The Priority of the Love Triplex
1 Corinthians 12:31 NASB "But earnestly desire the greater gifts. And I show you a still more excellent way." The word "best" or "greater" immediately involves decision making between better or good and that which is best. As we will see, what follows is not "a more excellent way," it is "the most excellent way," that which is best. In chapter 13 we will see that that is a path that involves pursuit of spiritual maturity which is exemplified by the three spiritual skills that we talk about in terms of the love triplex—personal love for God, impersonal love for all mankind, and occupation with Christ.
In this verse Paul uses a certain amount of irony and tongue in cheek which he has typically done as he has talked to the Corinthians in this epistle. There has been a certain amount of sanctified sarcasm and in other places he has verbally slapped them in the face, and throughout this section he is calling attention to the fact that the one thing that is lacking in their whole spiritual life is spirituality, which would be exemplified by love. They are the carnal Christians who are living their life like mere men (chapter three), they are operating on arrogance. There is inordinate competition exemplified in the congregation by competition between spiritual gifts. There is no room for competition between spiritual gifts, every spiritual gift is valuable and you can't compete over it because it is not up to you what spiritual gift you have or the degree to which you have it, that is up to God the Holy Spirit. The issue is: how are you going to use that spiritual gift to serve the body of Christ? What underlies the whole concept of Christian service is understanding this whole concept of personal love for God and impersonal love for all mankind.
What we are going to see in this section is a contrast between the carnal believer on the one hand and the spiritual believer on the other hand. What is it that characterizes the life of the carnal believer? He is operating on the sin nature, and remember that the key orientation of that sin nature is arrogance. Arrogance is me first. In contrast there is the spiritual believer, the believer who is filled with the Spirit and is walking by the Spirit.
Too often people think negative volition is hostility to doctrine. The most negative people are not the ones who are hostile to doctrine but the ones who are passive to doctrine. When you are not showing up in Bible class two or three times a week to take in the Word you are hostile to doctrine. It is a passive hostility because what you are saying is that it isn't really important and that you can live your life without it. That is no different from an atheist. In fact it is functional atheism because you are saying that God has no real significant role in your life. So in self-justification we develop all kinds for not being in Bible class. Now we have deceived ourselves. We think we are making it because there aren't any serious problems and we think that everything is going smoothly and we are just coasting on the grace of God. We are coasting on residual benefits from blessing by association in the past, and God is giving you basically enough rope to hang yourself. In self-deception you think that all the doctrine applies to somebody else. Then that leads to self-deification. We go from self-deception where it doesn't apply to us to self-deification where we react defensively and in anger when somebody challenges us with our lack of concern for doctrine. That just shows there is no humility and no teachability. As we are going to see, before you get to personal or impersonal love in chapter 13 there has to be a foundation of grace orientation which includes humility and teachability.
God the Holy Spirit sovereignly gave us a spiritual gift for the benefit of the body of Christ at the instant we trusted Christ as saviour. He didn't give it to us to use on ourselves, it is not used for self-edification, which is how the Charismatics want to define the gift of tongues or some sort of prayer language or "Holy Spirit language" to enhance their spiritual life. The Holy Spirit sovereignly gave these spiritual gifts so that we could mature spiritually and use them for the benefit of others; it is not self, and that is the contrast. The carnal believer operates on self, self, self and self, and the spiritual believer operates on orientation to doctrine, an orientation to God, and an orientation to the plan of God.
Something else that develops in the person who is a failure in the spiritual life is a facade of involvement. This is the person who shows up once a week—the nod-to-God crowd. Again, negative volition and arrogance is not simply hostility to the Word, it is passivity to the Word, apathy to the Word; it is people who think that somehow they have enough. Frankly, you never will have enough.
