All Gifts Are Temporary, But Love is Eternal (1 Corinthians Sermon 52)

Pastor Andy Davis preaches on 1 Corinthians 13:8-13, and the everlasting nature of God's love.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT - 

So take your Bibles, if you would, and open 1 Corinthians 13. We continue to make our way through this incredible chapter. And as we do, we're led to consider this morning, what is excellent, the excellence of Christian love. The human heart is designed by God to evaluate everything it knows in the universe. We are designed to see what's around us, to understand it, and to evaluate it and to have a sense of excellence. A sense of good, better and best. It has been good, I think, for us to be able to continue to have some continuity and to do the live stream and to continue to be fed with the word. That was good. It's better to gather, even though awkwardly and weirdly, I don't know that anybody really thinks this is like the exciting, most beautiful way for us to worship or to sing. Wes, how did we sound? Awesome, okay, that was the only right answer, we sounded great. But there's good, there's better and then there's best. And we know that the best is yet to come. We are looking forward to the heavenly best.

Children as they grow have very limited sense of excellence, a sense, a limited sense of what's truly excellent in the world. You know, the law of supply and demand doesn't really register with them. You know, they'd rather have a Popsicle than the joy of having scripture unfolded to them. They'd rather be at an amusement park than come and sit on a pew, I'm sure. They don't really have a sense of what's excellent, and so also we grow and develop in our sense of the excellence of Christian things, we develop a sense of what is truly excellent in this world. For myself, I'm not really an art aficionado, but I was willing to stand in line at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to see a Rembrandt painting, The Night Watch, it's behind a big plexiglass wall, they're refurbishing it and they have a robotic machine on it, and they're working on it, but I was willing to do that, and I wasn't the only one, thousands of people willing to wait to see an excellent painting. And so it is with all of us, I think we would love to hear the most excellent music that there is played by an excellent symphony orchestra rather than something that's lower. This world is filled with 7.8 billion people and innumerable possessions that we have, countless human skills and attributes, measureless achievements, soaring accolades and honors, countless artifacts, and there's an array of excellence, an array of skill, an array of those possessions, a sense of what is the lowest, the mean level, and then on up.

The Apostle Paul puts before us in 1 Corinthians 13 what he calls the most excellent way, look at verse 31, 1 Corinthians 12:31, he said, “And now I will show you the most excellent way.” The most excellent way, the word way implies a pathway, a journey, a destination. It brings my mind immediately to John 14:6, where Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.” So we are on this journey, we're going from where we are to a destination, we're going to the Father, and Jesus is the way. Paul in this chapter points to what he calls the most excellent way, the most excellent way of life, and it's absolutely no doubt, tied in his mind to the most excellent man that ever lived in Jesus Christ. The way of love then is the most excellent way of life there can ever be, for love is the distillation of the Christian religion. Love is both the journey along the way, and it is the destination to which we are going. So in this chapter, this single chapter, 13 verses that we've been studying now for weeks, it's dedicated to this one proposition that love is the most excellent way for human beings, the most excellent human attribute.

I. Three Arguments for the Excellence of Love 

Now, the whole chapter breaks into three divisions of this excellence, this is just kind of a quick overview of the whole chapter, we're gonna zero in on the third one, but first, all spiritual gifts are worthless without love. Secondly, all the excellent aspects of Christianity are summed up in and arise from love, and thirdly, love is eternal, but none of the spiritual gifts are. Now we're gonna spend our time on the third one, but let's walk through the first two quickly just by way of overview. First of all, all spiritual gifts are worthless without love. Look again at Verses 1-3, which you just heard read, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I'm only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol. And if I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.” So love must be truly excellent if it's absolutely indispensable to the proper use of spiritual gifts, it's the indispensable ingredient to all spiritual gifts, even the most extreme display of those gifts there has ever been in human history are worthless if there's not love.

