The Permanence of Love
13: 8-13
The permanence of love DIG: Why will the gifts of prophecy, tongues, and knowledge cease? How does history, theology and the Bible teach us that tongues ceased in the aposotolic age. Why is Yeshua Messiah the Perfect that will come? What will happen with prophecy and knowledge when we see Yeshua face to face? Why is love greater than faith and hope?
REFLECT: How have you experienced the difference between, “I love you if . . .” and “I love you because . . .” and true agape love? What is only partial in your life right now that you look forward to being permanent when Yeshua returns? What do you think it will be like when you see Yeshua face to face? To experience true, unconditional love. What will you say to Him?
When the Lord returns, when the Perfect comes, the spiritual gifts will pass away.
As Paul continues, he has one final verb for love – Love never falls (Greek: pipto, meaning to fall). By using this verb, Paul wants us to be sure of one thing, namely, that there will never be a situation in which love is the wrong way to act by causing us to fall. Sometimes, admittedly, we may need to act with what is called “tough love,” but this, too, is a form of love that seeks to change another person out of deep concern and compassion for that person’s growth and well-being. If we act in love, we will never stumble and fall down (13:8a).
Elizabeth Barret Browning (an English poet of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime, 1806-1861) wrote a poem entitled “I Loved Once,” in which she writes, “Love looks beyond the bounds of time and space, Love takes eternity in its embrace.” Love is deathless. It is never defeated, never disillusioned, never disappointed. Physical love (Greek: eros) that is mere passion burns like a stack of wood, hay or straw (3:12), and is soon consumed. That is the reason there are so many divorces today. It is not the kind of love that holds two hearts together. Love is eternal. It is permanent.
God’s love is that kind of love. How wonderful that is! His love “looks beyond the bounds of time and space and takes eternity in its embrace.” Messiah never stops loving. The only unpardonable sin is the rejection of the Spirit (Luke 12:10). Family members may be unbelievers, but Yeshua still loves them. Maybe someone you know has committed a great sin, but He still loves them. You cannot keep Messiah from loving them or you. You can put up an umbrella to keep yourself dry, but you can’t stop the rain from falling. Neither can you stop God from loving – regardless of the umbrella of sin or unbelief that anyone is under.429
Paul now returns to the gifts of the Spirit. He cites three specific examples – the three that had created the most problems in Corinth: prophecy, tongues, and knowledge. And following a common rabbinic pattern of comparing the two worlds, teaches that love never ends, but prophecies will pass, tongues will cease, current knowledge of the Word will pass (13:8b). Each of these gifts will eventually cease and disappear, but love will continue.
History, theology and the Bible teach us that tongues ceased in the apostolic age. As John MacArthur teaches in his book Charismatic Chaos, the contemporary charismatic movement does not represent a revival of biblical tongues. It is a delusion similar to the practice of counterfeit tongues at Corinth. What evidence is there that tongues have ceased?
First, tongues were a sign gift that ended with the apostles. The last recorded miracles in the B’rit Chadashah occurred in late 59 AD with the healings on the island of Malta (see the commentary on Acts, to see link click Db – The Storm along the Shore of Crete). From then until John finished the book of Revelation, no miracle was recorded. Miracle gifts, like tongues and healing are mentioned only in First Corinthians, an early letter written in 55 AD from Ephesus. The next two letters, Romans (57 AD) and Ephesians (60 AD), both discuss gifts of the Spirit at length, but there is no mention of the miraculous gifts. By that time miracles were already looked upon as something in the past (Hebrews 2:3-4). The apostolic authority and the apostolic message needed no further confirmation. Before the first century ended, all the B’rit Chadashah had been written and was circulating through the churches. The sign gifts had ceased to serve any purpose. And when the apostolic age ended with the death of the apostle John, the signs that identified the apostles had already become moot.
For those who say that all the spiritual gifts of the past are still in effect today, I will call your attention to Exodus (see the commentary on Exodus Ew – The Appointment of Bezalel and Ohaliab) where ADONAI singled out Bezalel and Ohaliab and filled them with the Spirit of God with the spiritual gift of being able to work with gold, silver, bronze, cutting precious stones to be set, woodcarving and every other craft. So, if none of the gifts have ceased, we would find people in every congregation with the spiritual gift of artistry. But we don’t. I have never heard of anyone, ever claiming the spiritual gift of working with gold, silver or bronze. Not only that, this giftedness is nowhere to be found in the lists of spiritual gifts in the B’rit Chadashah. Why? Because it too has ceased.
