The End of Temporary Gifts; 1 Cor. 13:8-13

1 Corinthians 14:20-22 tells us that tongues are a sign of judgment for Israel. The presence of Jews indicated that and once it happened, and when it happened, word would spread to other Jews; and it was to be a sign of impending judgment on the nation Israel because they had rejected the messianic claims of Jesus Christ.

Now we come to the section in 1 Corinthians 13 that begins with verse 8. Without this passage there really isn’t a clear statement anywhere in Scripture that these gifts stop.

There are four important interpretive keys for 1 Corinthians 13:8-13

1) There is a shift in both verbs and voice in verse 8. In the NASB there are the words “will be done away” in v. 8, katargeo [katargew], associated with prophecy and knowledge, but there is a different verb for tongues, pauo [pauw].

2) We have to note the meaning of the word “perfect” in verse 10, teleios [teleioj].

3) We have to understand that there is a temporal shift from now to then in verses 12 & 13. So what is the “now” and “then” referring to?

4) The point of the two illustrations in verses 11 & 12. “Put away childish things” is the same word, katargew, that is back in verse 8. The second illustration is the mirror illustration, v. 12.

1 Corinthians 13:8 ^NASB “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} knowledge, it will be done away.” Prophecy and knowledge are said to be abolished, future passive indicative of katargew, which means to abolish, to put an end to, to invalidate, to wipe out, to set aside, to supersede. So prophecy and knowledge both have the same action occur. The future tense tell us that this is yet future to the time that Paul is writing. The passive voice means that the subject receives the action of the verb. The indicative mood is the mood of reality from the viewpoint of the speaker. What Paul is saying is that at some time in the future something will happen and these gifts, knowledge and prophecy, will be superseded. They will receive the action of some event that supersedes them. Along with this is a voice change. People come along today is that the change here from katargeo to pauo here, from a future passive indicative to a future middle indicative is simply stylistic. A lot of people do that when they hit something controversial. Essentially their argument is that he didn’t want to keep using the same word over and over again, so for stylistic reasons he has shifted back and forth between synonyms. Good writers will do that, but let’s face it: Paul uses the verb katargeo four times in two verses. If it is used five times it isn’t being a little more repetitive. If style is an issue then he is going to use a number of different synonyms. He only changes it ones and that is significant.

There are four observation we need to make on verse 8

1) Prophecy and knowledge are both said to be partial. Tongues isn’t said to be partial.

2) Both prophecy and knowledge are abolished.

3) Prophecy and knowledge are both abolished by the coming of the perfect in verse 10. These two gifts are connected to the perfect tense in the Greek. The only time tongues is mentioned is when it is sandwiched in between the abolition of prophecy and knowledge in v. 8. We are told that prophecy and knowledge are partial, and the idea of partial is really of something that is incomplete. Verse 9: “For we know in part.” This is the Greek phrase ek merous [e)k merouj], an idiom for knowing something in part or in an incomplete way. Then, “we prophesy in part,” ek merous. Then in verse 10, “but when the perfect comes, the partial [ek marous] will be done away [abolished].” If we can understand the usage of these same words over and over again we realize that Paul is drawing connections here. This isn’t stylistic, he wants us to see that there are specific connections between these words because that is the thrust of what he is saying.

4) When we look at verse 8 we see the statement that tongues will cease—the verb pauo [pauw], here a future middle indicative. In a passive voice the subject receives the action of the verb; in the middle voice the subject participates in the action of the verb. However, the middle voice really involves a range of meanings. It has more of the idea of an active meaning here, not a passive meaning. In fact, some scholars think that pauo really approaches what they call a deponent verb in Greek, i.e. a verb that has lost its active voice form and it uses the middle passive form to stand for either a passive meaning or active meaning, either one depending on context. But for the sake of argument we will just say it approaches that active meaning. It still means the same thing in terms of interpretation, that the gift of languages will in the future stop acting. The implication from the way the passage is structured is that tongues will cease before prophecy and knowledge are abolished. That is inferred from the fact that tongues are stated only once and then he goes on to talk about the cessation or abolition of the two gifts, prophecy and knowledge.

