1 Corinthians: A 9-Day Devotional For WomenНамуна

All that Really Matters
1 Corinthians 13

Few passages in all the Bible rebuke and reorient our scale of Christian significance like 1 Corinthians 13. This is not merely a text that outlines what it means to get married, to be read at weddings. It is a text that outlines what it means to be a Christian, and as such it should be kept front and center of our daily lives as believers. 

Sandwiched in between two chapters in which Paul deals with some problems arising in the very gifted Corinthian church, having to do with tongues and prophecy, here Paul re-centers his readers. He reminds the Corinthians, and us, of heaven’s scale of significance. 

Paul says that supreme elegance with words (1 Cor. 13:1), superior knowledge and faith (v. 2), and ultimate self-sacrifice (v. 3) are all worthless apart from love. This arrests us. For the apostle puts his finger on those very things which appear to carry great clout with God. If God isn’t happy with our words, our knowledge and faith, and our sacrifice, what in the world *can* please him? 

Love. Impressive speech, knowledge, and sacrifice can all be exercised out of a fundamental absorption with self. Any of these things can be done to soothe our conscience, or to help us feel superior to other believers, or to solidify our sense of God’s approval of us. Only love, real love, is “self-proof.” For that *is* what love is—delighting to place another before ourselves. We all approach every relationship with one of two mind-sets: either a your-life-for-mine mind-set or a my-life-for-yours mindset. In these verses Paul is painting a picture of what a my-life-for-yours mindset looks like: it is patient and kind. It does not envy or boast. And so on. Love is glad to inconvenience itself for the sake of helping someone else. Love is the great and beautiful trade-off: my comfort for yours. 

What in the world can fuel such self-denial? It feels like death, of course. Why would I give up energy, time, emotional resources, and everything else for another? I’m barely surviving as it is! 

The answer is that there was One who walked the earth who spoke perfectly, who had prophetic powers and all knowledge and faith, and who even delivered up his body in self-sacrifice. But he did all these things in love. We follow a Savior who loves us despite our unloveliness. Only in reflection on this undeserved grace do our hearts settle into the joyous life of love that Paul outlines in this passage, which is so fundamental to what it means to be a sinner saved by the gospel. —Dane C. Ortlund