1 Corinthians 13 Discussion

If everything you do for God could still be “a noisy gong,” would you want to know why? We open 1 Corinthians 13 and let it confront the way we talk, serve, argue, and even “minister,” because Paul refuses to separate spiritual power from Christian love.

We’re Pastor Plek and Pastor Holland, and we work through the chapter with a simple flow: outline, observe, interpret, then apply. That takes us from the supremacy of love in verses 1 to 3, to the gritty characteristics of love in verses 4 to 7, and into the endurance of love as the only reality that never ends. Along the way we talk about tongues, prophecy, sacrifice, and the warning that gifts without love become empty at best and manipulative at worst.

We also slow down on a tension our culture often misses: love is kind and not rude, but love also “rejoices with the truth” and refuses to celebrate wrongdoing. Think of love as a fire that brings warmth and light, and truth as the boundary that keeps it from burning the house down. Then we wrestle with “the perfect” and why the hope of seeing Jesus face to face changes what we chase right now, including maturity, patience, and putting away childish ways.

If you want a Bible-based, practical take on what real love looks like in everyday discipleship, press play. Subscribe for more, share this with a friend who needs 1 Corinthians 13 beyond the wedding reading, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

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Transcript

Welcome And Chapter 13 Roadmap

Pastor Plek 0:10

And welcome back to a chapter a day. Keeps the devil away. I'm Pastor Plagueless, Pastor Holland. We're talking 1 Corinthians chapter 13. We're going to outline it, observe it, interpret, and then apply it so that you can take love with you today. All right, so chapter 13, verses 1 through 3 talks about the prominence and the supremacy of love. It is without it, pretty much everything you do is worthless. Then verses 4 through 7, uh, it's the characteristics of love. Like love is patient, kind, rejoices with truth, bears all things, and then has some negative traits. It's not uh love refuses to be jealous, boastful, arrogant, rude, et cetera. And then we got the endurance of love. Love never fails. In contrast, you're gonna have temporary gifts, prophecies will one day stop. The gift of tongues will one day stop. And when the perfect comes, the partial passes away. And that means that perfect. We'll talk about what that means in uh within this chapter. Then finally in verse 13, it kind of is all eclipsed by faith, hope, and love, these three. But the greatest of these is love. All right, what observations are you making here?

Pastor Holland 1:19

Uh love is like a really big deal.

Pastor Plek 1:21

Yeah, that's my first observation. Yeah. Now, our culture can sometimes take love and make it the it's never being mean.

Pastor Holland 1:31

Love, also, love is love. Did you know that? It's funny that um Paul never says love is love. He says love is a bunch of things here. But he doesn't say love. Yeah, he actually gives like more helpful um descriptions. It's patient, it's kind.

Pastor Plek 1:48

Uh okay, so what about um the first three verses? I love this uh because it gets into um speaking in tongues, which is what they were sort of known for of men and of angels. And this is where I go with it could be ecstatic speech, saying angelic speech is ecstatic of some sort. But have not love, I am a noisy gong or clinging symbol. You're just making noise, even if you're saying the best sermon ever. If you have the best sermon ever that is devoid of love, it is just a noisy gong or clanging symbol. Uh, and then if you have prophetic powers, like you are like you have visions and you could see the future, and you could literally move a mountain or give a healing of some sort, but you don't have love, you're worthless. And then even if you sacrifice mightily but don't have love, worthless. Isn't that wild? Yeah.

Pastor Holland 2:43

I am nothing and I gain nothing.

Pastor Plek 2:46

So when I think about these things, I think of um do you remember in Acts, oof, is it 12, where uh uh Herod Agrippa is giving an oratory speech of some sort, and then people go, It's the voice of a God, and he goes, He doesn't say it's not or anything, and then God just kills him. Yep, he's nothing.

Pastor Holland 3:07

And he's it says he's like eaten by worms, breathed his last and eaten by worms. And you're just like, All right, and that king's gone. Yeah.

