First Corinthians Thirteen, Read Again

You have very likely heard it read at a wedding: love is patient, love is kind. Most people hear it as a gentle poem about kindness.

It is beautiful. But Paul did not write it as a poem floating on its own. He wrote it in the middle of a letter in which he had already weighed things with the same words. When he came to describe agape ἀγάπη ag-ah'-pay, he did not set his teaching aside for a romantic poem. When the chapter is read with Scripture’s own definition of agape, keeping the commandments, it loses none of its beauty; it comes down from the wall and into ordinary life.

Nothing, and Nothing

Six chapters before the love chapter, Paul wrote this:

1 Corinthians 7:19 Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God is everything.

Circumcision “is nothing,” in Greek ouden estin, and what counts is “keeping the commandments of God.” Now the love chapter:

1 Corinthians 13:1-3 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have agape(love), I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all gnosis γνῶσις gno'-sis(knowledge), and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have agape(love), I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have agape(love), it profits me nothing.

In Greek “I am nothing” is outhen eimi, the same word for nothing in another spelling. The same writer, in the same letter, weighs with the same scale. Without keeping the commandments of God, all else is nothing, and without agape, I am nothing.

John has already said what agape toward God is: “For this is the love of God — that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3).

So when Paul closes the chapter with “the greatest of these is agape(love),” he is saying the same thing he said in 7:19: “keeping the commandments of God is everything.”

Verse 3 belongs here too: “if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have agape(love), it profits me nothing.” A man can give his body to the flames for pride or for a cause of his own, and it profits him nothing. But giving the body in order to keep the commandment, as the three friends did before Nebuchadnezzar, is agape.

Knowledge That Ends, Knowledge That Lasts

Earlier in the letter Paul had also set agape beside knowledge.

1 Corinthians 8:1-3 Now concerning things sacrificed to idols: we know that we all have gnosis(knowledge); gnosis(knowledge) puffs up, but agape(love) builds up. If anyone thinks he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know; but if anyone agapes(loves) God, this man is known by Him.

The phrase “known by Him” comes back at the end of the love chapter.

1 Corinthians 13:8 Agape(love) never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is gnosis(knowledge), it will be done away.

1 Corinthians 13:12-13 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will epiginosomai(knowing-without-misjudgment) fully just as I also have been fully epiginosko ἐπιγινώσκω ep-ig-in-oce'-ko(knowing-without-misjudgment). But now faith, elpis ἐλπίς el-pece'(hope), agape(love), these three; but the greatest of these is agape(love).

Gnosis, knowledge, “will be done away.” But the chapter ends with a knowing that is not done away: “then I will epiginosomai(knowing-without-misjudgment) fully just as I also have been fully epiginosko(knowing-without-misjudgment).” The one who has been known is the one named in 1 Corinthians 8, the one who loves God. The knowledge that puffs up passes away, but the one who loves God and keeps His commandments in the end knows fully, as he has been known.

It Rejoices with the Truth

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Agape(love) is patient, agape(love) is kind and is not jealous; agape(love) does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the aletheia ἀλήθεια al-ay'-thi-a(truth); bears all things, believes all things, elpis(hope)s all things, endures all things.

Agape “does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the aletheia(truth),” and Scripture says what that truth is:

Psalm 119:142 Your righteousness is righteousness forever, and your Torah is truth.

The truth that agape rejoices with is God’s Torah.

Agape also “endures all things.” The verb for “endures” is hypomeno. Its noun, hypomone ὑπομονή hoop-om-on-ay', endurance, is the word Revelation uses of the saints: “Here is the steadfast endurance of the holy ones — those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Yeshua” (Revelation 14:12). The endurance of the saints is described as keeping the commandments.

How Far Does “All Things” Reach?

Verse 7 raises a hard question. When agape “bears all things, believes all things, elpis(hope)s all things, endures all things,” must it put up with anything at all: being made unclean, being forced to eat what God called abominable, even robbery or rape? The text sets the boundary itself, in four ways.

First, verse 6, just before it, draws the boundary line. Agape “does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the aletheia(truth),” and only then comes “bears all things.” The “all things” of verse 7 are not all things including unrighteousness. They are what a love that rejoices with the truth, with the Torah, bears and endures.

Second, Paul used the same verb, stego, to bear or cover, earlier in the letter.