Secondly, all truly excellent aspects of Christianity arise from love. The most excellent demeanors, the most excellent attitudes in the Christian life come from love, the most excellent works in the Christian life flow from love, so Paul then describes it both positively and negatively, been walking through this carefully over the last number of weeks. Look at verses 4-7 again, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” So anyone who is living this kind of life is living the perfect Christian life, when it comes to other people, they are long-suffering toward other sinners, they actively do good works of kindness toward them with a glad and gentle heart, they have a complete delight in the blessings that they see that other people have and they don't have. It doesn't bother them at all. They're glad that those people have those blessings, they have no covetousness inside them, conversely, their own blessings, they don't boast over them, they realize they're given by grace, and they know that they are a conduit of blessings, so that people who are loving like this want to use the temporal blessings they have to bless other people. They are truly humble toward others, they consider other people better than themselves, they consider other people's needs as more important than their own, they've been humbled before God the creator because they're creatures, and they've been humbled before Christ the redeemer because they are sinners. And so these loving people are deeply humbled. They're polished in their manners toward other people, they consider the needs of other people just in physical space and time, they're mannerly, they're not rude, and they expand their hearts to include others and find pleasure in blessing others. They are not all about “me.” They're delivered from “me,” they're delivered from selfishness, and they're not given to sinful selfish anger, they're not short-tempered, they don't have a short fuse, and they're also very quick to forgive, they don't keep a record of wrongs, they're free from bitterness.

They delight in righteousness. They delight in seeing the truth of God's word at work in people's lives, and like Jesus, they also hate wickedness and all that it does to people. They bear offenses without complaining, they believe the best about other people and are hopeful about what God's grace can do in a sinner's life. And therefore they're willing to endure whatever bad treatment they get from other people. Now you look at that, that's my own summary of where we've been, anything... Oh my, what a man that would be, who lived like that. What a woman that would be who could actually live that kind of life. That would be a perfect life when it comes to dealing with other people, especially other sinful people. Now, only one person in history has ever done this perfectly, and that's Jesus Christ. Isn't it wonderful that in the gospel, that perfect record of love that Jesus won by his life is given to us as a gift to wear like a robe of righteousness on judgment day, isn't that beautiful? The imputed righteousness of Christ is given to us as a gift, so that we will stand as though on judgment day, as though we have been as loving as that. That's what the imputed righteousness of Christ is all about.

II. Love Never Fails, but All the Gifts Will Cease

 Now, the third aspect of the excellency of love we're gonna spend the rest of our time this morning on, and that is that love is eternal, but none of the spiritual gifts are. All of them are temporary, but love is eternal. This is the final step of Paul's unfolding the pure excellence of Christian love. Now, let's keep in mind that the Corinthians were very proud of their spiritual gifts. You get the sense of boasting over them, especially the showy gifts like prophecy and tongues, and so they were very proud of their gifts and they boasted over them. They probably boasted over everything that they had, and other people were envious and jealous and they would bicker and they were divided. They were a divided church. So Paul wants them to understand: all the spiritual gifts that they have and all of the roles that are connected with them are temporary, and not only are they temporary, but they are indeed a means to an end. There's an end that God has in mind. But love is eternal. It extends from the moment that you're converted to the end of your life here on Earth. It extends beyond that, beyond judgment day, beyond the second coming of Christ and on into eternity, and therefore it is the most excellent thing. It is the most excellent way. So let's walk through that and try to learn what Paul says.

"But love is eternal. It extends from the moment that you're converted to the end of your life here on Earth. It extends beyond that, beyond judgment day, beyond the second coming of Christ and on into eternity."

