October 4, 2024

Passage Read: 1 Corinthians 12-13
Meditation Verse: 13:8

Thought

Love, agape love in this passage, is not a spiritual gift, but a spiritual discipline. It is learning and choosing to care for the needs, especially the spiritual needs, of others. Spiritual gifts can certainly be a part of helping others, but Paul says here that when true agape love comes, the spiritual gifts will take a back seat and even be laid aside. Spiritual gifts are exciting, but they can be used more to exalt self rather than seek the good of others. But when genuine agape love takes control, the gifts are pretty much given up. They're not so necessary as love is, and love somehow eclipses the gifts. The one who understands and exercises agape love somehow chooses to leave off his spiritual gift. It grows unimportant to him. At the end of the previous chapter, Paul tells the Corinthians to seek the greatest gifts, like prophecy and teaching gifts, but that there is an even more excellent way, and that's the way of agape love.

Application

As much as I desire a real spiritual gift, to see miracles in my midst, if I pursue agape love and grow in it, I'll eventually lay aside my spiritual gift. So if God desires to grant amazing spiritual gifts in my ministry, I'm good with that, but what I want more than anything for myself and my people is that we all live in agape love, and that's something that we can and should be developing whether the Spirit gives us gifts or not. Agape love doesn't require a gift, it requires obedience and practice and diligence; it requires knowing God and how He acts and speaks, and emulating those. And it requires considering the needs and concerns of others as greater than my own. The New Testament has vastly more to say about agape love and how it looks in the life of a believer than it has to say about spiritual gifts. So it's clear: I should be far more consumed with learning to live out agape love than seeking and exercising spiritual gifts.