Secondly, the gift of tongues was intended as a sign to unbelieving Isra’el (see Do – Tongues are a Sign). They signified that God had begun a new work that encompassed the Gentiles. ADONAI would now speak to all nations and languages. The barriers were broken down. And so, the gift of languages symbolized not only the judgment of God on a disobedient northern kingdom of Isra’el, but also a blessing of God on the whole world. Tongues were a sign of transition between the Dispensation of Torah (see the commentary on Exodus Da – The Dispensation of the Torah) and the Dispensation of Grace (see the commentary on Hebrews Bp – The Dispensation of Grace). With the establishment of the Church, a new day had dawned on the people of God. But once the transition was made, the sign was no longer necessary and the gift of tongues ceased to exist.
Thirdly, history records that tongues did cease. Again, it is significant that tongues are mentioned only in the earliest books of the B’rit Chadashah. Paul wrote nine books after First Corinthians and never mentioned tongues again (see the commentary on Galatians Ae – Dates of Books in the B’rit Chadashah). Peter never mentions tongues; James never mentions tongues; John never mentions tongues; and neither did Jude. Tongues appeared only briefly in Acts and First Corinthians as the new message of the gospel was being spread. But once the Church was established, tongues ceased.
Chrysostom (347 to 407 AD) and Augustine (396 to 430 AD) – the greatest theologians of the eastern and western churches considered tongues obsolete in their day. Chrysostom stated categorically that tongues had ceased by his time. Writing in the fourth century, he described tongues as an obscure practice and as a result of “their cessation . . . no longer takes place.” Augustine, in his comments on Acts 2:4, wrote, “In the earliest times the Holy Spirit fell on them that believed and they spoke in tongues. These were signs adapted to that time . . . then it passed away.”
During the first five hundred years of the Church, the only people who claimed to have spoken in tongues were followers of Montanus. He was a second century heretic from Phrygia who believed he was a prophet sent from God to reform Christianity through self-denial, speaking in tongues, and continued prophetic revelation. His teachings were divisive because he and his followers believed themselves to be the only true church. Montanus and his followers claimed to receive revelation from God that added to the Word spoken by Messiah and the apostles. He taught that God’s kingdom would be set up in his own village of Pepuza in his lifetime, and that he would have a prominent role in it. Those and other false prophecies were among the reasons why the rest of the Church considered his movement heretical.
Apparently no other tongues-speaking was practiced in the Church until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when it appeared in several Roman Catholic groups in Europe. A group of militant Protestants in the Cevennes region of southern France began to prophesy, experience visions and speak in tongues. The group, sometimes called the Cevenol prophets, are remembered for their political and military activities, not their spiritual legacy. Most of their prophecies went unfulfilled. They were rabidly anti-Catholic, and advocated the use of armed force against the Catholic church. Many of them were consequently persecuted and killed by Rome. At the other end of the spectrum, the Jansenists, a group of Roman Catholic loyalists, who opposed the teaching of justification by faith, also claimed to be able to speak in tongues in the 1700’s.
Another group that practiced a form of tongues was the Shakers, an American sect with Quaker roots that flourished in the mid-1700’s. Mother Ann Lee, the founder of the sect, regarded herself as the female equivalent of Yeshua Messiah. She claimed to be able to speak in seventy-two different languages. The Shakers believed sexual intercourse was sinful, even within marriage. They spoke in tongues while dancing and singing in a trancelike state (see Ce – The Pagan Background of Counterfeit Spiritual Gifts).
Then in the early nineteenth century, Scottish Presbyterian pastor Edward Irving and members of his congregation practiced speaking in tongues and prophesying. Irvingite prophets often contradicted each other, their prophecies failed to come to pass, and their meetings were characterized by wild excess, much like the church at Corinth. The movement was further discredited when some of their prophets admitted to falsifying prophecies and others even attributed their “giftedness” to evil spirits. This group eventually became the Catholic Apostolic Church, which taught many false doctrines, embracing several Roman Catholic doctrines and creating twelve apostolic officers.
All of those supposed manifestations of tongues were identified with groups that were either heretical, fanatical, or otherwise unorthodox. For over 1800 years, the gift of tongues, along with other sign gifts, was unknown in the life and doctrine of the Church.
Then, around the turn of the twentieth century, tongues became a major emphasis within the holiness movement, a large section of which developed into modern Pentecostalism. The charismatic movement, which began in 1960, carried the practice of tongues beyond traditional Pentecostalism into many other denominations, churches, and groups, both Catholic and Protestant, filling the void in true spiritual living with false experience.
