
A closing word
The book is finished. You have walked through fifteen attributes of love and the closing chapter on what the love means in the long view. Whatever else this book has done in you, our hope is that it has set the love of God before you as something larger than you knew, more demanding than you wanted, and more glorious than the world has ever managed to describe.
Take the book and close it. Set it on a shelf. Then take what the book has been pointing at — the Word of God — and open that. The Word is where the love of God lives. The book is a small reading of one chapter of that Word, by one believer, for the use of the next generation of believers coming up. The Word is the Lord’s own description of His own love. Read it. Sit with it. Argue with it where you need to. Bring it back to itself.
And then, one day at a time, live what it describes. Be patient with the brother. Be kind to the family member who has worn you down. Refuse to envy the friend whose life is going better than yours. Refuse to brag about what God has given you. Refuse to inflate the man underneath your mouth. Refuse the unbecoming conduct. Stop organizing your life around yourself. Stop flaring at the small wrongs. Close the ledger you have been keeping on your brother. Refuse the pleasure of his downfall. Stand with the truth. Cover the failures you know about. Believe the best until evidence requires otherwise. Hope when hoping is hard. Stay under the weight when the weight has not been lifted.
This is the love the Lord calls us to. It is the love He has poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Romans 5:5). It is the love we have been invited to learn to walk in for as long as we are on this earth, and to continue walking in for the eternity to come.
It is the love that never fails.
Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.
Ephesians 3:20–21 (NASB)
THINK
You have come to the end of this book. The last reflection prompt is the simplest one in the book and the longest in its work. In one sentence, what one move of love is the Lord calling you to make this week, in light of everything you have read? Write the sentence down. Do not edit it. Do not make it bigger than it is. Then go and make the move. The book will have done what books can do. The walking-out is now yours. The Lord whose love never fails will be with you, on the day you make the move, and on the day after, and on every day for as long as you are practicing the love this book has been describing. Begin.