Looking at the book as a whole, Paul is dealing with a church who is taking advantage of Christ’s grace – examples: going to demonic temples for festivals, getting drunk on the communion wine, sleeping with their fathers’ wives, etc. They were abusing the love and grace of God…
[@more@] In I Corinthians 12 and 14, Paul addresses their abuse of spiritual gifts – using them to puff themselves up and make them look better (or more spiritual) then everyone else. In the middle of these two chapters, Paul writes his famous ‘love’ chapter – only, I don’t think it’s about the love between two humans (ie. husband and wife) like so many folks think (as seen in everyone having the chapter read at their wedding).
I think the chapter is about Christ’s love. The Corinthians were parading and flaunting the love they received from Jesus by saying, “Look at us – we are going to heaven and we can do whatever we want!” Paul was trying to tell them that Christ’s love is for everyone – not just for the spiritual, the rich or the popular – it’s for everyone. They need to stop parading God’s love and start living it out – being humble, being kind, forgiving others – that is what is important. Everything else is going to go away some day – but Christ’s love – that is going to stay no matter what.
The Corinthians need to stop looking inside themselves and start looking around at those who do not know Christ…. So much so that we, in this modern era, need to stop parading about saying how important we are because we know God – we need to shut up and start living it – start hanging out with the unloved, showing them that true love is. Show them that there is a God who cares about them – a God who is still alive and active today. To me, that is the message of 1 Corinthians 13.
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