K Neill Foster -The Third View of Tongues

If I had the gift of being able to speak in other languages without learning them, and could speak in every language there is in all of heaven and earth. but didn't love others, I would only be making noise.

If I had the gift of prophecy and knew all about what is going to happen in the future, knew everything about everything, but didn't love others, what good would it do? Even if I had the gift of faith so that I could speak to a mountain and make it move, I would still be worth nothing at all without love.

If I gave everything I have to poor people, and if I were burned alive for preaching the Gospel but didn't love others. it would be of no value whatever.

Love is very patient and kind, never jealous or envious. never boastful or proud.

Never haughty or selfish or rude. Love does not demand its own way. It is not irritable or touchy. It does not hold grudges and will hardly even notice when others do it wrong.

It is never glad about injustice, but rejoices whenever truth wins out.

If you love someone you will be loyal to him no matter what the cost. You will always believe in him. always expect the best of him, and always stand your ground in defending him.

All the special gifts and powers from God will someday come to an end, but love goes on forever. Someday prophecy. and speaking in unknown languages, and special knowledge - these gifts will disappear.

Now we know so little, even with our special gifts, and the preaching of those most gifted is still so poor.

But when we have been made perfect and complete, then the need for these inadequate special gifts will come to an end. and they will disappear.

It's like this: when I was a child I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child does. But when I became a man my thoughts grew far beyond those of my childhood, and now I have put away the childish things.

In the same way, we can see and understand only a little about God now, as if we were peering at his reflection in a poor mirror; but someday we are going to see him in his completeness, face to face. Now all that I know, is hazy and blurred, but then I will see everything clearly, just as clearly as God sees into my heart right now.

There are three things that remain - faith, hope. and love - and the greatest of these is love. -1 Cor. 13. The Living Bible.

The good Gospel ship is intended to float on love, and Paul makes it abundantly clear in this message which is commonly referred to as the love chapter.

Love distinguished

The first principle is that love is distinct from any and all of the gifts. Secondly, I must make it clear that if the choice were between love and the gifts (and it shouldn't have to be), the choice would always fall on the side of love.

Love contrasted

In his opening section (vv. 1-3) Paul deliberately contrasts love with the spiritual gifts. Neither tongues, even angelic tongues, nor prophecy, nor the word of knowledge, nor forth telling, nor giving, nor even martyrdom, have any value apart from love.

One of my friends makes this observation about 1 Corinthians 13: "It is interesting to note that after mentioning nine gifts in chapter 12, Paul mentions the word love nine times in chapter 13, contrasting it with the gifts."

Love, St. Paul makes clear, is the lubricating oil by which the spiritual gifts function. Without it, he also emphasizes, spiritual gifts may be abrasive and worthless.

And I think it is not going too far to say that he is directly implying that apostleship or administrating, teaching or healing would also be very unattractive indeed without the fragrance of love clearly manifest. Gifts of revelation operating apart from love can be very problematical. All that God reveals is not necessarily to be told. There are in fact a large number of scriptures which could be cited in support of the "discipline of silence." And surely rushing to announce to someone that he has a demon, even if it is so, is the very thing Paul assails here.

We might proceed through the lists. What value is there in exhortation without love? In healing a man and not caring one whit for his soul, his future, or his present poverty?

Love described

Let us not miss the fact that the description of love at this point is undertaken in the context of a corrective letter to the Corinthian believers. We might well expect Paul to allude and obliquely refer to the spiritual gifts while describing love.

Evidently there had been uncharitable behavior at Corinth, perhaps assembly pride. Love is longsuffering, not envious, not self-promoting and certainly not proud.

Pride, charismatic pride, is the great peril of the specially gifted. Many times when love is absent, the less gifted are called cold and not in tune with the "move" of the Spirit. Insufferable charismatic pride has been all too often the distinctive characteristic of those who claim so much of God's Spirit. Yet nothing more jarring can result than when spiritual gifts and the spirit of pride work together. Surely also, the enemy gets many footholds through charismatic pride because God himself has determined to "resist the proud."

This love "doth not behave itself unseemly." Spiritual gifts and supposed or spurious gifts have stimulated all kinds of erratic behavior. Sometimes the deceiving logic is, "I'll do anything to please the Lord." And more often than not that anything does not adorn the doctrine of Christ. But love adorns.

Love is unselfish. It is easy going; it does not delight to flush evil out into the public eye. It is decorous and modest. It rejoices in the truth, not in what it can do.

Love supersedes

A remarkable change takes place in chapter 13, verse 8. The understanding I get from the passage is that Paul is saying, "Now listen, these gifts are going to finally pass away. They are, after all, the things which accompany spiritual childhood and immaturity. We know in part. We prophesy in part. The day will come when these pretty jewels will be put aside. We still look at this subject through tinted glasses, but one day when Christ comes it will be face to face. Spiritual gifts are necessary for now, but don't make a big thing out of them."

Let me interject a personal word here. Earlier in these pages I suggested that spiritual gifts do not make one spiritual. And though I have seen the teaching in other parts of the Scriptures, I do not know how many times I had read 1 Corinthians 13 without seeing this thought. But I have discovered now and have seen for the first time in this writing that Paul was gently saying much the same thing here. Spiritual growth and maturity will certainly involve manifestation of the spiritual gifts, but preoccupation with gifts is not only unwholesome Christianity; it produces distortion in personal Christian growth and trouble for the church.

The summary

But does this cautious corrective mood mean that spiritual gifts are to be dismissed or ignored? Far from it. In 13:13 and 14:1 the emphasis is clear:

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. . . Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy.

Follow after love and desire spiritual gifts. You need both. It's like the two tracks of the railroad. Tear up one track and you will wreck the train.

Or to change the figure, love is like a wide river and the gifts are like the little boats that float upon it. Boats without a river are grotesque and tilted. But the wide river without boats is still majestic in itself. Ideally, though, the boats are there upon the river's broad expanse.

"Follow after love." It is something one does, seeks, pursues. And desire spiritual gifts. That, too, is something to be done: "Covet earnestly the best gifts."

From personal experience I would say that should one separate three days for fasting and prayer to seek a revelation of God's love or a manifestation of His gifts or both, that person would be pleasantly surprised at the response of our loving Lord.

I t is a deep pain to me that the polarization and separation among evangelicals on the spiritual gifts has produced in most cases either a harsh denunciation of all that is supernatural or an unhealthy fixation upon one miraculous gift.

Our Lord intended a beautiful balance. And something within me cries that once again it should be so.

The Third View of Tongues

Afloat on Love

CHAPTER 14