This is often called the love chapter, or to some it is the wedding chapter. A majority of weddings held in a church context have some portion of this chapter read. No matter how much the true context and meaning of the verses is taught, people like it because it talks about love. So what is really happening here is chapter 13?
Yes there is the discussion about what love is and what love is not. There is the discussion about how many of the great measures of our journey mean nothing if we are not loving. What the chapter really points to is found in the last little portion. The focus is on the perfection that is to come. How all our understandings on this side of the grave are less than perfect. Even our best intentions are flawed. I love the imagery Paul uses of the mirror. We see life, but it is a clouded picture.
To steal from Tina Turner, what's love got to do with it? For as much are the passage is about the love we have, it is even more about the love God has for us. It is not our ability to love which makes the imperfect, perfect. Interestingly, our inability to love causes the view of life we have to become more and more cloudy. Still it is the love God has for us, as shown through Jesus Christ that we can experience love and give love to others. It is through the work of Christ that when it is all said and done, when we run the race through, we will see perfectly through the love of God.
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