Refocusing Faith: A Study of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians (Love - 1 Corinthians 13:1-13)

Paul faced a problem. One of the churches he’d planted in Greece was being torn apart by factions and internal conflict, a situation that sounds an awful lot like what we see within the modern church. These divisions not only endangered its ability to share the Christian faith within a pagan world, they also threatened the unity of the church itself. In this letter, Paul challenged these Christians to put aside their animosities and refocus their faith on Jesus Christ. In each session, we’ll consider a part of Paul’s letter as follows:

• Session 1 - Paul’s Greeting (1 Corinthians 1:1-9)
• Session 2 - The Issue (1 Corinthians 1:10–3:4)
• Session 3 - Doing the Work We’ve Been Given (1 Corinthians 3:5–4:21)
• Session 4 - Right and Wrong (1 Corinthians 5:1–6:20)
• Session 5 - Marital Distractions  (1 Corinthians 7:1-40)
• Session 6 - Food, Freedom and Focus (1 Corinthians 8:1–9:23)
• Session 7 - What’s Most Important (1 Corinthians 9:24–11:1)
• Session 8 - Dealing with Traditions and Customs (1 Corinthians 11:2-34)
• Session 9 - Like a Body (1 Corinthians 12:1-31)
• Session 10 - Love (1 Corinthians 13:1-13)
• Session 11 - Tongues  (1 Corinthians 14:1-40)
• Session 12 - Resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:1-58)
• Session 13 - And in Conclusion (1 Corinthians 16:1-24)

In our tenth session, we looked at how Paul defined "love" (1 Corinthians 13:1-13). The discussion and passage are below.

1 Corinthians 13:1-13 [New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]

If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.