Many charismatics defended as biblical the modern tongues-speaking as part of the latter-day signs spoken of by Joel (Joel 2:28-32), and quoted by Peter in his speech on Shavu’ot (Acts 2:17-21). But it is clear from a careful examination of those passages that the prophecy does not apply either to Shavu’ot or to modern times. From earlier in Joel 2 we see that the time referred to is the Second Coming of Yeshua, when the Lord will remove the northern army far from Isra’el (Joel 2:20), just before the Messianic Kingdom is established and ADONAI’s chosen people turn to Him (Joel 2:21-27). It is only after this (Joel 2:28) that the miraculous signs in the heavens and on the earth will appear.
There was no blood, columns of smoke, darkening of the sun, or changing of the moon to blood associated with Shavu’ot (see the commentary on Acts An – Peter Speaks to the Shavu’ot Crowd). Nor have any such things happened in modern times. Peter was not saying that Shavu’ot completely fulfilled Joel’s prophecy, because obviously it did not. He was saying that the limited miraculous signs that had occurred shortly before he began his speech (see the commentary on Acts Al – The Ruach Ha’Kodesh Comes at Shavu’ot) were a glimpse of much greater and far-reaching signs and wonders that would come in the last days (Acts 2:17). There is simply no biblical explanation here for the modern reappearance of tongues (languages) or any of the other miraculous sign gifts.430
For our current knowledge is partial, and our prophecy is partial. That the present function of the spiritual gifts is incomplete, and that something more significant will come, is seen in Paul’s words but when the Perfect (Greek: teleion) comes. Here the incomplete state in which we now live forms the contrast. At that time in the future, there will be no need for such gifts because they are for this world only, the partial will pass away (Geek: katargethesontai, meaning to be abolished or to be rendered inoperative). In contrast to love, the spiritual gifts have a built-in obsolescence. They are not permanent and do not get perfected. Prophecy and our current partial knowledge of the Word will be brought to an end and be replaced with a perfect, or complete knowledge of the living Word, Yeshua Messiah. Katargethesontai makes it clear that these gifts do not flow into something new, like an onramp connecting to a freeway. They reach a dead end. So, when the Lord returns, when the Perfect comes, their function will end (13:9-10).431 To cite the marvelous imagery of Karl Barth (1886-1968), “Because the sun rises, all lights are extinguished.”432
Take knowledge for example. We are now able to know only in a partial and incomplete way; now we have only partial knowledge of God’s will and God’s Word. No one on earth can understand His Word perfectly. But when we are fully in His presence, seeing Him face to face (3:12), this current or partial knowledge will be replaced by perfect or complete during the Messianic Kingdom (see the commentary on Revelation Fh – The Dispensation of the Messianic Kingdom).433
Paul elsewhere described the purpose of gifts by an illustration employing the imagery of growth and maturity. According to Ephesians 4:11-16, the gifts were to be used to bring the Church from a state of infancy to adulthood. The word translated mature in Ephesians 4:13 is the same word translated perfection (Greek: teleion) in 13:10. Such a state will obviously not exist until Messiah’s Second Coming.433 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, argued like a child; now that I have become a man, I have finished with childish ways. Paul is here illustrating what will happen when the Perfect comes. In our earthly lives, all believers are like children compared to what we will be when we see Yeshua. A city like Corinth, famous for its bronze mirrors, would have particularly appreciated Paul’s final illustration. For now, we see in a mirror dimly. In our present state we are not capable of seeing more. But when we enter into our Lord’s presence, then we will see Him face to face. Now I know partly; then I will know fully, just as God has fully known me (13:11-12).
But for now, three things last – trust, hope, love (13:13a). The formula of “three great things” is common in Jewish literature. The same three appear in Colossians 1:4-5. Compare Micah 6:8, and this example from the Oral Law (see the commentary on The Life of Christ Ei – The Oral Law): Rabbi Shim’on ben-Gamli’el said, “The world is sustained by three things: judgment, truth, and peace, as it is said in the TaNaKh: Execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates (Zechariah 8:16)” (Avot 1:18).435
And the greatest of these is love, not only because it is eternal, but because even now in this life, love is supreme (13:13b). Love is already the greatest, not only because it will outlast trust and hope, beautiful and necessary as they are, but because love is inherently greater by being most God-like. For God is love (First John 4:8).436
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