Savoring a Cup of Tea: 1 Corinthians 13

Posted by Betsy

This passage is standard fare at weddings, on Christian Valentine's Day cards, and in collections of Scripture passages. But how many of us really meditate on this passage, pray through it, or seek to apply it to our own families? Paul gives us no qualifiers on this statement of Christian love. There is no "love is patient except when little Johnny is refusing for the 50th time to eat his peas." Or, "love keeps no record of wrongs except when hubby forgets my birthday again." Or "it is not irritable except when you don't get enough sleep the night before." No. Paul writes this beautiful statement of what love is with no qualifiers. Pray through this passage, asking the Lord to enable you to love those within your own home first. (Passage from ESV and copied from Bible.com)

¹If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ²And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³ If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part,¹⁰but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. ¹¹When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. ¹²For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

¹³So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.