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All right, so we will go back
to our series in 1 Corinthians. Now that we have finished our
series on the attributes of God, I'll try to focus on one preaching
series. I know, I'm sorry, my mind is
all over the place. I have too many things on it,
but let's now focus then on 1 Corinthians. So we'll go back to chapter 13
of 1 Corinthians. We'll continue where we left
off last time. which was that we completed verse
7 and we'll continue with verse 8. But we'll read the whole chapter
together to get the whole context and then we'll have a look at
at least verse 8 and maybe a little bit more than that. But let's
read the whole chapter. 1 Corinthians chapter 13. If
I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have
love, I have become a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal. 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 do not
have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions
to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned but do not
have love, it profits me nothing. Love is patient, love is kind,
and is not jealous. Love does not brag, and is not
arrogant. Love does not act unbecomingly. It does not seek its own, is
not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered. does
not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth,
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures
all things. Love never fails. But 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. For we know in part, and we prophesy
in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done
away. When I was a child, I used to
speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child.
But when I became a man, I did away with childish things. 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. But now faith, hope, love abide
these three, but the greatest of these is love. Amen. As you know very well by
now, this chapter is about love. It should be fairly obvious by
this point. And as we have gone through it,
we have seen three or four, maybe, when we
are done with the chapter. But so far we have seen two,
and we'll begin with our third part of this chapter. The first
two was first the preeminence of love, verse one through three,
and then the perfection of love, verses four through seven. Those are the two parts we have
been looking at, and we will begin our third part this morning. The... permanence of love, beginning
in verse eight. But just as a reminder, so that
we are all up to speed, we remember what we have been looking for,
we're just quickly gonna... do a little review. And if you
remember, we started there in verse one through three with
the preeminence of love, that love is the most important thing. Love is more important than anything
that you do or say or think. Indeed, love should motivate
everything you say, think and do. Love is of uttermost importance. And of course, when we speak
about love, let's just remind ourselves that we're not speaking
just of any kind of love. We're speaking about agape love,
divine love, love that is foreign to us, love that is coming from
above, from God, love that is so... foreign to us that we cannot
produce it. Indeed, we would never have agape
love if God did not give it to us to begin with. This love is
very, very foreign. Now again, going back to the
preeminence of love and how love is more important than anything
else, we saw that Paul was giving us a few examples. Maybe he was
exaggerating a little bit, but The important point there was
love is everything or is above everything else in whatever that
you do. He gave us the example of speaking
with tongues of men and of angels. And then, if I have the gift
of prophecy and if I know all mysteries and have all knowledge
and all faith, so as to remove mountains. And then, if I give
all my possessions to feed the poor and surrender my body to
be burned. All these things are good things. Paul is not taking
examples of bad things. All these things they list here
are good things. However, even good things can
be done for the wrong reason. And that is, of course, the whole
point. If you do not have love, but do these things, it profits
you nothing. It is of no value. You must have
love. Love is preeminent. Everything
that a Christian does must be based on divine love. And then verses four through
seven, we looked at what this love is. But of course, it's
good to know that we should have love in everything that we do.
But what is this love? Paul, you're telling us to do
everything in love, but what is this love? So he gave us a
portrait. He painted this beautiful picture of what love is or really
what it's doing. and what it's not doing. And
we saw that he was almost like a person. And of course, it is
a person. Paul is looking to his Lord,
Jesus, and looking at him, just taking notes from his life. Jesus
did this. Jesus didn't do this. This is
love. This is what love does, because
we see it in Jesus. So what did we see? Verse 4 through
7. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not jealous,
love does not brag, love is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly,
does not seek its own, it's not provoked, does not take into
account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness,
but rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all
things, hopes all things, endures all things. A list of 15 different
characteristics of love, what it does and what it doesn't do.
These verses, I hope, gave us a concrete picture of divine
love, so that when we now move into the perseverance, that's not
the word, the permanence of love, we know what it is, we know it
is important, and we will know that it remains forever. We have everything we need now
to move on, to take a step and mature our acts of love. Make it so lasting as love truly
is. It never stops. It never fails.
