More important than all the gifts is love (12:31b). First Corinthians 13:1–3 makes the point that without love the gifts are worthless. Verses 4–7 describe the nature of love, in language designed to point out how little the Corinthians are measuring up. Verses 8–13 highlight the temporary nature of all the gifts, contrasting with love’s permanence. The entire passage is quasi-poetic in nature, with an elaborate structure of symmetry and parallelism.

Verses 1–3 drive home the same truth repeatedly by using five of the spiritual gifts as illustrations of the identical principle: without love the most exemplary use of a particular gift profits a believer nothing. In verse 1, Paul makes the point with reference to glossolalia. “Tongues of angels” probably refers to the Corinthians’ estimation of this gift. “A resounding gong” is perhaps better taken to refer to a large “acoustic vase” used for amplification in the Greek theaters. Combined with a “clanging cymbal,” Paul graphically highlights that tongues without love leave only a hollow reverberation.

In verse 2, Paul uses the example of gifts of spiritual insight and of a faith to work miracles. Here he may be echoing the tradition of Jesus’ own words in Matthew 21:21, although the expression was proverbial for trusting God to perform great deeds. Verse 3 hammers home the point one more time with the most extreme example yet—seemingly total self-abandonment in exercising the gift of giving. The niv footnote (“surrender my body that I may boast”) may actually be the more original reading, instead of “surrender my body to the flames.” In that case “giving up one’s body” could include self-immolation but might also refer to the ancient practice of selling oneself into slavery to raise funds for distribution to the poor.

The niv’s translations of the various terms in verses 4–7 are generally quite good and self-explanatory. But we may add a few footnotes. “Patience” (v. 4) conveys the sense of “long-suffering.” “Boast” refers to the negative sense of “bragging about oneself.” “Proud” is more literally “puffed up.” “Rude” (v. 5) uses the same word translated as “unpresentable” in 12:23 and refers to activity “in defiance of social and moral standards, with resulting disgrace, embarrassment, and shame.” “Easily angered” translates a term from which our English “paroxysm” derives. “Protects” (v. 7) might instead mean “bears” or “puts up with annoyances”; it seems roughly synonymous with “endures.” “Trusts” is the common New Testament word for “believes.” Verse 7 thus forms a small chiasm (ABBA pattern), with the outside and inside pairs of verbs each meaning approximately the same thing. Taken together, verses 4–7 clearly portray love as selfless, seeking the good of the other first and foremost. “Love is what God in Christ has shown and done for ‘others’ in their helpless plight and hapless estate as sinners. In love we take God’s side, share his outlook and implement his designs; and we treat our neighbors as we know God has treated us (see Rom. 15:1–7).”

Verse 8 states the thesis of verses 8–13. Again Paul makes the point with sample gifts that were of particular importance in Corinth. Whereas faith, hope, and love endure, spiritual gifts prove less permanent. The niv renders the same verb katargeo (“to destroy or abolish”) four different ways in verses 8–11 (“cease” [v. 8a], “pass away” [v. 8c], “disappears” [v. 10], “put … behind” [v. 11]), but each of these captures an important nuance of the term. Paul uses a different verb (pauomai) with tongues (niv “be stilled”—v. 8b) but probably just for stylistic variety (creating an ABA pattern for the three parallel elements of v. 8). Although it is a middle voice (sometimes translated as action done to, by, or for oneself), this particular verb has become a virtual deponent (a verb without active voice endings) in the Greek of the New Testament, so it is dangerous here to read anything much into this specific grammatical form.

Why will the gifts cease? It is because they are imperfect provisions for an imperfect world, rendered unnecessary when perfection comes (vv. 9–10). But to what does “perfection” refer? The other main biblical meaning of the word (Gk. teleios) is “maturity” (cf. the metaphor in v. 11), but neither perfection nor consistent maturity has yet come to the church of Jesus Christ. Although later interpreters have at times felt otherwise, nothing in Paul supports any consciousness of his writing near the end of an apostolic age or the close of a biblical canon. And the metaphors in verse 12 fit poorly with such interpretations. After the Bible was completed, Christians did not see God “face to face” (only “face to book”!) or know him to the degree that he knew them. When we recall that 1:7 pointed out the ongoing role of the gifts until the return of Christ, there can be only one possible interpretation of “perfection”—it is the life in the world to come after Jesus reappears on earth.

But love abides on into eternity. So too probably do faith and hope (v. 13a), if faith is taken as belief in Jesus and faithful service to him, and if hope refers to the expectant anticipation of the good things God has in the future for us. Paul adds these other two virtues because the triad “faith, hope, and love” is a favorite of his (cf. 1 Thess. 1:3; 5:8; Col. 1:4–5; Eph. 1:15–18). But love remains the greatest (v. 13b) because it is the most foundational, essential and central to Paul’s understanding of the Christian ethic (cf., e.g., Gal. 5:6, 14, 22–23).