Chapter 0: Overview

“But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.” --- 1 Corinthians 13:10 (KJV)

The Question

What did Paul mean by “the perfect”?

The question is short. The answer has occupied careful readers for two thousand years without producing consensus. And the question matters --- not as an academic puzzle, but because how we answer it shapes how we understand spiritual gifts, how we relate to one another across traditions, and what we expect of our future with God.

Paul wrote these words to a church in Corinth that had turned spiritual gifts into a status competition. Tongues-speakers looked down on those who did not speak in tongues. The spiritually impressive elbowed out the quietly faithful. Paul’s response was not to abolish gifts but to subordinate them to something greater: love. Chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians is the theological heart of that argument. Within it, verse 10 makes a claim that sounds simple on the surface --- when the complete thing arrives, the partial things will be superseded --- but the identity of “the perfect” has been debated ever since.

The question is not merely historical. It reaches into Sunday morning practice in millions of congregations. If “the perfect” is the completed canon of Scripture, then prophecy and tongues ceased around 100 AD, and anyone claiming to exercise those gifts today is, at best, mistaken. If “the perfect” is the return of Christ or the eternal state, then those gifts remain available throughout the present age, and to forbid them is to reject something God still gives. If “the perfect” is the maturity of the church, then the answer depends on where we are in the process of growing up. These are not abstractions. They affect how we worship, how we counsel, how we evaluate spiritual experience, and how we treat believers who read the same passage and arrive at a different conclusion.

Four major interpretations have emerged:

• The Completed Canon --- “the perfect” is the finished New Testament.
• Christ’s Return --- “the perfect” is the personal return of Jesus.
• Church Maturity --- “the perfect” is the spiritual maturity of the body of Christ.
• The Eternal State --- “the perfect” is the consummated kingdom, the new heavens and new earth.

Each view has able defenders. Each has biblical support. And each has honest difficulties. This study examines the question through four lenses --- Scripture, Christocentrism, Antiquity, and Reality --- and presents what it finds without issuing a verdict. The goal is not to win the argument but to help you weigh the evidence yourself.

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The Text

Before anything else, the text itself. Paul’s argument runs from 1 Corinthians 13:8 through 13:13, and it must be read whole:

“Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” --- 1 Corinthians 13:8-13 (KJV)

This passage is not a standalone poem, though it is often read as one. It is the theological hinge of a three-chapter argument about spiritual gifts and their proper use. Understanding its place in that argument is essential.

In chapter 12, Paul establishes that the body has many members and many gifts, all from the same Spirit. No one gift makes a person more spiritual than another. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of thee.” The chapter ends with a pointed ranking: God has set in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers --- and tongues last. Then comes the transition that introduces chapter 13:

“But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way.” --- 1 Corinthians 12:31 (KJV)

The “more excellent way” is not a sentimental aside. It is the decisive move in Paul’s argument. Chapter 13 shows that love is greater than any gift, that gifts without love are nothing, and that gifts are temporary while love is permanent. Then chapter 14 returns to practical instructions for worship: prophecy is better than tongues because it edifies the body; everything must be done decently and in order; love governs how gifts are exercised. The bridge back is explicit:

“Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy.” --- 1 Corinthians 14:1 (KJV)

Chapter 13 was written to correct a church that had confused the instruments with the music they were meant to play. Paul does not condemn the gifts. He relativizes them. They are good, they are real, they are from God --- and they are temporary servants of something that will outlast them all.

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The Key Words

Several Greek terms in this passage carry weight that English translations cannot fully convey. A brief orientation here will help the reader; the full analysis is in Appendix A.

Τὸ τέλειον (to teleion) --- “that which is perfect.” The word τέλειος comes from τέλος (telos), meaning “end” or “goal.” Something is teleios when it has reached its designed purpose --- not primarily moral perfection (as in modern English) but functional completeness. The neuter form (to teleion) suggests a state or condition rather than a specific person. Paul uses the same root elsewhere for mature believers (1 Corinthians 2:6), for the corporate maturity of the church (Ephesians 4:13), and Jesus uses it for the ethical wholeness of kingdom life: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48, KJV). The word’s range of meaning is precisely what makes the debate possible: it can point to an event, a state, a process, or a person.