Love. is above everything. So that's
what we're going to do now. We're going to take a moment
to look at verse 8 and then we're going to move into verse 9 and
10. And we're not going to complete that, I'm afraid, because it
takes some time to have a look at the word, the perfect. Because
that's, for some reason, a very controversial word. But we'll
start at least. But we'll begin in verse 8, as
we do. So let's read that. Verse 8 says,
Love never fails. But 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. Now, the first thing that should
catch our attention here is the first three words, of course.
Love never fails. Love never fails. Now, literally,
the word fail means to fall, like a leaf who falls down out
of the tree and falls down to the ground and withers and dies. That's what the word means here.
Divine love, in that sense, never falls down, it never withers,
it never dies. It's everlasting. It endures forever and ever.
Love is, by its very nature, eternal. I mean, in the same sense that
God is eternal. We know that from our series on the attributes
of God. God is eternal and love is also eternal. It will never
stop. It will never fall down, wither,
die. Now, the word here in English
is fail, and that might bring our mind to the word success,
like love never fails in that sense. It's always successful,
but that's not at all what... I don't think that's at all what
Paul means here. He's not talking about success and failure. He's
merely talking about the permanence of love, that it never stops,
it never falls down. It's always enduring. I mean,
it's a lovely idea to think that love never fails. It's always
successful. You can say that, I will love you so much that
I will love you into the kingdom. I will be successful in that
sense. And of course, it's a lovely
idea, but that's not at all Paul's point here. Just wanted to make
that clear because again, the word in English seems to indicate
some kind of failure or success, but that's not really what Paul
is talking about. The main point again is the permanence
of love. Love endures. Love goes beyond
and on and on into eternity. Already now we can taste eternity
by this love. We know that we're not, in our
current physical bodies, eternal beings. Our souls are eternal,
obviously, but everything we can touch, feel, see, taste,
so on, it's not eternal. But love, divine love, is eternal. You know that all other kinds
of love will pass away. Phileo, Eros, all those other
kinds of love that I've been talking about, those will pass
away. But agape love will never, ever
stop. And in contrast to this, we of
course have the spiritual gifts, which is the greater context
we have been talking about in chapter 12. We'll come back to
in chapter 14. Paul is already preparing us
for that. He's talking about three different
gifts here. But in contrast to these gifts,
love is eternal while the gifts are very much not. They are very
temporary. They will cease. They will pass
away. It's inevitable. We have to see
it. It's that these gifts are so very temporary. Their nature
is different than that of love. Now, the first thing I want to
note here about the temporary nature of the gifts is the word
that Paul puts in front of each of these gifts, and it's the
word if. If. Now I know that some Bibles
don't include this word for whatever reason. I know my Swedish Bible
doesn't. I don't know how it is with your
Bibles, but the NASB at least is faithful enough to the text
to include the word if. And it's important. It should
be there. Paul is making a point by including
the word if. The translation should really
say, but if prophecies, if tongues, if knowledge. And why is this
important? Because Paul is, of course, very
aware of the temporary nature of gifts. They will not always
manifest. They will not always be there
in the church. Indeed, some of these gifts were
so temporary that they were only manifested in the early church
for a very specific reason. I'm, of course, talking about
the more miraculous gifts that were there to confirm the message
of the apostles, the message of the good news of Jesus Christ,
where before we had the New Testament, before we had anything, or they
had, let's say that we weren't there, but before they had the
New Testament, they had those gifts to verify, to confirm their
message. But Paul is very aware that these
gifts will not last. Therefore, he puts the word if
before that. And indeed, even if these gifts
would be lasting to this day, not every Christian has them.
Not every Christian goes around and prophesies. Not every Christian
goes around and have the gift of knowledge, which we talked
about in chapter 12, and so on. We have separate gifts. Now,
some have more than one gift, blessed as they are. Some have
fewer. But still, they are temporary
and they do not always manifest. Therefore, Paul is adding this
word, if If, if, if this gift, if it manifests, if you know,
if you see it, if you're blessed by it, know that it is so, so
short-lived. So short-lived. It is the Spirit
who decides how He distributes His gifts. You should not expect
it to manifest all the time in every Christian, in all places.
