But we pass on to another and a still more important theme, a wonderfully full picture even for God’s Word, that most perfect and beautiful unfolding of divine love which we have in 1 Corinthians 13. After all, if the Corinthians had coveted gifts, they had not coveted the best. But even if we may desire the best gifts, there is better still; and the best of all is charity—love. Accordingly we have this in the most admirable manner brought out both in what it is and in what it is not, and that too as corrective of the wrong desires of the Corinthians, and the evil spirit which had manifested itself in the exercise of their gifts; so that what seems to be an interruption is the wisest of parentheses between chapter 12, which shows us the distribution of gifts and their character, and 1 Corinthians 14, which directs the due exercise of gifts in the assembly of God. There is but one safe motive—power for their use, even love. Without it even a spiritual gift only tends to puff up its owner, and to corrupt those who are its objects.