Should Christians Expect Miracles Today? Objections and Answers from the Bible, Part 3, by Wayne A. Grudem
21. When Paul says, “As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away” (1 Corinthians 13:8), doesn’t he mean that prophecies and tongues would cease early in the history of the Church?
Some have argued that 1 Corinthians 13:8 means that Paul expected prophecy and tongues to cease early in the history of the Church. But does the passage really teach that? We must look at the larger context:
Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully even as I have been fully understood, so faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:8-13). In verse 9, Paul gives the reason why prophecy and tongues will cease: he says, “Our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away” (1 Corinthians 13:9-10. So he says that prophecy will pass away at a certain time, namely, “when the perfect comes.”
But when is that? It has to be the time when the Lord returns. This is because it has to be the same time as indicated by the word “then” in verse 12: “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully even as I have been fully understood.” To see “face to face” is an Old Testament phrase for seeing God personally (see Genesis 32:30; Exodus 33:11; Deuteronomy 34:10; Judges 6:22; Ezekiel 20:35—these are the only Old Testament occurences of this Greek phrase or its Hebrew equivalent, and they all refer to seeing God.) The time when I shall know “as I have been known” also must refer to the Lord’s return (1 John 3:2; Revelation 22:4).
Some have argued that “when the perfect comes” refers to the time when the New Testament canon is complete. (The last New Testament book written, Revelation, was written in AD 90 at the latest, about 35 years after Paul wrote 1 Corinthians.) But would the Corinthians ever have understood that from what Paul wrote? Is there any mention of a collection of New Testament books or a New Testament canon anywhere in the context of 1 Corinthians 13? Such an idea is foreign to the context. Moreover, such a statement would not fit Paul’s purpose in the argument. Would it be persuasive to argue as follows: We can be sure that love will never end, for we know that it will last more than 35 years? This would hardly be a convincing argument. The context requires rather that Paul be contrasting this age with the age to come, and saying that love will endure into eternity.
Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones observes that the view that connects “when the perfect comes” (1 Corinthians 13:10) to the time of the completion of the New Testament encounters another difficulty. “It means that you and I, who have the Scriptures open before us, know much more than the apostle Paul of God’s truth …It means that we are altogether superior …even to the apostles themselves, including the apostle Paul! It means that we are now in a position in which …’we know, even as also we are known’ by God …indeed, there is only one word to describe such a view, it is nonsense.”49 John Calvin, referring to 1 Corinthians 13:8-10, says, “It is stupid of people to make the whole of this discussion apply to the intervening time.”50
This means we have a clear biblical statement that Paul expected the gift of prophecy (and, by implication, probably all spiritual gifts51 to continue through the entire Church age and to function for the benefit of the Church until the Lord returns.52
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Category: Pneuma Review, Spirit, Summer 2000
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