In the previous blog post, we saw that Paul contrasts love with spiritual gifts. Love never fades, but gifts like prophecy, speaking in tongues, and knowledge would disappear. The Corinthians placed too much value on these gifts, and Paul corrects their focus by teaching them about them.
cease
Prophecies are pronouncements of God and predictions; (speaking in) tongues is the ability to speak of the mighty works of God in a language they have never learned (Acts 2:11). By knowledge, Paul refers to revelations from God, in which He reveals spiritual truths. These three gifts are said to cease. The Corinthians acted as if these gifts were the ultimate, but Paul explains that they are anything but perfect.
1 Corinthians 13
9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
Partial
The gifts, such as prophecy, tongues, and knowledge, would be abolished (1 Corinthians 15:8). Verse 9 explains why: these gifts were partial, that is, fragmentary. While they were gifts of God’s Spirit, given to equip believers and provide them with what was needed, they never revealed the whole. It always remained limited: a prophecy here, a word of knowledge there, or an utterance in a foreign language—something here, something there.
Incomplete
Thus, only parts of God’s revelation were passed on, never the fullness. For example, if someone in Corinth spoke a prophecy, it would be of no use elsewhere because it was not heard. And even those who did hear it received only a part of God’s message, never the whole. The gifts were therefore by definition incomplete, pointing forward to the complete revelation that was yet to come.
10 But when maturity comes, what is in part will be done away.
Maturity
This phase, in which fragments of God’s word were revealed through spiritual gifts, is compared in 1 Corinthians 13 to the stage of a child (1 Corinthians 13:11). A child is immature, not yet fully grown. While this is a normal phase of life, it passes. A child would grow into adulthood, and the ecclesia would also do the same.
Nullified
The goal is maturity; the path to it is the childlike phase. When this immature phase is over, what was only partial will be nullified. That is also the reason for the cessation of these spiritual gifts. They would have had their value, but when the full word of God was revealed, they would lose their usefulness. What was partial would be nullified by what was perfect. The child would have become a full-grown man.
Only in heaven?
The word translated here as maturity is rendered as perfect in the Statenvertaling and NBG. People sometimes conclude from this that the gifts cease when we reach heaven, in perfection. But that’s not the point.
In 1 Corinthians 2:6 and 14:20, this word is translated in the NBG and Revised Statenvertaling as “mature” and “adult,” and in the context of 1 Corinthians 13, it refers to the difference between an adult and a child, as the following verses show. More on this in a future blog post.