October 30, 2001

"But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet show I unto you a more excellent way." 1 Corinthians 12:31

Paul had been writing to the Corinthians about the gifts in the body of Christ, the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  He ends that subject and begins the next with this verse.  We should desire and covet the gifts but yet he says there is a "more excellent way".

The Amplified Bible says, "But earnestly desire and zealously cultivate the greatest and best—the higher [gifts] and the choicest [graces].  And yet I will show you a still more excellent way—one that is better by far and the highest of them all [love]."

Love never fails.  True consistent, steadfast love will go further in bringing deliverance, healing, growth etc., than anything else will.  Yes, we need the gifts of the Spirit but if we have all the power and excitement of the moving of the gifts and don’t operate in the love of God, it’s for nothing (but the flesh).

We may, consciously or unconsciously, look at people who don’t move smoothly in the gifts of the Spirit as being immature in the things of God but the Bible says just the opposite.  Love is a more excellent way.  Love is the sign of maturity.

"And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.  I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.  For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?" 1 Corinthians 3:1-3

If we don’t walk in love, but we have envying, strife and divisions among us, we are carnal Christians, spiritual babes.  We may be operating in the gifts of the Spirit.  We may appear to have it all together.  But if we are not walking in the love of God we are immature Christians.

Thank God for the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  We are to "earnestly desire and zealously cultivate" them.  But if we want to be sure we are ministering to people in the best possible way, we must operate in the love of God.