First of all, love never fails, but all the gifts will cease. He just simply asserts it. Look at verse 8, he said, “Love never fails.” It's a simple assertion. In Verse 13, “Now these three remain [or abide], faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.” But conversely, all the spiritual gifts will cease, verse eight, “As for prophecies [he says], they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.” So those three, I think, stand and represent all the spiritual gifts, these three, all the spiritual gifts, are temporary, but love is the most excellent way because it is eternal, it's permanent. It never passes away. Now here, I do not want to take much of an off-ramp off of this text and discuss what's generally known as cessationism. Cessationism is the idea that the sign gifts, what we call speaking in tongues, prophecy, miracles, all of those gifts were temporary and ended with the completion of the New Testament canon. So that's, I believe, an off-ramp that John McArthur, my mentor and my other mentor, Jonathan Edwards, both take. And you're like, “You're a bold man if you're gonna walk away from those two great mentors.” I'm not walking away from them, I covered cessationism back in December and you can listen to that sermon at that point. I think whether those sign gifts continue or not is not settled from this chapter. I think what Paul's talking about goes far beyond the end of the first century, far beyond the end of the Apostolic Age, it goes on into the realm of perfection, and it goes on into the realm when at last we will see God face-to-face. It goes on into the realm of perfect knowledge, and so therefore, I don't really see the need to go into cessationism much at all, but I've covered that, etcetera. It's debatable, it's discussed, and pretty soon after a couple of sermons on heaven, we're gonna get to go, God willing, into 1 Corinthians 14 and talk about tongues and prophecy, and we'll have all kinds of fun doing that. So why don't we just wait on all that? But I don't think that this is clearly a cessationist text, I think that the text goes far beyond that.

So how is love permanent, actually eternal? Well, at the moment of conversion, God's supernatural love, divine love enters into your soul by the transforming work of the Holy Spirit and it never leaves. Once the love of God enters your life, at conversion, it will be with you forever. Now what happens at regeneration is the miracle of a transformation of your heart, so that the heart of stone is taken away, that unresponsive cold, hard resistant heart is removed and God puts a responsive, soft, yielded, submissive heart in instead. Without that, none of us gets converted. Now, at that moment, what happens is described in a lot of places, but 2 Corinthians 4:6 is my favorite. And 2 Corinthians 4:6 said, “For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” So God shines his own glory in his only begotten Son. In the record we have in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John of Jesus' words, his actions, his demeanor, all of that a perfect record of his life, and so the Holy Spirit comes and takes that and sets it on fire inside your heart, you see a light, you see the glory of God, and your eyes, the eyes of your heart, are enlightened, they're open. That's faith, and you see the beauty of God in Jesus. And your heart is attracted to that, that is the love of God, and it's vertical. You are transformed from a God hater to a God lover, and that never changes, it'll grow, it'll develop, it'll never go away. Forever you will love God vertically, but then flowing out from that perfect vertical love that God works in us by the Spirit is the love for other people, horizontally, the second great commandment. And if there is no love, then there is no life. There has been no conversion, there has been no heart surgery; the heart of stone is still there. It says in 1 John 3:14, “We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death.” So that's horizontal. If you don't love others, if you don't love your brothers, you're dead in your transgressions and sins. If you say, if you claim that you love God and you hate your brother, you're a liar, 1 John says.

So this is of the essence of the transformation, God has put love for himself above all, first, and then secondly, love for others, and that divine love continues throughout the Christian life. The Holy Spirit enters into us at conversion, and he never leaves. And the fruit of the Spirit is love and you could say, and then all the rest, and maybe all the rest are just manifestations of different aspects of love. But love kind of sums all of it up, and as long as the Holy Spirit is in you, and he will never leave you, if you're genuinely converted, you will love, you will love God and you will love others, and this will go on eternally, our love will be perfected in heaven. Our love for both God and others will not cease at the end of our lives. Paul, at the end of this chapter, lifts our minds up above into the heavenly future that we're going to enjoy. Look at Verse 9-10, “For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, that when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.” So the perfection that Paul has in mind here is nothing less than heavenly perfection of seeing God face-to-face. Look at verse 12, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face-to-face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” So that's our future. The thing that God told Moses on that mountain, “You cannot see me and live.” We will be able to see him and live and not just live but live eternally. We will see him face-to-face, so this is talking about heavenly glory, of heavenly knowledge of God.

