Skip to content
mannafest.faith
Read
1 Corinthians

1 Corinthianschapter 13

13 verses · BSB1 Corinthians book hub →

Speaks with:1 Corinthians 13×5Galatians 5×31 John 4×31 John 3×21 Peter 4×31 Timothy 1×1

Summary

Chapter summary

The love chapter. Though I speak with tongues of men and angels, and have not charity, I am nothing. Charity suffereth long and is kind; envieth not; vaunteth not itself; is not puffed up; doth not behave itself unseemly; seeketh not her own. Charity never faileth. Now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. Wesley reads this as the crown of the Corinthian correctives. Every gift is nothing without love.

Context

Epistle · Paul — 1 Corinthians overview

  • A. 1–3 Tongues, Prophecy, Martyrdom — and Still Nothing
  • B. 4–7 What Love Actually Does
  • C. 8–13 Now We See Dimly; Then, Face to Face

The outline

  1. A.Tongues, Prophecy, Martyrdom — and Still Nothingvv. 1 to 3

    Read vv. 1 to 3 →

  2. B.What Love Actually Doesvv. 4 to 7

    Read vv. 4 to 7 →

  3. C.Now We See Dimly; Then, Face to Facevv. 8 to 13

    Read vv. 8 to 13 →

Threads

Each of these runs on past this chapter. The passage you have just read is marked.

Faith, hope, and love as one triad

Pattern

Paul binds the three graces into one triad across three letters: now abideth faith, hope, charity; faith in Christ Jesus, love to all the saints, and the hope laid up in heaven; the work of faith, labour of love, and patience of hope; and the triad worn as armor.

The triad is Paul's shorthand for the whole Christian life, and the greatest of these is charity. At 1 Thessalonians 5:8 the three become armor, the breastplate of faith and love and the hope of salvation for an helmet.

  1. 1 Corinthians 13:13 you are here

    Now abideth faith, hope, charity

    These three abide when prophecies, tongues, and knowledge have served their season; the greatest is charity.

  2. Colossians 1:4-5

    Faith, love, and the hope laid up

    The Colossian thanksgiving runs the same triad: faith in Christ Jesus, love to all the saints, the hope laid up in heaven.

  3. 1 Thessalonians 1:3

    Work of faith, labour of love, patience of hope

    The letter opens by remembering each grace at work in a church a few weeks old.

  4. 1 Thessalonians 5:8

    The triad worn as armor

    The breastplate of faith and love, and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.

The world behind this chapter

1 Corinthians 13
When
Paul's third journey, writing from Ephesus · c. AD 54–55
Where
The centre of the argument about gifts — not a wedding reading but a rebuke.
Who first heard it
A gifted, quarrelsome congregation being shown what all their abilities are worth without love.

The history

The noisy gong and clanging cymbal were instruments of pagan worship, used in the ecstatic cults to work a crowd up. Describing gifted speech that way, to people who had grown up around those rites, was pointed.

Corinth was famous for its bronze, and polished bronze mirrors were among its products. A bronze mirror gave a real but dim and slightly distorted image — which is exactly the comparison Paul makes for present knowledge against seeing face to face.

The list of what love is and is not reads like a diagnosis of the letter's problems: not jealous, not boastful, not arrogant, not insisting on its own way. Every item has an address earlier in the letter.

"Giving my body to be burned" (some manuscripts read "that I may boast") refers to the most extreme act of self-sacrifice imaginable in that world. Even that, Paul says, is worth nothing without love.

What it meant to them

The first hearers were not being handed a poem about romance. They were being told that tongues, prophecy, mountain-moving faith, and giving away everything they owned added up to zero without love — and they were the ones ranking each other by exactly those things.

The permanence argument closed it. Prophecy, tongues, and knowledge all belong to the partial present; faith, hope, and love remain, and the greatest of these is love.

Sources cited

  • Bruce W. Winter, After Paul Left Corinth
  • Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament

Every work MannaFest builds on →

The text of this chapter

This page carries no textual note on 1 Corinthians 13. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →

This page draws on J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament; Jonathan Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.

← Back: 1 Corinthians 12Continue: 1 Corinthians 14 →