Paul finishes describing what love is and is not, and what love does and does not by stating, “Love never fails.” There’s just something totally different about God’s love. Prophecies will cease, tongues will be stilled and knowledge will pass away. These are some of the gifts that the Apostle had been speaking of in chapter 12 and by mentioning the three he is implying that all the other gifts fall into the same category. They are temporary. Then he mentions that they are also incomplete.
That’s hard for us to accept sometimes. We like to think that we have it all figured out, like our teenage daughters do. But we don’t. The knowledge we have is not full, we are always learning new things, and hopefully getting stirred up by something that we finally figured out after all the years. Humility and the understanding that we will never know everything or be right all the time is something we have to learn to walk the road of Christ. It seems though that the love God has given to us is not temporary.
I was recently scanning some slides into the computer that are close to 30 years old. Many of the images are faded so you can’t see them clearly or recognize who’s in the photo. This is how Paul describes the knowledge that we have as born again Christians. We know, but not everything. We see, but there’s a lot we don’t see. We have to accept that. It keeps us expecting to find out more, to be curious about the ways of God. One day we will know fully. We’ll go from grainy black and white to full color HD, only better.
We may not know everything, but God does. The God of love knows our every need and keeps us in the palm of His Hand. That’s what love does. Jesus said, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. “ He knows us, and with perfect knowledge of who we are and what we’ve done He still chooses to love. That says a lot about the one we believe in. He knows me, He loves me, and He always will.
