1 Corinthians 13:8-13
Love Never Fails: The Eternal Nature of Love – 1 Corinthians 13:8-13
1 Corinthians 13:8-13 (NIVUK)
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Commentary
Finally, the apostle says, verse eight, love never fails. But that is not to say that you will never fail in love. We all do, and the test of love is not that you never make a mistake, it’s what you do next.
That to love is to start over, to dust yourself off, to say sorry properly, and to commit yourself once more to beginning again. To say love never fails, means love never ends because there is something of God in it, something of eternity in it.
And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these, is love. Love endures into eternity. It is perhaps the only thing that you can take with you. So invest your life wisely. Choose the way of love above everything else. Root yourself in God. Work hard to see love flourish wherever you go.
Value it above everything else. Create communities and relationships of love wherever you go. Be rich in love and you will be truly rich in this world and in eternity. William Wordsworth once said, the small unremembered acts of kindness and love are the best parts of a person’s life. May your lives be rich in kindness and love and bear fruit that lasts into eternity. And this is what the Bible calls the most excellent way.