Truth As Love’s Safe Boundary

Pastor Plek 3:15

Or the prophetic powers. I always think of Balaam. You remember Balaam? He's the guy on the donkey that you know, the donkey sees the angel, but he can't, and uh, tells him not to go that way, but then God allows him to, and then eventually he blesses whom um the king of Midian wanted to curse. He he blessed Israel, but then he gave him the secret because he did he was blessing not from love, he was blessing from almost like duty, but had no love. In fact, his love was for money, and so therefore he figured out a way for Israel to curse themselves, and so he is nothing in in the grand scheme of things. And the other one I thought of was uh Judas, who sacrificed himself after he um betrayed Jesus, yeah, and he got hell. He is he gained nothing from that sacrifice, right? So you can sacrifice, you can do great things for God. This goes back to Jesus saying, like, um, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not do miracles in your name? Did we not do mighty works in your name? And I'll say, Depart from me, I never knew you. You did not have love of Jesus or love of people, or if you didn't have love.

Pastor Holland 4:29

Yeah, and I I love when he's describing love here, it's like uh because we mentioned before, like our culture will take love and um twist it to mean something that you know is like, oh, you're you're you never say hard, hard truths, or that you have to affirm or accept everyone and everything so that you know you can be inclusive. And um he when Paul describes it though, he says that it's kind, it's not rude, but he also says that it doesn't rejoice at wrongdoing, it rejoices with the truth. Right. So like I think of like a fire in a fireplace. Like if you have a fireplace and there's no fire in it, um, you're there's no light, there's no warmth, it's not doing anyone any good. You need like fire would be like the love. Um so you need you need the fire and the fireplace, but also you need the the curtain thing so that that fire doesn't spread and burn the house down. And like truth is the boundary that helps love really be what it's supposed to be, um, and that it's warmth, it's light, it draws people in, um, but it doesn't burn down the house. Yeah. That's that's what our culture does with love is it's it it's destructive, actually, because it affirms everything, even wrongdoing.

Pastor Plek 5:46

And yeah, uh yeah. That's not love. Affirming wrongdoing is it's rejoicing in wrongdoing, and that's not love. Yeah. How about look at verse seven? Love bears all things. That that's where sometimes I feel like uh should we be bearing with sin or bear like what do you think he's he's getting there?

Pastor Holland 6:05

No, like bears up under all things um with the people that you are loving. And so, like if you're married and your spouse gets in a horrible accident and now you need to, you know, serve them and help that they're they're debilitated in some way. You don't just go, all right, I'm out. That's not what I signed up for.

Pastor Plek 6:24

And what about love believes all things? That's like you're you believe the best in people, or you believe that God can do anything. Where do you where do you think that is?

Pastor Holland 6:32

Uh I think all all of these all things means like through all things. In the midst of all things, no matter what comes, love bears up under it. You believe, you have you have faith in God, you have hope in God.

When The Perfect Finally Comes

Pastor Plek 6:46

Maybe it's like love perseveres through the most difficult trials, all yes, with faith and with hope, um, not giving up. Um what about the okay, love never ends, prophecies will pass away, tongues will pass away when the perfect comes. What is the perfect? Uh the return of Christ. Okay, so there's three options here. You got it could be that when the the all the scripture was canonized, and so now therefore you don't have any more tongues and you don't have any more prophecies. There's new no there's no new revelation. Uh, or it could be when you die, or it could be when Christ returns. Uh so I think those are all available options. Uh, I tend to think of the last two as being most likely. Um okay. Yeah. Because when you meet Jesus, that's when there's no more need for prophecy or like a partial knowing of something.

Pastor Holland 7:37

Yeah, you'll see him face to face.

Fully Known And Still Loved

Pastor Plek 7:40

Uh let's get into some uh nature of man here. One of the first things I just noticed is that um we are not fully known by people. And being fully known by God or being fully known by anyone is a scary thing.

Pastor Holland 7:57

Yeah.

Pastor Plek 7:58

Uh and uh this is I I think it's a Kellerism, Tim Keller. But like, you know, our greatest fear is that we would be fully known and rejected, and we are loved, and that is wild. Like this whole chapter is about love, even though you are fully known.

Pastor Holland 8:18

Yeah, yeah. Um that's uh part of the love. Um love is patient and kind. Um, that kind of thing is like even though you are not like holding up your end of the deal necessarily, or you're not everything that I want you to be or need you to be, my love for you is not dependent on on what you measuring up. My love for you is like a a steady commitment of me to your good.