Πρόσωπον πρὸς πρόσωπον (prosopon pros prosopon) --- “face to face.” This is not a casual idiom for “better understanding.” In the Old Testament, “face to face” is the precise description of Moses’s unique access to God --- a privilege shared by no other prophet:

“And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.” --- Exodus 33:11 (KJV)

“And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face.” --- Deuteronomy 34:10 (KJV)

Paul deliberately echoes this tradition. Our present knowing is like that of ordinary prophets --- through riddles and visions. The future knowing will be like Moses’s --- direct and unmediated. But Paul goes further: he promises this not for one unique figure but for all believers. Whatever “the perfect” is, it must be something capable of granting the entire community what was once one man’s exclusive privilege.

Ἐν αἰνίγματι (en ainigmati) --- “in a riddle” (the KJV renders it “darkly”). This word appears only once in the entire New Testament, and it deliberately echoes Numbers 12:8 in the Septuagint, where God says he speaks to Moses “not in riddles” (ou di’ ainigmaton). Paul is placing the Corinthians --- and all present-age believers --- in the “riddle” category of prophetic knowledge, awaiting the “face to face” that was Moses’s exclusive privilege. Even the best knowledge we have now, including Scripture, is mediated through this indirect mode. The “then” will be qualitatively different.

Ἐπιγινώσκω (epiginosko) versus γινώσκω (ginosko) --- “know fully” versus “know.” In verse 12, Paul deliberately switches verbs: “now I know (ginosko) in part; but then shall I know fully (epiginosko), even as also I am fully known.” The prefix epi- intensifies: this is not merely more knowledge but a qualitatively different mode of knowing --- thorough, personal, and patterned on the way God already knows us. The standard for our future knowing is God’s present knowing of us. That is a very high bar.

Παύσονται (pausontai) --- “they shall cease.” This form is future middle voice, used specifically for tongues, while prophecy and knowledge receive a different verb (καταργέω, katargeo, “rendered inoperative”) in the passive voice. Whether this grammatical variation implies that tongues will cease at a different time or by a different mechanism is one of the most technically contested points in the entire debate. The cessationist argument holds that the middle voice indicates tongues “will cease of themselves,” independently of the coming of “the perfect.” The continuationist response holds that the middle voice is simply the standard intransitive form of this verb and carries no separate theological freight. Both sides agree on the grammar; they disagree on what the grammar means. The Greek opens a question; it does not answer it.

(Chapter 1 provides the complete verse-by-verse grammatical analysis and translation comparisons.)

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Four Views in Brief

Each view deserves more space than an overview can give. Chapter 4 presents them in full, with each view’s pastoral fruit and honest challenges. Here, each gets its strongest argument and its most pressing difficulty.

The Completed Canon

The argument: When the New Testament was completed --- the last apostolic documents written and recognized --- God’s full written revelation became available. The partial, revelatory gifts (prophecy, tongues, word of knowledge) were instruments for a church that did not yet have the whole of Scripture. Once the canon was finished, the instruments were superseded. Supporting this reading, Paul wrote to Timothy:

“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.” --- 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (KJV)

The word for “perfect” here (artios, “thoroughly equipped”) invites comparison with to teleion. James 1:25 speaks of “the perfect law of liberty” --- using the same teleion root to describe the word of God. And Jude 3 speaks of “the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” --- a completed deposit.