Now, love extends into eternity and actually love will outlast even faith and hope, even faith and hope are temporary. Paul ends this chapter with these three great attributes of the Christian soul, verse 13, “And now these three remain faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.” and I'm adding the only eternal of the three is love. So spiritual gifts will pass away when this world ends, spiritual gifts may well pass away before then, may- some of them may have passed away, that's the very issue of debate with cessationism, that's true, but whether they do or not, spiritual gifts are not as important as faith, hope and love. A Christian actually may cease being able to exercise his or her spiritual gifts, my gift is preaching and teaching, I might have a stroke at some point and be unable to speak, and so I would not be able to minister my spiritual gift again. I might get to a place where I cannot really receive the benefits of other people's spiritual gifts; that might happen to me, those things do happen. A woman whose gift is hospitality may tragically lose her home and for a period of time be unable to host anybody. And so spiritual gifts are fragile, they are temporary, they are useful. But faith, hope and love are lasting. Now, while we live in this world, faith, hope and love remain every single moment of our Christian lives. Your faith in Christ is being sustained right now by the secret working of God's grace through the Holy Spirit in you. You're not on your own, concerning your faith, you don't have to maintain the fire of faith in your heart, you do need to keep believing in Jesus, but you will because Jesus is interceding for you at the right hand of God, that you will continue to believe and trust in him. And that's a beautiful thing, so that faith will be sustained, so also hope. Now, faith is the eyesight of the soul, by which we see invisible spiritual realities. By which we see in some sense Christ at the right hand of God interceding for us. But love is greater than faith, because actually faith produces, or is a means to the end of producing love in our hearts. Effectively, faith serves love. Also hope is a strong assurance in the heart that the future is bright based on the promises of God, that we're actually- we're looking forward to heaven. But we learn from scripture, and we're gonna learn more, God willing, over the next two weeks, that heaven is a world of love. And so hope is really ultimately all about love, we are going to be swimming in an ocean of love in heaven. I can't wait over the next two weeks, I could probably go 20 weeks, but I won't do that to you, to just describe what I mean when I think Jonathan Edwards means when he says that heaven is a world of love. But hope is all about that; we're going to a place where we will be loved and where we will love. And so hope serves love as well, and only love will come with us into eternity. When you breathe your last breath on earth and your soul departs from your body and you become absent from the body, but present with the Lord you won't need faith anymore. You'll be among those righteous people made perfect in the heavenly Zion worshipping God. You won't need faith. And the same thing with hope, you won't need hope. When the promises have been fulfilled, you'll leave hope behind. Romans 8:24 says it plainly, “Hope that is seen is no hope at all, who hopes for what he already has?” So you won't need hope in heaven. When the new heavens and the new earth come, and you're in your resurrection body, and you're surrounded by the glorious redeemed, they're shining like the sun in the kingdom of your Father. When all of the things that God has promised us in the gospel have come true, faith and hope will be fulfilled. Let's put it that way, you could say, obsolete, but I like fulfilled. Their need is done, but love will still be there, and not only that, but love is going to be developing for all eternity. You're gonna love more and more and more as time goes on. So faith and hope will not come with us into heaven, but love will really just be beginning there.

"When all of the things that God has promised us in the gospel have come true, faith and hope will be fulfilled. ... Their need is done, but love will still be there, and not only that, but love is going to be developing for all eternity."

