Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Corinthians 12-14.

I love the fact that chapter 13, the “Love Chapter”, is in the middle of today’s passage, because that allows us to see it in the context Paul intended.  Obviously, this placement lets us know that love is a gift from the Holy Spirit.  Equally obvious, if we read it in this context we do not miss Paul’s message that love is the most important spiritual gift, that without love all other spiritual gifts have no value.  However, there is one point about what Paul tells us about love that we miss most of the time: we have a limited ability to choose which spiritual gifts we receive. Certainly, each and every one of us can ask the Holy Spirit for the gifts of love, faith, and hope in the knowledge that the Spirit will grant our request.  We can even be confident that the Spirit will give us more of those three if we ask for it.  If we desire other spiritual gifts we may ask for them as well, and if our request is truly to serve the will of God, we will likely be granted the gift we request.  There are limits to this ability to request the spiritual gifts we desire, because as Paul points out, the Body only needs so many eyes, or ears, or fingers.  So, aside from faith, hope, and love, there are conditions as to whether the Holy Spirit will grant us the gift(s) we desire.  The first condition being that our desire for that particular gift must be rooted in faith, hope, and love (most importantly in love).  The second condition being that the Body of Christ must not already have enough members who have that particular gift.  In fact, Paul tells us that we should look at the Body of Christ around us through the lens of love and request that gift which it is most in need of at this moment.  This may mean joyfully embracing a role which the world would consider demeaning.  Those who truly love as Paul describes love will never see it that way.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.