The Dreaded Gift-return

If God’s people would please
take their Bibles and turn to First Corinthians chapter 13. First Corinthians chapter 13,
our continuing study. The dreaded gift return. we just got through the greatest
month of gift returning in the calendar year, January. The two
biggest days of returning gifts are December 26th and 27th, not
surprising. I mean, why dilly-dally, right,
if you’re going to have the hordes to deal with in January? Especially
since, on average, Americans return one third of all the gifts
they receive. You gotta beat those crowds.
And so I’m certain that we’ve all been in that predicament.
We receive some gift, whether for birthday or Christmas or
Mother’s Day, whatever the day is, whatever
the occasion, we receive some gift and it’s the wrong size. or the wrong color, or the wrong
style, or sometimes perhaps it has a flaw, or for some reason
it isn’t quite right, a scratch, a dent, a missing piece after
one proper use. You get it, we’ve all been there.
And so you already know the anxiety that immediately begins to build
when you have a dreaded gift return? Will they take it back? Do I still have the receipt?
Did I already recycle the box? Has it been more than 30 days?
Do I have all of the parts? What did I do with those tags?
What questions will they ask me when I get there? What is
my excuse for bringing this item back? And there are some establishments
that are far less return friendly than others, right? And we all
know that there is a great deal of retail fraud and just plain
dishonesty. And we desperately don’t want
to be lumped in with that crowd. I remember years ago, one particular
retail establishment began to float the idea of no hassle returns. You bring it back, no receipt,
no excuses. We just want to secure our customers. And the idea became very prominent
for a little while. And people took full advantage
of it. And it soon went away. No hassle returns went away. so that now if we have a return,
we know that we are voluntarily submitting ourselves to an on-the-spot
investigation. Name, address, date of birth,
reason for return, name of your firstborn, blood type, social
security number, vehicle make, model, and plate, How much tread
is on the tires? High school mascot, mother’s
maiden name, favorite sitcom. And so as you walk into the store,
your anxiety begins to reach a fevered pitch. You feel like
a soon-to-be felon as you desperately approach the returns desk. You
have the goods. You found the receipt. You have
your well-worded excuse, and still you sweat and stammer. All of that courageous bravado
that you were going to employ, if anyone dared challenge your
return, immediately begins to evaporate, doesn’t it? and you’re
left to plead with the customer service person that is one quarter
your age with your sad eyes alone. And that’s usually how the dreaded
gift return goes, right? Well, the Corinthians had some
gifts that in their opinion weren’t quite right. There were some
gifts that they valued and eagerly sought, and some more than others. There were some gifts that they
had not even yet opened, let alone put to use. And because
of this, Paul cries fraud in their attempt to do an exchange. Paul has already shown this church
that there was one gift that they had not even tested yet,
the gift of loving one another in the use of all their other
varied gifts. The Corinthians had spiritual
gifts in great measure, and they were indeed exercising them,
not always with the best motives, not always properly, and some
of them were even trying to exercise gifts that they did not possess.
And so, It was evident to Paul that something was missing, some
key element was lacking. And based on what he had already
learned, the missing element in Corinth was love. And this is why Paul makes the
promise to these believers at the end of chapter 12, I will
show you still a more excellent way, a better way of using your
gifts that better glorifies the Savior that you propose to serve. He wants to show this church
a way. And the way is love. And here in chapter 13, Paul
opens the door to this way, the love chapter, as it’s been called,
a chapter that is embedded into Paul’s greater discussion of
spiritual gifts. Love, Paul reminds these believers,
is to be the ultimate characteristic of a Christian. Not their denomination,
not their level of learning, not their doctrine, but especially
love toward their fellow believers. That’s how they’d be known. Unfortunately,
this gift hadn’t even been opened yet in Corinth, let alone put
to full use. And so Paul opened the chapter
with those three proverbial sayings, three truisms about the missing
element of love. The absence of love renders the
exercise of one’s spiritual gift, whatever it is, it renders it
unproductive if it’s not coupled with love. A noisy gong, Paul
calls it. It is also, and not only unproductive,
it’s unadorning. Paul says, I am nothing if I
don’t couple love with the exercise of my gift. And thirdly, not
