1) Paul teaches that the motivation behind using spiritual gifts is more important than the gifts themselves. Without love as the motivation, gifts are worthless despite their potential power or impact. 2) Love is demonstrated through patience, kindness, humility, selflessness, and bearing all things. These characteristics indicate that gifts are being used to build others up rather than for personal gain or ego. 3) Spiritual gifts are temporary and provide only a partial understanding, while love is eternal. When the perfect comes, gifts will cease, but love will remain the greatest thing.

1. The Christ Centered Life:
Spiritual Gifts-What’s your
motivation?
I Corinthians 12:31-13:13

2. The Reasons Behind our actions
are important
Actor: What is your motivation?
Businessman: What is your motivation?
Why do you sing?
Sport’s figure: Why do you compete?

3. The Greatest Motivation for doing
is Love
• http://www.wingclips.com/movie-clips/friday-
night-lights/being-perfect

4. Christian:
What is your motivation?
Paul tells us what our motivation
should be for using our gifts in
I Cor. 13

5. 1 Corinthians 12:31–13:13 (ESV)
31 But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will
show you a still more excellent way. 1 If I speak
in the tongues of men and of angels, but have
not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 And if I have prophetic powers, and
understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and
if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but
have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I
have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,
but have not love, I gain nothing.

6. 4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or
boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not
insist on its own way; it is not irritable or
resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing,
but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all
things, believes all things, hopes all things,
endures all things.

7. 8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass
away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for
knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part
and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect
comes, the partial will pass away. 11 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. 12 For now we see in a mirror
dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part;
then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully
known. 13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these
three; but the greatest of these is love.

8. I. Motivation determines the value of a
spiritual gift(1-3)
A. Set Your Heart on the Greater Gifts.
31 But earnestly desire the higher gifts (τὰ
χαρίσματα τὰ μείζονα).
1. The greater gifts are: 1 Cor. 12:28 And God has
appointed in the church first apostles, second
prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then
gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and
various kinds of tongues.
2. Why desire them? For the building up of the
body of Christ.

9. I. Motivation determines the value of a
spiritual gift(1-3)
“And I will show you a still more excellent
(ὑπερβολὴν) way.”
B. What is more important than the Spiritual
gift?
1. The motivation for using the gift.
2. The motivation of love accomplishes more than
the perfection of the gift.

10. I. Motivation determines the value of a
spiritual gift (1-3)
C. God gives the gift but it’s the motivation of
the heart that gives it value.
1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but
have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging
cymbal.
1. Eloquence is just painful noise without the
motivation of love.
2. Even saying, “I love you” with a wrong
motivation can cause damage.

11. I. Motivation determines the value of a
spiritual gift(1-3)
C. God gives the gift but it’s the motive of the
heart that gives it value.
2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all
mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all
faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not
love, I am nothing.
2. I’m not something because I have a gift, I’m
something because I have God’s love.
3. A gift, unless used through the motivation of love
has no worth.

12. I. Motivation determines the value of a
spiritual gift (1-3)
D. Even giving to others and to good causes can
be meaningless.
3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body
to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Apart from the motivation of love:
1. I gain nothing through charity.
2. I gain nothing through being a martyr.

13. • How do we know that we are using our gifts
through the motivation of love?
• Paul lists characteristics that are evidences of
love:

14. II. Expressions that demonstrate the
motivation of love (4-7)
A. 4 Love is patient and kind

15. II. Expressions that demonstrate the
motivation of love (4-7)
A. 4 Love is patient and kind
B. love does not envy or boast;

16. II. Expressions that demonstrate the
motivation of love (4-7)
A. 4 Love is patient and kind
B. love does not envy or boast;
C. it is not arrogant 5 or rude (behave
indecently).

17. II. Expressions that demonstrate the
motivation of love (4-7)
A. 4 Love is patient and kind
B. love does not envy or boast;
C. it is not arrogant 5 or rude (behave
indecently).
D. It does not insist on its own way (self
seeking);

18. II. Expressions that demonstrate the
motivation of love (4-7)
A. 4 Love is patient and kind
B. love does not envy or boast;
C. it is not arrogant 5 or rude (behave
indecently).
D. It does not insist on its own way (self
seeking);
E. it is not irritable (easily provoked to anger) or
resentful (keep a mental record);

19. II. Expressions that demonstrate the
motivation of love (4-7)
A. 4 Love is patient and kind
B. love does not envy or boast;
C. it is not arrogant 5 or rude (behave indecently).
D. It does not insist on its own way (self seeking);
E. it is not irritable (easily provoked to anger) or
resentful (keep a mental record);
F. 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing,
G. but rejoices with the truth.

20. II. Expressions that demonstrate the
motivation of love (4-7)
H. 7 Love bears all things,
– Puts up with all annoyances and difficulties.
I. believes all things,
– To trust, to think true, to have confidence in.
J. hopes all things,
– To look forward with confidence to what is good and
beneficial.
K. endures all things.
– Stays with someone in spite of the sufferings and
disappointments.

21. The Gifts are important to the building
up of the Church, but they are
temporal.
Love is Eternal

22. III. Love is eternal. Gifts cease (8-13)
A. Love is eternal.
“8 Love never ends.”
B. The gifts are temporal.
1. “As for prophecies, they will pass away;
2. as for tongues, they will cease;
3. as for knowledge, it will pass away. “

23. III. Love is eternal. Gifts cease (8-13)
C. These gifts only reveal a glimpse of reality.
1. Knowledge and prophesy are incomplete.
9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
2. When the body of Christ (the Church) is
perfected the gifts will pass away.
10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

24. III. Love is eternal. Gifts cease (8-13)
C. Paul Illustrates the growth of a body with
childhood.
11 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.
Point: We are presently like children with a little
knowledge of the way things will be.

25. III. Love is eternal. Gifts cease (8-13)
D. Paul Illustrates the difference with a mirror.
12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then
face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall
know fully, even as I have been fully known.
Point: Don’t be arrogant about your gifts, what
you think you know or what you think you
know about yourself. It falls far short of the
way things really are, or shall be.

26. 13 So now faith, hope, and love
abide, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.