1 Corinthians 13:13

1 Corinthians 13:13. And now abideth faith, love, hope, these three; but the greatest of these (Gr. ‘greater than these') is love. Most modern interpreters take “abideth” here to mean ‘are of equal duration' eternal. Some (as De Wette, Stanley, Alford) understand “faith” and “hope” as eternally “abiding,” inasmuch as they pass in the future world into sight. But in that sense (as Meyer replies) it should rather be said that they disappear than “abide.” See Romans 8:24; Hebrews 11:1. The only other sense in which these graces could be said to “abide” eternally is, that since the whole of the unseen future can never be taken in at once, there must ever be room for “faith” in a coming future, and “hope” of what bliss will then be disclosed and experienced. But though there is a truth in this, it seems to us a more metaphysical thought than the apostle was likely to mean here; and he who wrote Romans 8:24 “What a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?” would scarcely have put “faith” and ‘‘hope” in the same category with so very different a grace as “love,” as having a common independent existence and eternal duration. A far simpler and more natural interpretation, we think, may be given to this verse. The instincts of some of the early interpreters (as Chrysostom) guided them rightly, we believe, to put the emphasis upon the first word “Now” in contrasting the supernatural gifts, which were soon to disappear from the Church, with the permanent graces of “faith and hope and love: ” All these supernatural gifts were designed only for the first starting of the Church, and are gradually to cease; but the cardinal graces of faith and hope and love, without which the Christian character cannot exist, will abide on earth as long as the Church itself is left there.' In this view concur some modern expositors (as Neander). But what it may be asked is to become of “faith” and “hope” hereafter? A reasonable enough question in itself, but one on which no light is cast by this verse, as we understand it; the one object being to affirm that those three graces will outlive all mere gifts. As to the future of those graces, the truth would seem to be that since “faith” and “hope” will certainly pass into sight, and so be lost in any distinctive sense, they are to be viewed as, in their very nature, temporary means towards something else into which they are destined to pass; while love, from its very nature, though admitting of indefinite increase, can never pass into anything else and higher, and so is necessarily eternal.

Note. When one surveys the ethics of Paganism, even at its best, and observes how fragmentary it is, and how halting, how it glorified revenge as sweet and noble, while the patient endurance of wrong was regarded as unmanly and pusillanimous, in how Divine a light does that Religion stand forth which gives such a view of Love as we have in this chapter! In every other Religion and Ethical system, the true foundation of such a character is wanting, and the true source of the power to realise and exemplify it is unknown. Those Jewish scholars who refuse to accept Christians may produce from their rabbinical writings single passages embodying maxims akin to those of the New Testament; and wonderful indeed it would be if their writings should contain no such passages with the Old Testament in their hands, and those “read in their synagogues every sabbath day,” not to speak of the light of the New Testament reflected on them and insensibly influencing them. But the two have only to be put together to shew which alone has the stamp of Heaven upon it. Whoever will read this chapter with a simple mind will be unable to resist the conviction that the true secret of what alone unites all hearts was in possession of the writer of it, that he felt himself commissioned to open this secret to others, and that he even exulted in doing it. Christians in the first ages of the Gospel were proverbial for their love one to another. Now, alas, many would think them proverbial rather for the reverse. In view of this may we not hear the apostolic inference as verified in ourselves, “Whereas there is among you jealousies and strife, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?”