Daily Manna · Day 24 · January 24
The Greatest
“And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”
A house in Corinth, a letter being read aloud, and a room that has been arguing for months about which of them has the more impressive gift. Somebody is claiming tongues. Somebody else is claiming knowledge. The reader gets to chapter thirteen and the room goes quiet, because the letter has stopped talking about their gifts and started grading them.
The chapter is an audit. Prophecy, all mysteries, all knowledge, faith enough to move mountains, everything given away to the poor, a body given to be burned: Paul stacks the entire inventory and prices it at nothing without love. Then he tells them why, and the reason is not sentimental. It is temporal. Prophecies shall fail. Tongues shall cease. Knowledge shall vanish away. These are not bad things; they are provisional things, scaffolding on a building. Verse 13 is what is left when the scaffolding comes down. Faith, hope, charity, these three abide, and love is greatest because it is the only one of the three that God Himself has. He does not need faith and He does not hope.
Take this as the warning it was written to be. It is possible to be right, fluent, generous, courageous and even correct about God, and to be nothing. Paul says nothing, not less. The Corinthians were not a heretical church. They were a gifted one, and this chapter is aimed at them.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 24 is Thirty and Eight Years (John 5:6).