Updated 3/12/18

1 Cor 13

1 Cor 13 is perhaps the best-loved passage in the NT and perhaps the Bible itself. It is used at almost every Christian wedding, and at many non-Christian ones as well.

And, I would argue it is among the most misunderstood passages.

The Context / Subject of 1 Cor 13

1 Cor 13 is a short chapter, just 13 verses, that sits between 1 Cor 12 and 1 Cor 14. This gives us an important, I would say crucial, contextual clue: since Ch 12 and Ch 14 are both about spiritual gifts, enablements provided to believers by the Sovereign Work of God The Holy Spirit, then there is compelling reason to understand that Ch 13 is likewise on the same subject, and an important connection between the two chapters that bookend it.

Further, Ch 12 ends (at vs. 31) with a clear reference to a “better” or “more excellent” way (literally, Gr. “road“). Recall that the Bible as written had no verses or chapters. There was no 1 Cor 13 for the first thousand years of Christendom as chapter headings did not come into being until about the 10th Century, and verse numbers about 500 years after. So any reader of the 1 Cor Epistle would have seen no separation, none / zero / zip, between what we today know as 1 Cor 12:31 and 1 Cor 13:1. Those two sentences would have been adjoining just as sentences in this writing are. If one reads the text in this way, the contextual significance of Ch 13 is much more apparent.

The Study Text for 1 Cor 13

Given here is a pdf study text for 1 Cor 13: 1 Cor 13 Clausal Interlinear with Codes

Agape Love is the Key Word

The Gr word agape translated “love” in this chapter is the dominant word, occurring nine times in just these 13 verses.

There are many words in the Gr that express the idea of affection of one for another, each word with their own semantic range and nuances. In our culture the word “love” is used in so many ways that it almost lacks any clear, deep communication value. Not so with agape love.

Let’s start with the ‘nots’ of agape love; it is not:

Familial love parent-child, siblings, extended family
Specifically husband-wife love as the context usually implies
Neighborly love in the sense of friends, pals, companions, co-workers, classmates

If we exclude all of the above, in our culture it seems like there’s nothing left, nothing missing that requires another word. (After all, we don’t need, use, or invent words that encompass nothing: let’s see, how about “abackle,” a word I just invented? What does it mean? Nothing. It doesn’t even mean “nothing,” because we have that word already actually means something. But abackle doesn’t even mean that; so, it’s definition would be: [ ].)

Agape to us feels like abackle. This is because agape is so completely contrary to our fallen natures that it doesn’t define / encompass anything that is needed or useful to describe to or for us. So a good place to start with agape is to imagine one is peering into some strange, alien world trying to learn something totally outside one’s human experience.

Christian Expression of Spiritual Gifts is Meaningless Without Agape Love

1 Cor 13 begins with the exercise of significant spiritual gifts done without agape love:

Tongues (languages, communication, the essential act of one being reaching deeply into another being),
Prophecy (telling forth of the truths from the highest and ultimate reality of God into our being locked into a fallen time and culture)
Understanding (grasping even the entirety of such highest and ultimate reality as much as any human is capable)
Faith (the certainty of the not directly graspable heavenly realm)
Charity (forgoing my ownership of anything in my hands and rather giving it freely to anyone lacking whatever I may have)
Sacrifice of life (giving over my life to some ultimate good gladly experiencing even a horrific form of death by a culture hating me and my actions).

That’s a really really impressive list of doing good unto others. Hall of Fame material. But, in these verses such acts enabled by those enumerated spiritual capabilities are done absent agape love. What’s the result? (I want to say abackle, but then abackle would mean something; alas). The Biblical text says such missing agape none of these gifts benefit the receiver of my actions as was intended by the Giver of such gifts, nor do they benefit me the actor. It appears that God is here saying that such gifts done in such way are either utterly useless / pointless or actually harmful (which is getting close to the meaning of abackle, though of course abackle cannot mean anything. We can think of such agape-less activities as being on the path to the ultimate limit, like a infinite series, approaching the unapproachable limit of abackle. So perhaps abackle is what an eternity in hell really is).

What Does Agape Love Look Like

1 Cor 13 gives us a series of descriptions of what agape-love does and doesn’t do, and look like in the doing:

Patient (suffers long, NKJV)
Kind
Not envious (on one’s gift and opportunity compared to others)
Not drawing attention to itself (parade around is the NKJV idea)
Not self puffing up
Not rude (to those being ministered to, or to others gifted)
Not seeking its own
Not provoked
Not thinking evil
Not rejoicing in iniquity (of others who are gifted)
Rejoices
Bears up
Believes (in the good of the gift, the Giver, and the people))
Hopes (in that good being ultimately expressed)
Endures

The Love List: https://www.knotmaking.net/loves-list-in-1-cor-13/

The length and weight (of meaning) of the above list in 1 Cor 13 is worthy of reflection, pondering. What do these words, or any one or two of them, really mean, in terms of actions? A study aid for this is given at the above link and here:

Whenever encountering a list in the Bible, consider these possibilities:

It could be an unordered list, something like a completely unordered grocery list.
It could be a list leading to a crescendo, namely it builds to the last item listed, something like a recipe for a special evening food that ’emerges’ from all the ingredients as the final goal.
It could be a list where the first item is a heading, and everything that follows is a derivation / consequence / subordinate.
It could be a list has a series of cycles / combinations that cohere together something like a musical “movement” in a concert piece.