What we have from verse 8 so far is, “Love never fails.” That is the main idea, it doesn’t fall, present active indicative of pipto [piptw], it never fails, it never falters. This is going to be tied together because the last verse of this paragraph says: “But now [in the church age] faith, hope, love, abide [continue] these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Why? Because love never falters, never fails. So everything else that is said in this paragraph is sandwiched between these two statements: Love never fails, and faith, hope and love will continue in this church age. But something doesn’t continue; something won’t continue, and that has to do with the spiritual gifts of prophecy and knowledge which represent all of the temporary or sign gifts. So Paul says: “Love never fails; but if {there are gifts of} prophecy, they will be abolished; if {there are} tongues, they will cease; if {there is} knowledge, it will be abolished.”

1 Corinthians 13:9 ^NASB “For we know in part [we know partially] and we prophesy in part [partially]; [10] but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.” What does he mean when he says we know partially and we prophesy partially? That is because at that stage in the church age, not having a completed canon of Scripture, no one had a complete understanding of God’s revelation. There was revelation that was not given to Paul, that was given to John, that was given to Peter. Paul did not have a lock on truth. No one human being in the church age has a lock on spiritual truth. There are some who have a greater capacity and a greater understanding than others, but no one understands it all, knows it all, or has a complete understanding of the Bible. This was especially true in the early stage of the church age. So in the early church there were those who had the gift of knowledge, which had to do with the impartation of revelation for a specific issue in a local church, and it was partial. The person with the gift of knowledge didn’t know it all; the person with the gift of prophecy didn’t know everything. They only knew the bits and pieces of the puzzle and the bits and pieces of what was revealed about the spiritual life. So it wasn’t until the canon was complete that there was full understanding of God’s plan and purposes in the church age, but during that early stage of the church age, that transitional period from the day of Pentecost to the death of the last apostle and the completion of the canon of Scripture, believers were now in the church age and needed to understand church age truth. So to take up the slack for believers who didn’t have a Bible, who didn’t have a New Testament, who didn’t have access to what we have access to, God had this gift of knowledge and prophecy and wisdom and other revelatory gifts that were present in the church in order to provide that information until the completed canon was available.

Now we come to the word “perfect” which is the Greek word teleios [teleioj]. This is where the debate focuses. What does this word mean? Notice it is used in the context to complete something. There are seven different ways in which this word “perfect” is interpreted, but they can all be boiled down to two categories. The first category has to do with completion, something that completes something that is incomplete. It has to do with what is really a quantity idea. Lexicographers will refer to this as a quantity idea versus a quality idea, or a completion idea or a perfection idea. A completion idea focuses on what we have in the context, that we have something that is partial. In other words, incomplete. So teleios, then, ought to have this idea of completion, the perfection idea. The word teleios itself can mean complete or mature, or it can have the idea of perfect, i.e. describing a situation that is flawless, that lacks any blemish, describing an idyllic or utopic state. But with one possible exception, which is in the Gospels, teleios never ever refers to a flawless, utopic or perfect situation anywhere else in the New Testament. Everywhere it is found in the epistles it has this idea of completion or maturity.

So there are seven interpretations of “perfect.” The first two relate to this completion idea and they are really very similar. One is the idea that this relates to the completed canon , the second is that it is the mature church. Our argument is that these are two sides of the same coin because when we talk to someone who takes the view that this is the mature church, that when the church reaches a level of maturity, then the partial gifts will no longer be evident. When you ask what it is that makes the church mature it is that it has complete revelation. It is the completion of the canon and the end of the apostolic era. So whether we are talking about the completed canon idea or the mature church view we are still putting the same point in time of somewhere about 95 AD. So these two ideas are very similar to one another.

