But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet I show unto you a more excellent way.
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Ambrosiaster
AD 400
The graces of the Lord which are seen in persons do not relate to the merit of the individual but to the honoring of God. Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.
But covet earnestly the best gifts. Seek from God, and exercise, if you have received them (cf. notes to ver8), the more useful gifts, such as apostleship, prophecy, Wisdom of Solomon , but not such as the gift of tongues, which you are in the habit of seeking after and of priding yourselves in. So Anselm. Others take the clause interrogatively, "Do you covet the best gifts? then I will show you a more excellent way still." So Chrysostom, Theophylact, Å’cumenius.
And yet show I unto you a more excellent way, viz, the way of charity, which is the way to God, to life, and everlasting glory.
The commentary ascribed to S. Jerome says here that the Apostle divides off charity from the gifts of the Spirit, because these latter are gratuitously given by God, but charity is acquired by our own efforts and natural powers. This shows this commentary not to be S. Jerome"s, but the work of Pelagius or some Pelagian, as was said before. Primasius, who transcribed a good deal of this commentary, h...
Be zealous for the better gifts: which are to be more or less esteemed, as they are accompanied with charity, as he is going to show in the next chapter. (Witham)
Now by saying this, he gently hinted that they were the cause of their own receiving the lesser gifts, and had it in their power, if they would, to receive the greater. For when he says, desire earnestly, he demands from them all diligence and desire for spiritual things. And he said not, the greater gifts, but the better, i.e., the more useful, those which would profit. And what he means is this: continue to desire gifts; and I point out to you a fountain of gifts. For neither did he say, a gift, but a way, that he might the more extol that which he intends to mention. As if he said, It is not one, or two, or three gifts that I point out to you, but one way which leads to all these : and not merely a way, but both a more excellent way and one that is open in common to all. For not as the gifts are vouchsafed, to some these, to others those, but not all to all; so also in this case: but it is an universal gift. Wherefore also he invites all to it. Desire earnestly, says he, the better ...
