It is well to remark the connection of charity—love—here (1 Cor. 13) with the assembly of God and the working of the Holy Spirit in it. Everywhere love is precious, never out of season, and above all it is the life-breath of the church. Where love is not the regulating power in the Spirit, the very nearness of the saints to each other and the action of the gifts prove the greatest dangers; where love governs, all else works smoothly to the edification of the saints and to the Lord’s glory. If the Corinthian saints, in their ministering of the gifts, had forgotten the supreme excellence of love, the Apostle puts it forward with all prominence between his treatment of the Spirit’s presence and action in the assembly and the order laid down for the due exercise of gift there. Love, he shows, has intrinsic and divine excellency, surpassing all gifts, even the gifts that edify, for such gifts may exist where there is no love.
W. Kelly (from Notes on Corinthians)