III. All Graces of the Spirit are Temporary Means to an End: Love 

So all the graces of the spirit are temporary means to the end of love. We are gifted; we are blessed by the Holy Spirit. The third person of the Trinity has been delivering Christ to you from the moment of your conversion. He has been working powerfully and deeply. So I've said before, and I'll continue to say, you owe your salvation as much to the third person of the Trinity as you do to the second person. Jesus died for you, shed his blood for you, it's true, but you wouldn't care about that at all, if it weren't for the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has been ministering inside you. He's been ministering a deep conviction of sin, you see the need for a savior, and you know that you can't survive judgment day if it weren't for Christ, you would most certainly be condemned for your sins, you would be- you would hear the dreadful words, “Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” You know you deserve it. Well, how do you know that? It's because the Spirit has convicted you of sin. You've seen that you've violated the laws of God; the Spirit's worked that conviction. And then the Spirit, as we've said, works an illumination of Christ to you, you see him as a savior, you see him as beautiful and attractive, you want him, you're drawn to him. You realize his death is really for you; it's your death. His life, his resurrected life is your life, you are drawn to him and connected to him by faith the Spirit has worked this. And you have a deep sense of the love of God in all of this, and these things continue every day of your Christian life here on earth, an ever-deeper conviction of sin, an ever-greater illumination of Christ going on through the ministry of the word, ever-deeper love for God and for others. These things continue; these are workings of the Spirit.

Now, the Spirit also uses spiritual gifts to help these things. So the gift of prophecy delivers God's word from heaven to earth. The prophets of olds heard God speaking words and they proclaimed them to their generations, some of those prophets like Moses and others, wrote down their prophecies that became the written word of God, the apostles were prophets in their writing ministry. And so we have the 66 books of the Bible, we have the perfect delivery system of the truth of God through the prophetic gift.

So also the spiritual gift of apostleship, an authoritative office that established the pattern of church life for generations to come, gave us the New Testament, the apostolic testimony to Jesus, written down in the words of the New Testament. The gift of apostleship and then the gift of evangelism brought the gospel message from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria, and little by little to the ends of the earth. These spiritual gifts are a delivery system, the spiritual gift of tongues early on was a sign of supernatural activity, a sign that the Holy Spirit had descended on Cornelius and his family when they heard and believed, simply by hearing with faith. The spiritual gift of being a pastor, teacher, shepherd of souls, continues to this present day and you receive benefits from that every week- I just go back again in my heart to John 21, what Jesus said to Peter, “Feed my sheep.” So I get to do that to you, today. I get to do that week after week, to just feed your faith, feed your souls. And we need it, don't we? We need the word of God, we need to have our souls and so that spiritual gift benefits, and so also all of these gifts are gifts flowing from the mind of God through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, all of these things. But all of these means of grace are temporary, all of them, and none of them will be needed in heaven. Ephesians 4:13 speaks about the gifts he gives unto the apostles, unto the prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers to prepare God's people for works of service so the body of Christ may be built up, listen to this: “Until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” So that word “until” means we need all of these gifts until we're perfect. And then we don't need them anymore. Jonathan Edwards put it this way, “It's like the fruits of the field and a farmer orchard, which need tilling and need rain and need sunshine until they're ripe, but once they're ripe and they've been gathered into the barn at harvest time, they need them no more.” And so it will be with all the spiritual gifts, no spiritual gifts in heaven. But all the means of grace have love as their final goal or their final end. What God is doing in salvation is ultimately working love in us. Edwards says the reason that gifts cease and love doesn't is that gifts are the means to the end of love that we would love. Love is the point of it all, and the gifts are the means the Holy Spirit uses to work love in us.

IV. All Earthly Knowledge of God is Limited, Imperfect, and Immature

 Now, all earthly knowledge of God is limited, imperfect and immature. So that's what I get to do today. I get to give you limited, imperfect and immature knowledge of God as I preach. Isn't that exciting? I got up and I was thinking about this sermon, it's like “I get to do some more limited, imperfect and immature stuff.” But look at the verses, look at Verse 8-12, it says, “Love never fails, but where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be still; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now, we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face-to-face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” So he zeros in on the spiritual gifts that are word-based knowledge gifts, tongues, prophecy, knowledge, these kinds of things are word-based.