only unproductive and unadorning, it’s unprofitable. It profits
me nothing. I get nothing out of exercising
my gift for Christ. Doing anything without the key
ingredient of love is pointless, Paul says. And then last Lord’s
Day, we were treated to the greatest description of love ever written. And we saw that Paul had a purpose
for providing this description. Paul’s observation was that this
church needed a biblical definition of love. He was aware of many
different ways in which the Corinthians were falling short of the true
ideal. some of their sinful deeds he
had likely witnessed personally. He also had reports from others
about their bad behavior and still other attitudes and areas
of misconduct he likely learned about from the Corinthians own
letter to him. He had an unflattering but an
accurate mental picture of the people in this church. They were,
as we saw last week, short-fused and harsh, resentful, boastful,
conceited, inappropriate. self-absorbed, incendiary, touchy,
winking at sin, disregarding of truth, intolerant, suspicious,
cynical, and faint-hearted. That was Paul’s picture of the
believers in Corinth. So rather than a neatly packaged
grouping of this picture of ideal love, he presents to them a long,
detailed, overwhelming description of love, and he articulates the
true nature of love in quite a random order. It’s not unlike
the way we take note of things when we look in the mirror. It’s
not methodical at all. It’s haphazard, it’s rapid fire,
one description right after the other, and its effect in the
end is overwhelming. And this likely left the Corinthians
stunned, wondering how to even determine the usefulness of their
own spiritual gift. Now, like a good shepherd, Paul
will not leave them without guidance here. He’s been faithful to tell
them that any gift unattended by love is bound to be a fruitless
exercise. But he moves here in verses 8
to 10 to provide them insight. Insight into the proper assessment
of the use of their own gifts. And what he does here in these
verses is provide them factors for determining the usefulness
of a gift. We’ll take the passage or the
chapter in its entirety once again. One of the greatest chapters
ever written, certainly on the subject of love. Verse one, if I speak with the
tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I become
a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy
and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all
faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions
to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do
not have love, it profits me nothing. Love is patient. Love is kind and is not jealous. Love does not brag and is not
arrogant. Love does not act unbecomingly. It does not seek its own. It
is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,
does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth,
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures
all things. Love never fails. But if there are gifts of prophecy,
they will be done away. And if there are gifts of tongues,
they will cease. If there is knowledge, it will
be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy
in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done
away. When I was a child, I used to
speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child.
When I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now
we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know
in part, but then I will know fully just as I have been fully
known. But now faith, hope, love abide
these three, but the greatest of these is love. And so having
introduced this missing element of love, showing them the pointlessness
of serving without it, and a detailed description of what love looks
like, here he gives them insight into evaluating the use of their
gifts. And he basically tells them that
there are factors that they need to consider in order to think
accurately and properly use their own God-given gift. And he points
out three things. There are gifts of everlasting
durability. There are gifts with a transitory
expectation. And that is because there are
gifts of temporary usefulness. Let’s begin, if we could, in
this consideration of the dreaded gift return, looking at these
factors determining the usefulness of a gift. The first one, there
are gifts of everlasting durability. Paul has already described what
love is, what love looks like. But here he appends one more
descriptive to that which we saw in verses four through seven. And he just says it simply, love
never fails. Whatever else may be the relative
longevity of other gifts, love is perpetual. Love is everlasting. Love never fails. And before
we take another step in our consideration of this first point, We need
to consider the word that Paul uses here when he says, love
never fails. Most or many translations, at
least, translate it the same way, love never fails. Another
popular translation, the ESV and others, has it this way,
love never ends. Both of those are good, capable.
