Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Corinthians · About this commentary
Without Love, Nothing
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
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. · WEB
Four supreme achievements are named and each is priced at zero — and the last two are acts nobody would call selfish.
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 1 Corinthians 13:1.
The chapter opens on the gift Corinth valued most and pushes it past its own ceiling — not merely human languages but of angels. And the verdict is a noise: brass sounding, a cymbal clanging, the instruments of the pagan processions these people would have grown up with 1 Corinthians 12:2. Loud, hollow, and carrying no message. The most impressive utterance in the world, without love, is percussion.
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 1 Corinthians 13:2.
Three more, and each is taken to its absolute limit — all mysteries, all knowledge, all faith, enough to move mountains as the Lord had promised Matthew 17:20 Mark 11:23. These are the very things the letter has been discussing: prophecy, ranked second among the appointments 1 Corinthians 12:28; knowledge, the boast of the strong 1 Corinthians 8:1; faith, listed among the Spirit's gifts 1 Corinthians 12:9.
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 1 Corinthians 13:3.
The last two are the hardest, because they are not gifts at all but sacrifices — and sacrifices of the kind nobody could dismiss as self-serving. Total divestment of property, and the surrender of the body itself. If any human act could be assumed to constitute love, it would be one of these two.
And the verdict is nothing. Which establishes what the chapter is actually claiming: love is not the same thing as generous behavior, and cannot be inferred from it. A man may hand over everything he owns for reasons that have nothing to do with the people who receive it — for the record of having done it, or for his own standing before God. The letter has already exposed that mechanism in a congregation whose giftedness had become a way of establishing itself 1 Corinthians 4:7.
So the three verses close every exit. Neither eloquence, nor insight, nor faith, nor charity, nor martyrdom counts as the thing itself. What the thing is has to be described, which is what the next four verses do — and the description is entirely in verbs 1 Corinthians 13:4.
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