7. Conclusion (14:37–40)
C. Spiritual gifts (12:1–14:40)
It was universally accepted in antiquity that some people, who were in specially close touch with the divine, had special spiritual endowments. At times they behaved in unpredictable ways, threw themselves about, spoke in a frenzied manner, and so on. Their ‘enthusiasm’ was the mark of the presence of the divine spirit within them. From the day of Pentecost on, some within the Christian church manifested unusual spiritual gifts. They did things like speak in a tongue they did not understand. To many early believers this kind of thing was pre-eminently the mark of a ‘spiritual’ person. By comparison the practice of Christian virtue seemed staid and colourless. Paul’s discussion of this subject is epoch-making. In contrast to the usual idea, he was clear that the Holy Spirit comes not only on a few outstanding people, but on all believers (Rom. 8:9, 14). And the presence of the Spirit is to be seen characteristically in what he calls ‘the fruit of the Spirit’, qualities like love, joy, peace, and so on (Gal. 5:22–23), not ecstatic behaviour. Here he begins by showing that it is the Lordship of Christ that is the touchstone. If the exercise of ‘spiritual gifts’ does not make for the Lordship of Christ, they are not from God. He proceeds to the point that there are many gifts of the Spirit, and that all are necessary. He lists some of them and proceeds to ‘the most excellent way’, the way of love. Then he relates the exercise of the spectacular gifts to the conduct of public worship and insists that all must be done in an orderly fashion. He agrees with the Corinthians that the spectacular gifts have their place. But he does not accord them the pre-eminent place. That place belongs to love.
1. The variety of gifts (12:1–11)
Paul begins with the importance of a clear recognition of the Lordship of Christ. There are many spiritual gifts and they all bring glory to Christ; they never oppose him.
1. Now about introduces another of the topics in the Corinthians’ letter (see on 7:1), though exactly what they had asked is not clear. Whether gifts should be added after spiritual (as NIV, AV, etc.) is not certain. Paul’s word (pneumatikōn) might be masculine, ‘spiritual men’, or neuter, ‘spiritual things’; most take it in the latter sense and understand ‘things’ as ‘gifts’. There is not a great deal of difference in this context, for both Paul and the Corinthians are thinking of the men who exercise the gifts. The adjective pneumatikos (‘spiritual’) is unusually common in this letter (15 times, out of 24 times in Paul; no more than 3 times in any other letter). It is not the usual word for ‘spiritual gift’, which is charisma (vv. 4, 9, etc.). Notice the affectionate address, brothers, introducing a section where there may be much rebuke. For I do not want you to be ignorant see the notes on 10:1. It indicates that the subject thus introduced is important.
2. As it stands this verse in the Greek is ungrammatical. Two suggestions have won support. One is that of Hort, that for hote we should read pote, when the sense would be, ‘You know that formerly you were Gentiles, carried away …’ The other is that we supply another you were (ēte) with the participle apagomenoi (led astray) at the end of the Greek sentence. This would yield the meaning, ‘You know that, when you were Gentiles, you were carried away …’ The difference is not great and it does not matter much which we adopt. Usually in the New Testament ethnē (NIV pagans) means non-Jews, but it can mean those not Christian (e.g. 1 Thess. 4:5), as it does here.The characteristic of these people is that they are led astray to idols. The verb is often used of leading away a prisoner or condemned person (e.g. Mark 14:44; 15:16). The pagans are seen, not as men freely following the gods their intellects have fully approved, but as under constraint, people who know no better. There is something pathetic about idol worship. Dumb idols characterizes their deities as totally unable to answer those who call upon them. They could make nothing known to their worshippers. There is a very unusual construction in the Greek that NIV renders somehow or other you were influenced; it seems to convey the idea of repetition (Prolegomena, p. 167; Grammar, p. 974); the pagans were continually led about. And no matter how they were led, they were brought only to dumb deities.
3. Because of this background, the Corinthians could not be expected to know everything about Christianity, and more particularly about ‘spiritual men’. So Paul makes his first point, that the genuinely spiritual man is known by his utterances. Cursed translates anathema, ‘something laid up’, i.e. laid up in a sacred place. It thus came to mean what is given to a deity, and since this is totally lost to the giver, the word came to have the meaning ‘that which is destroyed’. Particularly was this the case when the destruction was itself a religious act, for example when Jericho was totally destroyed at the Lord’s command. So the meaning passes over to ‘accursed’, and this is the usual sense of the term in New Testament days. The natural meaning of these words is that someone had called Jesus accursed, but who or why or how we cannot say. Some point out that a Jew is more likely to use the term anathema than a Gentile and point to Jewish cursing of Christians (and cf. Acts 26:11). Others remind us that pagans in times of persecution called on the accused to curse Christ, which Pliny tells us those who are really Christians cannot be made to do (Epistles 10:96). Others again think no-one used the words; Paul is simply making up a suitable antithesis to Jesus is Lord. But perhaps we should start with Paul’s teaching that Christ became ‘a curse for us’ (Gal. 3:13). It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that some excitable and imperfectly instructed Corinthian had distorted the thought in an ecstatic utterance. The Corinthians may have wondered whether the excitement under which the statement was made was evidence of divine inspiration. Paul firmly denies this. The content shows that the words are not from God. It is an assertion that Jesus is rejected by God, a denial of the Lordship of Christ. That is not the way the Spirit leads people. On the contrary, it is only by the Holy Spirit that anyone can hail Christ as Lord. Obviously a mocking unbeliever can mouth the words Jesus is Lord. Paul is not denying this. He is saying that the words can be uttered with full meaning only under the influence of the Holy Spirit. The Lordship of Christ is not a human discovery. It is a discovery that is made and can be made only when the Spirit is at work in the heart.
4. Different kinds (diaireseis) is from a root expressing the idea of division. It might mean ‘apportionment’ (Orr and Walther) or ‘distribution’ (Barrett), though most take it as NIV. Gifts renders charismatōn, the usual word for the extraordinary endowments the Spirit confers on chosen people. The word is from the same root as ‘grace’ (charis). It points to the freeness, the bounty of the gift. It might be used in a general sense of God’s good gifts (Rom. 11:29), or of the ‘spiritual gift’ Paul wanted to impart to the Romans (Rom. 1:11). But characteristically it is used, as here, for the special operation of the Holy Spirit within people. The Corinthians had evidently regarded the possession of such gifts as a matter for pride and had set one believer against another on the basis of the possession of this or that gift. They had created division. Paul insists that this is the wrong attitude. There is diversity in the endowments the Spirit gives, but it is the same Spirit, and the Spirit does not fight against himself. All the gifts are to set forward the same great divine purpose.
5. There are different kinds of service (diakonia; see note on the cognate word diakonos in 3:5). But the differences are not important. It is the same Lord. As usually in Paul, Lord refers to Christ, and the passage reveals something of the high place Paul assigns to him. He places him here between the Holy Spirit and the Father. This is not a formal enunciation of the doctrine of the Trinity, but passages like this are distinctly trinitarian in character. The service might be service rendered to Christ. But since in the previous and following sections it is the action of the divine within the believer that is mentioned, we should probably understand this verse to mean that the indwelling Christ enables his people to render service, or perhaps calls them to service. Conzelmann points out that ‘everyday acts of service are now set on a par with the recognized, supernatural phenomena of the Spirit’. Humble, everyday service is not to be despised.
6. Working is something like ‘activity’; it is God’s power in action. The divine activities are manifold, but it is the same God. For the third time Paul brings out his point that there can be no division among Christians on the ground of the ‘gifts’, because it is one and the same God who provides the gifts in all their diversity. He works all of them in all. NIV is probably right in adding men, but the gender is indeterminate, and some prefer to add ‘things’. But the emphasis in this passage is on what God does in believers.
7. To each one is important; everyone has some gift from God. The manifestation of the Spirit may mean ‘that which the Spirit makes manifest’ or ‘that which makes the Spirit manifest’. Either way the thought is of the spiritual gifts, and of the exercise of those gifts as something public and open which others than their possessors perceive. The gifts are not given for rivalry and jealousy but for the common good. That is the point of it all. Spiritual gifts are always given to be used, and to be used in such a way as to edify the whole body of believers, not some individual possessor of a gift. A schismatic individualism contradicts the purpose of the gifts.