The word is a curious one, or at least a curiously applied
one here. The word in the Greek is piptoe. Sounds almost like tiptoe, but
with a P. And the word typically means
to fall or to fall down. It’s used some 90 times in the
New Testament, and almost always with a reference to someone or
something falling. So let’s look at all 90 of those
reference, I’m just kidding, just seeing who’s awake. I’m
not going to take the time to look at all of them, but I can
give you a representation. And I, just hovering over our
study of the book of Acts, right? We’ve just come through not only
reading it in here for our New Testament reading, but studying
it in Sunday school. Just listen. Remember when the
apostles, they sought to select another apostle to replace Judas? Judas took early retirement,
and they wanted to replace him, and so they drew lots, and the
lot fell piptoe to Matthias. When Ananias, remember chapter
four and five, when Ananias was caught in his lie, he fell down
and breathed his last. He died, likewise his wife. When
Paul was confronted on the road to Emmaus, fell down, pipto. When Cornelius the Gentile first
met Peter, he fell at his feet. And remember sleepy Eutychus,
sitting in the window, listening to Paul late at night. He fell
down from the third floor. I think you get the idea. And
so here in 1 Corinthians, one of only two times in all the
New Testament it’s translated fail. And it’s only translated
this way one other time, Luke 16, 17, that it’s easier for
heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter
of the law to fail. But those two occasions pick
up a subtle detail in meaning for this word. It means to fall
into ruin or destruction. And Paul says that there is absolutely
no way that either a single letter of the law or God’s gift of love
can ever fall or fail. Love always triumphs. Love is
an everlasting gift and love will never be overcome. Love
will never fail to win out. It will never be prevented from
succeeding. Love will not be overshadowed
or overworked by some other gift. It won’t ever be ultimately overwhelmed
by the weaknesses and failings of those in whom it is being
instilled. It will rise and conquer in time. Love is imperishable. Love, as we saw it last week,
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures
all things. Love never fails. It does not quit. It does not
give up. It cannot be exhausted or overspent. Now this kind of spirit-infused,
genuine love is that which Paul noted of the Thessalonian believers. This was a church that by human
standards, you might remember, should not have even come into
existence. Paul was only in town three weeks.
And there was a near riot in his exit. And yet Paul said of
this church in his opening lines of his first letter to them,
He notes that their labor of love was one of their hallmarks.
It’s a sad thing that in our current day use of that little
phrase, labor of love, it seems to almost downplay that virtue.
Doing something for which you’re not paid or not paid enough,
but you’re gonna labor on anyway. It’s a task done not, rather
it’s a task done for pleasure, not reward. And it’s important to note that
Paul uses this phrase to refer not only to his manual labor,
remember, making tents, but the tent-making ministry
that allowed him not to be a burden to the churches that he served,
and to the actual work of ministry itself, to the labor and toil
of the gospel on behalf of others. Paul said that the Thessalonian
church was a loving church. Later on in that third chapter
of 1 Thessalonians, Paul says that Timothy brought word, brought
good news of their faith and love. This wasn’t just a flash
in the pan. The love that they had for one
another was not a momentary eruption while Paul was on site. It was not a passing fad, it
was a sustained exhibition of genuine care for one another. And still, in that same letter,
Paul prays for this love to increase. May the Lord cause you to increase
and abound in your love for one another. So this intense and
practical love was to be an ever increasing grace. Such intense love for one another,
Paul likened in his closing chapter of 1 Thessalonians to a suit
of armor, having put on the breastplate of faith and love. Because of
this, Paul urged the Galatian church to, through love, serve
one another. Such love must never be allowed
to cool and falter. It’s supposed to grow and flourish. to the large and growing church
in Rome, Paul reminded them that love should be a naturally free-flowing
demonstration to our fellow believers, and that such love was intensely
practical. Listen to this. In Romans chapter
12, Paul tells them that this love is to be without hypocrisy. Love is not just a kind face,
not a smile, not just pleasant words. It’s supposed to be a
sincere, practical affection for God’s people. As with a lot of people in a
lot of churches, it is much easier to pretend, to go through the
motions of brotherly love, than it is to practice the real thing,
right? Peter, too, in his first letter
urged the scattered pilgrims to a sincere love of the brethren. Don’t be phonies, he says. So that’s always the temptation,
to fake it with regard to brotherly love, to just kind of go through
the motions. Brother, I’ll pray for you, as James chided. Still one chapter further in
Romans 13.10, Paul says that love does no wrong
to a neighbor. Love is also compassionate and
caring and sensitive. Christian love goes out of its
way to avoid offending one’s brother. It is the opposite of
self-centeredness and selfishness. Paul told the Corinthians effectively
the same thing in the positive back in chapter eight. Love edifies,
love builds up. Love subdues arrogance. Love takes into account a brother’s
feelings, a brother’s weaknesses, a brother’s varied life experiences. Love builds up one’s fellow believers,
it does not tear down. And how about this practical
admonition from Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church? In 4.2
of Ephesians, he says, with patience, showing tolerance for one another
in love. If there’s anything that love
is, it’s patience. With one’s fellow believers,
love is not only everlasting, it’s intensely practical. Instead
of some measure of mulling over some measure of retaliation,
The godly individual, walking as Christ would have him to walk,
actively bears with rude treatment, especially by his or her brother. The result of the Spirit’s production
of humility and gentleness and patience was a life marked by
real, tangible, practical patience, a love for his brother. No wonder Paul draws to a close
in that letter by admonishing them to walk in love just as
Christ also loved you. Christian love is, like Christ,
self-sacrificing. Love never fails. It’s active,
it’s increasing, it’s everlasting. But not all gifts of the Spirit
are so durable. And Paul talks about those in
the rest of chapter or verse eight. There are gifts of everlasting
durability. Love is one of them. And there
are gifts of transitory expectation. Look at verse eight, if you would,
please. But if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done
away. If there are tongues, they will cease. If there is knowledge,
it will be done away. While love is eternal, everlasting,
enduring, it is not so of some of the other gifts of the Spirit.