The challenge: The concept of a twenty-seven-book New Testament did not exist when Paul wrote to Corinth around 55 AD. Paul could not have been thinking about a reality his hearers could not have imagined. More pressingly, the phrase “face to face” --- which in the Old Testament consistently describes direct, personal encounter with God --- sits uneasily as a description of receiving a completed text. No one meets a book face to face. And the knowledge Paul promises in verse 12 --- “then shall I know even as also I am known” --- exceeds anything that reading Scripture, however inspired, can supply. God does not know us through a text; he knows us directly and comprehensively. If our future knowing is patterned on God’s present knowing of us, something more than a book must be in view.

No patristic interpreter, across the roughly three and a half centuries of surviving comment, ever connected “the perfect” with the canon. The reading is modern: the fullest history of interpretation of this verse finds no clear advocate before the nineteenth century --- and the earliest writer known even to mention the view, Robert Govett (1813-1901), reports it only to argue against it (Decker). The view still has able defenders --- its fullest single-article statement, Andy Woods’s 2004 article, is engaged point by point in Chapter 4 --- but none has yet answered the ancient record.

Christ’s Return

The argument: The “face to face” of verse 12 most naturally describes the personal encounter with Christ that believers receive at the resurrection. The closest New Testament parallel makes this explicit:

“Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” --- 1 John 3:2 (KJV)

Paul’s “now … then” contrast is standard Pauline eschatological language, the same framework he uses throughout his letters to distinguish the present age from the age to come. The entire letter of 1 Corinthians is framed by eschatological expectation --- opening with “waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1:7) and closing with “Maranatha” (16:22). Chapter 15, just two chapters later, is Paul’s definitive treatment of the resurrection. And Revelation 22:4 brings the arc to its destination: “they shall see his face.”

This is the majority view among modern commentators --- Fee, Thiselton, Carson, Bruce, Morris, and Witherington all hold it --- and the ancient church tradition supports it with near-unanimity (Clement of Alexandria’s maturity reading and John of Damascus’s law-of-Christ reading are the only significant departures from the eschatological direction within the surviving corpus).

The challenge: If gifts continue until Christ’s return, how should the church evaluate contemporary claims to prophecy and tongues? This view does not itself provide criteria for discernment, though other passages do (1 Corinthians 14:29; 1 Thessalonians 5:21; 1 John 4:1). Some cessationist scholars accept the eschatological reading of “the perfect” but argue that gifts ceased for other redemptive-historical reasons --- the close of the apostolic age, the completion of the foundational revelation (Ephesians 2:20) --- meaning this passage does not settle the gifts question either way.

Church Maturity

The argument: Ephesians 4:11-13 explicitly connects gifts, their purpose, and the word teleion:

“And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” --- Ephesians 4:11-13 (KJV)

The gifts serve “till” (mechri) the church reaches corporate maturity --- “a perfect man” (eis andra teleion), the same root as in 1 Corinthians 13:10. Paul uses teleios throughout his letters for present, achievable maturity (1 Corinthians 2:6; Philippians 3:15; Colossians 1:28). The childhood-to-adulthood analogy in verse 11 invites a reading of growth over time. And Jesus himself used the same word for a present ethical call: “Be ye therefore perfect” (Matthew 5:48). The view’s strongest modern form (Thomas) does not claim the church has arrived: the gifts serve until the goal is reached --- whether the terminus proves to be the body’s maturation or the parousia itself, whichever comes first.

The challenge: Has the church ever demonstrably reached maturity? Two millennia of schism, heresy, and failure of love suggest otherwise --- which means, by this view’s own logic, the gifts should still be operating. More importantly, “face to face” and “know even as I am known” describe a state that exceeds any earthly spiritual achievement, however mature. Even the most advanced Christian does not encounter God with the directness and thoroughness of divine knowledge. The language points beyond anything history has produced.

The Eternal State

The argument: The full “face to face” knowledge of God --- knowing as we are known --- can only be realized in the consummated kingdom, when God dwells directly with his people and every veil is removed:

“And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.” --- Revelation 21:3 (KJV)

“And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads.” --- Revelation 22:4 (KJV)

Augustine’s theology of the beatific vision locates the fulfillment of 1 Corinthians 13:12 here: “the sight… which is promised anew to us face to face” (De Trinitate 15.23.44). The “face to face” vision of Revelation 22:4 --- denied even to Moses in its fullest form (Exodus 33:20) --- will finally be granted in the new creation.