8. What has been put shortly in vv. 4–6 is now expanded, and some of the gifts the Spirit gives are listed, together with a repetition of the truth that it is the one Spirit who provides them all. There are other lists of the gifts (v. 28; Rom. 12:6–8; Eph. 4:11–12), but the lists are different; the only gift in all four is prophecy. Clearly the Spirit gives many gifts and there is no one definitive list. What most of these gifts were is uncertain. Long ago Chrysostom lamented that the passage is obscure on account of the cessation of the gifts, ‘being such as then used to occur but now no longer take place’. The first two are ‘word of wisdom’ and ‘word of knowledge’. ‘Word’ may mean the message, as NIV, but that is far from certain. And, while it is not difficult for us to differentiate between wisdom and knowledge, we cannot be sure that our difference is the one Paul meant. Some find no difference other than stylistic (Barrett, Conzelmann). It is true that wisdom denotes the highest mental excellence (see on 1:24), and that this has been prominent in the early chapters. But does Paul mean the same thing here? BAGD point out that Paul sometimes associates knowledge with mysteries, revelations and prophecy (13:2; 14:6). They suggest that he thus ‘invests the term with the significance of supernatural mystical knowledge’, a meaning common in Hellenistic Greek, more especially among the mystery religions. But is that what Paul means here? Paul certainly thinks of all the wisdom and all the knowledge the Christian has as coming Spirit. But here he is talking of special gifts, gifts moreover of ‘a word’ of wisdom and of knowledge, not wisdom and knowledge themselves. It is not easy to see what they are.
9. The difficulty here is that, whereas faith is characteristic of all Christians (they may be spoken of simply as ‘believers’), Paul is limiting it to a certain group who have this special gift. There is no difficulty about faith being a gift; all faith must be seen as God’s good gift to us. The difficulty is in seeing what this special faith is over against the common faith that all believers have.5 Unfortunately there is little to guide us. Paul proceeds to speak of healing and the working of miracles, so he probably has in mind a special kind of faith associated with miraculous operations (cf. 13:2, ‘a faith that can move mountains’). There is no article with gifts of healing (nor with any other item in this list). This fastens attention on the quality of the gift rather than its individuality. Healing is plural in the Greek, which perhaps means different gifts for different kinds of sickness.
10. Miraculous powers is more literally ‘workings (cf. v. 6) of miracles’, where miracles (dynameōn) stresses the element of power in the ‘mighty works’. It is often used of the miracles of Jesus. We can only conjecture what is meant. As it immediately follows ‘healings’ and is preceded by to another it seems that miraculous cures are not in mind. Jesus did miracles like the stilling of the storm and the feeding of the multitude, but there is no record of any of his followers ever doing anything like that (though in the longer ending of Mark it is prophesied that they would ‘drive out demons’, ‘pick up snakes’, and ‘when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all’, Mark 16:17f.). Calvin thinks of the smiting of Elymas with blindness (Acts 13:11), and the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1–11).
Prophecy is inspired speech. In the Old Testament the prophets spoke the word of God to their generation, sometimes predicting the future (which indeed is sometimes the mark of the true prophet, Deut. 18:21–22), more often speaking to the needs of the present. This, too, is the function of the prophets of the New Testament; they were engaged in ‘forthtelling the present’ rather than ‘foretelling the future’ (Redpath; though cf. Acts 11:28, etc.). Prophecy might be occasional (Acts 19:6), or a settled office (vv. 28f.). Here Paul probably has in mind mostly the second class, though his expression is broad enough to include both. His point is that the Spirit gives to some the ability to utter inspired words, which convey the message of God to the hearers. Grudem points out that this does not necessarily mean more than ‘a divine authority of general content’ (p. 69), i.e. the general content is inspired, but the exact form of words cannot be put on the same level as that of the canonical prophets.
It must often have been difficult to be sure whether a man claiming to be a prophet should be believed or not. Every believer must ‘test the spirits’ (1 John 4:1), because false prophets were many. But the ability to distinguish between spirits shows that to some was given a special discernment in this matter. The expression may be wider and include discerning demons. Again, our ignorance of the circumstances forbids us to be dogmatic.
The ability to speak in different kinds of tongues appears to have been a special form of speech when the person uttering the words did not know what they meant (unless he also had the gift of interpretation). Some have interpreted this from Acts 2, where ‘tongues’ seems to mean speaking in a foreign language. But it is difficult to see this here. Whereas in Acts 2 the characteristic is intelligibility (Acts 2:8–11), here the characteristic is unintelligibility (‘no-one understands him’, 14:2). The gift here is not part of the church’s evangelistic programme (as in Acts 2), but one exercised among believers. It is not understood by people who speak other languages, but requires a special gift of interpretation. Without that gift of interpretation, the speaker in tongues is to speak ‘to himself and God’ (14:28), which is a strange way to treat one of the world’s recognized languages. The gift was not one whereby people might be more readily understood by others, but one in which they did not even understand themselves. Utterances in no known language, but under the influence of the Spirit, seems to be Paul’s meaning. The interpretation of tongues is added as the gift that makes the gift of tongues intelligible.
11. Some emphasis is put on the variety of the gifts by beginning the sentence with all these (the object of the verb ‘works’ in the Greek). The unity of the divine purpose comes out in the expression one and the same Spirit. The stronger form than that used in vv. 4, 5, 6 underlines the truth that the divergent gifts do not point to divergent divine purposes. It is the one God who gives them all. The gifts are thus not to be set over against one another as though their possessors were rivals. Those who have them are to co-operate in working out the one divine purpose. The Spirit gives them to each man, which reminds us that God deals with us as individuals. He does not hand out his gifts indiscriminately but meets the needs and the capacities of each. The personality of the Spirit is brought out in the concluding just as he determines (or ‘wills’). This is a personal activity; the Spirit is to be thought of as a person, not a vague force or influence; as ‘he’ not ‘it’.
2. Diversity in unity (12:12–31)
Paul sees the church not as ‘a democracy, still less anarchy … It is a Body’ (Green, p. 93). Unity and diversity are both important. In antiquity quite a number of thinkers used the analogy of the human body, as in the Stoic idea of the world or of the state in which each citizen is a member (cf. Seneca, ‘we are the parts of one great body’ [Epistles 95:52]). Many commentators cite the fable of Menenius Agrippa used in a plebs revolt in Rome: the stomach appeared to the other members of the body to be doing nothing but enjoy the food they put into it; so they agreed to starve it, only to find that they thereby enfeebled themselves (Livy, ii. 32). All the members of a body work for the common good.
12. It takes many different members (NIV parts) to make up a body. Inevitably the members differ, but their differences do not affect the fact that there is a fundamental unity. So it is with Christ. This is not the thought of Christ as the head of the body (as in Eph. 5:23; Col. 1:18; contrast v. 21). Rather, Paul’s favourite concept that the Christian is ‘in Christ’ (see on 1:30) is at the basis of what he says. Since all believers are in Christ they are one body. There are many parts to the human body—and to the church. In both there is unity in diversity.
13. Baptism into one body symbolizes this truth (from other standpoints baptism is ‘into Christ’, Gal. 3:27, or ‘into his death’, Rom. 6:3). Early in this letter Paul appealed to baptism into Christ as pointing the Corinthians away from their factions and rivalries to their essential unity (1:13ff.). The same thought is put in a different form here. Jews or Greeks, slave or free, all alike are baptized into one body, and thus into a unity that transcends all human distinctions. Paul emphasizes what the Spirit does. By one Spirit is really ‘in one Spirit’ (the construction is the same as that in Matt. 3:11, ‘with water’, ‘with the Holy Spirit’). It points to the Spirit as the element ‘in’ which they were baptized. It is only as there is an activity of the Spirit that baptism has meaning; ‘the apostle refers to the spiritual reality of which their baptism in water was the symbol’ (Wilson). From another point of view all Christians were given the one Spirit to drink. The Spirit has entered their innermost being and it is the same Spirit that has done this in all of them. The verb is sometimes used of irrigation, from which comes the thought of abundant supply (cf. Goodspeed, ‘we have all been saturated with one Spirit’).
14. Diversity is no accidental attribute of the body. It is of its very essence. No one member is to be equated with the body. It takes many members to make up one body.
15–16. Therefore individual members cannot contract out. The disputes at Corinth seem to have depressed some of the less gifted members of the church. They wondered whether they had any right to belong to so august a body, including as it did people with such wonderful and spectacular gifts. Paul gives encouragement to the lowly. The foot may very well be depressed at its inability to exercise the complicated functions of a hand, and may see its own function as a lowly one (always in the dust, and bearing the weight of the whole body). But that does not put it outside the body. As with foot and hand, so with ear and eye. Bodies need feet as well as hands, ears as well as eyes. Chrysostom acutely points out that the foot contrasts itself not with the eye, but with the hand. We are prone to envy those who surpass us a little, rather than those who are patently in a different class.