These are but for a time. That's the first thing we have
to note about the temporary nature of the gifts. Then the second
thing we can note about the temporary nature of the gifts is which
gifts Paul lists here, addresses here. He mentions three gifts. Prophecy, tongues, and knowledge. Prophecy, tongues, and knowledge. Now, prophecy and tongues we'll
talk a little bit more about in chapter 14, but here Paul
also includes knowledge. Why these three? Well, probably
because they were highly sought after in the Corinthian church. These were the gifts that everybody
desired. These people who are still very
immature, very fleshly, were looking for spectacular things. They were looking for people
who could prophesy from the Lord, who could speak in new tongues,
who had the gift of knowledge. These were gifts that the Corinthians
desired. Their appearance of the gifts gave the impression that this
Christian who has them, he must be special. He must almost be,
dare I say it, perfect, complete. He must be specially chosen by
God for something more holy, an elevated position. They were
looking at these gifts from the completely wrong viewpoint, desiring
the gifts for the wrong reasons. And Paul takes hold of these
three gifts now and shows the Corinthians the folly in valuing
gifts who are so temporary, who will be here today and gone tomorrow.
Why do you value these gifts so much? Oh, it's a folly. You should value love. It is
eternal. It will never fail. It is more
important than everything. Why don't you value love, Corinthians? Oh, that you would understand
the preeminence of love, the permanence of love, the perfection
of love. It's almost as if the Corinthians saw themselves or
those people again who had these gifts as perfect. Maybe the perfect
that we'll talk about a little bit in verse 10. Might be a hint
to that. So therefore, again, Paul wants
to correct the opinion of the Corinthians. And of course, not
just the Corinthians, everybody who has a wrong understanding
and he comes with a wrong Intention to the spiritual gifts needs
to be corrected by Paul's words here. These gifts, if anything,
are temporary. They will be so short-lived. Why do you look to them? Look
to love. Value love. Desire love above
everything. If the gifts appear, and sometimes
they do, it is for your edification. It is not for you to just possess,
to have, to lift up yourself with, I am the prophet, I am
the tongue speaker, I am the one with knowledge. No, they
will soon, soon disappear, says Paul. Now the third thing, moving
on. The third thing we should note
here about the temporary nature of the gifts is what verbs Paul
uses to say that they are temporary. He uses two different verbs.
For prophecy, he uses the word, be done away. And with tongues,
or prophecy and knowledge, be done away. And then with tongues,
he uses the verb, cease. So we see, that Paul uses a couple
of different verbs here. He's not using the same verb
over and over. He's using different verbs, and I think it could be
for just rhetorical effect, of course. He's not just wanting
to repeat himself with the same word over and over and over.
But I think he's using different verbs for a reason. for a reason. So what do these verbs mean?
Well, the first verb, to be done away, means something that is
nullified or put out of action. It's a verb used to show that
someone has the power to cause something else to stop or to
cease, cease to function, either because it's harmful and you
need to stop its harmful function or because its function has been
fulfilled. Its purpose is completed. There's
nothing more for it here to do. Therefore, something else stops
it, makes it go away, seizes it, nullifies it. Now, the verb
seize is, of course, very similar. It's not that they're very different,
but there is a small distinction. The verb seize has a more abrupt
meaning to it. It means just to stop, desist,
cease immediately. And this verb is often used when
you want to show that someone is stopping He's stopping to
do something immediately. Like in 1 Peter 4, verse 1, it
says, He who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin. The sinner has ceased his sinning. That's how the verb is used.
It's used by someone who is stopping an action in themselves. And
this can be also seen in what is called the voice of the verb.
If you don't know what the voice of the verb is, that's all right.
We call it active or passive. Who is doing something in a sentence? Is it the subject who is doing
something or is it someone else? And Paul is using here different
voices for the verbs. For the first one, be done away,
he uses the verb or the voice, sorry, Passive. He's using passive as in someone
else is doing something or the subject is the one being acted on. That's
passive. The car is driven, that's passive.
