Hunting down love
In The Message, Eugene Peterson paraphrased the start of 1 Corinthians 14 as: “Go after a life of love as if your life depended on it — because it does.”
As I read that this morning, I could not remember ever reading any English translation of 1 Cor 14:1 that said my life depends on love. Take a look at this sampling and you’ll see what I mean.
So I looked up the Greek text that the translators and Peterson were working from:
ΔΙΩΚΕΤΕ ΤΗΝ ΑΓΑΠΗΝ,
1 Corinthians 14:1
ΖΗΛΟΥΤΕ ΔΕ ΤΑ ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΙΚΑ,
ΜΑΛΛΟΝ ΔΕ ΙΝΑ ΠΡΟΦΗΤΕΥΗΤΕ
diōkete tēn agapēn,
zēloute de ta pneumatika,
mallon de hina prophēteuēte
Pursue love,
and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts,
especially that you may prophesy. (ESV)
Indeed 1 Cor 14:1 does not say anything about my life depending on love.
But Peterson was not translating – he was paraphrasing. The love referred to here is the subject of the entire previous chapter, in which the Apostle Paul writes: “If I … have not love, I am nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:2) Peterson was right: my life (my existence, my identify, my purpose) does depend on love. For in God “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), and “God is love.” (1 John 4:8)
I am reading Prof Tom Wright’s “Paul: a Biography“, in which he devotes a whole chapter to “zeal” in a first century Jewish context and considers that Paul did not ditch one religion (Judaism) in favour of a different religion (Christianity); rather he discovered that, in Jesus, God was fulfilling the promises that Paul was so “zealous” about – but in ways what were beyond what he had previously imagined.
With that in the back of my mind, when I looked into 1 Corinthians 14:1 this morning I found that the words for “pursue” and “desire” are far more loaded than I had realised.
Before he met the risen Jesus, Paul says …
ΚΑΤΑ ΖΗΛΟΣ,
Philippians 3:6
ΔΙΩΚΩΝ ΤΗΝ ΕΚΚΛΗΣΙΑΝ
kata zēlos,
diōkōn tēn ekklēsian
As for ZEAL,
I was HUNTING DOWN the gatherings” (of Christians)
Now, Paul urges us – like him – to instead …
ΔΙΩΚΕΤΕ ΤΗΝ ΑΓΑΠΗΝ,
1 Corinthians 14:1
ΖΗΛΟΥΤΕ ΔΕ ΤΑ ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΙΚΑ,
ΜΑΛΛΟΝ ΔΕ ΙΝΑ ΠΡΟΦΗΤΕΥΗΤΕ
diōkete tēn agapēn,
zēloute de ta pneumatika,
mallon de hina prophēteuēte
HUNT DOWN love,
and be ZEALous for spiritual [things],
especially so that you can prophesy.
“Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God. It chases me down, fights ’til I’m found, leaves the 99.” (From the song “Reckless Love” by Cory Asbury)
I find the “so that” in 1 Corinthians 14:1 – which I do not remember noticing before either – especially helpful too. “Spiritual gifts” in general and “prophecy” in particular have sadly been divisive of Christians, especially in the Western churches of the last hundred years. “Be zealous for spiritual things, especially so that you can speak words from God to others in love” feels far less contentious.