17. We should possibly omit an and read ‘if all the body were eye …’ for it is function that is stressed. No member of the body can perform the function of another. The ear cannot see, but then the eye cannot hear either. Both functions are necessary for a normal body. So with the ear and the sense of smell.
18. The whole discussion is placed on the highest level, for the members are not in the body haphazardly; God has arranged them, or better, ‘put’ them (JB). It is not only a matter of arrangement; God created the parts to make a body like this. Every one of them brings out the point that God’s care does not extend only to the more important and spectacular. His oversight and creativity extend to every member of the body. He made them all just as he wanted them to be (‘just as he willed’).
19–20. The incongruity of the exaggerated reverence the Corinthians had for one or other of the gifts is brought out by a rhetorical question. No matter how important any one member may be, there can be no body formed from it alone. That would be a monster, not a body. But in fact, as things are, there are many parts, and together they make up but one body. This emphatic reiteration of the theme of unity in diversity rounds off this part of the discussion.
21. Now Paul looks at the other side of the coin. He turns from the humbler members, who thought their lack of the spectacular gifts might disqualify them from membership of the church, to those possessed of great gifts, who evidently looked down on their less gifted brothers. In their lofty eminence they thought that they could manage well enough without the unimportant contributions of lowly people. But the eye cannot do without the hand, nor the head without the feet. One member of the body may perform its own function well, but that does not mean that it can dispense with the services of other members which perform different functions, functions that it cannot perform. Barclay comments, ‘Whenever we begin to think about our own importance in the Christian Church, the possibility of really Christian work is gone.’
22. From the negative Paul proceeds to the positive. Not only can no member do without other members, but even the parts that seem to be weaker are indispensable. Weaker is the comparative of asthenēs, ‘sick’. The word emphasizes the apparently complete unimportance of these members. Yet even so Paul does not speak of them as an ‘addition’ or even ‘a welcome addition’. They are indispensable. The body cannot do without them (like the stomach in Menenius Agrippa’s fable). Robertson and Plummer comment that in society the humbler workers are more necessary than those with higher gifts. ‘We can spare this artisan better than this poet; but we can spare all the poets better than all the artisans.’
23. Paul seems to be speaking about clothing here. There are some parts of the body thought to be less honourable. These we clothe in seemly fashion and thus give them special honour (the verb translated treat is often used of clothing, e.g. Matt. 27:28). In the same way our unpresentable parts (probably the reproductive and excretory organs) we treat with special modesty (BAGD, ‘propriety, decorum’).
24. Our presentable parts (those we think to be good looking) need no aid. Thus we do not adorn them as we do the other parts of the body; they get no special treatment. Again (as in v. 18) there is the thought that the composition of the body is not by chance, but is due to God’s ordering. God gives honour to those parts of the body that naturally lacked it. Combined signifies a harmonious mixing; it is a word sometimes used of blending colours. God’s arrangement of the members in the body does away with clashing and blends all into one harmonious whole.
25. The action of God is directed to the prevention of division (the word used in 1:10 of the dissensions that caused factions in the Corinthian church). In his perfect blending of the parts in the human body God provided against dissension. On the contrary (the strong adversative alla), it is his plan that the members have equal concern for each other. Equal (to auto, ‘the same’) guards against partiality. In the body all the members without distinction work for the good of the whole. No special care is lavished on one member to the detriment of other members. Concern (merimnaō) conveys the notion of anxiety. It is a strong term and denotes no tepid emotion.
26. The unity of the body is seen in both suffering and honour. The suffering of any one member means that the whole body suffers. It is impossible for one part of the body to be in pain and the remainder at peace. The existence of one trouble-centre means that the whole body is involved (we say ‘I have a pain’, not ‘my toe has a pain’). Similarly when one member of the body is honoured, all share the joy. ‘The head is crowned, and the whole man is honoured’ (Chrysostom). Paul does not in fact speak of sharing the honour, but the joy. His choice of word emphasizes the impossibility of rivalry within the body.
27. You is the emphatic pronoun, put first for further emphasis. Body is without the article; it is the characteristic of the Corinthian believers that they belong to Christ’s body (the article would have distinguished this body from other bodies). There is emphasis on the truth that the Corinthians are members of nothing less than Christ’s body. All that Paul has been saying refers to them. The last part of the verse is more literally ‘you are members in part’ (ek merous, ‘individually’, Phillips; the same expression is translated ‘in part’ in 13:9). Paul’s meaning is that each one of them belongs to the body. None can claim to be the whole, but none is excluded.
28. In the New Testament, church very often refers to the local group of believers. This is noteworthy as perhaps the earliest example of the use of the term for the church universal. Paul proceeds to list some of the parts of the body of Christ. He has made the point that in the natural body God puts the parts in place (vv. 18, 24). So with the body of Christ. People do not choose to be apostles, prophets, and the rest, but God sets them in the church. First of all … second … third picks out three specially significant gifts (cf. Eph. 4:11). We cannot press the order throughout the list, though clearly none of the rest is to be ranked with the first three. It is probably significant that tongues (with interpretation), which the Corinthians valued so highly, comes last of all (as in vv. 8–10). Apostles were originally chosen by Christ to be with him, and that he might send them to teach and to cast out devils (Mark 3:14f.) In time there were others than the Twelve, such as Barnabas, James, and Paul himself. They seem always to have been held in high esteem as custodians of the authentic gospel and witnesses to what God has done (see on 9:1f.). For prophets see on v. 10. Chrysostom remarks that every church ‘had many that prophesied’, which makes the prophets local officials, rather than belonging to the church at large as did the apostles. We would not have expected the teachers to rank so high. The fact that they do indicates the importance of teaching in the apostolic age. We must bear in mind that the cost of hand-copied books was high,6 and few believers could look forward to owning a Bible. The function of a teacher in such a church must have been tremendously important, even if we do not know precisely what he did and why he needed a charisma.
From this point Paul speaks of the gifts rather than of the people who exercised them: ‘then miracles, then gifts of healings’ (see on vv. 9, 10). The meanings of the words translated those able to help others (antilēmpseis) and gifts of administration (kybernēseis) are quite unknown. Commentators and translators guess at meanings like ‘works of charity’ (Héring) and ‘gifts of support’ (Barrett) for the first, and ‘gifts of administration’ (NIV, RSV) or ‘good leaders’ (JB) for the second. Antilempsēis certainly means help of some sort, but what that kind of helping is that requires a special charisma we simply do not know. Kybernēseis is the activity of the steersman piloting a vessel (a cognate word is used of the ‘pilot’ or ‘captain’ of a ship, Acts 27:11; Rev. 18:17). It looks like a word of direction of some sort, but we have no way of knowing which. The two terms remind us of the immense amount about life in the apostolic church of which we are ignorant. For tongues, see on v. 10.
29–30. All the questions in these two verses are introduced with the particle mē, which indicates that the answer ‘No’ is expected in each case. The series of rhetorical questions, quite in Paul’s argumentative style, hammers home the fact of diversity. Christians differ from one another in the gifts they have received from God. No gift can be despised on the grounds that all have it, for all differ. Paul here omits ‘helps’ and ‘governments’ from the list, but adds, Do all interpret?
31. Paul has ranked some of the gifts in order. He has also indicated that even the humble parts of the body are necessary, and that all are set in the body by God. It is not inconsistent with this to suggest that the Corinthians do well if they eagerly desire the greater gifts. They cannot obtain them unless God chooses to give them, but presumably their earnest desire and their preparing of themselves is seen as a preliminary to reception, at least in some cases. Yet there is something higher than the greatest of all these gifts, and this is within the reach of the humblest and most ordinary believer. So Paul proceeds to unfold the most excellent way. Some suggest that he means that love is the more excellent way to the gifts. This is possible grammatically, but Paul’s treatment of love does not leave the impression that it is simply a means to an end. Love is to be pursued for its own sake.