So I was thinking about an illustration of this. How could I illustrate it? And a couple of years ago, Daphne and I went to the Southern Baptist Convention in Phoenix. It just so happened that Phoenix is near the Grand Canyon. Been there before, I wanted to take my daughter to see the Grand Canyon and I was thinking about, how could I describe in words sunset on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon? So I thought, well, maybe I don't need to. Maybe some really gifted word-based people have done that for us. So this morning, I'm there online trying to find if anybody has done it, so I have all these handwritten notes of people who have tried to describe the Grand Canyon. So listen to this, this is 1910, a guy named George Wharton James said this, “Though only 217 miles long, the Grand Canyon expresses within that distance, more than any one human mind has yet been able to comprehend or interpret to the world. Famous word masters have attempted it, great canvas and color masters have tried it, but all alike have failed, they know they cannot describe it, but they proceed to exhaust their vocabularies in talking about it and in trying to make clear to others what they saw and felt.” Or this one, “In the supreme flaming glory of sunset,” so what does that look like in your mind's eye? “Supreme flaming glory of sunset,” picturing that. “The whole canyon is transfigured as if all the life and light of centuries of sunshine stored up and condensed in the rocks was now being poured forth as from one generous fountain flooding both earth and sky.” Now that's pretty good. You picture it in your mind. This woman in 1897, Amelia Hollenback, went with her sister, she was visiting from Brooklyn, New York, they took an all-day dusty bumpy stagecoach ride from Flagstaff to the South Rim, and she wrote down her feelings when she saw... This is what she said, “There are many colored rock fragments strewn around and wild flowers and cacti and sagebrush and queer twisted cedars and pinions grow all about. Now, perhaps if you stood on these rocks just ahead, you might see better the way to go. You try it and then suddenly there IT is,” imagine "it" being capitalized, both the I and the T, “there IT is, the Grand Canyon, as if half the world has fallen away below your feet.” That's her description. Then Irvin Cobb, who was a humorist for the Saturday Evening Post, tried more of a Mark Twain approach, 1913, “It is generally conceded that the Grand Canyon of Arizona beggars description, I shall therefore endeavor to refrain from doing so. I realize that this is going to be a considerable contract, nearly everybody on taking a first look at the Grand Canyon comes right out and admits its wonders are indescribable and then proceeds to write 2000 to 50,000 words describing it. Speaking personally, I wish to say that I do not know anybody who has yet succeeded in getting away with the job.” All right, well, imagine Amelia going back to Brooklyn, New York, and all her friends wanna know, “What was it like?” “I can't describe it.” “Okay. Well, let's have some tea.” So we are just kind of word-based people, and God's given us the gift of language and we try to put things into words.

Friends, if the Grand Canyon is like that, how much more the new Jerusalem, the new heaven, new earth? God gave us two chapters, Revelation 21 and 22 that I've been meditating on almost daily for five years, and that's enough. What Paul is saying is, effectively, whatever knowledge you have of God and of his love and of his glory, it is immature and is incomplete. It is in that sense, imperfect. Now, prophecies are a source of knowledge about God and other people, when the prophet said, “Thus says the Lord,” they would speak and then the prophets would write down what they said, scripture is a flawless record of the prophetic gift. So also the knowledge that's based on the prophecies, the scriptural prophecies that have been delivered, is a gift to the church, the systematic theologians that mine out solid exegesis and put theological concepts together and weave them together in theology, that's a gift. Exegetists write commentaries on Romans or in 1 Corinthians, and they seek to teach the church and theologians weave these together into systems of truth so that we can learn everything that the Bible covers topically. The doctrine of God, the doctrine of man, of sin and of Christ, the doctrine of the church, of angels and demons, the future, the doctrine of ordinances, the doctrine of time and money, and government, and every topic addressed in the Bible. And this is helpful. It's beneficial. So when Paul says, “Where there is knowledge, it will pass away,” he doesn't mean that the truths that have come up out of scripture will in the end have been disproved or proved to have been false. It's not what he's saying. Jesus himself said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” When we get to heaven we're not gonna suddenly find out there actually were many ways to God, and that Buddhism was a fine way to get to heaven, we're not going to find that. We're not gonna find that Jesus actually isn't the only begotten Son of God. We're not gonna find any of that. The Bible is perfect truth, and everything it asserts is true, but the gift of knowledge and the skills of sound exegesis, and the work of preaching and teaching like I'm doing right now, all of those things will become instantly obsolete the moment you see Jesus face-to-face. The moment you are in the presence of Almighty God and you see his glory with your own eyes, you will be transformed and you'll be made like him, for you will see him as he is. And all of the tributaries or delivery systems of truth you had while you were in this world will be as nothing compared to what you will get at that point, and not only that, your own minds and hearts will be transformed, you won't resist, you won't fight, you won't have ego problems, you won't have blockage problems, you'll just be ready to receive, you'll be ready to receive whatever God wants to teach you about himself, minds and hearts. You will understand God and you will delight in him in a perfect way.