The other five views are also very similar. They are that this occurs at death when we are face to face with the Lord. All of these other views are going to take that face to face view in verse 12 as being face to face with the Lord. So one view is that it is at the time of death when we are face to face with the Lord. A second view is that the perfect is at the Rapture. See, at each of these times, where are you? You’re in heaven, a state of perfection, flawlessness. A third view is that it is the second coming. Fourth, that it is just the eternal state. Then, for theologians who are in love with their own obscure, abstruse vocabulary, they use the word “eschaton.” That just refers to something in the future. So all of these ideas under perfect all have to do with some other status, not in this life but in the next life when we are face to face with the Lord, but it has to do with a qualitative environment now.

The point we are making is that the word teleios can either have this quantity idea or a quality idea; context determines. Well, what does the context say? The context says we know in part and we prophesy in part. Partial is a quantity idea, so we can’t shift from quantity to quality in the same context. We have to be consistent. So obviously it is the idea of the completed canon or the mature church that rules the day here in understanding the term “perfect.” But elsewhere in the New Testament the word teleios describes the Word of God—James 1:25: ^NASB “But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the {law} of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.” So it is clear that teleios is used to refer to the Scripture. Not only that but in this same context of James chapter one James uses the analogy of a mirror in v. 23 to describe the Word, just as Paul does in 1 Corinthians 13: “For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror.”

1 Corinthians 13:10 ^NASB “but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.” In other words, “when that which completes has come.” What does it complete? It has to be of a similar category; apples don’t complete oranges. What is completes is a partial prophecy and a partial knowledge—revelatory gifts, they have to do with giving content information from God. So whatever it is that completes it has to be of the same category of revelation. Once again that suggests that what we have here is the Word of God, the canon of Scripture, not a completed state of maturity in the church or one of the states of perfection. Furthermore, if we take one of these other views—death, the Rapture, second coming, or the eternal state; and there are many who are not Pentecostal, not Charismatic, who hold to any of these five—but if the coming of the perfect here is something that happens in the future or when we leave this life, then what we are saying is that tongues, knowledge, and prophesy will continue until that happens. That completely eviscerates, guts your position. You don’t have a position anymore. What that means is these things will continue until that event takes place.

Now we come to the two illustrations. How do we understand them? They are designed by the apostle Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to illustrate this shift that takes place from incomplete to complete, from going from an incomplete state of knowledge or prophecy to a complete state of knowledge and prophecy.

1 Corinthians 13:11 ^NASB “ When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away [katargew - abolished] with childish things.” That shows that there is a difference between the child and the adult. The child is incomplete, the adult is complete, mature. Some will say this shows the maturity idea in the church. The maturity idea is present here but it is linked to the giving of complete revelation, that what brings the church to a mature position is that they have the completed canon of Scripture.

1 Corinthians 13:12 ^NASB “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.” It is crucial to know what is happening in the Greek in this verse. The way most people think of this is that “now I see in a mirror dimly.” In other words, now I see life and it is somehow dim and I don’t really have all the information, so I don’t understand why God is doing certain things in our lives and our information is sketchy at best; once we are face to face with the Lord we will understand everything. That is not what Paul is talking about at all.

The word for “now” here is arti [a)rti]; the word “now” is verse 13 is nuni [nuni]. Why does Paul make this shift? In many cases when arti and nuni are used they refer to something that is happening. now. Ninety-nine per cent of the time they are virtually identical, they are synonyms; but when they are used in the same context there is a difference. That is, that the arti has the idea of something that is immediate, right now, today. The nuni is a more general “now,” during this general time period. That makes a big difference in how we understand this. For, “right now,” Paul is saying, in this pre-canon period, “we see in a mirror dimly.” What do you see when you look in a mirror? You are face to face with who? God, or yourself? So if it is talking about a mirror it can’t be talking about face to face with God. The word translated “dimly” is ainigma [a)inigma] from which we get our English word “enigma,” which means something that is puzzling, mysterious, dim or incomplete. So what Paul is saying is that now at this time we are looking at this reflection of ourselves in the canon of Scripture, but it is not all there yet, it is partial; it is like looking at a mirror and there are big chunks missing from it.