3. In praise of love (13:1–13)
Paul’s ‘most excellent way’ is the way of love, which he proceeds to expound in a passage of singular beauty and power. Adolf Harnack called this chapter ‘the greatest, strongest, deepest thing Paul ever wrote’ (cited in Robertson and Plummer), and few would be prepared to contest this verdict. The chapter is not a digression, as some have thought, but is ‘essential to Paul’s argument’ (Bruce, p. 117). He has not finished with the ‘gifts’, and he has much to say about them in the following chapter. But it is integral to his argument that the central thing is not the due exercise of any of the ‘gifts’. It is love. Some translations render the word agapē by ‘charity’ (AV, Knox), a translation derived from Wycliffe, who took it from the caritas of the Vulgate. We need not doubt that ‘love’ is the better rendering, but it is worth noticing that Jerome used caritas because the kind of love the Latins meant by amor was not what the New Testament meant by agapē. This Greek word was not in common use before the New Testament (it occurs twenty times in LXX and a few times in writings like The Epistle to Aristeas). But the Christians took it up and made it their characteristic word for love (it occurs 116 times in the New Testament, 75 being in Paul). Whereas the highest concept of love before the New Testament was that of a love for the best one knows, the Christians thought of love as that quality we see on the cross. It is a love for the utterly unworthy, a love that proceeds from a God who is love. It is a love lavished on others without a thought whether they are worthy or not. It proceeds from the nature of the lover, not from any attractiveness in the beloved. The Christian who has experienced God’s love for him while he was yet a sinner (Rom. 5:8) has been transformed by the experience. Now he sees people as those for whom Christ died, the objects of God’s love, and therefore the objects of the love of God’s people. In his measure he comes to practise the love that seeks nothing for itself, but only the good of the loved one. It is this love that the apostle unfolds.7
1. Paul begins with some hypothetical possibilities (and his use of the first person probably means that he is preaching to himself, too). The tongues of men and of angels almost certainly refers to the gift of ‘tongues’, but the expression is general enough to cover speech of any kind (cf. JB, ‘all the eloquence of men or of angels’). No language in earth or heaven is to be compared with the practice of love. It is easy enough to be fascinated by eloquent discourse, to be hypnotized by the magic of words, and to pass over that which matters most of all. Anyone who is taken up with saying rather than doing has become nothing more than sound. A resounding gong is really ‘resounding bronze’ (and Corinth was famous for its bronzes8). ‘Bronze’ may denote the metal itself or any object made from it. Here it clearly points to something noisy and gong is probably right (though some think a trumpet is meant). There may be plenty of noise in a gong, but there is nothing more. So is it with the clanging cymbal; it produces a loud, though harsh, sound. With both there is ‘noise, but no melody’ (Thrall). The gift of ‘tongues’ means noise, but, unless there is interpretation, no meaning. The sounds of gongs and cymbals would have been familiar at Corinth from their use by devotees of Dionysius or Cybele. Phillips perhaps has this sort of thing in mind with his unusual rendering: ‘If I were to speak with the combined eloquence of men and angels I should stir men like a fanfare of trumpets or the crashing of cymbals, but unless I had love, I should do nothing more.’ The best speech of earth or heaven, without love, is only a noise.
2. Paul moves from ‘tongues’ to knowledge, another important concept for the Corinthians. He has just ranked prophecy (see on 12:10) as second only to the apostolate (12:28), so that he cannot be accused of minimizing its importance. But loveless prophecy amounts to nothing. All mysteries (see on 2:7) and all knowledge point us to the sum of all wisdom, human and divine. It includes the knowledge people gather for themselves (gnōsis, knowledge, sometimes has a meaning not unlike our ‘science’), and what they know only by revelation. Mysteries are truths that people could never find out for themselves. They know them only because it has pleased God to reveal them. Faith is, of course, the basic Christian attitude, but the term may also be used of a special gift of the Spirit (12:9), and here it is clearly this that is meant. It is the kind of faith that works miracles (cf. Mark 11:22f.). Paul has ‘all’ before faith (cf. RSV); he is referring to faith in the fullest degree. The Corinthians clearly thought that the possessors of certain gifts were extremely important people. Paul stoutly maintains that if they have even the highest of gifts, and that in full amount, but lack love, not only are they not very important; they are actually nothing. His choice of words is very impressive.
3. From knowledge and deeds of power Paul turns to deeds of mercy and dedication. Give translates psōmizō, a verb connected with psōmion, used of the ‘piece of bread’ that Jesus dipped and gave to Judas (John 13:26f.). Paul is speaking of giving one’s goods in small amounts (JB, ‘piece by piece’), i.e. to large numbers of people. Edwards thinks that the verb also conveys the idea that ‘every gift is made by the man himself (Chrysostom refers to ‘the administering also with all care’), though this may be reading too much into it. The verb is in the aorist tense, pointing to a once-for-all action, the action of a man who, in one grand sweeping gesture, sells all that he has and gives it away. It is sobering to reflect that one may be generous to the point of beggary, and yet completely lacking in love. The Greek has nothing corresponding to the poor; the emphasis is on the giver, not the recipients. There is a difficult textual problem surrounding the next expression, where some MSS read ‘give my body to be burnt’ (as NIV), and others ‘give my body that I may boast’.9 On the whole it seems a little more likely that we should read ‘boast’, but giving oneself to be burnt is certainly one way the body might be given. The expression reminds us of the three youths who gave their bodies to the fire (Dan. 3:28, LXX), though there is, of course, no suggestion that they were lacking in love. Paul may have had a special case in mind, such as the Indian Calanus who burnt himself alive before Alexander (Strabo 15.1.68). If we accept the reading ‘boast’ we may perhaps think of people who sold themselves into slavery and used the money to provide food for the poor (1 Clement 55:2). Paul is saying that it is possible for a person to give his body up to burning or to slavery and make this spectacular sacrifice without love. That person may be moved by dedication to a high ideal, or by pride or the like. If so, he gains nothing. First-century people commonly saw great merit in deeds of charity and in suffering. Paul totally rejects all such ideas. Love is the one thing needful. Nothing can make up for its lack.
4. Paul has shown that even the highest gifts are worth nothing at all if love is absent. Now he looks at the situation when love is present. Love is patient, he says, where his verb (makrothymeō) means the opposite of ‘short-tempered’. It denotes patience with people rather than with circumstances (Barclay). The concept is often used of God (Luke 18:7; 2 Pet. 3:9; the noun, Rom. 2:4; 9:22, etc.). It thus points to a godlike quality, and is eloquent of love’s self-restraint. The other side of this is that love is kind (chrēsteuomai). This is the only occurrence of the verb in the New Testament and it is not found before this. Some have felt that Paul coined it. The corresponding adjective may be translated ‘good’ (15:33), or ‘kind’ (Eph. 4:32). Perhaps we are not wrong in suggesting that Paul’s verb combines the two meanings. Love reacts with goodness towards those who ill-treat it; it gives itself in kindness in the service of others. Love does not envy; the verb is occasionally used in a good sense (as in 12:31, ‘eagerly desire’), but more usually it means a strong passion of jealousy or the like. This is its meaning here. Love is not displeased at the success of others. Love does not boast, where Paul uses a picturesque word, the root pointing to what BAGD define as a ‘wind-bag’. For is not proud see the note on ‘take pride’ in 4:6. The last two verbs remind us that there are many ways of manifesting pride. But love is incompatible with them all. Love is concerned to give itself, not to assert itself.
5. Love is not rude, where the verb (aschēmoneō) means ‘what is not according to proper form (schēma)’, and thus anything disgraceful, dishonourable, indecent. It is a general term with a wide range of meaning. Love avoids the whole range of unseemliness. Love is not self-seeking (‘does not seek its own things’), which might be understood as ‘does not insist on its own way’ (RSV) or ‘is not selfish’ (GNB). Both arise from self-centredness and this is the very opposite of love. Love is not easily angered, ‘is not touchy’ (Phillips). There is, of course, a place for anger (cf. Eph. 4:26), but that is a passionate opposition to evil, not a selfish concern for one’s own rights. Karl Barth reminds us that the neighbour ‘can get dreadfully on my nerves even in the exercise of what he regards as, and what may well be, his particular gifts … Love cannot alter the fact that he gets on my nerves, but … it can rule out … my allowing myself to be “provoked” by him’ (Church Dogmatics, IV, 2 [T. & T. Clark, 1958], p. 834). Love keeps no record of wrongs. Paul uses this verb (logizomai) in the sense of the reckoning of righteousness to the believer. It is a word connected with the keeping of accounts, noting something down and reckoning it to someone. Love does not take notice of every evil thing that people do and hold it against them. Love takes no account of evil. It does not harbour a sense of injury.