And Paul lists just three here, prophecy, tongues, and knowledge. Paul isn’t citing these in any
sort of finite sense as if they were the only gifts that are
temporary in nature. But again, he uses these three
examples and he declares them to be transitory. They’re temporary,
they’re fleeting, they’re designed by God to be impermanent. And
these are just some of God’s gifts through the Spirit that
have a transitory expectation. They’re not permanent, they’re
not perpetual, they were never intended by God to be such. I’d
like to call one feature of this verse to your attention right
at the outset. If you glance down at verse eight,
you’ll notice something very interesting. In the case of both
prophecy and knowledge, Paul says that they will be done away. But in the case of tongues, he
says they will cease. This is a very subtle difference,
but it is different. And we’ll consider the reason
that Paul chose his words so carefully. He speaks somewhat
hypothetically at the outset. He says, if, if there are gifts
of prophecy, if there is knowledge. So it’s not, he’s not looking
to call out particular individuals. He’s speaking quite generally.
In such a case where a person is so gifted, That’s his approach. And he says of the first, if
there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away. The Greek word done away, again,
used to both prophecy and knowledge is the word kathargao. You may not know it, but you
already know this word. Because Paul uses this word plentifully,
he uses it 27 times, rather, of the 27 times that it’s used
in the New Testament, Paul uses it 25. You’ve seen this word,
no doubt. Paul likes this word, and so
the chances are good that you already know how Paul uses this
word, katargo, Romans 3.31. Do we then nullify the law through
faith? May it never be. Romans 6, our
old self was crucified with him in order that our body of sin
might be done away with. 1 Corinthians 2.6, in the same
epistle, we speak wisdom, not of this age nor the rulers of
this age who are passing away. 1 Corinthians 15, which chapter
we look to get to one day, The last enemy that will be abolished
is death. Second Corinthians chapter three,
speaking of the veil that covers the eyes of unbelievers, he says
the same veil remains unlifted because it is removed in Christ. Galatians 5.4, you have been
severed from Christ. You who are seeking to be justified
by law, you want to add works into your faith in Christ? You
are severing yourself from him. And Ephesians 2.15, Christ Jesus
abolished in his flesh, the enmity of sin against us. We were at
war with God and Christ in his coming abolished that guilty
testimony before us. And so did you catch all that?
Nullified, done away with, abolished, removed, severed. This is a severe
word. And that’s what, why Paul, that’s
what Paul says awaits These prominent gifts, prophecy and knowledge,
severed, abolished, nullified. There’s coming a day when these
things will not be needed. They won’t be needed any longer
and they will completely pass away. The point Paul is making
here is that these things will not merely slow down to a trickle. The point that Paul is making
here is that they will not be temporarily sidelined. They will
come to a place where they are no longer needed and they will
be done away with completely. Now, in order to begin to determine
when these things met or will meet their end, we’ll have to
first identify exactly what gift Paul is referring to here when
he speaks of prophecy and knowledge. Let’s ponder each of these gifts
that will meet with such an inglorious end one day. First, prophecy. As we saw, this is a broad-ranging
gift when we saw it earlier. Paul seems to capture here, when
he refers to this gift in the plural, as prophecies, he calls
them. There are many different flavors
of this gift. It’s a dynamic gift, it comes
in many different forms. We met up with this gift twice
in Paul’s discussion already, back in chapter 12, verse 10,
and then more recently in 13.2. And we saw that prophecy is not
limited to what we typically think of when we hear this word.
