Love's the Answer
In I Corinthians chapters 12-14 Paul is concerned about the peace of the congregation. The gifts which were given to the body and experienced via the various parts, instead of uniting the body had become occasions of tension. Something was missing and it wasn't the existence of various gifts (see 1:5-7).
The purpose of the gifts was to build up the congregation so that it might be indeed the united body of Christ, that it might know God and rejoice together in his purposes through the body (12:25).
Instead the people pouted, swaggered, dominated or sulked in the background (12:15-16, 21). They had some insights, some knowledge, some flashes of wisdom, they had prophets who spoke some truths and they had people who could speak foreign languages.
Paul insists if they had all these at a maximum they would still only have a partial, limited knowledge of God. What brings a person into the full knowledge of God is love. (And if that is what they all say they want--love's the best way, the more excellent way to pursue it.)
At best, the various gifts result only in a vision seen by reflection in a mirror (13:12). Gifts plus childishness equals near-sightedness. But when the perfect (mature, completed) state arrives (when love is the driving force of the life) then we see, not in a mirror, but face to face. (The word picture suggests someone looking in a mirror and seeing someone behind them. Their mirrors weren't as good as ours. The person turns from the mirror and the poor image he sees in it and now looks face to face at the one he saw in the mirror.)
Depending on the gifts is depending on a poor mirror. The gifts can only bring partial discernment. Love results in a perfect seeing, a knowing "even as" we're known (compare 8:3).
The "even as" isn't speaking of degree of knowing but the way of knowing. It's clear we'll never know God to the degree he knows us. Not now or ever. In Matthew 5:48 Christ calls us to be perfect "as" your heavenly Father is perfect. He isn't taking about degree. That's beyond us--permanently. But the Father's way is the model.
So "when that which is perfect is come" probably speaks of the state of having been matured (see the use of the word in 14:20). But the state of having been matured is the state beyond partial knowledge which comes through gifts. It is the state that comes through love. When a person loves God (8:3) he is known by God. Paul repeats this here and calls it "knowing in full" as opposed to "knowing in part".
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.