Some value teaching but disregard prophecy (but 1 Thess 5:20!); some exalt tongues but resent teaching; and so forth. We need to appreciate all the gifts. By definition, gifts given by God’s grace are good. We just need to make sure that we use them in the right ways!

Purpose of gifts: Build up Christ’s body (1 Cor 12)

We should therefore keep in mind the purpose of gifts: to build up Christ’s body. God gives us gifts especially to minister to others. If we use them to boast of our superiority we abuse them. We dare not despise others’ gifts, no matter how small they seem. Nor dare we minimize the value of our own gifts.

In explaining this point, Paul waxes eloquent. Many Corinthian Christians unimpressed with Paul’s rhetoric, so he uses here the rhetorical technique called anaphora: three times he repeats but varies the same sort of expression: “varieties of … but the same” (12:4-6). Then he offers his thesis in 12:7: “But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (NASB). Then he again uses rhetorical repetition, linking diverse gifts with the phrase, “to another …” (12:8-10, varying the Greek terms for “another”). In 12:11, he returns to “the same Spirit,” as in 12:4, bracketing the entire section.

Then he elaborates on the point that the body works as one yet has many members (12:12, 14, 20, 27). He dwells on this point at length; dwelling-on-a-point was an approach that orators used when they wanted to reinforce a matter. Paul takes his body metaphor to grotesquely graphic lengths: we don’t want our eye or foot declaring independence from body! Today we might even think of tissues that become harmful to the rest of the body, as in the case of cancers or gangrene (cf. 2 Tim 2:17). God forbid that any of us should become gangrene to the rest of the body of Christ! We should use our gifts to serve the rest of the body, and also recognize that we ourselves need the rest of the body and its gifts.

We don’t routinely amputate members of our body because we think some less important than the others. We don’t tear out some members because we think, “That one’s dispensable! Oh, here, I’ve got two eyeballs, let me get rid of one!” We don’t normally regard any of our members as dispensable, because all of them have functions that contribute to the whole. Indeed, Paul says, we work harder to protect weaker members and to clothe the less public members (12:22-26).

Paul goes on to note gift-roles in 12:28-30. Of these, he ranks only the first three: apostles, prophets, and teachers. (Those of us who are teachers can let out a big cheer now!) The others are unranked, although Paul probably lists tongues last because of its abuse in Corinth (1 Cor 14).

The way of love (1 Cor 13)

1 Corinthians 12 and 1 Corinthians 14 are about spiritual gifts, and it’s no coincidence that 1 Corinthians 13 lies right between them. (Those of you who are good with math may have already noticed this pattern.) 1 Corinthians 13 is no mere abstract treatise on love, despite Paul’s use of epideictic rhetoric here to praise the character of love. 1 Corinthians 13 is showing why love is central in the proper use of spiritual gifts.

We should note the verses that frame Paul’s elaboration about love: 1 Cor 12:31 and 1 Cor 14:1. These verses are explicit that we can seek for spiritual gifts; it is not simply a matter of what we are born or born again recognizing, but we can pray for God to give us particular gifts (1 Cor 12:31; 1 Cor 14:1, 39). (God is, of course, sovereign in which ones he gives us, knowing what is best for the body as a whole; 12:7.) But Paul is also clear which gifts we should particularly seek. Love seeks the best gifts—best being defined by love as those gifts that build up the body.

Paul demonstrates that, without love, use of gifts is worthless. Gifts are valuable but we abuse them if we do not deploy them to serve and love. In 1 Cor 13:1-3, Paul declares that love greater than all God’s gifts to us; in modern terms, love rather than unmerited gifts is a sign of “spirituality.” (Even if love, too, is a fruit of God working within us; Gal 5:22; 1 John 4:19.)

Paul uses hyperbole, or rhetorical overstatement, here, to reinforce his point graphically. Even if I spoke in all tongues, communicating in all languages, I would be nothing without love! (Most Anglo Americans speak just one language. Most of my African friends speak three or four. But even if we spoke all languages …) Having all knowledge—a status that not even the world’s greatest scholars dare claim—and all faith so as to move mountains (a hyperbole borrowed from Jesus), would not grant us status before God. Even if we work hard to develop these gifts, these skills are gifts, not merits, and they are worthless without love.

The point, of course, is not that God’s gifts are bad. God’s gifts are by definition good. But if we use them only to honor ourselves and not to build up Christ’s body, if we deploy them selfishly rather than to serve lovingly, we miss the point for which God gave us the gifts. He gives us gifts so we can participate together as Christ’s body in building one another up, in being agents of God for one another.

In 1 Cor 13:4-7, Paul describes what love is like. Sometimes we think that Paul is merely praising love. He is praising love, but he is also implicitly reproving the Corinthians. Love is not jealous (zêloi; 13:4)—but the Corinthians are (3:3). Love is not arrogant (phusioô; 13:4)—but the Corinthians are (4:6, 18-19; 5:2). Love does not seek for oneself (ou zêtei ta heautês; 13:5); in 10:24 Paul exhorts the Corinthians to seek not for oneself but for others (i.e., not one’s rights but preventing others from stumbling).

Paul again waxes eloquent with rhetorical patterning in 13:7: four times he begins with panta (“all things”). Love, he declares, puts up with all things (13:7a). This evokes Paul’s earlier example of himself in 9:12: he puts up with all things (using the same term, stegô) to prevent others from stumbling.

(Continued in part 2)