But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet I show unto you a more excellent way.
All Commentaries on 1 Corinthians 12:31 Go To 1 Corinthians 12
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
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, has shown the falsity of this remark. It appears too that charity is the gift of God from Rom. v5: "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us." Hence S. Paul says here that he shows a more excellent way, meaning one that excels all others. If, then, the graces gratuitously given are of lower rank and are given by God, much more ought charity, which is exceedingly better and more excellent than them all, to be sought for and to be given from God. The Apostle then fixes the distinction between charity and the gifts of the Spirit in the fact that these latter are given for the good of the Church, not for the sanctification of him to whom they are given, while charity is given to make him who has it holy and pleasing to God. " Hebrews ," says S. Augustine (de Laud. Char.), "holds both what is patent and what is latent in God"s sayings who holds charity in his daily life."
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