We tend to think of prophecy as the bold prediction of future
events, and almost always by divine revelation. a zap that
enables the speaker to declare some fantastic thing. But its most basic meaning is
just a faithful proclamation of God’s word, whether it’s a
direct revelation or whether it’s principles
that are derived from scripture, carefully presented, The Old
Testament prophets did foretell both blessings and judgments
of God’s people, but they did so as God’s spokesmen. So not every message was a message
of prediction. And with the completion of God’s
revelation in the New Testament, the Word of God then becomes
the exclusive source of the prophet’s proclamation. Now teaching, preaching,
the exercise of prophecy in that sense is designed to continue
until the Lord returns. Otherwise, I should just stop
talking. In its most dramatic form, declaring
divine revelation, I would suggest that as the evidence tells us,
that form of the gift has ceased, passed away. We’ll talk more
about that in the weeks to come. But likewise, this second gift
that Paul says will be done away, abolished, that of knowledge,
Paul also mentions a gift similar to the gift of prophecy. Back
in 12.8, he mentioned the word of knowledge. kind of this momentary
zap of information from the Holy Spirit that was given, a word
of knowledge given for a moment, not a proclamation like in what
a prophet would do. If that is what Paul is referring
to here, then he says that there will come a time, perhaps has
already come, when such a need for supernatural prophecy, divine
revelation in the moment, will come to an end. It’s not immediately
clear that this knowledge is what Paul is referring to here.
It could just be that he means the knowledge that you and I
glean that is ultimately stored up in our brains through the
study of books and learning, that kind of knowledge. Knowledge
acquired by the painful process of trial and error, study, testing
of theories and the like. There will come a day when even
this knowledge will no longer be needed. So the Corinthians, if we back
up, they were fixating on things. Even if we just limit it to prophecy
and knowledge, they were fixating on things that would ultimately
fade away. instead of cultivating the gift
that they would exercise throughout all eternity. No matter which
form of prophecy or what measure of knowledge, eventually neither
of them would be needed. We’ll see our Savior face to
face one day, and we will know as we have been known, as Paul
tells us in verse 12 of this chapter, when we get to heaven,
the day of study and learning is over. And so prophecy and knowledge
will be abolished, nullified. What about tongues? As I’ve already
pointed out, Paul uses a different word in regard to tongues. This
gift we also saw back in chapter 12. It was first poured out on
the church at Pentecost. It was a sign gift that was intended
to authenticate the apostle’s message of the gospel. The believers
in Christ now indwelled by the Holy Spirit began speaking in
other languages. Supernaturally, immediately,
clearly, and excellently, they began speaking with other tongues. Because this gift was such a
sensational display of God’s Spirit, it was highly prized,
especially in Corinth, and greatly desired. But Paul says, even
this gift, if there are tongues, they will cease. And again, he
uses a different word here, translated as cease. Here he uses the Greek
word pao. The word is not so plentifully
used in the New Testament, only 15 times. It’s used in Luke 8,
24, of Jesus rebuking the wind of the waves, the wind and the
waves, and it stopped immediately, completely. We just saw it both
in our New Testament reading and in our Sunday school study
in Acts, Acts 21. Paul had just come into Jerusalem,
remember? And there was a near riot and
Paul was taking quite a beating. That is until the Roman commander
showed up with his troops and they stopped beating Paul. The word doesn’t refer to a break
or a pause of activity. It speaks of a complete cessation. There will come a time when tongues
will cease. Even supernaturally proclaiming
the gospel message will no longer be necessary, and tongues will
cease for that purpose. We will continue to proclaim
the gospel. We just won’t need a foreign
language by which to do it. They will come to an abrupt stop. They will cease fully and completely.
There’s a fascinating little detail, hard to distinguish here
in our English translations, this verb, cease. It’s not only
different from the verb that was used of prophecy and knowledge,
kalargao, but it is also in a different form than that verb. With the
other two verbs, the verb is passive. The subject receives the action
of the verb. But here, with regard to tongues,
the verb is in the middle voice. Literally, it does the action
to itself. Tongues will stop themselves. I like the way one commentator
characterized this. He says that God gave the gift
of tongues a built-in stopping place. Enough. And they stopped themselves.
The lingering question is, when? I’ve already suggested to you
that tongues, as we saw them in Acts 2, have ceased. The need
for them ceased, and tongues ceased. That’s my position. The
modern practice of speaking in tongues, this kind of ecstatic,
unintelligible, rambling, or perhaps a private prayer language,
it bears no resemblance to God’s original gift as seen on the day of Pentecost.