So therefore, all Christian knowledge in this world is limited, it's imperfect, and immature. First limited, we know in part, and we prophesy in part. So that's the limitation. So like John 16:12, Jesus said, “I have much to say to you, more than you can now bear.” So you can't bear the whole truth, right now. The secret things belong to the Lord, but the things revealed belong to us. In heaven, he reveals everything.

Secondly, imperfect, when the perfect comes, the imperfect passes away. It's not faulty; it's just imperfect because of its limitations. It's incomplete. It's immature. And then he speaks of immaturity, “When I was a child, I thought like a child, I talked like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” It's as though Paul is saying, that receiving the knowledge of God is mediated through prophecy, through tongues, through exegesis and preaching and teaching, is like a form of spiritual baby talk. We need it, we've gotta have it. Our souls are saved by it, by the baby talk. Have you ever talked to a little kid about their conceptions of God? It's really fascinating, isn't it? I remember talking to one, I think she's a little girl, she thought that God is like a big, huge giant who literally holds the world in his hands. So I was talking to Daphne about this this morning, I said, “Do you think she wonders what he stands on?” and I think we both decided, “Well, no, he sits on a throne.” I said, “But what's the throne on?” I think the thinking hasn't gone that far. She's like, “Are we gonna be like that? When we get to heaven we're gonna think I was like a little kid.” Yes, yes, you're gonna realize that all of the thinking that you did about God not faulty, is not wrong. It's just immature. That's what Paul means, “When I was a child, I thought like a child, talked like a child, reasoned like a child.” When we get to heaven, we'll grow up. When we get to heaven, we will see God perfectly and finally, and we will delight in that. We will understand what Paul meant when he said in Romans 11:33, “Oh the depths of the riches, the wisdom and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable his judgments and his paths beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?”

So right now we see, as the KJV says, “through a glass darkly.” Look at verse 12, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, [it's another translation] but then face-to-face, now I know in part then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” So the mirror in Paul's day would be a highly polished piece of metal, like brass, so very highly polished. That was the best they had. It wasn't until 1835 that a German chemist invented a piece of glass with silver backing that we now know as a mirror and gave a sharper image, most expensive, as far as I know, and perfect mirror that has ever been made by human skill went into the Hubble Space Telescope. And apparently it had a slight flaw, and the flaw in the mirror amounted to effectively 150th the breadth of a human hair, but it created enough distortion in distant starlight that it had to be rectified at the cost of millions, if not billions of dollars, to rectify that, but that's the most perfect mirror there's ever been. Paul says, our understanding of God comes from looking at a mirror, and it's dim. The Greek word here is literally in an enigma, it's a sense of an enigma when you're looking in the mirror of God's word, when you're looking and hearing a sermon, however well it's done, however biblical and accurate, it's like you're looking in an enigma. And the knowledge you're getting from that is limited and imperfect, you're seeing through a mirror dimly. So the decisive completion of our salvation awaits glorification, it awaits that final transformation when we at last see God face-to-face, as Jesus said, “Now, this is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” So over the next two weeks, God willing, we're gonna look at our heavenly knowledge, and we're gonna see how it will be limitless, it will be perfect and mature. And so, God willing, we'll have two weeks to walk through heaven as a world of love. 