1 Corinthians 9:12 If others share in this exousia ἐξουσία ex-oo-see'-ah(right, authority) over you, do we not more? Nevertheless, we did not use this exousia(right, authority), but we endure all things so that we will cause no hindrance to the good news of Messiah.

“We endure all things” is panta stegomen, the same words as 13:7. Paul gave up his own right for the good news; he did not accept evil.

Third, agape hates evil, and no one can abhor evil without the commandments that tell him what evil is.

Romans 12:9 Agape(Love) without hypocrisy — abhorring what is evil, holding fast to what is good;

Fourth, “does not take into account a wrong suffered” has its root in the Torah.

Leviticus 19:16-18 You shall not go about as a slanderer among your people; you shall not stand against the blood of your neighbor; I am the LORD. You shall not hate your brother in your heart; you shall surely reprove your fellow, and you shall not bear sin because of him. You shall not avenge, and you shall not bear a grudge against the sons of your people, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD.

Just before “You shall not avenge” stands “you shall surely reprove your fellow,” and before that, “you shall not stand against the blood of your neighbor.” Bear no grudge, yet reprove, and do not stand by when your neighbor’s life is in danger. What agape covers is the hurt done to oneself and the urge to repay it, not the evil done to a neighbor.

Daniel Did Not Eat

So when someone tries to make us unclean, agape does not put up with it and eat. Daniel did not; he “set upon his heart that he would not defile himself with the king’s food” (Daniel 1:8). And Daniel foresaw a time when the covenant itself would be defiled.

Daniel 11:32-33 And those who do wickedly against the covenant (berit בְּרִית ber-eeth') he shall corrupt by smooth words; but the people who know their God shall be strong and act. And those who are wise among the people shall make the many understand; yet they shall stumble by sword and by flame, by captivity and by spoil, for days.

“The people who know their God shall be strong and act,” even though they fall “by sword and by flame.” That prophecy saw its first fulfillment when Antiochus IV set up a pagan altar in God’s house and swine were offered on it, the very abominations Isaiah names (Isaiah 66:3, 66:17). Those who stood firm cleansed the house and dedicated it again, and the feast that remembers it is Hanukkah, the Feast of Dedication. Yeshua was in the temple at that feast.

John 10:22-23 At that time the Feast of Dedication took place in Jerusalem; it was winter, and Yeshua was walking in the temple in the portico of Solomon.

Had the faithful accepted defilement in the name of enduring all things, there would be no Feast of Dedication. What agape endured was not the defilement but the sword and flame suffered for refusing it. What the three friends endured was not bowing before the image, but the furnace for not bowing.

The Torah Protects the Victim

Nor does “endures all things” mean putting up with robbery or rape. The Torah treats the victim as someone to be protected.

Deuteronomy 22:25-27 But if in the field the man (ish אִישׁ eesh) finds the betrothed young woman, and the man (ish) seizes her and lies with her, then the man (ish) who lay with her shall die alone. And to the young woman you shall do nothing; there is for the young woman no sin of death; for as when a man (ish) rises against his neighbor and murders him — a soul (nephesh נֶפֶשׁ neh'-fesh) — so is this thing. For in the field he found her; the betrothed young woman cried out, and there was none to save her.

She is without guilt, because she cried out and there was none to save her, and the Torah’s answer is to hold the man to account and to be the one who saves. Elsewhere Scripture says, “Rescue the poor and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked” (Psalm 82:4).

Someone may answer with Yeshua’s own words.

Matthew 5:39-41 But I say to you: do not resist the evil one; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. And to the one who wants to krino κρίνω kree'-no(sue, take to court) you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak also. And whoever compels you to go one milion(Roman mile), go with him two.

The three examples are a slap on the cheek, a lawsuit for one’s tunic, and a mile one is forced to walk. Each is about not taking personal revenge for something done to oneself, which is the word of Leviticus 19:18, “You shall not avenge.” It does not tell anyone to stand by while a neighbor is robbed or violated; Leviticus 19:16 forbids exactly that.

So the “all things” of 1 Corinthians 13:7 are everything that comes on the road of keeping the commandments: laying down one’s rights for the good news, refusing vengeance, enduring insult, persecution and even death for the commandments’ sake, believing and hoping to the end on that road. Agape endures all things in order to keep the commandments, and it endures nothing that would make it abandon them.

Paul said that the one who loves God is known by Him. In one of Yeshua’s parables everything at a wedding door depends on being known, and the words spoken through that door are the most sobering that anyone waiting for a wedding could hear.