6. It is all too characteristic of human nature to take pleasure in the misfortunes of others (cf. Smedes, ‘We will enjoy our disgust so much that we would be furious were we to be deprived of it’, p. 78). Much in our newspapers is the reporting of disaster or evil deeds, and our newspapers sell; plainly there is that in us to which reports of evil appeal. But love is not like that. Love takes no joy in evil of any kind. Rather it rejoices with the truth. Love shares truth’s joy; it cannot rejoice when the truth is denied. There is a stern moral undertone throughout the New Testament, and nothing is ever said to obscure this. Love must not be thought of as indifferent to moral considerations. It must see truth victorious if it is to rejoice. Truth is often connected with the heart of Christianity (cf. Jesus’ words, ‘I am … the truth’, John 14:6; and Paul’s words, ‘as truth is in Jesus’, Eph. 4:21). Truth is set over against unrighteousness a number of times (e.g. 2 Thess. 2:10, 12), and we should probably understand this wide usage here. Love rejoices in the truth of God, in the truth of the gospel (cf. John 8:56).
7. Now some positives to set over against the negatives. Love always protects. The verb (stegō) basically means ‘cover’; this leads to ‘hide by covering’, or ‘ward off by covering’ and thus ‘endure’. It is possible that it has the former meaning here (cf., though with a different verb, 1 Pet. 4:8). Love conceals what is displeasing in another and does not drag it out into the pitiless light of public scrutiny. But it is more likely that it is the latter meaning that is in mind (as in 9:12, ‘put up with’). Love does not give way easily; it endures. Always trusts points to the quality that is ever ready to allow for circumstances and to see the best in others (cf. Moffatt, ‘always eager to believe the best’). This does not mean that love is gullible, but that it does not think the worst (as is the way of the world). It retains its faith. Love is not deceived by the pretences of any rogue, but it is always ready to give the benefit of the doubt. Always hopes is the forward look. This is not an unreasoning optimism, which fails to take account of reality. It is rather a refusal to take failure as final. It is the confidence that looks to ultimate triumph by the grace of God. Always perseveres brings the thought of steadfastness. The verb (hypomenō) denotes not a patient, resigned acquiescence, but an active, positive fortitude. It is the endurance of the soldier who, in the thick of the battle, is undismayed, but continues to lay about him vigorously. Love is not overwhelmed, but manfully plays its part whatever the difficulties.
8. Love is permanent; it never fails, where the verb commonly means ‘to fall’. It comes to be used with the meaning ‘collapse’, ‘suffer ruin’. Love will never suffer such a fate. ‘Many waters cannot quench love’ (Ct. 8:7). Over against this permanence of love Paul sets the certain passing away of gifts on which the Corinthians set so much store. Prophecies will cease (katargeō; see on 1:28). They are the setting forth of what God says to people through his prophet. But when we stand before God there will be no place for the prophet, no reason for his prophecies. Tongues likewise will be stilled. The same line of reasoning applies here. In the very presence of God there will be no reason and no place for the kind of revelation that tongues bring. Knowledge, the painfully acquired knowledge of earthly things, will pass away in the light of the immediate presence of God. The verb is the same as that used for prophecies (katargeō), though NIV translates it differently.
9–10. It is not difficult to understand we know in part (and the research in every laboratory in the world demonstrates the truth of the statement). The more we know the more we realize that we do not know. What is meant by we prophesy in part is not quite so clear. Probably the idea is that God does not reveal everything, so that the prophet, no less than the sage, gives but a partial glimpse of truth. Perfection (to teleion) conveys the idea of the destined end or aim. It points to God’s plan. When the consummation is reached, all that is partial disappears (katargeō again; see on v. 8).
11. The contrast between the partial and the complete is illustrated from human life. It is natural enough for a child to act like a child, as Paul points out from his own experience. The verb thought (phroneō) is a word for general intellectual activity, and is not to be taken as ‘feel’ (as RV and others). It has to do with the intellect rather than the emotions. Reasoned (logizomai) takes it a step further. It means ‘to reckon’ (see on v. 5), from which we get the general idea of working things out or reasoning. For the child all talking, thinking and reasoning are done at the childish level. Paul contrasts this with man’s estate. He was no Peter Pan, refusing to grow up. He exercised the functions of adulthood with determination; he put childish ways behind him (put … behind is katargeō once more; the fourth different translation of this difficult verb in four verses!). Paul does not mean simply that childish things passed away with the passing of time. His choice of verb indicates a determination on his part that he would not be ruled by childish attitudes. The tense is perfect, which shows that he put away childish things with decision and finality.
12. Reflection is really ‘mirror’ and this has occasioned some discussion. Some see a reference to revelation, some to the practice of certain magicians who used mirrors in their profession, others to a mere reflection of reality. But the double contrast in this verse surely puts the imperfect and the perfect in contrast. Our knowledge of God in the here and now is imperfect and is in contrast with what it will be in the hereafter. Mirrors in the first century were of polished metal. Corinth was famous for its mirrors, but few Christians would have been able to afford a mirror of good quality. In the nature of the case the reflection would not be very clear. It is, of course, also the case that a mirror always distorts to some extent: it reverses left and right, what it shows is limited by the frame, and it is always indirect. So Paul says we see en ainigmati, ‘dimly’ (RSV). The noun properly means ‘a riddle’ (we derive our word ‘enigma’ from it), so that the expression means ‘in a riddle’, i.e. ‘indistinctly’ (cf. NEB, ‘Now we see only puzzling reflections in a mirror’). While we live out our lives on this earth our sight of things eternal is, at best, indistinct. But then, says Paul, it will be face to face. He does not define his then, nor does he say with whom we shall be face to face. But in neither case is there need. His meaning is plain enough.
As with seeing, so with knowing. All earthly knowledge is partial, a truth Paul has already laid down (v. 9). Over against it he sets the perfect knowledge when we shall know as we are known. The first know is ginōskō, but on the second occasion he employs the compound epiginōskō (used also when he says I am known). The use of the compound verb often signifies no more than that one’s knowledge is directed towards (epi) a particular object. But it may mean a full and complete knowledge10 which seems to be the force of it here (and which NIV brings out by inserting fully). I am known is in the aorist tense, which points in the same direction. The knowledge that God has of Paul is not something growing and becoming more and more perfect. God knows him through and through, with a knowledge that is perfect and complete.
13. If and now is understood in a temporal sense, ‘now, at this present’, Paul is contrasting life in the here and now with that in the hereafter. This, however, seems unlikely. He is not saying that faith, hope and love continue throughout this life, for that could equally be said of prophecy, tongues and the like with which he is contrasting them. It is more probable that the words are to be taken in the logical sense, ‘now as things are’, ‘now in conclusion’. Over against the things that are temporary Paul sets these eternal verities. The verb remain is singular in the Greek. This may be only because the subject follows and the verb agrees with the nearest subject. But if it is significant Paul is seeing the three as in some sense one. They form a unity. By adding these three he effectively sets them apart from everything else. They are pre-eminent. Nothing may stand with them. We see this also in the fact that the three are often linked in the New Testament and early Christian literature (Rom. 5:2–5; Gal. 5:5f; Eph. 1:15–18; 4:2–5; Col. 1:4f.; 1 Thess. 1:3; 5:8; Heb. 6:10–12; 10:22–24; 1 Pet. 1:3–8, 21f; cf. Barnabas 1:4; 11:8; Polycarp 3:2f.). Evidently it was an accepted practice in the early church to link these three.
Faith is one of Paul’s dominant themes. He could write, ‘The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God’ (Gal. 2:20). The faith that was central to his living was central also to his teaching, as even a cursory acquaintance with his epistles reveals. Some have felt that faith essentially belongs to this life and they see no place for it in the hereafter. But faith means trust in God and commitment to him, and that surely lasts into the coming age.
It is a little surprising that hope should figure in this short list. And yet—we cannot live without hope. No movement has really gripped the hearts of significant numbers of people which has not given them hope. In the first centuries Christianity made a habit of taking people from the depressed classes, slaves, women, outcasts, and giving them a living hope. It is not a gain, but a grievous loss, that so often today Christians are people whose hope is no more than the mild optimism of the worldly. It is important to see that hope in the New Testament sense is one of the great, abiding realities. Hope is linked with God, who is ‘the God of hope’ (Rom. 15:13). And unless we think of the afterlife as a static, monotonous heaven, there will always be room for an eager hope based on the God of hope.