The car is not driving itself, even though we have, of course,
self-driving cars today. But, you know, you get the point.
Someone else is driving the car. The car is driven, that's passive.
And then the other verb, cease, is in what is called middle voice. And what is middle voice? Well,
we don't have that in English or Swedish for that matter. I
don't think we have it in Finnish either. What is middle? Well, middle is when the subject
is both doing and is the object of the action. So it's a middle
thing between active and passive. The subject is doing something
on itself, literally. That's what middle is in simple
terms. middle voice. And of course then
we see when he uses it with the verb seize and especially with
the gift tongues. What does that tell us? That
tongues seize themselves. The other things will be done
away by something or someone else. Prophecy will be done away,
knowledge will be done away, but we don't know who. Well,
of course, if you go a little bit further, we know that it
is the perfect, verse 9 and 10 will come to that. But the gift
tongues will cease, not because of someone else, but it will
cease in and of itself. That's the verb that Paul is
using here. And this difference really, it's
not just a nuance, It means something. Paulists, and I believe this,
John McArthur believes that, well, some scholars don't, but
I think it's pretty clear that he's showing that the gift of
tongues is even more temporary than these other gifts. It is
so temporary that it will even seize itself. It will stop itself. It is only here for this little
tiny period of time, and then it will stop of itself. There will be no need for anyone
else to stop it, for any event or any person to come and seize
it or the perfect as we will come to in verse 10. No, we don't
even need to go into verse 9 and 10 to realize that tongues have
seized. They seize themselves. It's in
their nature to seize. And that is, of course, very
important in how we interpret these gifts and what makes them
stop, what makes them be done, go away, cease, stop. Because
obviously, I already told you, and you probably know, if you
have studied this passage and have an interest in charismatic
gifts and when they cease, that there is a debate here. People
will go to the nth degree to defend or to will defend their
viewpoint and attack the other and say, well, we can see here
this and that, and they completely miss this point. I don't think
that gifts, sorry, tongues is even the object there in verses
9 and 10 when he talks about the perfect and the partial will
be done away. That's not tongues. Tongues has
already ceased before that. Now, of course, if we look at
the nature of tongues and what they were used for, what was
the purpose of the miraculous speaking in tongues? We know
that it was, again, for the verification of the message, that the message
of the apostles would be believed. And there was a secondary meaning
also. It had the meaning of judgment, judgment on Israel. God had done
it before when he had sent the Israelites into captivity, into
a land where they spoke a language they did not understand. That
was a sign of judgment. But these things are very temporary. The verification of the apostles'
message is obviously temporary because we don't have apostles
anymore. We have the word written down. And judgment on Israel was also
temporary. They didn't stay forever in captivity. It was only for a short time.
So we can see just by how tongues are used, its purpose, its meaning,
that is always short-lived. It's always temporary. That's
why I also firmly believe that God, or Paul here, God through
Paul, is telling us that tongues will cease in and of themselves. It's not waiting for the perfect
to come. It's already ceased. It's already fulfilled its function.
It's done. Now, of course, this is talking
about tongues in its miraculous form. Of course, we have people
speaking in tongues. How else could we speak? We have
to use our tongues. That's what it means. Languages.
But I mean, that's obvious. It should be obvious that there
is still the ability to learn languages and tongues and speak
them with people. But we're talking about the miraculous
gift of tongues. So, again, coming back to the
main point here. In relation to eternal love,
we see that the spiritual gifts will decay. They will be done
away. Some have already stopped. They're not eternal. They're
so very temporary. But love is eternal. Love endures because God endures. Now, having said that, and we'll
have a little bit of time. We can move on. We'll leave verse
eight. We'll go on into verse nine and
10, and we'll start looking at it. Again, I don't think, or
at least I know we can't do the whole thing today because again,
there's so much debate here. There's so much controversy with
this word, the perfect. So we're gonna break it up into
two parts. We'll continue next time, but
we'll start looking at verses nine and 10. see what Paul says
there. So let's read verse 9 and 10.
It says, for we know in part, I'm prophesying in part, but
when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When the perfect comes, the partial
will be done away. There's so much debate here.