That is why Paul challenges these arrogant Corinthians by saying: "Earnestly desire the best gifts." The verb that he uses is zeloo [zhlow], a second person plural, which means he is addressing this to the entire congregation, and this is typical of the way Paul has addressed the imperatives of this epistle. They all addressed to the congregation as a whole but they apply to each individual in the congregation. It is a present imperative indicating that this is supposed to be the ongoing standard operating procedure in the life of the believer. Zeloo can have a positive sense and a negative sense. In the positive sense it means to positively and intensely interested in something, to strive for something, to desire something. We don't work for spiritual gifts, we don't exert ourselves for spiritual gifts. It also has the idea of being dedicated, to be deeply interested in someone or something, and the emphasis here is to be intensely interested in the best gifts. The word translated "best" (or, more excellent) is megas [megaj] which is a comparative adjective. Superlatives pretty much dropped out of Koine Greek by the turn of the first century so it was necessary to judge from context, and what we have here is the illative use of the comparative adjective. So what Paul is saying is: Don't desire the better gifts; desire the best gifts.
There is an interesting word play here, an almost tongue-in-cheek irony taking place, because of the structure of this whole section. He is going to make a contrast in the second half of the verse: "And I show you a still more excellent way," which should be translated "the most excellent way." So there is a contrast between the best and the most excellent way. The most excellent way, as we will see in chapter thirteen, has to do with advancing to spiritual maturity and demonstrating personal love for God and impersonal love for all mankind. At the end of chapter 13, v. 13, Paul says: "But now [in the church age] faith, hope, love, abide [continue] these three; but the greatest [megaj] of these is love." So we cannot say that when Paul says to "earnestly desire the best" or "the greatest" that he is talking about love, because he uses the word "gifts"; but there is a tongue-in-cheek there because he is going to show that the most excellent way is really built on desiring the best. How can he say "the best"? When you use a superlative adjective there is obviously a ranking of different options. Some are better than others, and he is going to say to desire the best. What are the best? In 12:28 Paul ranks the spiritual gifts, but he only ranks the first three. So we have the first three that are set in this context above all of the other spiritual gifts. "And God has appointed in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers." After that he just lumps them all together: "then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, {various} kinds of tongues." Those are not ranked according to order. The only ones that have a priority are three communication gifts: apostles, prophets and teachers.
In Ephesians 4:11, 12 there is a listing of four different gifts: "And He gave some {as} apostles, and some {as} prophets, and some {as} evangelists, and some {as} pastors and teachers,
But what underlies the function of that spiritual gift is growth to maturity where we master the love triplex: personal love for God, impersonal love for all mankind, and occupation with Christ. That is why Paul shifts from v. 31 to chapter 13 to love. He says at the conclusion of v. 31: "I show you the most excellent way." Here we have the Greek preposition kata plus the adjective huperbole [u(perbolh], and it doesn't have an article because when you put a preposition with the noun the preposition replaces the article, but when it is translated into English it should not be translated as an indefinite but as a definite noun: "the most excellent way." The phrase indicates doing something to a surpassing degree or exceedingly. The most excellent way relates to spiritual maturity. What characterizes the mature believer is going to be the operation of love. This is what Jesus said to His disciples in John 13:34, 35. This concept of impersonal love is what under girds and is the foundation for Christian service.
That becomes the testimony of the maturing believer that is in opposition to Satan in the angelic conflict. Satan's modus operandi is to be served. When the believer advances to spiritual maturity and it works itself out in terms of Christian service by giving up what you want to do to do what is right. You are operating on a higher standard than personal pleasure and personal benefit. But you won't do that until you have grown to a stage where you are manifesting some level of impersonal love. That can only happen if you are studying the Word and growing to maturity. The discussion on love in chapter 13 is not some rabbit trail that Paul runs down in the middle of this discussion on spiritual gift, it fits perfectly in the context.
In the first three verses of chapter 13 Paul is going to demonstrate in one of the most beautiful pieces of prose ever written the priority of love and the surpassing excellence of love. It includes all three categories: personal love for God the Father, impersonal love for all mankind, occupation with Christ. If love isn't there it doesn't matter what else you are doing it is not worth anything, it is all human good, all works of the flesh. It is love that is the prerequisite for doing anything that is divine good. Love is the orientation of the believer who is walking by means of the Holy Spirit.