The last word in this chapter fittingly is love. Love occupies the supreme place. God cannot be said to exercise faith or hope, but he certainly loves, and indeed is love (1 John 4:8, 16). We should not press Paul’s comparison too closely, nor waste our time inquiring into the precise manner in which love surpasses faith or hope (though it may not be without significance that in v. 7 these two are modes of love’s outworking). It is not Paul’s intention to rank the three in order. In the face of the regard the Corinthians had for the spectacular he is saying, ‘The really important things are not “tongues” and the like, but faith and hope and love. And there is nothing greater than love.’
The commentator cannot finish writing on this chapter without a sense that soiled and clumsy hands have touched a thing of exquisite beauty and holiness. Here what is true of all Scripture is true in especial measure, that no comment can be adequate to so great a theme. Yet no commentator can excuse himself from the duty of trying to make plain what these matchless words have come to signify for him. And no Christian can excuse himself from the duty of trying to show in his life what these words have come to mean for him.
4. Prophecy is superior to ‘tongues’ (14:1–25)
Paul has dealt with the variety of spiritual gifts and the essential unity in the body of Christ of those who have them. He has shown that love is pre-eminent; it stands above all else. Now he concentrates on two of the gifts, ‘tongues’ and prophecy, and the length of his treatment shows the importance of the subject to his readers. From the way the apostle writes it is not unreasonable to deduce that there were some in Corinth who held that ‘tongues’ was the more important, perhaps even that those who spoke in ‘tongues’ were superior Christians. Paul is at pains to make it clear that the exercise of this gift is legitimate. It can be a mark of spiritual fervour, and in any case every gift of God is good and is to be used. But at the same time he curbs the exaggerated regard some of the Corinthians had for it. He steadily insists that the gift of prophecy is much to be preferred. Following on his demonstration of the importance of love, Paul insists that edification must be the prime consideration. Does one’s gift help other people? That is the important thing.
1. The opening words sum up Paul’s position. As he has stressed throughout chapter 13, the most important thing is the pursuit of love (the Greek has nothing to correspond to NIV’s the way of). Follow (diōkete) has the idea of pursuit with persistence; it ‘indicates a never terminating action’ (Grosheide). Barrett translates, ‘Pursue love as your aim.’ With this Paul links eagerly desire (the same word as in 12:31) spiritual gifts; those gifts as the outworking of love will build up other believers. Among the gifts Paul gives the first place to prophecy (see on 12:10). This is something like our preaching, but it is not identical with it. It is not the delivery of a carefully prepared sermon, but the uttering of words directly inspired by God.
2. The reason for the inferiority of ‘tongues’ is its unintelligibility. Anyone exercising this gift is engaged in private communion with God. No-one understands him, which makes it plain that this gift differs from that in Acts 2, where everyone understood. Some think that spirit here refers to the Holy Spirit (e.g. RSV, ‘in the Spirit’), but it seems rather to refer to the person’s own spirit (cf. v. 14); his spirit as distinct from his understanding. Mysteries (see on 2:7) are matters which people could never know of themselves, but there is usually also the thought that God has now revealed them. Here it is the element of secrecy that is uppermost. Unless there is someone there with a special gift of interpretation, what is spoken in ‘tongues’ is quite unknowable to mankind.
3. By contrast the prophet edifies, exhorts, comforts. For strengthening (really ‘edification’ or ‘upbuilding’) see the note on the related verb in 8:1. The word for comfort (paramythia) is found only here in the New Testament, but the cognate verb is used of comforting the bereaved (John 11:19, 31). Prophecy, then, is a means of building up Christian character, of encouraging and strengthening people, and of giving them comfort in their distress.
4. Paul does not deny that ‘tongues’ have a value for edification. But (unless interpreted) they profit only the person who exercises the gift, whereas he who prophesies builds up the whole church. There can be no doubting which of the two acts is done in love.
5. Once again Paul stresses the importance of edification. He would like to see all the Corinthians speak with ‘tongues’. Consistently he refuses to speak disparagingly of this gift. But even more would he wish to see everybody prophesying. The person prophesying is greater than the speaker in ‘tongues’ (would the Corinthians have put it the other way round?). The spectacular character of speaking in ‘tongues’ seems to have appealed to the Corinthians, but Paul roundly asserts the superiority of prophecy, unless there is interpretation. If ‘tongues’ are interpreted the hearers are edified, and there is no great difference from prophecy. Both are inspired speech, and both now convey a message to people.
6. As often, Paul softens his rebuke with the affectionate address, brothers. The construction is very condensed, being a mixture of ‘If I come … what shall I profit you?’ and ‘What shall I profit you, except I speak …?’ Paul pictures his next visit to Corinth and supposes that he does nothing there except speak in tongues. What good would that be to anyone? The criterion is still edification, and the inferiority of ‘tongues’ is plain; it is a gift that does not profit the hearers. The things that do profit are gifts like revelation. This word is often used in the wide sense, of God’s revelation of himself, but there is also a narrower use for some specific matter that God reveals to one of the believers (cf. Gal. 2:2), and which he might then pass on to others (cf. v. 25). In this sense revelation is closely related to prophecy (vv. 29–31). For knowledge (gnōsis) see on 12:8. Word of instruction (didachē) means ‘teaching’, instruction in the Christian faith.
7. Paul illustrates his point from other areas of life, first that of music. Flute will stand for wind instruments in general, and harp (kithara, from which we get ‘guitar’) for all stringed instruments. Neither flute nor harp makes sense unless there is a meaningful variation in the sounds produced. An aimless jangle means nothing.
8. So in the military realm. The trumpet conveys the commands of the leader to men remote from him. It is thus of the first importance that it should be blown so that it can be understood. If the sound is not clear (and the hearer does not know whether it means ‘Advance’ or ‘Retreat’), it has failed of its purpose. It is useless.
9. You is emphatic. This applies to the Corinthians especially. With your tongue is also in an emphatic position, which stresses the connection between the tongue and intelligibility. The Corinthians had delighted in unintelligible tongues, but speech is either intelligible or nothing more than speaking into the air.
10. There are some obscurities in the Greek here. Undoubtedly renders ei tychoi, which means ‘if it should turn out that way, perhaps’ (BAGD). Its use with numerals is to make them indefinite. Here it is probably meant to modify ‘so many’ (which it follows in the Greek). Barrett sees the meaning as ‘I don’t know how many’, while Goodspeed translates, ‘There are probably ever so many different languages in the world’. Languages translates phōnōn (‘voices’), and without meaning, aphōnon; Paul is making a play on words. His point is that there is no real difference between being unintelligible and being dumb. The whole point of language is to communicate meaning.
11. Meaning translates dynamis, ‘force’, ‘power’. Speech understood is effective communication, but speech not understood has no ‘power’ at all. Foreigner is perhaps not the best translation of barbaros, ‘barbarian’. The word is onomatopoeic; it means someone whose language sounds like ‘bar bar’, i.e. whose language makes no sense. The word is often used in a derogatory fashion, of those beyond the pale of civilization (just as is the case with the English equivalent). It is this that foreigner misses. Paul’s primary thought is that the person’s speech is unintelligible, but the derogatory associations of ‘barbarian’ are in mind also. The speaking in ‘tongues’ that seemed to the Corinthians a matter for such pride turns out to be the means of making them nothing more than barbarians. This would be even worse for a Greek than for us.
12. Again an emphatic you drives home the relevance of what Paul is saying to his correspondents. Are eager is really a noun, ‘zealots’ (from the same root as ‘eagerly desire’, v. 1; 12:31). There is this difference that, whereas the verb is often used in a bad sense, the noun is usually used in a good sense, as here. Spiritual gifts is really ‘spirits’, but there is probably little difference (though some see a desire for supernatural gifts without much concern for their nature). ‘Spirits’ perhaps stresses a little more the ‘spirit’ character of the gifts for which the Corinthians were ‘zealots’, i.e. their origin in the Holy Spirit. Paul does not blame them for this desire, but urges them to seek to excel in gifts that build up the church. He keeps coming back to this thought. Edification, the building up of other believers, is what matters. ‘Spiritual gifts are incompatible with spiritual selfishness’ (Orr and Walther). While it is right to desire to excel in the exercise of spiritual gifts, it is those that build people up that are important. If they do not edify they do not matter.
13. The man who speaks in a tongue should not rest content with the gift. Its value is too limited, and he should pray for the gift of interpretation. Then what he says will help other people. There was apparently nothing static about possession of the gifts. Anyone who had the gift of ‘tongues’ need not take that as his end state. He might later receive other gifts, more particularly that of interpretation. He should pray to this end.
