From the Pulpit...

Chapter 13 was about the exercise of spiritual gifts in love, and chapter 12 ended with a call for the church to desire the best gifts in its service to Christ. Those two ideas are summed up in the first part of 14:1: “Pursue love and desire spiritual gifts.” Up to the time of Paul’s writing the letter, the church had been pursuing spiritual gifts with a wrong focus. Remember the inferiority and superiority complexes and mistreatment of fellow members in the church? Boasting and not recognizing the interconnected nature of the body of Christ were problems in the church. The love-emphasis of chapter 13 goes a long way toward correcting those problems because love is concerned with God and neighbor as opposed to self. Paul encouraged the pursuit of spiritual gifts. That was fine if they did so as a corporate body, not as individuals seeking to aggrandize themselves. But more importantly, they were commanded to pursue love with all the vigor and more than they were pursuing spiritual gifts.