We see this terminology used in the Old Testament. In Numbers 12:6-8 God is speaking with Moses, and in the LXX the word ainigma is used. Numbers 12:6 ^NASB “He said, ‘Hear now My words: If there is a prophet (He is talking about prophecy here)among you, I, the LORD, shall make Myself known to him in a vision. I shall speak with him in a dream. [7] Not so, with My servant Moses, He is faithful in all My household; [8] With him I speak mouth to mouth, even openly, and not in dark sayings [ainigma], And he beholds the form of the LORD. Why then were you not afraid To speak against My servant, against Moses?’” So ainigma is associated with prophecy, with incomplete prophecy. We have the phrase “mouth to mouth” here and this image was designed in the Old Testament to convey the clarity, precision and completeness of God’s revelation to Moses at that time. But the phrase “face to face” in 1 Corinthians 13 is not the same thing because the mirror analogy shows that the face to face isn’t face to face with God but is face to face with man.

So verse 11 gives us the overall idea of these illustrations. The first part of verse 12 gives us the illustration as it relates to prophecy: “Now we see in a mirror enigmatically,” the prophecy is incomplete; “but then [when the prophecy is complete] I will know fully [epignosis knowledge] just as I also have been fully known.” He is not talking about when we are in heaven because when we are absent from the body and face to face with the Lord we are not going to be omniscient, we are still going to be a finite creature. We will never know everything that God knows. So Paul isn’t saying here that when he is in heaven he is going to have complete knowledge, omniscience; that is not true. He is saying that now in this early part of the church age, in the pre-canon period our knowledge is partial, prophecy is partial; but then, when the canon is complete, I will have face to face knowledge of myself because of the perspicacity of Scripture. Then he goes to a second illustration: “now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.” In other words, the Scripture is going to tell you who you really are, blemishes and all.

1 Corinthians 13:13 ^NASB “But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.” He has just got through saying is that knowledge and prophecy are going to be abolished, but what is going to continue during this church age? Faith, hope, and love.

A problem: If you take the perfection view, then what you are saying is that faith, hope and love are going to continue; that knowledge and prophecy cease at the time of your coming face to face with the Lord. But then you would have to say that faith, hope, and love continue. What you have said is that if you take the perfect as being face to face with the Lord, whether it is at the Rapture, second coming, death, what you are saying is that knowledge and prophecy and tongues will continue up until you are face to face with the Lord. That would necessitate that faith, hope and love would continue beyond that, because it is knowledge and prophecy that stop and faith, hope and love that continue. So you have a real problem. 2 Corinthians 5:7 ^NASB “for we walk by faith, not by sight. [8] we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.” We are not going to walk by faith once we die, we are going to walk by sight. So faith stops when we die; faith stops when we are face to face with the Lord. So we can’t take the perfection view because that would mean that we are trying to say that faith continues after death. Furthermore, what about hope? Romans 8:24 we are told ^NASB “For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he {already} sees?” In other words, when we are face to face with the Lord there is not going to be any more hope either. Romans 8:24 says that hope is confined to time, 2 Corinthians 5:7, 8 says that faith is confined to time, and that means that faith and hope both have ceased once we are dead or face to face with the Lord at the Rapture, etc.

All of this means that the gift of knowledge and prophecy were abolished when the canon came. But what about the gift of tongues? They have ceased. As we will see when we get into the section dealing with the purpose of the gift of tongues is that it was designed as a sign of judgment to Israel. When they heard doctrine taught in the Gentile languages that would be a sign that God was going to judge the nation. The nation was judged in 70 AD. Tongues wasn’t needed for a sign anymore because what it had signified had already come. So there is no basis today for saying that the gifts of prophecy and tongues and knowledge continue at all. The sign gifts were designed only for the foundation period of the church which was the pre-canon period from roughly 33-95 AD.