14–15. Up till this point Paul has concentrated on the value of the gifts to people other than those who exercise them. Now he looks within. Anyone who prays in a tongue is not using his mind (nous). The Christian life is considerably more than a mental exercise, but anyone whose mind is unfruitful is not being true to his Christian calling. This passage is very important for its insistence on the rightful place of the intellect. Notice that this is secured without any diminution of spiritual fervour. Paul is not arguing for a barren intellectualism. There is a place for the enthusiasm so strikingly exemplified in the use of ‘tongues’. But it must be allied to the use of the mind, and this ‘tongues’ by itself does not provide. Paul singles out two activities specially appropriate in public worship: prayer and singing. Both must be done intelligently, with the mind. Sing (psallō) properly means ‘sing to the accompaniment of a musical instrument’, but here it is used quite generally (cf. v. 26, and for Paul singing, Acts 16:25). Clearly Paul is not looking for unintelligible prayers (prayers in a ritual, emotional jargon?) or hymns chosen on the basis of attractive tunes without regard to the theology they express. The mind is to be active in both.
16–17. Paul turns attention to one whom he calls idiōtēs (from idios, ‘one’s own’), a private person. It may mean ‘unlearned’ (Acts 4:13; cf. 2 Cor. 11:6), or it may be used for laymen over against priests, private citizens over against those in public life such as magistrates, men without military rank (‘privates’ or ‘GIs’) over against officers (see MM). It would be easy to understand the term here of the ‘uninitiated’, people not Christians, except that in v. 23 the idiōtēs is distinguished on the one hand from believers and on the other from unbelievers (the whole church is assembled and there come in some idiōtai, or unbelievers). It is, of course, possible that Paul uses the word in different senses in the two places, but they are close enough and similar enough for us to interpret the word in the same way both times if that is possible. In some religious associations the word was used for ‘non-members who may participate in the sacrifices’ (BAGD), and this may give us the clue. These are ‘inquirers’, people who had not committed themselves to Christianity, but who were interested and had thus ceased to be merely ‘unbelievers’. Such people would not be able to give assent to a prayer of thanksgiving uttered in a ‘tongue’, for they would not understand it. Amen is our transliteration from the Greek of what was already a transliteration from the Hebrew. It is the participle of the verb ‘to confirm’, used adverbially in the sense ‘truly’. It was employed as the congregation’s response to prayers (e.g. Neh. 8:6), and that is its meaning here. By using it at the end of a prayer uttered by someone else the worshipper makes the prayer his own. The idiōtēs cannot do this with prayer in a tongue, since he is ignorant of the content of the prayer. Others would, of course, be in the same position, but probably everyone had a special concern for the idiōtēs, the man who might be won. It may be a perfectly good prayer (You may be giving thanks well enough), but it is unintelligible. There is thus no edification, and that, as Paul has been saying throughout this whole discussion, is the condemnation of ‘tongues’.
18–19. Paul’s minimizing of ‘tongues’ does not arise from ‘sour grapes’. He himself exercises the gift more than all the Corinthians and that is something for which he thanks God. It is a good gift. But in church (= ‘in assembly’; there is no the in the Greek) he would prefer to speak five intelligible words than to utter a torrent of words in a tongue (cf. Robertson, ‘It is better to be useful than brilliant’). In church, of course, means ‘in the assembly of Christians’, not in a building, as our usage might suggest. There were no Christian buildings at this period.
20. The address brothers, a further reminder of Paul’s affection, softens the rebuke and also serves to slow up the progress of the argument and to focus attention on what follows. Stop thinking (present imperative) like children implies that the readers were in fact doing this and Paul calls on them to cease. More literally, he says ‘stop being children in mind’, where his word for ‘mind’ differs from that in v. 14. Here he has the plural of phrēn, ‘the midriff’, ‘the diaphragm’. The ancients located thought in this part of the body, so that the word came to mean much the same as our ‘mind’. There is not a great deal of difference from nous. Paul just wants his friends to stop being infantile in their thinking. Godet comments: ‘It is indeed the characteristic of the child to prefer the amusing to the useful, the brilliant to the solid. And this is what the Corinthians did by their marked taste for glossolalia’ (glossolalia = speaking with tongues). It is good to be infants where evil is concerned; that is the place for the childlike attitude. But, when it comes to thinking, they should be adults (teleioi, ‘mature’).
21. The Law here is the Old Testament in general, not specifically the Pentateuch. Paul quotes Isaiah 28:11f., agreeing neither with LXX nor the Hebrew (it is not unlike the translation of Aquila). The reference is to the failure of the Israelites to heed the prophet. Their judgment will be to be delivered over to men of strange speech, the Assyrian invaders. The connection with the present argument is not obvious. Perhaps Paul means that, as those who had refused to heed the prophet were punished by hearing speech that was not intelligible to them, so would it be in his day. Those who would not believe would hear unintelligible ‘tongues’, but be quite unable to understand the wonderful meaning.
22. There is a problem in that at first sight what Paul says in this verse is contradicted by what follows. Here ‘tongues’ are for unbelievers, but in v. 23, when unbelievers are confronted with ‘tongues’, they think the speakers are mad. Again, prophecy is said to be for believers, but Paul speaks only of its effect on unbelievers (vv. 24–25). The meaning may be that ‘tongues’ are a judgment on wilful unbelief (as in v. 21), while prophecy is for believers in the sense that it ‘makes believers of unbelievers’ (Bengel). But perhaps the best suggestion is that of B. C. Johanson (NTS, 25, 1978–79, pp. 180–203), who argues that v. 22 should be seen as a rhetorical question (like that in Gal. 4:16, where the construction is similar). The Corinthians may well have argued that a man speaking in ‘tongues’ would be a sign to outsiders that God was at work, whereas prophecy did no more than convey a message to the believer. Paul asks, ‘Are tongues, then, a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers, and prophecy for believers, not for unbelievers?’ He proceeds to refute this view in the examples that follow.
23. Paul imagines the whole church assembled, with everyone speaking in tongues (the complete fulfilment of the wildest dreams of those who saw ‘tongues’ as the most desirable of the gifts). If now there come in some ‘inquirers’ (idiōtai, see on v. 16) or some unbelievers, the result will be disastrous. The effect of a massive display of ‘tongues’ on non-Christians, whether inquirers or rank unbelievers, will be to convince them that Christians are crazy.
24–25. The effect of prophecy is different. This time Paul uses the singular for unbeliever and for ‘inquirer’ (he employed the plural in v. 23), but the change is not significant, unless he is suggesting that conversion is always an individual matter. The effect of a display of prophecy on an outsider is given in striking terms. Prophecy conveys a divine message (see on 12:10), and this will have powerful effects. Convinced (elenchetai) means ‘convicted’; it is used of the Holy Spirit’s work of convicting the world of sin (John 16:8). The divine word comes to the non-Christian with convicting power. For judged (anakrinetai) see on 2:14. The effect of the prophetic word is to reveal to the man his state. His whole inner being is searched out. Those things he fondly imagined to be hidden in his heart he finds reproved and judged, and he can ascribe this only to the activity of God. The result of prophecy is that he comes to worship God, recognizing that God is present in his church. Prophecy leads him to God.
5. The practical outcome (14:26–33)
This little paragraph is very important as giving us the most intimate glimpse we have of the early church at worship. It is not complete and, for example, it does not say whether passages of Scripture were read or not. But it is our earliest account of a service and it enables us to see something of what the first Christians actually did when they assembled to worship God. Clearly their services were more spontaneous and less structured than was normally the case in later days. We have no way of knowing how typical of the whole church worship at Corinth was, but it cannot have been very far from the norm, else Paul would have said so.
26. Come together means come together for worship. We need not press everyone (or ‘each’, hekastos), as though it meant that every member of the congregation always had something to contribute. But it does mean that any of them might be expected to take part in the service. It is curious that Paul does not speak of anyone having ‘a prophecy’, but perhaps a revelation means much the same. A hymn or ‘psalm’ (AV, JB; psalmos) properly denotes a song sung to the accompaniment of an instrument, but then more generally, a song. It was used especially of the psalms in the Old Testament, and some think that a Corinthian would come with one of these and perhaps a meditation on it. But singing was common among the early Christians (cf. v. 15; Matt. 26:30; Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16), and the New Testament has a number of Christian songs (e.g. Luke 1:46–55, 68–79, and the songs in Revelation). The more likely meaning is that a worshipper would bring a song of his own composition for the service. A word of instruction (didachē) is a piece of Christian teaching. A revelation will be some specific matter that God has revealed to the believer, perhaps a ‘prophecy’ or something akin to it. An interpretation will be the interpretation of a tongue. There was thus a variety of ingredients in the service. But the guiding rule is ‘Let all things be done for edification’ (NASB), as Paul has been insisting.
