I’d like to set before you a paraphrase of that well known chapter on love found in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13. I’m calling it a paraphrase, but actually I’m just replacing the word translated “love” with a word or concept that supplies what I take that biblical word love to mean. As best as I can tell, when we read that “God is love” or read about loving one another, something emotional is not what’s in view. What I think is in view is how we behave towards one another, and to me what we are being called to is embodied in the word “helpful.”

So with that in mind I offer the following:

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but I do not allow God’s helpfulness to work through me, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

2 And if I have prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can remove mountains, but do not allow God’s helpfulness to work through me, I am nothing. 3 If I give away everything I own, and if I give over my body in order to boast, but do not allow God’s helpfulness to work through me, I receive no benefit.

4 God-guided helpfulness is patient, God-guided helpfulness is kind, it is not envious. God-guided helpfulness does not brag, it is not puffed up. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-serving, it is not easily angered or resentful. 6 It is not glad about injustice, but rejoices in the truth.

7 God-guided helpfulness bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 God’s helpfulness never ends.

But if there are prophecies, they will be set aside; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be set aside. 9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, 10 but when what is perfect comes, the partial will be set aside. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became an adult, I set aside childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror indirectly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope, and God-guided helpfulness. But the greatest of these is God-guided helpfulness.