What Does Agape Love Accomplish

The listing of 1 Cor 13 goes on:

Never fails

In contrast to the “failures” (in the sense of expiration, transitoriness) of:

Prophecies
Tongues
Knowledge

How is Agape Love Used in the Bible

Here are two cornerstone verses expressing agape love, both of them showing forth God’s agape love for us.

John Baptizes Jesus (Matt 3) NKJV

¹³Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him. ¹⁴And John tried to prevent Him, saying, “I need to be baptized by You, and are You coming to me?”

¹⁵But Jesus answered and said to him, “Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he allowed Him.

¹⁶When He had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him. ¹⁷And suddenly a voice camefrom heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

The highlighted word “beloved” in Matt 3:17 is from the root agape. This event, with the use of agape, is also recorded in Mark’s Gospel (Mk 1:11) and Luke’s (3:22), and 2 Peter 1:17. Clearly the significance of this statement is that Jesus, was identified by God the Father and God the Spirit as the object of the Father’s agape love. This was a hugely dramatic moment as something extraordinary occurred as the heavenly realm broke open directly into our space-time realm with the signs and statement. And the true fatherhood of Jesus, both biologically and spiritually, became the central issue for understanding His words. The Pharisees concluded that Jesus’s fatherhood was demonic, or Satan, or Satan himself in human form attacking their God-honoring, Mosiac life using certain miraculous powers to spread false teaching. In their pride of thinking their sufficiency under Law, they could not ‘see’ Messiah standing right before them. It was only by means of repentance, as was the rite of John the Baptist’s baptism–a repentance from the poisonous self-concept that I have the capacity to fulfill the Law and deserve God’s favor–that man could behold this great reality that God was indeed in the flesh, truly man, but far far different than any man, as He was indeed God the Son, Being from all eternity to all eternity.

In addition, at the close of Jesus Christ’s ministry another dramatic unveiling of the heavenly realm was made manifest. Consider this passage, again from the Gospel of Matthew, Ch 17 (NKJV):

17 ¹Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves; ²and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light. ³And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. ⁴Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, let us make here three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

⁵While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and suddenly a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!” ⁶And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their faces and were greatly afraid. ⁷But Jesus came and touched them and said, “Arise, and do not be afraid.” ⁸When they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.

⁹Now as they came down from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, saying, “Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man is risen from the dead.”

There are likewise parallel passages of the same event in Mark (9:7) and Luke (9:35).

Jesus’s Declaration to Nicodemus (John 3) NKJV

The second cornerstone passage on agape is God’s affirming such relationship of His love toward His creation. Consider the famous text from John Ch 3 where a Pharisee named Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night.

¹ There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. ²This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”

³Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

⁴Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”

⁵Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. ⁶That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ ⁸The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

⁹Nicodemus answered and said to Him, “How can these things be?”

¹⁰Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things? ¹¹Most assuredly, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness. ¹²If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? ¹³No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. ¹⁴And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵that whoever believes in Him should not perish but^[b] have eternal life. ¹⁶For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. ¹⁷For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

The highlighted word in John 3:16 is again the word agape. So pairing this usage with the one above in Matt 3 we can connect God’s apape love for His Son with His love for us, as the Gospel will make clear that Jesus Christ Himself becomes our substitute so that when God the Father sees us, He sees His Son, a completely astonishing, and wonderful, truth.

This recognition is so central to the Christian faith. God is love is so contrary to the ‘gods’ of many / most (all?) religions of history; those ‘gods’ must be appeased or else. But God is just, and utterly holy. Twice in the Bible there is the triple repetition of “Holy! Holy! Holy.”

In Isaiah 6:3, originally recorded in Hebrew, it is explicitly said of “the LORD of hosts” where “LORD” is the Hebrew Tetragrammaton, YHWH, the name of God, which is translated into English as Jehovah or Yahweh, but was translated in the Greek version of the OT at the time of Christ (the Septuagint) by the Gr word kurios (or, kyrios) which means (in English) Lord, and was the title used of Jesus Christ as when we read, and say, the Lord Jesus Christ. (Lord is usually shown in most translations by all small capitals to let us readers know that the underlying Hebrew was YHWH).
In Revelation 4:8, originally recorded in Gr, the phrase “Holy, Holy, Holy” is said of “The Lord God Almighty,” where again Lord is the English translation of the Gr kurios. This verse joins together three English words that are the common translations of the three great OT Hebrew words for God: Lord for YHWH, God for Elohim (the Most High), and Almighty for Adonai.

