…they will pass away…

1 Corinthians 13:8

Paul’s famous discourse on the “more excellent way” which is love (12:31; 13:1-7) was given to show the Corinthians that having the ability to supernaturally speak in tongues was not the “end all, be all” of Christianity (12:1ff; 14:1ff).  After defining love and making clear that without it performing miracles, being benevolent, and even martyrdom were all meaningless, the apostle says that love never “ends” (pipto, “falls down,” fails, falls away, ends).  In the end, love will remain alongside faith and hope and will forever outrank them in value (13:13).  However, the same cannot be said for miraculous spiritual gifts.

Having already listed the various kinds of miracles the Holy Spirit imparted to some within the early church (12:4-11), Paul now synecdochally cites three of them – “prophecies,” “tongues,” and “knowledge” – to inform the church at Corinth that the spiritual gifts on which they placed such a high premium (especially speaking in tongues – 14:1ff) would “pass away” and “cease” (13:8).  He then lists both a major reason behind their coming demise and an even more significant reason for the Corinthians to rethink their mislaid emphasis on them.  Citing only two of the miraculous gifts (knowledge and prophecy) to again synecdochally represent all of them, he refers to those who use them as doing so “in part” before foretelling that “when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away” (13:9-10).

The casual Bible student reads “the perfect” and automatically and understandably concludes that Paul is referencing the future return of the sinless Savior.  However, a study of the Greek term translated “perfect” (teleios, complete, mature, fully developed) shows that Paul did not have Jesus in mind when using this term.  The apostle is comparing “the perfect” (teleios) to miraculous spiritual gifts which he calls “the partial” (meros, “part, in contrast to the whole”).  Teleios has to do with being complete and mature, while meros is associated with being incomplete and immature…and the apostle is correlating having miraculous spiritual gifts with the latter.

He then builds on this analogy by first looking back to his childhood and acknowledging that he “gave up childish ways” of speaking, reasoning, and thinking once he reached adulthood (13:11), his point being that God associates performing miracles with spiritual immaturity and wants the Corinthians to “grow up” so they place a higher premium on things like love.  He then gives another comparison: “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face” (13:12a).  The “mirror” or “glass” (esoptron) of Paul’s day was not like modern transparent glass or the clearly reflective mirrors made of glass we think of today.  In biblical times people used finely polished metal to see their reflections; doing so would give one a vague, blurred reflection of themselves (“dimly”) as opposed to the clear view they would have of each other when seeing one “face to face.”  He was comparing the use of miraculous spiritual gifts to seeing one’s blurred reflection in polished metal as opposed to something better (“the perfect”) which he compares to clearly seeing others in person.

Paul’s final analogy gives us a better idea of what “the perfect” is:  “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (13:12b).  Referring synecdochally to the miraculous spiritual gift of knowledge – which was basically God directly imparting divine knowledge to the one who had this gift (cf. Matt. 10:19-20; Lk. 12:12; Acts 2:4ff; 4:8ff; Ex. 4:12; Num. 23:5; Deut. 18:18) – and again correlating it with the aforementioned “the partial” (“Now I know in part”), Paul looks ahead to a time when the church “shall know fully.”  In other words, the divine revelation given through these miraculous spiritual gifts only gave the early church a portion of God’s revealed will.  At the time Paul was writing this letter, the full revelation of Christ’s law in the entirety of the New Testament had yet to be given.  Once that occurred with John’s writings in the late first century, the New Testament would be complete…the very meaning of teleios (“the perfect”).  At that point, Christians would come to know and possess the entirety of God’s revealed will for them just as God fully knows them (“then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known”).

Basically, miracles would cease once the New Testament was completed.

— Jon