Living in the Partial While We Wait for the Perfect
“Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away” (1 Corinthians 13:8).
Paul does not diminish the spiritual gifts, but places them inside a larger story. Very simply, every gift has a shelf life. This is one of the clearest places in Scripture where we are told that the spiritual gifts have a terminus. There will come a day when they are no longer needed. And Paul explains why.
“For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away” (1 Corinthians 13:9–10).
Right here is where disagreement has lived for a long time. What does Paul mean by “the perfect”?
Broadly speaking, two interpretations have emerged over the years.
“The perfect” is the completion of the New Testament canon or the death of the last apostle. The argument goes like this: once Scripture was complete and the apostolic era ended, the gifts that authenticated that era were no longer necessary and therefore ceased.
“The perfect” is the beginning of the eschaton, the moment when Christ returns and we enter our eternal, unhindered life with him.
Both views are attempting to honor Scripture. But I find the second far more compelling. Paul’s language presses us forward, not backward as he describes our present state with words like partial, in part, childish ways, and dimly. Those words still describe our experience today. We still see through a mirror dimly. We still know in part. We still grope toward clarity, even with open Bibles and faithful teachers.
Paul then contrasts this with something dramatically different. “But then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (verse 12). That does not sound like the completion of the Bible. It sounds like resurrection. It sounds like the return of Christ and the moment when faith gives way to sight.
Paul reinforces the point with, “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” (verse 11). Childhood is not bad. It is just incomplete. It is necessary for a time, but it is not the destination.
The gifts function the same way. They are given to nurture our affections for Christ, build up the church, and point others toward him. When we see him face to face, when we know fully as we are fully known, those gifts will have completed their work. That is why Paul can say, without contradiction, that love never ends while the gifts do.
At Legacy, we believe the gifts of the Spirit continue, even the miraculous ones. We also believe they will cease when the “perfect” arrives, when Christ returns to finish the story and renew all things.
That often raises a very reasonable question: “But then why do we not see many prophecies or miracles or tongues.” I think scripture gives us several reasons not to be surprised by that.
First, the Bible never gives us a distribution formula for the gifts. The Spirit gives as he wills, not as we expect and not evenly across time or geography (1 Corinthians 12:11).
Second, throughout Scripture and church history, the more visibly spectacular gifts tend to cluster around moments of missional disruption and gospel expansion. Not always, but often you see them surge at key redemptive moments, at boundary crossings, at the front edges of the mission. Acts reads the way it does because the gospel is exploding into new peoples and places.
Third, most ordinary church life in the New Testament is profoundly unspectacular. Teaching, prayer, service, helps, endurance, generosity, love, hospitality. These are not flashy, but they are no less Spirit given or Spirit powered. The Spirit is often most active in what feels pedestrian.
Fourth, churches develop cultures. Communities tend to cultivate certain gifts more than others. Some environments naturally draw teachers. Others draw prophetic personalities. Both can be deeply faithful expressions of the body of Christ. If I put an open mic in the sanctuary every week and invited anyone to give a prophecy or a tongue, some of you would quietly slip out the door and never return. Others would show up for the first time. That is not a theology issue as much as it is a culture issue.
The New Testament never requires every local church to display every gift in equal measure at all times. It does require every church to pursue love. Because in the end, when the gifts fall silent, love will still be speaking.