If you only knew how many books there were written about this.
There are whole conferences just to this These few words, I find
it amazing that so much controversy seems to linger here on this
little phrase, this one word, the perfect. What in the world? I don't have any doubt in my
mind that Paul was very clear when he wrote down this and he
had no intention of it ever becoming such a controversial thing, but
who knows? But again, We need to create
a biblical understanding of this, of everything, of course, that
we read in scripture. We're not going to come to this
one word and be like, oh, we're going to defend cessationism. We're going to look at it from
a cessationist viewpoint and this is what it means and boo
to all those who say it differently. No, we're going to take it slowly,
soberly, taking our time, studying this Word. Again, I intentionally
slow down our pace here through 1 Corinthians just because it
is... Well, first of all, love is so
important. Let's not forget that. The main point of this chapter,
why Paul is talking about love, it is far and above everything
else. We can speak till our Wives go home and our faces become
blue and yellow about the spiritual gifts. But beloveds, let's remember
the important thing, which is love. Love. That is important. That's really
why we have slowed down. We're not slowing down because
there's a lot of controversy and we must know every single
argument so that we can defend ourselves from those who disagree
with us. No, we slow down because we look at love. There's always
a reason to look at love, to have our minds conform to love. So again, before we tackle these
verses, remember Paul's main point, the permanence of love. When the perfect comes, whatever
it is, love will continue. The gift cease. Gifts go away. Every spiritual
gift is temporary and short-lived. But love will continue even after
the perfect has come. Whatever it is, there will still
be agape love. Prepare for that which is eternal,
not for the temporary. We all have enough of our temporary
struggles and miseries. Let's prepare our minds for that
which is eternal. Let's not forget that. But having said that, let's nevertheless
make an introduction at least here in verses 9 and 10. The
first thing I want us to see here in these two verses is what
I already touched on earlier. Namely, that these gifts will
be done away. What Paul mentions in these verses
is that we will know and prophesy in part. Did you see this? He didn't mention tongues here.
We won't speak in tongues in part, he says. No, we will know
in part and we will prophesy in part. And then there's once
again a reason why I think that Paul is Not including tongues
here, because he knows they will have already ceased. When the
perfect comes, there is no one speaking tongues anymore. They
have already ceased. But we will continue to know
in part and prophesy in part. We will continue to do these
things until the perfect, whatever it is, comes. Tongues, however, is not waiting
for the perfect to come. It will have already stopped. And again, I think this is important.
And I think this settles the debate pretty much because it
seems to be around the gift of tongues so much so that, yeah,
people break off friendships with one another because of disagreements
here. But let's not do that. Let's not be so immature that
we break off friendships. brotherhood just because we disagree
on one verse. Again, I think that the debate
becomes pretty non-existent when we realize
that Paul is not speaking about tongues in verse 9 and 10. When
the perfect comes, who is even talking about tongues then anymore?
They don't care about tongues anymore. They're looking to the
perfect and they're still practicing what? Love. They're practicing
love. So again, regardless of one's
opinion about the perfect and regardless of our opinion on
the charismatic or miraculous gifts, love will continue. And the debate, I think, can
be pretty easily resolved if we only saw this distinction. Tongues have already ceased because
they were very, always was very, temporary in nature. That's Paul's hope. Point here,
come September, love is eternal. So once again, we have established
this, once we have understood this, once we have looked at
the text and realized, oh, Paul is not even talking about tongues,
the perfect is becoming very clear, at least in my mind, what
it is. And we'll talk about the different
interpretations about it, but that will be for next time. So
I'm gonna leave you with a cliffhanger there, but come back next time,
we'll talk about the perfect, we'll go through the different
interpretations of it. But before that, the second thing
I want us to see is that these verses are a rebuke of
the Corinthians. Like the whole chapter. Like
the whole book, it's a rebuke to the Corinthians. Poor Corinthians,
they received this and it was just rebuke after rebuke. Poor
people, they were really in for something. They were immature
and they needed someone to come and rebuke them. Someone to tell
them off. And that is also what these verses
is about, what I think Paul's intention was, because we cannot
forget who Paul wrote to. He wrote to the Corinthians.
