Love in Heaven

1 Corinthians
Written By Steve Estes

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Speaker: Steve Estes
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 13:8-13
February 23, 2025

Sermon Notes

1 Corinthians 13:8-13: “Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I reasoned like a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child. When I became a man, I put childish things behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

Outline:

1. Wrong idea of spirituality

  • Tongues

  • Same wrong idea with prophesy

  • What the chapter has said

2. Summary of this passage

3. Three temporary gifts of ministry

  • Prophecy

  • Tongues

  • Knowledge

4. Two figures of speech and a clear statement

  • Contrast between childhood and adulthood

  • Contrast between reflection and face-to-face

  • The clear statement

5. On verse 13

  • “These three remain”

  • “But the greatest of these is love”

6. Jonathan Edwards on love

  • The cause and fountain of love

  • The objects of love

  • The beings who will love

  • Some aspects of love

Steve Estes

Steve Estes has been senior pastor at Brick Lane Community Church in Elverson, Pennsylvania, for over thirty-five years. 

Steve’s books and other writings began with his longtime friendship with Joni Eareckson Tada. As teenagers, they grappled with why God allowed Joni’s paralysis in a swimming accident in the Chesapeake Bay. Steve left for college . . . they kept in touch . . . she liked the style of his letters. When her 1976 autobiography Joni spawned thousands of reader responses, she asked Steve to join her in crafting a follow-up. The result was A Step Further in 1978.

Later, Wycliffe Bible Translators commissioned Steve to write the biography of former college friend Chet Bitterman, a Wycliffe linguist who was kidnapped and murdered by political terrorists in Colombia in 1981. Other books and articles followed, including When God Weeps (with Joni) and A Better December (a giveaway book for non-Christian friends at Christmas.)

Steve was educated at Westminster Theological Seminary, Columbia Bible College and Jerusalem University College in Israel. He has taught homiletics at Westminster and is a board member of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation.

But Steve would say his most significant life achievement was persuading college classmate Verna Stoltzfus to marry him in 1974.  They now have eight children and more grandchildren than can fit in a van.

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