"SpiritualGifts" Tagged Sermons
Paul draws a sharp contrast between eternal love and the merely temporary spiritual gifts the Corinthians boasted in. That boasting exposes a human pride that must be thoroughly undone before love can take its rightful place.
Working through an outline of 1 Corinthians 13, tongues and prophecy are affirmed as genuinely supernatural gifts even as love is insisted upon as standing above them all. Paul’s own sarcasm toward Corinthian boasting comes through clearly, with Christ himself at the center of the chapter.
Engaging the modern Pentecostal movement, the gifts that continue in the church today (teaching, helps, administration) are distinguished from those identified as temporary: apostleship, prophecy, miracles, healings, and tongues. That distinction shapes how 1 Corinthians 13 should be read.
The party divisions at Corinth (around Paul, Peter, and Apollos) and the disputes over spiritual gifts, Christian liberty, and speaking in tongues that followed from them get traced out. Above all of it, Paul sets love as ‘the more excellent way.’