Saturday’s Soldier Devotional – PLUS -07/01/2023 – Faithful Steward Ministries and FSM Women's Outreach

Maybe it is just me, but my friends and I used toy soldiers similar to the ones depicted in the picture above and fought major battles in the dirt behind our homes for many years as children. Eventually, we all grew up, found other interests, and put away our toys.

Such is the like of a Christian. In our main text, Paul is reminding the church at Corinth that infighting over Spiritual gifts is childish. As we mature in our Christian life, it is we must also put away the “toys” or immature practices of our youth (beginning beliefs) and diligently seek the meat of the Word of Life, in order to fight the Spiritual battles put before us daily.

Chapter CONTEXT from BibleRef.com:

Paul begins this chapter by describing just how useless, even destructive, spiritual gifts are when not applied from the standpoint of love. Displays of tongues, prophetic powers, and supernatural spiritual knowledge may be impressive, but they are worthless if not used as intended by God, out of a heart of love for Him and other believers. Even the most spiritual of activities, selling everything to give to the poor and sacrificing one’s life to be burned for the sake of others, gains a person nothing if not given in love (1 Corinthians 13:1–3).

Paul describes the love he’s talking about. It’s not a love of swollen feelings that may come and go. It’s not the love of flowery or eloquent words. This is God’s love—from the Greek agape—often described as “unconditional love” by Christians. It is unconditional in the sense that it does not depend on the one being loved, but on the commitment of the one acting.

Paul uses 14 verbs, actions, to describe this love. Seven are positive statements about what love does, and the other seven are negative statements about what love does not do. In all cases, true Christian love is about setting one’s self aside for the good of other believers. Lack of love was at the heart of nearly all the problems Paul had confronted in this letter.

Love is patient and kind. It actively waits and actively moves for the good of others. On the other hand, love doesn’t envy or boast, not even regarding the spiritual gifts of one’s self or others. Love is not arrogant, convinced of one’s superiority over others. Love is not rude, meaning that it does not act indecently, sinning and breaking cultural norms to bring attention to one’s self.

Those who love like this have given up on seeking their own status and satisfaction first and foremost. Instead, they genuinely commit themselves to seeking good for other believers. Because of that, they don’t get irritable or provoked when other people get in their way. The other people are the point, not the obstacle. Love also means truly letting go of past hurts instead of storing them up and keeping a record or wrongs.

Love refuses to take any joy or pleasure from wrongdoing. Instead, it declares that was is true is worth celebrating above all. Love loves the truth. Love doesn’t set limits on love. Love does not declare, “This far and no further.” Love bears, or puts up with, all things for the good of other believers. That is true even if that means loving from a greater distance to avoid the active abuse of others.

Similarly, love believes all things, pushing the burden of truthfulness onto others instead of carrying the burden of uncovering falsehood. Love doesn’t stop hoping for other believers to do good, no matter the evidence of the past. Love doesn’t quit when the trials of life pile up. Love keeps going.

Paul sums it up: Love never fails. Christians may fail to love, as the Corinthians have clearly demonstrated, but God’s kind of love will always be effective. And unlike spiritual gifts, which will no longer be needed when Christ comes, love will last forever (1 Corinthians 13:4–8).

On that day, Christians will know even as God knows us now. Until then, spiritual gifts provide a partial knowledge of what is to come. Both now and then, love will remain the greatest of all the virtues (1 Corinthians 13:9–13).

Verse 11 Commentary from Gill’s Exposition of the Whole Bible:

When I was a child I spake as a child,…. That cannot speak plain, aims at words rather than expresses them, delivers them in a lisping or stammering manner: hereby the apostle illustrates the then present gift of speaking with divers tongues, which was an extraordinary gift of the Spirit, was peculiar to some persons, and what many were very fond of; and yet this, in its highest degree and exercise, was but like the lisping of a child, in comparison of what will be known and expressed by saints, when they come to be perfect men in heaven:

I understood as a child; and so does he that understands all mysteries, in comparison of the enlightened and enlarged understandings of glorified saints; the people of God, who are in the highest form and class of understanding, in the present state of things, are but children in understanding; it is in the other world, when they are arrived to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, that they will in understanding be men:

I thought, or “reasoned”,

as a child; whose thoughts are low and mean, and reasonings very weak; and so are the thoughts and reasonings of such as have all knowledge here below, in comparison of that perfect knowledge, those clear ideas, and strong reasonings of the spirits of just men above:

but when I became a man, I put away childish things; childish talk, childish affections, and childish thoughts and reasonings; so when the saints shall be grown to the full age of Christ, and are become perfect men in him, tongues shall cease, prophecies shall fail, and knowledge vanish away; and in the room thereof, such conversation, understanding, and knowledge take place, as will be entirely suited to the manly state in glory.