Love Must Lie At The Root Of All We Do Especially Our Ministry To The Church (13:1-13).
Paul now deals with what must lie behind the use of spiritual gifts, if they are to be truly spiritual. And in so doing he expands into a detailed description of what is involved in Christian love. It is a return to his brief statement in 1 Corinthians 8:1 where he pointed out that knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. There the idea was primarily that the love was for God, for it is love for God which is the true source of knowledge of God and being known by God. So his first concern here is to indicate that without that love for God, and its consequent result in love for one another, any gifts are meaningless.
However, once the theme is begun, he waxes eloquent on the true basis of genuine Christian love, concluding that it is the greatest virtue of all because it will continue on when all else has passed away. He points out that it is the basis of all Christian behaviour and must be at the root of all responses to the Spirit. It is the end to which all else is directed.
The word used for love (agape) was one rarely used by the Greeks, and it was taken over by the Christian church as a suitable word to describe Christian love, that is, love which expresses itself spiritually and honourably, without any sexual connotations. It has nothing to do with romantic love or physical love (which if misused are anathema). The basic idea behind it can be understood from this chapter with its definition of such love. In the New Testament it is love which acts wholly out of concern for others, the true loving of one's neighbour (but see 2 Timothy 4:10 where, however, Paul may be deliberately using it as a contrast). This was not always so for agapao was sometime used of degraded love in LXX (e.g. 2 Samuel 13:1), but in general it was taken over as being free from having a specifically restricted meaning, and as often indicating a higher form of love.
The Greeks had different words for love, primarily phileo which referred to the solid affection of good friends, and erao which reflects romantic love. In the New Testament agapao often parallels phileo but never erao.
We should note that the thing that has primarily caused Paul to digress somewhat in this direction is his exhortation to desire the greater gifts. He has recognised immediately the danger of that exhortation, and so he seeks to put it in its vital context. The desiring of the greater gifts must arise out of love for their fellow believers, not out of a desire for self-glorification. Once that fact is settled he will then return again to the exhortation (1 Corinthians 14:1).
Indeed we may consider that such a reminder as this about love is overdue. He has been dealing with the different problems in the church, and stressing the unity of believers in Christ. But Jesus Himself had taught that central to that unity was love (John 13:34-35; John 15:12; John 15:17). He had stressed that it was by their love for one another that people would know who were His disciples. Thus to deal with the present situation without laying stress on love would have been to fail to follow the Master's guidance.
So Paul here says, 'Do not seek the gifts for themselves, but seek them because you love your fellow-believers and desire the best for them, and do not look at whether someone has tongues, or prophecy, or all knowledge, or great faith, or is self-sacrificial and generous in an extravagant way, look rather to whether they have love, whether their lives and behaviour reveal the essence of God's love as described in 1 Corinthians 13:4-6. Then you will know if the gifts are truly genuine.' It is that, not the demonstrating of what purport to be manifestations of the Spirit, that is the test of the truly spiritual man.
No mention is made in the passage as to whether Paul is talking only of love for one another, or whether he also includes the idea of love for God. However, 1 Corinthians 8:1 really settles the argument. He is thinking of love as a whole. It is love for God that results in the knowledge of God and being known by God, and it is that which results in love for our brother. Thus here Paul has in mind love in its essence, reaching up to God, and reaching out to the people of God, although having the second primarily in mind in the detail, for that is the love which can be witnessed. But always at the root we love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). So the love of which he speaks results from resting in the love of God, and letting it flow into us and through us so that it reaches back up to Him and out to His people.
We should note that in this chapter, while he speaks of the manifestations, he nowhere speaks of them in this context as 'gifts' or 'spiritual things'. For what he describes here, if not backed by love, can be manifestations which are not gifts of the Spirit, but false manifestations brought about, either by human endeavour, or even worse by the deceitfulness of evil spirits.