The More Excellent Way
Called into Fellowship
By Will Bourne · Bourne Again Media LLC
1 Corinthians 12–14 · 39–53
The journey of this volume
How can a gifted community become a loving one? First Corinthians 12 through 14 brings the Spirit’s gifts, the one body, love, and shared worship into one movement. Begin with chapter 13, where patience and kindness become visible in how people treat one another. This reading invites you to celebrate varied gifts and let truthful, practical love guide the way you speak, serve, listen, and participate.
How could love change the way I use a gift, conviction, or opportunity to speak?
What you’ll explore
- The Spirit’s gifts for the common good
- Many members in one body
- Love expressed through truth and kindness
- Worship that builds others up
Love made visible in shared life
Begin with 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 in your Bible. Read 1 Corinthians 13:4 through 7 within Paul’s teaching on gifts and the body in chapters 12 through 14. Notice the actions and dispositions through which love becomes recognizable.
The following reading summarizes Commentary 45, “1 Corinthians 13:4-7,” with a selected excerpt from the manuscript.
Paul’s description of love addresses the disorders of a real congregation. Division, pride, injured consciences, and competition for prominence reveal why gifts need a governing way that serves the whole body.
Will follows love through patience, kindness, humility, restraint, and truthful care. Love makes room for growth, celebrates another person’s good, and refuses to turn knowledge or power into a means of superiority.
Love rejoices with truth and gives hope and endurance their proper direction. The commentary keeps patient service joined to protection and responsible care, so shared life grows through grace without concealing wrongdoing or consuming people.
Love made visible in shared life
Love is also kind. Kindness moves toward another person’s good. It speaks with care, notices need, shares burdens, and uses power to serve. Patience without kindness could become distant tolerance. Kindness gives patience a constructive direction. Together they resist the harshness and indifference that can hide beneath religious certainty.
Will Bourne · From Commentary 45 on 1 Corinthians 13:4–7, in The More Excellent Way
Following Christ through this movement
The crucified Christ judges boasting and gives His people life as mercy. Christian love grows from belonging to Him and receiving His self-giving grace.
The Spirit distributes gifts within one body and directs them toward the common good. Patient, kind, truthful love gives those gifts a fitting shape and helps worship strengthen the people who gather.
Continue in Scripture
John 13:34–35 · Galatians 5:22–23 · Ephesians 4:1–6
Read these passages alongside the selected manuscript commentary. Keep each literary and historical setting in view while following the biblical witness toward Christ and faithful practice today.
A question to carry
Where do I need to listen with patience or respond with kindness? How could I celebrate another person’s contribution without comparing it with my own?
Stay with one person or situation that comes to mind. Notice what this passage brings into view before deciding how to respond.
Back to section choices ↑One faithful step
Choose one shared setting this week. Make room for another person’s contribution, offer specific thanks, or pause before responding to a misunderstanding. Let kindness serve truth and the real good of those involved.
Back to section choices ↑A prayer for the journey
Jesus, form Your love among us. Teach us patience, kindness, humility, and joy in the truth. Holy Spirit, guide our gifts toward the common good and make our shared life a place where people are heard and strengthened. Amen.
Back to section choices ↑The formation emphasis in this volume
Will’s commentary reads love within Paul’s sustained correction of Corinth. Patience and kindness become practical responses to rivalry, pride, and ways of exercising gifts that leave others diminished.
The formation emphasis gives love both tenderness and moral clarity. Humility, restraint, and joy in truth support a fellowship where gifts serve people, varied contributions are honored, and care remains responsible.
Editorial summary of Will Bourne’s manuscript.
Back to section choices ↑