Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Corinthians · About this commentary
Faith, Hope, and Love Remain
1 Corinthians 13:8-13
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will be done away with. Where there are various languages, they will cease. Where there is knowledge, it will be done away with. · WEB
The gifts are temporary by design because they are partial, and the chapter ends by naming the three things that outlast them.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will be done away with. Where there are various languages, they will cease. Where there is knowledge, it will be done away with 1 Corinthians 13:8.
The argument turns from worth to duration. Three of the gifts Corinth prized are named and each is given an expiry — and the reason is not that they are defective but that they are partial: for we know in part and we prophesy in part 1 Corinthians 13:9. Prophecy and knowledge are ways of receiving fragments, and a fragment becomes unnecessary when the whole arrives.
But when that which is complete has come, then that which is partial will be done away with 1 Corinthians 13:10.
The terminus is that which is complete, and the next two verses identify it. It is not the closing of an era of church history but a condition described as seeing face to face and knowing fully 1 Corinthians 13:12 — which is what the letter elsewhere dates to the Lord's coming 1 Corinthians 1:7 1 Corinthians 15:52 1 John 3:2.
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things 1 Corinthians 13:11.
The first analogy, and it carries a rebuke that has been in the letter since chapter three, where this congregation was called babies who could not take solid food 1 Corinthians 3:1–2. The point here is not that the gifts are childish but that a stage which is entirely appropriate is nonetheless a stage, and clinging to it once it is passed is the error.
For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, even as I was also fully known 1 Corinthians 13:12.
An ancient mirror was polished metal: it worked, and it gave a real image, indirectly. That is a generous account of present spiritual knowledge — not false, and not direct. Face to face is the phrase used of Moses' unusual nearness to God Numbers 12:8 Exodus 33:11, promised here to everybody.
And the last clause quietly restores the theme from chapter eight. Even as I was also fully known — the knowing that has always been complete is God's of us, not ours of him 1 Corinthians 8:3. A church competing over knowledge is told that it is already fully known, and that its own knowing will catch up later.
But now faith, hope, and love remain — these three. The greatest of these is love 1 Corinthians 13:13.
Three survivors, set against the three that pass away in verse 8. And love is greatest for a reason the chapter has supplied: faith gives way to sight and hope to possession, but love is what God himself is and does, and there is no condition in which it becomes unnecessary. Which is why the argument can resume in the next verse without contradiction — follow after love, and earnestly desire spiritual gifts 1 Corinthians 14:1. The gifts were never the rival; they were always the servants.
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