This week we’ve been exploring the “Love Chapter,” 1 Corinthians 13. The distinguishing feature of Christians should not be what we're against, how often we meet, whether we send out missionaries, plant churches, or even meet the practical needs of the poor. The distinguishing feature of the Christian community is that we demonstrate love for other people. We've read that love is a lifestyle and this is the context for all spiritual gifts. We've seen that when we truly love people we demonstrate kindness and patience with them. We celebrate the good times when they come and hang in there with them when the going gets tough. Today, let’s finish up this series as Paul writes about one final feature of love:

Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture. But when full understanding comes, these partial things will become useless. When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor. 13:8-13)

In today’s passage, Paul highlights love's endurance. He says that the spiritual gifts of speaking in unknown languages or prophecy have their appropriate uses, but eventually will no longer be useful. Why? Because one day Paul says we shall know God “face to face,” We will know and fully understand the things that these gifts point toward. Even now, we must see them all in context. Jesus said that the most important commandment is to love God and the second greatest commandment is to love people. Therefore, we must never allow spiritual gifts or any other aspect of Christian life, such as church activities, End Times prophecy, or signs and wonders to distract us and keep us from giving our full attention to demonstrating Jesus' love to those around us.

All of the spiritual gifts are for now, but love is forever. Love is eternal...and that is very Good News!