1 Corinthians 13 – Love Wins

I have done this before  – revised parts of Scripture to capture and emphasize points – but felt the need to do it again as we come to the close of a very long, tough, confusing and tumultuous year (at least for me and those whom I call family).  It has been another year of growth and pain, joy and hope, loss and life and as I do every year (like most others), I take stock of my life, my faith, and my mission.

I am reminded that my mission is to help people grow spiritually and to do the same for myself.  I am reminded that I am in relationship with Jesus who for me is Life and Resurrection, the only hope that outlasts all my dread and despairing.

So, I needed a reminder – a condensed version if you will – of exactly WHO Jesus is.

I believe that 1 Corinthians 13 is the most succinct and descriptive theological dissertation on the nature of Jesus and God.

And in a year, where we all seemed to focus more on our differences, and did so with intense vitriol and hatred, I also thought it appropriate to do my revision.  God is love and in Jesus we see all the glory of God, so I took out the word “love” and replaced it with Jesus.

So when you are wondering who Jesus is and how he thinks, feels and would respond to you, read this…

Blessings.

1 Corinthians 13 (New International Version – NIV) – Revised by Niles Comer

13 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have Jesus, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have Jesus, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have Jesus, I gain nothing.

⁴ Jesus is patient.  Jesus is kind.  Jesus does not envy, nor does He boast, and He is not proud. ⁵ Jesus does not dishonor others, and is not self-seeking, Jesus is not easily angered, and Jesus keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Jesus does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ Jesus always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

 ⁸ Jesus never fails.

But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and Jesus. But the greatest of these is Jesus.