He didn't write to the church in Jakobstad at year, whatever
year it is, 2024, even though, of course, we are secondary recipients. He wrote to the church of Corinth
with their problems. And I touched on it earlier.
I said that maybe some of the people there thought that, well,
the people who have these gifts, they are probably perfect. They're almost as perfect as
you can be on this side of the grave. They have reached completeness. So I think there might be something
in the word the perfect there. Paul is being a little bit sarcastical. When you think you are perfect,
but wait until the perfect comes. You who think you are perfect.
Just wait. And I think we see that by him
using the words, we know in part and we prophesy in part. Corinthians,
you know nothing. It's only in part. The perfect
is still yet to come. Who are you to say of yourselves,
well, I have the gift of tongues, therefore I am perfect. Oh, Corinthians, know this. You know in part and you prophesy
in part. Just remember to love for eternity. And I think this is easily missed. Some people get so emotional
with what they want to defend in these verses that they completely
forget the context, they completely forget the people that Paul is
writing to, and it's easily missed. However, the only perfect thing
that ever walked on this earth was not one of us. It was not
a spiritual Christian with many gifts. It was Christ. That's the only truly perfect
thing that has been on this planet. And right now his physical body
is in heaven, so he's not here. So whatever the perfect is, it
is something outside ourselves, at least in our current condition.
With our physical, frail bodies that decay and will die, will
go away. So it is with the spiritual gifts.
They are frail, they're temporary, they will go away. Now the apostle John tells us
in 1st John chapter 3 verse 2 and 3 he writes, Beloved, now we
are children of God and it has not appeared as yet what we will
be. We know that when he appears we will be like him because we
will see him just as he is. And everyone who has this hope
set on him purifies himself just as he is pure. Now, our walk
here is not one of perfection, but one of purification. Purification. Meaning that we
repent from sin. We walk in sanctification, in
obedience to God's word. That's what we are right now. We are not yet what we will be. Perfection is not in us. Perfection is outside us. So again, whatever the perfect
is, we'll look at it next time. When it comes, it will make an
end to all incompleteness, to all imperfection, to all partial. What is partial? And even now,
as we are partial or temporary beings living here, walking here in imperfection, we can already
taste that which is perfect and which is eternal and which will
last, which is love. We are not what we will be but
we can taste or what we will be which is eternal beings full
of agape love. Leon Morris writes this, when
the consummation is reached all that is partial disappears. it will disappear and perfection
will come. And we'll leave the text here.
We'll make it a little bit shorter message today, but we'll leave
it here. We'll come back to it with the understanding that love
never fails. All right, let's pray. Father,
we come before you this evening or this, sorry, not this evening,
this day, this afternoon with a minds that are intrigued, that
are full of desires and want to know, what are you talking
about here, Lord? What is the perfect? What is
the meaning of gifts? Above everything else, we want
to know, Lord. We're so eager to know, and yet
we're reminded we know only in part. Oh God, that we would take
that to heart. that we would settle it in our
minds that however much knowledge we have and then however many
gifts that we have, it will only be in part until the perfect
comes. And we remember then. for all
the good things that you have given us through gifts and knowledge
and all the rest, to love, to love one another, to love now
as we will love in eternity, as you have loved us from eternity
past to eternity future. Oh God, help us love, help us
Focus on the permanence of love. It is always here. It will never
fail. Help us, Lord, to be loving beings. And Lord, for those who have
heard this message this Sunday, who do not believe, who are not
part of the kingdom, who cannot taste of the eternity of your
divine love, please be merciful to them. Let the words trickle
down into their hearts. Change them, Lord. Change them. Give them a new heart of flesh. Oh, God, be merciful to them
as you have been merciful to us. So be merciful to them. Oh, God, we pray for them. We
pray again that your son would be lifted up, that his name would
be praised now and forevermore. We pray all these things in his
precious name. Amen.
The Permanence Of Love
Series 1 Korintierbrevet
| Sermon ID | 111424145952968 |
| Duration | 42:15 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | 1 Corinthians 13:8 |
| Language | English |
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