V. Applications

 So what applications can we take from this? So first, I can't ever preach without an opportunity to urge everyone who hears me to make certain that their sins are forgiven through faith in Christ. Come to Christ. Trust in him for the forgiveness of your sins. Do you know that you're a Christian? Are you certain that you're born again? I think COVID-19, the events of 2020 and then the terrible events that happened over the last two weeks have shown us- first of all, the brevity and uncertainty of life, we don't know how long we have, we don't know how long we have in this present mode, we know that we're going to die, but we don't know when. And then we can see in current events and honestly in our own hearts, the depths of wickedness and sin, if you know what to look for, if the Spirit has worked in you, you know that you have evil in your heart that you can't change it, you can't make it better. We need a Savior, and God knowing that, sent his Son into the world to save us from our sins. He lived a sinless life, he lived that perfect life of love that I described at the beginning of this message, and he died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice because we deserved the wrath of God, he did it in our place, but God raised him from the dead. And by faith in him, not by our own good works, not by our own life reformation, but by simple faith in him, our sins are forgiven. Do you know that your sins are forgiven through faith in Christ? And if you do, then all of the things I've said for the last two minutes or three minutes about the gospel; go find some way to tell that to somebody this week.

"We need a Savior, and God knowing that, sent his Son into the world to save us from our sins. He lived a sinless life, he lived that perfect life of love."

Every Saturday afternoon, Calvin and I go down and sit in the little plaza down there where the big bull is, I don't know what that bull's made of, metal, I guess, some kind of metal bull. And we just sit there on the bench and we read a book about evangelism. And he has a heart to reach out with the gospel, I do too, and we just wanna be out in public, despite COVID-19, we wanna be out there and just- and then as things kinda go back to normal, we just wanna be able to share the gospel. Well, as we were sitting there yesterday afternoon, a rally came with cameras and all that, right where we were. It seemed best for us not to leave, so we just kept reading the book on evangelism, and ended up getting in a conversation about the gospel, and it was a good conversation, you know, there was some good listening and a chance to talk about faith in Christ. We have an obligation to the people that God providentially brings in our lives to share the gospel. It's the only hope there is for this world. And we are called on to be witnesses.

Secondly, let's see the permanence and excellence of love, that's what this is all about, see how faith, hope and love are greater than all of the spiritual gifts, and that love is greater than faith and hope because it's eternal and the others are temporary. See how all spiritual gifts are a means to the end of working love in us, and therefore we need to do them in love. Look at each phrase, we've been through this now for four or five weeks, but now I get to see, but at least get to see the top half of your face and say take the words of verses 4-7, “Love is patient, love is kind. Doesn't envy, it doesn't boast.” Just take each phrase and say, “Oh, Holy Spirit, show me my sin, work this in me, make me a loving person, transform me by the power of your Word.”

And then finally, set your heart on heaven, we're gonna have God willing, two weeks to look at it, but you don't have to wait for my sermon, just read it yourself, meditate on it. You can go look at Jonathan Edwards, Heaven is a World of Love. It's 40 pages, dear friends, so that's why I thought it'd be good to walk through it over two weeks, but go ahead of me and read and see what we've got waiting for us in heaven.

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the time that we've had to study. Lord, despite the fact that this is like looking in a mirror dimly, that this is like baby talk, that our knowledge of God is so imperfect and limited, and immature, yet we are thirsty to hear from you, we want, oh Lord, you to work the truth in us. So I pray that you would strengthen each of us by the message of the word now, work love in us deeply by the power of the Spirit, help us to courageously face the circumstances of our day and to be willing to speak the truth in love to people who are dying, who are without hope and without God in the world, we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.