Spiritual Gifts: Love Required

Paul now arrives at the pure heart of Christian service within the church - it is God's love. He demonstrates in three areas how spiritual gifts are useless without real sacrificial devotion: First, one could use amazing WORDS such as perfectly speaking an unknown tongue, or even a hypothetical heavenly tongue, but it would only result in an ecstatic show and an empty sign without genuine love - the end result would be as useless as a loud irritating noise; Second, one could also WOW people with an exciting sermon including amazing prophecy, revealing secret knowledge and having unshakable faith - but without genuine love it would be empty service, and all of one's public efforts would have the end result of being worthless; Finally, one could perform impressing WORKS involving extreme sacrifice such as giving all of one's own possessions, and even delivering one's own body to be burned, but it too would be empty service without genuine love - the end result would be of no account, absolute zero.