As we get into the chapter we will also notice that Paul takes love and uses it to interact with certain spiritual gifts. In the first verse the focus is on the gift of tongues [languages]. In the second verse it is countered to prophecy, knowledge and faith. In those two verses all of those four are temporary gifts or sign gifts. Then in verse 3 Paul is contrasting love to pseudo-spirituality. This is a false view of Christian service. There is a biblical view of Christian service which is to grow to spiritual maturity and as a result of that spiritual growth you manifest your spiritual gift—you are not passive to it. The Holy Spirit is never going to make you do anything. As you grow and mature and you make decisions to apply the Word sooner or later you are going to get options to do something. Christian serviced operates in a lot of different categories and there has to be some maturity. It is not always doing what we like to do, what we want to do.
Love is the key idea all through this chapter. That is indicated by the fact that the noun agape [a)gaph] is used ten times in the chapter. What is unique about that is that outside of the Bible the noun agape is rarely used. The standard word that was used for love in everyday Greek was eros, and it had more to do with a sexual, emotional or sentimental type of love, which is how most of the people, in our culture think about love; they don't know any better. So under the inspiration of God the Holy Spirit the writers of Scripture used the noun agape and really invested it with new meaning. It has to do with a mental attitude volition, a decision to act with care and concern and regard for someone. The model is God the Father in the plan of Salvation. God is love. Our definition of love comes from how God manifests Himself, not what you think love is. Most people think of love in terms of how they feel or somebody they knew that was very kind and generous, and that has nothing to do with it. You define love from the creator, the love that we have in our experience is simply a reflection of the creator who designed man a certain way to reflect who and what he is. But you don't define the concept by your experience and then impose that on God.
This chapter is going to emphasize the fact that love really flows out of a certain growth process. You start with grace orientation. If you don't understand grace you can't love, because love means dealing with people not on the basis of what they deserve but on what they don't deserve. Love means forgiveness, it involves forgiveness; not just overlooking faults but genuine forgiveness; not just ignoring failures but genuine forgiveness; not just acting as if it didn't happen. To understand how to do that you have to understand grace and to understand grace you have to go back to the cross and understand that Jesus Christ paid the penalty for your sins when you were an enemy of God. The more you understand grace the more you are going to be impressed with what God did. That should generate a personal love for God. Because love is virtue dependent and the virtue in our love is not from us, it is from God that, then, leads to impersonal love for all mankind. Part of the function of impersonal love for all mankind has to do with Christian service. Who are we serving? We are serving the Lord Jesus Christ in relationship to other believers. So spiritual gifts operate at their most efficient level once we have gone through this stair-step advance.
Another point in terms of observation is that this chapter fits the broader context introduced in 8:1. There we are told that gnosis [gnwsij] makes arrogance but love edifies. Once again we get back to the fact that love operates within that sphere of walking by the Holy Spirit, and that leads to edification, spiritual growth. It involves the fact that they had a problem in Corinth with those who were going out and eating food sacrificed to idols even though it created a stumbling block for immature believers. What was the problem? No love, no impersonal love for all mankind, no willingness to give up personal rights because it helped others. Then there was a problem in worship in chapter 11 where there were men and women operating outside their divinely established roles. So there wasn't submission in various authority spheres and that was a breakdown, once again, of personal love for God and impersonal love for others. Part of responding to authority, part of the role of the husband loving the wife and the wife being in submission to the husband, is in operation and application of impersonal love. Then there were problems at the Lord's table because they were more concerned with eating their own food and getting drunk on the communion wine, and so it was once again a manifestation of arrogance rather than love. Then is chapters 12-14 there is arrogant focus on the spiritual gifts and so there is a breakdown there.
This chapter 13 really slaps the Corinthian believers in the face as much as it does modern self-absorbed, self-indulgent 21st century believers who just show up at church every now and then, or who are too concerned about the details in their own life to have any genuine concern or impersonal love for anyone else.