1 Cor. 12:31b (ESV) And I will show you a still more excellent way.
The sign gifts experienced by the Corinthian church and mentioned in 1 Cor. Chapter 12 were truly miraculous: God would speak directly through one person to another; they would speak in other languages, speaking prophecy, receiving divine wisdom and knowledge, etc. Then after listing all these wonderful gifts that so occupied the Corinthian church, Paul says, “I will show you a still more excellent way.”
This short sentence has a lot to consider. First, of course, is that what Paul is about to describe is greater by far than the gifts he just addressed. How much greater? He has two modifying words to present the fullness of the word “excellent:” still and more. Still (eti in the Greek) can mean even as in even more. The two words translated “more excellent” are actually one word in Greek: huperbole, from which we get our word hyperbole, and means to throw beyond or surpass. It means beyond an extravagant exaggeration, a far better way. The verse can be translated And now I will show you a way that is beyond comparison (NET).
The thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians is rightly called “The Love Chapter.” Because of this, we hear it often at weddings. In the first three verses of the chapter, Paul tells us that all of the gifts he just talked about are pointless without love at the foundation.
Starting in verse 4, Paul lists the traits of a godly love: patience, kindness, humility, selflessness, patience, gratefulness, forgiveness, moral goodness, and truthfulness. It bears slings and arrows, trusts, is hopeful, and endures. Then Paul says a very interesting thing. He says, “Love never ends.” In the Good News Translation, that is translated, “Love is eternal.”
Imagine that. Those of us who are getting older and seeking to leave a legacy behind must embrace this promise. Our love will last forever. My love for my wife is eternal; our giving a meal to a homeless person because God loves them will be counted to us forever. The things that we do here in this life that are based in love will live on forever. I believe when we stand before God after death, God may well ask what loving acts we’ve done and what we’ve done that was unloving.
After all, the evidence is pretty substantial: 1 John 4:8 tells us God is Love. Jesus gave us two great commandments: to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. I think Paul is trying to inform us that love will be the basis of much of the judgment to come. It does seem God has placed us here to show His love in all the things we do, as Paul asserts in our passage here and again in other passages:
Eph. 2:10 (ESV) For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
I believe God’s love is so far above our understanding that He has authored a series of 66 books, written by more than 40 authors, penned over a span of 1500 years to tell us much about His love. Of course, that collection of ancient books is the Bible. I don’t think we really get it, though. The limitation isn’t God’s, it’s ours.
Why is this important?
In his Republic, Plato talked about reality in a story called Plato’s Cave. It briefly goes like this: Imagine a large group of people lives in a darkened cave where we are chained to a standing position since birth. Their heads are fixed so they can’t move. Behind them is a fire casting shadows on the wall in front of us. So far as they know, their own shadows, the shadows of workers behind them, the items they might hold, and the way they interact are all seen by these people in two dimensions and basically black and white. That is reality to them.
Then one breaks free and finds his way out of the cave into the outside. At first the light blinds him, but as his eyes adjust, he begins to see color; he sees three dimensions, he sees the world as it really is. After a while, he runs back into the cave to tell the others what reality is truly like, but all he has is a vocabulary limited to a world of two dimensions and in black and white. He can’t explain in words that can approach an even rudimentary description of what’s out there.
Our language isn’t broad enough or versatile enough to fully express what God and His heaven are like.
Our limitation in understanding what God and His love are truly like is that we have no common point of reference. There are no words in our three-dimensional world that we see only in a limited color band to explain it.
Like Paul says at the end of the passage, 1 Cor. 13:12 (ESV) : For 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.
We have tasted of the love of God, but we do not know it fully. That will only come when we join Him in heaven. All we can say for certain is that it is far greater than any exaggeration, far deeper than we have ever felt, and will last forever.
The following was allegedly found written on the wall of an insane asylum more than a century ago:
Could we with ink the ocean fill
and were the skies of parchment made,
were ev’ry stalk on earth a quill
and ev’ry man a scribe by trade,
to write the love of God above
would drain the ocean dry;
nor could the scroll contain the whole,
tho’ stretched from sky to sky.
Believers Armed and Dangerous 