Reread in a New Light

The passage we’re looking at today is a bit overused. If you’ve ever been to a Christian wedding, you’ve heard it no doubt. It starts to feel sort of fluffy and ‘nice.’ But what if that’s not the intention?

What if Paul wrote the below passage with the process of construction-deconstruction-reconstruction in mind?

Paul is helping us all think about the natural process of maturing - we start as spiritual children with clear knowledge and spiritual gifts that we employ (construction)… but that’s not the goal. Then we come to recognize that our knowledge is only partial and our vision is, as one translation says, “through a glass, darkly” (deconstruction). Finally we embrace that knowing is the goal - and that we can do so now, and we can do so in love, and that this is enough (reconstruction) as we await true fullness.

Ponder these things and let the Spirit speak to you as you read and ponder these words:

Where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 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. 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.

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

• 1 Corinthians 13:8-13