13:8
Love is now compared to the gifts, and again we should remind ourselves we are not talking about sentimental soppiness here! The gifts are temporal. Prophecies will last only for a time, tongues will cease and knowledge will pass away. Why are these things temporal? When Christ returns and we are raised to new life or transformed will be immortal, we will be in eternity. We will see and know all things. So prophecies and knowledge (as we think of it now) will be gone. By the way, this hints that prophecy is a glimpse from eternity, it is a revelation from God. We will see Christ face to face, we will see Him as He really is, we will stare into the face of God. So tongues will be a total irrelevancy. But love never ends. God is love, love is eternal, it is a foundational quality.
13:9,10
The knowledge we receive now is only partial knowledge, no matter how spirit inspired it might be. When we prophesy we prophesy in part. We do not foretell or reveal all things, for all things are not revealed to us. Indeed, how could we possibly foretell all things? “When the perfect comes, the partial will pass away”. This verse is used by some as a support for cessationism, ie the gifts ceasing at the end of the apostolic era. This is a perfect example of eisegesis, something most cessations would recoil in horror at. Paul is quite clearly looking forward to the end of the present age, the return of Christ. There is no reference to any apostolic age. Some talk about the canon of Scripture being the “perfect”, but that is equal nonsense. The text is quite clearly talking about the return of Christ when the gifts will cease to by.
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