There is one key transitional sentence at the end of 1 Corinthians chapter 12 leading into chapter 13: “And I will show you a still more excellent way.” The more excellent way is the way of love. Love is made up of behaviors that are patterned after God. When we love we show people who God is and what God does.

Paul closes out this “Love chapter" in verses 8-13:

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Here as Paul brings this section to completion he brings home the point. It’s important to be gifted, to use your gifts and talents to serve in the Church and to serve God in the world, but as important as those gifts are, they are not the ultimate or final good, they are penultimate or next to last good. To speak a prophetic word to exhort a congregation is important, to exercise the gift of speaking to the world in ways that are understood by people of different languages is valuable, and knowledge is a necessary good to a flourishing life and church, but all of these are penultimate good, not ultimate. They will give way to the eternal, but love will outlast everything. At the end of all things love for God is love.

I’m getting older and I have some serious health challenges which remind me that I am a mortal person. Unless Jesus Christ returns very soon I will one day join those who have gone to “sleep in the dust of the earth” (Daniel 12:2) awaiting the resurrection. As I get closer to my personal end, I am more aware of that which is truly most important in life. It’s not my accomplishments, it’s not how much money I’ve earned, at the end of the day what matters most is “Did I love?” Jesus summed up the entire teaching of God with 2 things: “Love God and Love others”. Paul is adding more depth and clarity to what love looks like and what we all should aspire to be. Every morning we should ask, “God, how can I love well today?” And at the end of the day ask “God, how well did I love today?”