27–28. As ‘tongues’ presented the principal difficulty, Paul deals with that subject first. He limits the number of speakers to two—or at the most three. Enthusiasts tend to go on and on, but there is a limit to what a congregation can take! They are to speak one at a time, which seems to show that the Corinthians had had experience of a number of people exercising this gift simultaneously, which must have been very confusing. Paul forbids it. Someone must interpret carries on the position Paul has consistently taken up. Edification is the supreme consideration, so ‘tongues’ must not be used unless there is an interpreter. This shows that we are not to think of ‘tongues’ as the result of an irresistible impulse of the Spirit, driving the man willy-nilly into ecstatic speech. He could keep quiet, and that, Paul says, is what he must do unless there is an interpreter. This also implies that he knows beforehand that he intends to speak—otherwise he would not be checking whether there was an interpreter present.
29–31. Prophecy is also subject to regulation. Just as in the case of ‘tongues’, there should be no more than two or three prophets speaking at one service. It is not certain who are the others who are to weigh carefully what is said. This may refer to all the other prophets, but as there is a special gift of distinguishing between spirits (12:10), it is more likely to refer to people who have this gift. It is also possible that the whole church is meant (cf. 1 John 4:1), as Grudem holds (p. 62; so Barrett). The utterance of one who claims to be a prophet is thus not to be accepted uncritically, but is to be tested in the appropriate way. It would seem that certain prophets would normally be selected to speak, but the possibility might arise of a direct revelation to someone who is sitting down (apparently the speaker would have been standing; cf. Acts 13:16; the usual posture for teaching in antiquity was sitting, TDNT, iii, p. 443, and for the synagogue, cf. Luke 4:20). The designated speaker should in this case give way. In the course of time all, which might mean all the congregation (Barrett), but more likely all the prophets, will have the opportunity of engaging in prophecy. The purpose is that everyone may be instructed and encouraged.
32–33. Just as those speaking with ‘tongues’ had the ability to keep silent when they chose, so is it with prophecy. It is not an irresistible divine compulsion that comes upon the prophet. The early church sometimes thought of such compulsion, and, for example, when the officers came to arrest Polycarp he prayed for two hours and could not be silent (mē dynasthai sigēsai, this last word is the verb used in v. 28; Martyrdom of Polycarp, 7). All three nouns in v. 32 are without the article, which makes it read like a proverb, ‘Spirits of prophets are subject to prophets.’ Prophecy is a means of divine illumination, but ‘It is for prophets to control prophetic inspiration’ (NEB). This arises from the fact that God is not a God of disorder but of peace. If the prophets had no control over their spirits, any prospect of an orderly assembly would vanish. But Paul sees the character of God as a guarantee against such disorder. God, because he is the kind of God he is, will produce peace, not disorder.
We should probably place a full stop after peace and take what follows with the next verse (as NIV). It is true that some follow AV and take it with the preceding (Robertson and Plummer, Barrett). But it is difficult to think that such a far-reaching principle should be qualified as no more than the custom of the churches.
6. Women in church (14:34–36)
Paul was concerned with the status of women in 11:2ff. (where see notes). This is a further application of the principles he set out there. Christian women ought not to be ‘forward’, they should not needlessly flout the accepted ideas of the day. Barclay comments: ‘In all likelihood what was uppermost in his mind was the lax moral state of Corinth and the feeling that nothing, absolutely nothing, must be done which would bring upon the infant Church the faintest suspicion of immodesty. It would certainly be very wrong to take these words of Paul out of the context for which they were written.’ We must exercise due caution in applying his principle to our own very different situation. For example, in recent discussions this passage is often cited as deciding the question of the ordination of women. But it should be applied to that question only with reserve. Paul is not discussing whether and how qualified women may minister, but how women should learn (v. 35).
34–35. If As in all the congregations of the saints (cf. 4:17) goes with this verse, Paul is calling on the Corinthians to conform to accepted Christian practice. For women to take on themselves the role of instructors would have been to discredit Christianity in the eyes of most people. Indeed, among the Greeks women were discouraged from saying anything in public. Plutarch says that the virtuous woman ‘ought to be modest and guarded about saying anything in the hearing of outsiders’ (Advice to Bride and Groom, 31); again, ‘a woman ought to do her talking either to her husband or through her husband’ (ibid., 32). Paul calls on them to observe the customs. He does more. He refers to the Law to remind them that they are to be in submission (he does not add ‘to their husbands’; it is a general status of which he speaks, cf. Eph. 5:21). Most think he has in mind Genesis 3:16 (though, as elsewhere, he may be thinking of Gen. 1:26ff.; 2:21ff.). The silence of women in the churches is something of a problem. As Paul has countenanced their praying or prophesying (11:5), the rule against their speaking is not absolute (cf. Acts 2:18f.; 21:9). Moffatt takes the view that Paul ‘never vetoed a devout woman from exercising, even at public worship, the prophetic gift which so many women in the primitive Church enjoyed’. He understands this prohibition to refer to ‘matrons taking part in the discussion or interpretation of what had been said by some prophet or teacher during the service’ (Grudem, pp. 249–251, essentially agrees, as do Thrall and others). Héring finds ‘a clear distinction between a preaching woman … and a woman who is merely present at worship as an ordinary member of the congregation’. G. Delling sees here ‘the prevention of self-willed speaking’ (TDNT, viii, p. 43). Calvin took Paul to mean that, while the necessity may arise for a woman to speak in public, she must not speak in a regular church service. We must bear in mind that in the first century women were uneducated. The Jews regarded it as a sin to teach a woman, and the position was not much better elsewhere. The Corinthian women should keep quiet in church if for no other reason than because they could have had little or nothing worthwhile to say. It is not noticed as frequently as it should be, that Christianity from the very first assumed that women would learn as freely as men (cf. Luke 10:39–42). Paul is here concerned with the way women should learn. He does not argue for this; he takes it for granted. He simply says that they should ask their questions of their husbands at home and not disturb the assembly. That would outrage propriety; it would be disgraceful (the same word as in 11:6), which Bultmann understands as ‘ “that which is disgraceful” in the judgment of men’ (TDNT, i, p. 190).
36. This seems to indicate that the practice had actually been taking place at Corinth. More than once Paul has had occasion to complain of the pride of the Corinthians. Clearly they felt free to strike out on new lines, justified only by their own understanding of things Christian. It is in the light of such a temper that Paul inquires ironically whether the word of God took its earthly origin from the Corinthians, or whether it was to them only that it came. They must not think that they alone know what is Christian. They must give due attention to the customs and the thinking of ‘all the congregations of the saints’ (v. 33).
7. Conclusion (14:37–40)
Paul sums up the discussion in words reminiscent of the ‘Whether they will hear or whether they will forbear’ of the prophets. He has given his judgment faithfully on the matters raised and he is in no doubt that God has guided him in what he has said.
37. Paul makes the high claim for what he is writing, that it is the Lord’s command (there is emphasis on Lord). He could not possibly make a higher claim (which we should not overlook for its bearing on the question of the way the New Testament writers viewed their inspiration). Not only is this the Lord’s command, but anyone who is a prophet or spiritually gifted will recognize the fact. Some of the Corinthians claimed to have spiritual discernment. Let them show it by recognizing inspiration when they saw it.
38. There is a very difficult textual problem with this verse. Many MSS support the text behind AV (and LB), ‘if any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant’ (agnoeitō), but probably most students now agree with Metzger that we should read agnoeitai. This can mean ‘he is not recognized’ (RSV, NASB). But not recognized by whom? JB reads ‘you should not recognize him’, while NEB has ‘God does not acknowledge him’. It is also possible to take the verb as future, in which case the meaning is as Moffatt, ‘Anyone who disregards this will be himself disregarded’ (i.e. on judgment day). Any one of these is possible and we have no way of knowing for certain which should be accepted. Fortunately the main thrust is clear: any spiritual person will recognize the voice of God in what Paul says and will ignore this at his peril.
39. In keeping with his attitude all along, Paul enjoins his friends to seek prophecy rather than ‘tongues’. But they should not despise ‘tongues’. These, too, are a gift from the Lord, and their use should not be forbidden.
40. The chapter closes with a notable principle. Public worship is very important. Everything in it must be done in as seemly a manner as possible, and with due regard for order. Indecorousness and undue innovation are alike discouraged.