Introduction
3. The supremacy of love ch. 13
Paul now proceeded to elaborate on the fact that love surpasses the most important spiritual gifts. Some of the Corinthian Christians may not have possessed any of the gifts mentioned in the previous three lists in chapter 12, but all of them could practice love. Clearly all of them needed to practice love more fully. The fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) is a more obvious demonstration of the Spirit’s presence in a life and His control over a life than the gifts of the Spirit.
Love is the most fundamental and prominent of these graces. The love in view is God’s love that He has placed in the believer in the indwelling Spirit that should overflow to God and others. It is the love that only the indwelling Holy Spirit can produce in a believer and manifest through a believer. Fortunately we do not have to produce it. We just need to cooperate with God by doing His will, with His help, and the Spirit will produce it.
"A Christian community can make shift somehow if the ’gifts’ of chapter 12 be lacking: it will die if love is absent. The most lavish exercise of spiritual gifts cannot compensate for lack of love." [Note: Bruce, 1 and 2 Corinthians, p. 124.]
This chapter is something of a digression in Paul’s argument concerning keeping the gift of tongues in its proper perspective (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:1), but it strengthens his argument considerably. As we have seen throughout this epistle, the Corinthians needed to love one another and others. It is not coincidental that the great chapter on love in the Bible appears in a letter to this unloving church.
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