The statement of the text appears at first sight even to surpass in paradox those which precede it. For to one superficially considering the matter it seems almost impossible that a Christian man should bestow all his goods to feed the poor, and even give his body to be burned in self-sacrifice for country or friends, or the cause of Christ, and be destitute of the Christian grace of love. Yet, notwithstanding this paradoxical appearance, our text will clear up as we advance.
I. "If I bestow all my goods to feed the poor." The Apostle gives us this extreme example to cover by it all others, and to show that much less will they profit under the same defect. Let us take a few of them and trace the character described. Outward liberality may arise from various reasons. (1) A man may be liberal from the mere bent of his natural disposition. He may give to satisfy his wish and ease his desire of giving; true Christian charity gives in self-denial, often withholding where nature prompts to give, often giving where nature would fain withhold. (2) It is obvious that a man may bestow all his goods to feed the poor out of motives of mere display. (3) There may be a conscientious, a God-fearing bestowal, yet exercised in a hard rigid spirit of duty and legal obligation, without kindliness of heart or manner; just as we may deposit the seed, and the plant may appear, but may after all be nipped by unkindly skies and winds.
II. "If I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing." The idea evidently is, of great sacrifices made, hardships undergone, privations and sufferings submitted to. It varies from the former one in this: that there the goods were sacrificed, here the person. All toil, all self-denial, all sacrifice, without love, profiteth nothing. Well, indeed, might it be written, that "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked," when it is so difficult for a man to deny himself without at the same time indulging himself, when that Divine grace which should be at the root of all self-sacrifice can be personated by its very opposite, and the counterfeit pass current with a man's self and with the Church of God!
H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons,vol. vii., p. 133.
References: 1 Corinthians 13:3. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. v., p. 89. 1 Corinthians 13:4. Preacher's Monthly,vol. vii., p. 111.