Pastor Plek 8:45

That's good.

Pastor Holland 8:46

Yeah. Um how about uh we can't yeah, go ahead. I was gonna say verse 11. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. There is um, we ought nature of man, we're supposed to mature. Um, and sometimes we don't. Yeah. Uh sometimes, despite uh us getting older um naturally, physically, we stay spiritually um malnourished, malformed, immature, you know. And so Paul's encouraging here the Corinthians, I think. He's saying, You you might um you might have all these great gifts and you might look physically mature, but spiritually, you you're acting like children still, and you need to learn how to love each other.

Pastor Plek 9:36

Yeah, it's good. Um, anything else in nature of man here? Oh, about man cannot produce true love on his own without the spirit's work. Yeah. Uh so even heroic acts, kind of like we talked about, um, without love are empty.

Pastor Holland 9:55

Yeah.

Pastor Plek 9:56

Okay. How about character of God?

Pastor Holland 9:58

Um All this stuff about love, you can just say you can switch love out with Christ or God. God is patient. And God is love. Yeah.

unknown 10:08

Yeah.

Pastor Plek 10:09

But love is not God. Yeah. You want to talk? You want to explain what God is love. That's uh first John, right? Um, and so love is not God, meaning like your highest thing, like you worship is like loving, like the feeling of love. This is different. This is um our our hearts should be focused on who Jesus is, and he is the epitome of love. But love, the emotion, or even the action, isn't God. There you go. Yeah, that's good. Um uh yeah, how about um God values uh what it endures eternally? So love endure is is a forever thing that we will experience in heaven with God. And prophecy will have when you have full knowledge, you'll have no need for prophecy. You have no need for miracles when miracles are no longer miracles.

Pastor Holland 11:12

Yeah. Love love will endure um even even after, you know, we we're walking by faith right now, we'll be walking by sight when we see Jesus. We won't need to hope in anything anymore because you know, the everything we're hoping for now will have come when Jesus returns. But so faith and love or faith and hope go away, but love continues forever. Yeah.

Pastor Plek 11:37

How about God promise us to know him as well as he knows us? Yeah. Isn't that cool? I mean, like, imagine knowing God as intimately as he obviously knows you, and then when you have perfect knowledge, wow. And getting to see Jesus face to face. Right.

Pastor Holland 11:54

I mean, man, that's gonna be awesome.

Pastor Plek 11:57

Man, all right, let's get into some application. Uh sin to confess or or avoid, a promise to claim, an example to follow, command to obey, or knowledge to believe. Uh, what you got?

Pastor Holland 12:07

I think knowledge to believe of we'll see Jesus face to face one day, just knowing it's good to remember Christianity is not just a set of like truths that you agree with. Yeah. Or, you know, um yeah, it's about a person, Jesus Christ, who we're gonna spend eternity with and one day see face to face.

Pastor Plek 12:25

How about sin to avoid? Don't use your gifts, talents, or service without genuine love. Otherwise, they become manipulation. Like when you prophesy or something without love for someone, it's usually a manipulative tactic. When you are have a a speech that you're trying to persuade someone, but you don't have love, that could be a manipulation technique.

Pastor Holland 12:49

Uh, another application, um, give up childish ways. Nice. If you're if you're listening to this and you are not a child, you should not be acting like a child. Um grow up.

Pastor Plek 13:03

Grow up. How about promise to claim love never fails? Um when we have Jesus, we know that we can grow with him. He'll be patient with us, he'll be kind to us, he will love us, and it will never fail to produce in us him.

Pastor Holland 13:19

Yeah. Um, be patient. Nice. Be kind. Don't be envious. Don't be done. Don't be boastful. Don't be arrogant or rude. Nice. Don't insist on your own way. I mean, you could just read this.

Final Takeaways And Goodbye

Pastor Plek 13:31

Rejoice in the truth, not in wrongdoing. Yeah. All right. That's good. I think that pretty much wraps it up for me. Okay, yeah. Hey, thanks so much for watching. We'll see you next time on a chapter a day.