Most conservative scholars say that tongues ceased near the
end of the third century, that is the late 200s, perhaps even
earlier, And that would make tongues among the most temporary
of all of God’s supernatural gifts. It came and it went, and
they stopped completely. We’ll talk more about that in
the weeks to come. But Paul tells these believers,
so misguided regarding God’s gifts to his church, that although
love is designed to be an everlasting gift among God’s people, Most
of the signed gifts will run their course and either be abolished
or they will cease. But why? Why should gifts so
spectacular at one season, so valuable to Christ Church, so
soon be laid aside as unneeded and unwanted? Why? Paul tells us in verses nine
and 10. And so these factors, not only there are gifts of everlasting
durability and there are gifts of transitory expectation, but
that’s because there are gifts that are only of temporary usefulness. And Paul addresses that in these
verses. Look at verse nine, for we know
in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the
partial will be done away. Well, that makes it clear. We’ll work on this. In the first
place, even at their very best, knowledge and prophecy are divinely
limited. They can only ever impart a slender
portion of necessary information. We know in part and we prophesy
in part. Even when we receive these valuable
pieces of data, they only comprise a small portion of our total
bank of information. It’s just part of God’s revealed
truth. In God’s world, pardon me, in
God’s world, we receive general revelation and special revelation. We’ve seen this before. God provides
an overwhelming amount of revelation just through what He has made.
Would you flip over to Romans 1 for a moment? We call it general revelation. It’s God’s creation, all of it. Romans 1, Paul makes a declaration
of this revelation. Let’s take it in verse 18. For the wrath of God is revealed
from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who
suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about
God is evident within them. There isn’t a soul on the face
of the earth that doesn’t have some sense of, call it what you
will, higher power, a creator, a being that is greater than
them, God. That which is known about God
is evident within them. Why? For God made it evident
to them. Oh, well that clears it up. God
essentially had a Sunday school lesson and taught everyone on
the face of the earth that’s ever been born that there is
a God. When exactly did that happen?
Well, look at verse 24. Since the creation of the world,
His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature
have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been
made, so that they are without excuse. A basic understanding
of some supreme being, someone greater than you, who was here
before you, who created all of this beauty and order, God revealed it to them. Back,
if you would, please, to 1 Corinthians 13. Well, Romans 1 is really
just an echo of Psalm 19, remember? Psalm 19, the heavens are telling
of the glory of God and their expanse is declaring the work
of his hands. All you have to do is walk outside
and look up. And you have a testimony of God.
All of God’s wonderful creation stands as a daily, hourly, moment-by-moment
testimony to every person that there is a God and that this
is His created world. This rudimentary but unmistakable
testimony of Himself leaves people without excuse. They know. But general revelation isn’t
God’s only witness. There’s also special revelation. Special revelation would include
God’s word, the complete body of God’s revealed will to mankind. And the other aspect of special
revelation is no other than Jesus Christ himself. As the writer of Hebrews declared
it in these last days, God has spoken to us in his son. This
is God’s final piece of revelation. So God has provided plenty of
revelation for humanity. All of these three gifts, prophecy
and tongues and knowledge. They will all fall under also
special revelation, but Paul says here in verse nine. That
what is provided here by God is just a part. Just a part of
his overall revelation. We know in part and we prophesy
in part. Whatever revelation we gain from
these means when all is said and done is only a tiny sliver.
We will never, we can never get all of what we could ever know
from prophecy. It was never intended to be the
sole source of our total body of knowledge. There’s still a
gap and still much that we don’t know at the end. Wise King Solomon
touched upon this in Ecclesiastes chapter three. He has made everything
appropriate in its time. He has also said eternity in
their heart yet so that no man will find out the work which
God has done from the beginning to the end. There are so many
things that we don’t know. We learn all we can, we’ll never
know everything. Paul echoes that same sentiment
right at the end of Romans 11. Oh, the depth of the riches,
both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are
his judgments and unfathomable his ways. Do you have God figured
out? Me neither. Our knowledge is
finite, it’s limited. And so I would liken this partial
or imperfect knowledge to coming up out of a cave where all you’ve
had is a candle or a small lantern. But the closer you come to the
mouth of that cave and into the light of the sun, the more insignificant
that candle becomes, such as prophecy, such as tongues. Finally glance down at verse
10. At present, our knowledge is
limited. Our revelation is limited. Even
the means of gaining more information is limited. But it won’t always
be this way. Paul says, when the perfect comes,
the partial will be done away. When the perfect comes. When the perfect comes. Whatever can that mean? And you might as well imagine
that there are a lot of different opinions as to what Paul is referring
to here. There’s absolutely no consensus.