The central question, and OT mystery, was how could it be that God’s character of love and holiness, requiring his agape love and, at the same time, righteous justice, ever be reconciled in a world of fallen men. For those falsely holding to the Law’s sufficiency for such reconciliation, the answer was self-justification by faithfully fulfilling the entirety of the Law. That was the Pharisaic teaching and innermost belief. The NT Gospel, revealed in Jesus Christ, but promised by words and symbols through the OT, was that such reconciliation would take place by the only means possible, by the substitutionary and complete and final fulfillment by God Himself. This humanly incomprehensible truth hinges on grasping agape love.

Agape Occurrences in the NT

Agape is an important word in the Gr text (NT) of the Bible and occurs in numerous places:

As a noun, generally translated “love,” agape occurs 116x.
As a verb, agapao, it occurs 142x.
As a modifying word, agapetos, most-commonly translated as “beloved” or “dear,” it occurs 62x.
So the root agape occurs 320x in the NT (expressed as a noun, verb, or modifier). There are only 260 chapters in the NT, so 320 occurrence means we find the idea expressed often.

All these occurrences of agape are given here as both a spreadsheet and a PDF, the same information in both formats:

Agape Root in NT (Excel spreadsheet format)
Agape Root in NT (PDF) Note: first half of PDF (pp. 1-18) gives the left half of the Excel format table, and the last half of the PDF (pp. 19-36) gives the right half; so you have to go halfway through the PDF to p. 19 until you begin to see the column heading “Next Context” and that corresponds to the entries that began on p. 1. So “Son, in whom I am well pleased,” etc. (on p. 19) goes with, to the right of, Matt. 3:17 (on p. 1), and so forth (p. 20 goes with p. 2). If you are only looking for the verse reference, then you do not need to refer to pp. 19-36. However, on pp. 19-36 you find the next phrase in the verse where agape occurs, the corresponding Strong’s number, the root word (in Gr), the sense (contextual definition), and the part of speech of the word (noun, verb, etc.). You will find the occurrences of the root agape in 1 Cor on pp. 6 and 7).
A simplified PDF showing only the verse and immediate phrase context of each occurrence of agape is given here: Root Agape in NT, Simplified

Looking at all these occurrences of agape can seem overwhelming. But what is even more overwhelming is the full Biblical (and eternal) significance of the word agape, especially in contrast to our time and culture where the word “love” has been so misused and corrupted as to be worse than meaningless.

Is Agape Always Presented in a Positive Context

As the above PDFs and spreadsheet show, there are many, many passages where agape is used in a positive context: husband agape your wife (Eph. 5), disciples of Christ are to agape one another (“a new commandment I give to you that you agape one another” John 13:34), the head word on the list of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5), etc..

However, there are some significant passages where God shows us something important about agape gone wrong. Consider:

A. Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces. (Luke 11:43)

⁴²Nevertheless even among the rulers many believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they did not confess Him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue; ⁴³for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God. (John 12)

B. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. (John3:19)

¹²But these, like natural brute beasts made to be caught and destroyed, speak evil of the things they do not understand, and will utterly perish in their own corruption, ¹³and will receive the wages of unrighteousness, as those who count it pleasure to carouse in the daytime. They are spots and blemishes, carousing in their own deceptions while they feast with you, ¹⁴having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin, enticing unstable souls. They have a heart trained in covetous practices, and are accursed children. ¹⁵They have forsaken the right way and gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; (2 Peter 2)

C. for Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world, and has departed for Thessalonica—Crescens for Galatia, Titus for Dalmatia. (2 Tim. 4:10)

If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. (John 15:19)

In this unholy ‘trinity’ of verses we see something about the deepest longing of the fallen heart: (A) pride in Judaism / law keeping righteousness (Luke 11:43 and John 12:43), (B) love of darkness, likely here a reference to the appetites of the flesh (John 3:19 and 2 Peter 2:15), and (C) love of the world system, likely a reference to pride outside of Judaism (2 Tim. 4:10 and the world’s love of its own adherents John 15:19). The use of agape love, instead of other Gr words for love, in these contexts shows us how deep, how enduring, and consuming such corrupted affections of the heart are awaiting expression in each of us, but for the grace of God.

Who Initiated Agape

The above agape lists clearly show that it is God who first agape loved us, and our agape love for Him is but the response of the new heart implanted in us, solely by Grace. Consider the following agape verses (NKJV):

Romans 5:1 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. ³And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; ⁴and perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. ⁶For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. ⁸But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. ⁹Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. ¹⁰For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. ¹¹And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

2 Thes. 2: ¹³But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth, ¹⁴to which He called you by our gospel, for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. ¹⁵Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle. ¹⁶Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace, ¹⁷comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work.

1 John 3:1 Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. ²Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. ³And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

1 John 4:¹⁷Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world. ¹⁸There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. ¹⁹We love Him because He first loved us.

Can We Lose God’s Love

Consider this well-known passage in the Epistle to the Romans (NKJV) here for the purposes of grasping the permanence of God’s love:

Romans 8:31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? ³²He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? ³³Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. ³⁵Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ³⁶As it is written:

“For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”

³⁷Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. ³⁸For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, ³⁹nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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Resources for 1 Cor 14 are here: