1 Corinthians Chapter 14, Verse 1
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1: διωκετε την αγαπην ζηλουτε δε τα πνευματικα μαλλον δε ινα προφητευητε
1: Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather
that ye may prophesy.
1: Follow after charity, be zealous for spiritual gifts; but rather
that you may prophesy.
Follow after charity. Pursue love, (1Cor 13:1;) that is, earnestly desire it; strive to possess it; make it the object of your anxious and constant solicitude to obtain it, and to be influenced by it always. Cultivate it in your own hearts, as the richest and best endowment of the Holy Spirit, and endeavour to diffuse its happy influence on all around you.
And desire spiritual gifts. I do not forbid you, while you make the possession of love your great object, and while you do not make the desire of spiritual gifts the occasion of envy or strife, to desire the miraculous endowments of the Spirit, and to seek to excel in those endowments which he imparts. See "1Cor 12:31".
The main thing was to cultivate a spirit of love. Yet it was not improper also to desire to be so endowed as to promote their highest usefulness in the church. On the phrase, "spiritual gifts," See "1Cor 12:1".
But rather that ye may prophesy. But especially, or particularly, desire to be qualified for the office of prophesying. The apostle does not mean to say that prophecy is to be preferred to love or charity; but that, of the spiritual gifts which it was proper for them to desire and seek, prophecy was the most valuable. That is, they were not most earnestly and especially to desire to be able to speak foreign languages, or to work miracles; but they were to desire to be qualified to speak in a manner that would be edifying to the church. They would naturally, perhaps, most highly prize the power of working miracles and of speaking foreign languages. The object of this chapter is to show them that the ability to speak in a plain: clear, instructive manner, so as to edify the church and convince stoners, was a more valuable endowment than the power of working miracles, or the power of speaking foreign languages. On the meaning of the word prophesy, See "Rom 12:6".
To what is said there on the nature of this office, it seems necessary only to add an idea suggested by Professor Robinson, (Gr. and Eng. Lexicon, Art. profhthv,) that the prophets were distinguished from the teachers, (didaskaloi,) "in that, while the latter spoke in a calm, connected, didactic discourse, adapted to instruct and enlighten the hearers, the prophet spoke more from the impulse of sudden inspiration, from the light of a sudden revelation at the moment, (1Cor 14:30, apokalufyh;) and his discourse was probably more adapted, by means of powerful exhortation, to awaken the feelings and conscience of the hearers." The idea of speaking from revelation, he adds, seems to be fundamental to the correct idea of the nature of the prophecy here referred to. Yet the communications of the prophets were always in the vernacular tongue, and were always in intelligible language, and in this respect different from the endowments of those who spoke foreign languages. The same truth might be spoken by both; the influence of the Spirit was equally necessary in both; both were inspired; and both answered important ends in the establishment and edification of the church. The gift of tongues, however, as it was the most striking and remarkable, and probably the most rare, was most highly prized and coveted. The object of Paul here is to show that it was really an endowment of less value, and should be less desired by Christians, than the gift of prophetic instruction, or the ability to edify the church in language intelligible and understood by all, under the immediate influences of the Holy Spirit.