I’m not going to mention all of them, only a few of the most
popular. Some say that the perfect refers specifically to the coming
of Christ, that is second coming. As if we look up and we see the
perfect, who is Christ, and everything comes into focus. There’s a degree
of truth to that. Christ is perfect. But there’s
a glitch with this option. And this is rather technical,
but the word perfect is in the neuter gender. And that means
it cannot refer to a person, especially not to Christ. And
that’s why most people back away and say, well, no, it’s not to
Christ. Specifically, it’s to the second coming as an event.
But the second coming is far too dynamic of an event to imagine
an immediate perfecting knowledge as soon as Christ burst through
the clouds. Some say that the perfect is used in the sense
of mature. That’s oftentimes how this word
is used. Shaped, it refers instead then
to the mature church. When the church becomes mature,
when the church finally grows up, then we won’t have any more
need for these things. When the church is perfect, fully
mature, partial knowledge, partial prophesying will no longer be
needed. And a really great verse that
is often associated with this verse, go ahead and flip over,
we have all kinds of time. Because I won’t feed you till
noon. Would you flip over to Ephesians
4, just for a quick minute. And I’ll talk more about this
verse here in a little bit at the meeting. but scroll down
to verse 11, and he gave some as apostles and some as prophets
and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers for the
equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building
up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of
the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man. Perfect. To the measure of the stature
which belongs to the fullness of Christ. Now let me ask you,
Are you even close to the measure of the stature which belongs
to the fullness of Christ yet? Do you really believe? Have you
ever seen anyone, even the most godly saint that was ready like
this, fully mature, perfect on this earth? It’s not gonna
happen. This is talking about the direction that we’re heading.
It’s talking about the direction of maturity and perfection, but
we won’t be perfect until glory, and that brings us. To another. Suggestion, some say that the
perfect. Refers to the completed writing
and gathering of scripture. The canon of scripture when the
scripture is complete, we won’t need prophecy anymore, and there’s
a lot of truth to this. This is one of the more popular
views. Once the Bible is complete, there won’t be any need for prophecy,
no more need of tongues, no more need of special revelation, because
that’s what Scripture is. And that’s all true, but what
about knowledge? Our need for knowledge is not
nullified by the coming of the Bible. If anything, the need
of knowledge is increased, right? And it would be a real stretch
to suggest that the Corinthians understood this statement this
way. Oh, I get it. This is just the
first of many epistles that are going to be written and collected
along with the gospels and ultimately the book of Revelation. And they’re
all going to be collected and they will join the Old Testament
scriptures as the Bible. That’s not how the Corinthians
would have understood it. The bigger problem is when this
happens, not only tongues, but prophecy, knowledge, they’re
all abolished. The New Testament wasn’t completed
until the end of the fourth century. And yet both knowledge and learning
and the proclamation of God’s word continues unabated. The
only remaining suggestion is that which makes the most sense. The perfect refers to our glorified
state in eternity. When we arrive there, there will
be no more need of learning. There will be no more need of
piecemeal revelation. There will be no need of prophecy
or tongues or book learning knowledge. We will not miss those gifts
at all. because we will see and be with
Jesus himself. And this perspective shapes the
overall design of this entire passage. Paul isn’t looking here
to pinpoint a date when these things will run their respective
courses, when prophecy will be abolished,
when knowledge will be nullified, when tongues will cease. He just
says that they’re finite. that they will certainly come
to an end, even if we don’t know exactly when. It’s not a passage so much about
cessation as it is our condition in heaven. And what Paul is emphasizing
is not even so much the feebleness or the temporary nature of these
other gifts. They have or they’ve had their
place in God’s economy. What he’s declaring here is that
these gifts have their limits. And that in contrast to the perpetual
gift of love. We won’t need these gifts in
glory, but love on the other hand is everlasting. Love will
be exercised in glory, love towards Christ, love towards God, love
towards our fellow believers. Love is that gift that we never
need to return for a refund. Would you humble yourselves before
his throne?