Are Supernatural Sign Gifts For Today?

One day, when the perfect comes, we will have no more need of knowledge or prophesy, preaching or teaching, wisdom or interpretation, mercy or leadership. We will not have need of the Bible. We will no longer need the written Word of God because we will be eternally in the presence and full comprehension of the living Word. “The perfect,” therefore, refers to the eternal state of believers. Paul is saying that spiritual gifts are only for a time, but that love will last for all eternity. His point is simple and clear.

C. Gifts Are Elementary (13:11-12)

And third, gifts are elementary.

Paul now illustrated what happens when “the perfect comes.” In our earthly lives all Christians are children compared to what we will know when we are perfected in heaven.

So Paul said in verses 11-12: “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.”

Perhaps Paul was comparing his present spiritual state to his boyhood, as a child. A Jewish child was considered a boy until his bar mitzvah (“son of the law”), after which he was considered a man. One moment he was a boy; the next he was a man.

Our perfection in Christ will be a type of spiritual bar mitzvah, a coming into immediate, complete, and eternal spiritual adulthood and maturity. At that moment everything childish will be put away. All immaturity, all childishness, all imperfection, and all limitations of knowledge and understanding will be forever gone.

In this present life, even with God’s Word completed and the illumination of the Holy Spirit, we see in a mirror dimly. In our present state we are not capable of seeing more. But when we enter the Lord’s presence, we will then see him face to face. Now we can only know in part; then we shall know fully, even as we have been fully known.

V. The Superiority of Love (13:13)

And finally, notice the superiority of love.

Paul said in verse 13: “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

Returning to the temporal, to the Christian’s earthly life, Paul mentioned the three greatest spiritual virtues: faith, hope, and love. These three spiritual virtues are also known as the “Pauline triad.”

Actually, faith and hope are encompassed by love, which “believes all things,” and “hopes all things” (v. 7). Because faith and hope will have no purpose in heaven, where every truth will be known and every good will be possessed, they are not equal to love.

Love is the greatest of these not only because it is eternal, but because, even in this temporal life, where we now live, love is supreme. Love already is the greatest, not only because it will outlast the other virtues, beautiful and necessary as they are, but because it is inherently greater by being the most God-like. God does not have faith or hope, but “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16).