NOTES for Co1 13:13

¹³And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

Faith, hope, charity are the traditional triad of so called in the Middle Ages the "theological" virtues, which were considered proper only for Christians, unlike the virtues "heathen", who, according to the same representations of the Middle Ages, are proper to all people, including heathen virtuous. And Paul, as we see, from the three accentuates on charity, without denying moreover that faith and hope are inseparably connected to it. Then what means the apostle? We would have been able of course to explain everything only by the peculiarities of the spiritual device of the human personality.

Indeed, trust, and hope are always connected somehow or other to those relationships, which join man with God and with the neighbor. And charity understood as understand this word the authors of the biblical books, is the relationship, around which is built all the rest. It is particular on charity that is based every trust, and only charity allows to hope on something, whether it is related to God or to man. But the problem is probably not only in it.

All the expectations of Christians are connected somehow or other with the Kingdom, with the fact that will come the day of its full and final triumph, the day of the last Judgment and the return of the Savior. And the faith of every Christian is also connected to the Kingdom and to the One who brought the Kingdom to the world. And when will come the day waited by every Christian of the end of the current stage of the history of the Kingdom, charity will stop being only a relationship, having become this spiritual environment, in which are going to live from now on all the inhabitants of the Kingdom.

Indeed, in the Kingdom charity is the spiritual environment, inside which are build all the relationships forming its basis: the relationships of its inhabitants between themselves, their relationships with God and with Jesus, the relationship of Jesus with His Heavenly Father. And if faith and hope under their current form still belong to the world partially not transformed to a certain extent defining their form, charity as for it, manifested by the Savior Himself, this charity, which He left to His followers, belongs already now to the Kingdom entirely.

Other notes

For Co1 13:8-13

⁸Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

⁹For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

¹⁰But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

¹¹When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

¹²For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

¹³And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

It is very difficult to speak about such “abstract” concepts, let alone compare them. With a certain degree of... Read more

It is very difficult to speak about such “abstract” concepts, let alone compare them. With a certain degree of approximation, we might put it this way: in ordinary usage, faith and hope describe our relationship to facts. Faith concerns facts that “already are” (I believe that God exists, that He is good, that He created the world, that He ordered the world in such-and-such a way, that He gave His only-begotten Son...), while hope concerns facts that are “still ahead” (I hope for salvation, resurrection from the dead, eternal life...). But sometimes these words are used to express our relationship with another person: faith as trust in God, hope as reliance upon Him. The word “love” belongs to this same series: it speaks of our relationship with someone else. Yet this word truly is “greater” than faith and hope, because love means the fullness of relationship and, of course, includes both trust and hope.

For Co1 13:8-13

⁸Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

⁹For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

¹⁰But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

¹¹When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

¹²For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

¹³And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

For Paul, love is undoubtedly the foundation of all the relationships that connect... Read more

For Paul, love is undoubtedly the foundation of all the relationships that connect people living in the Kingdom with God and with one another. That is why it remains relevant even when everything else ceases to be so (v. 8). But the apostle is not speaking simply about life in the Kingdom. He clearly has in mind a certain fullness of the Kingdom itself, so to speak, the fullness of fullness. All the spiritual gifts that Paul described so vividly only a short time earlier now disappear, dissolving into love. The apostle gives a completely unambiguous explanation for this: all the gifts we can have today are still far from the fullness of that love with which the Kingdom is permeated, and therefore they are temporary (vv. 9-10). This incompleteness is connected with our own spiritual state: from the point of view of that fullness of life that will become possible in the Kingdom revealed to the end, we are still children, having only the most general ideas about the life of the Kingdom and having taken only our first steps in it (v. 11).

As one can see, for Paul the spiritual path of individual people living in the Kingdom is inseparable from the history of the Kingdom itself. For him the spiritual maturing of Christians is inseparable from the becoming of the Kingdom and its development in our world, which is being transfigured but has not yet been transfigured to the end. The realities of the Kingdom are perceived with difficulty today not only because our eyes have not yet developed enough to see the objects of the spiritual world clearly, but also because these realities themselves have not yet fully taken shape and have not been completely revealed (v. 12). But the full revelation of the Kingdom will happen only at the end of time with the Savior's return. Until then, the love of the Kingdom, which we can experience only in part, is joined with faith that the day will come when it will be revealed to the world in all its fullness, and with hope that we ourselves too will become part of this fullness (v. 13).

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