The challenge: For most practical purposes, this view and the Christ’s Return view arrive at the same conclusion: gifts continue until the eschaton. Paul seems to present “the perfect” as something with a specific arrival (“whenever the perfect comes”), not as an unfolding mode of existence. The Corinthians were asking about gifts in their present assemblies, and an answer pointing to the eternal state, however true, may be more remote than their immediate question requires.

(Chapter 4 presents each view in full, with its strongest advocates and pastoral fruit.)

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What the Early Church Believed

The testimony of the first four centuries is one of the most striking features of this study. Chapter 3 presents it in detail; Appendix B collects the primary sources with full quotations and source citations.

The patristic reading is overwhelmingly eschatological. From the Didache’s call to “be made perfect in the last time” (c. 70-100 AD), through Irenaeus’s argument against the Gnostics that complete knowledge belongs to the age to come (c. 180 AD), through Tertullian’s setting of Numbers 12:6-8 beside 1 Corinthians 13:12 and reserving the face-to-face encounter “to some future time” (c. 210 AD), through Chrysostom’s exposition that when the perfect comes “we shall not only know as much, but even a great deal more” (c. 390 AD), to Augustine’s teaching that “the sight… which is promised anew to us face to face” belongs to the life to come (c. 415 AD): the ancient tradition is unanimous against the canon reading and, Clement of Alexandria excepted, eschatological in its direction.

The one significant exception is Clement of Alexandria (c. 200 AD), who reads “the perfect” as the mature spiritual knowledge available to the dedicated believer in this life through progressive growth from faith to deeper knowledge. His reading is genuine and historically significant --- Clement was a serious thinker, head of the most intellectually sophisticated school in early Christianity --- but it stands largely alone in the pre-Nicene period, shaped by his Platonic philosophical inheritance. No other pre-Nicene father follows him in this.

The most important observation for the reader to weigh: no ancient interpreter connected “the perfect” with the completion of the biblical canon. Not one. This silence spans the roughly three and a half centuries of surviving comment and every major region of early Christianity. Several of these fathers --- Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen --- lived during the very period when the canon was being assembled. They were part of the process. None of them made the connection. Chrysostom and Augustine wrote after the canon had been formally defined by Athanasius (367 AD) and affirmed at Hippo (393 AD) and Carthage (397 AD), and they still did not make the connection.

Augustine went further. In his De Trinitate, he argued that Scripture itself belongs to the “mirror” side of Paul’s equation --- it mediates the divine but is not the direct vision. On Augustine’s reading, the arrival of even a perfect text would not constitute “face to face” encounter with God. That awaits the beatific vision in eternity.

The canon-completion interpretation is a modern reading: the fullest history of interpretation of this verse (Decker) finds its earliest known appearance in the nineteenth century, and there in a writer reporting the view in order to refute it. This does not make it wrong --- later insights can be valid, and the early church could have missed something. But it means this reading carries no ancient attestation and must stand entirely on its exegetical merits.

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The Weight of Evidence

Without declaring a winner, honesty requires acknowledging where the evidence tilts. Chapter 5 develops this assessment in full.

The grammar establishes a future arrival of uncertain timing --- from Paul’s vantage; the eschatological direction comes from verse 12’s content. The construction hotan (“whenever”) with the aorist subjunctive in verse 10 is the standard New Testament grammar for events of future and uncertain timing --- a description an arrival c. 100 AD would also satisfy from Paul’s desk. The future form “I shall know fully” (epignosomai) in verse 12 is unambiguous: this knowing does not yet belong to Paul. The “now … then” contrast is standard Pauline shorthand for the present age versus the age to come.

The patristic evidence is unanimous against the canon reading, and near-unanimous for the eschatological one. Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Chrysostom, and Augustine all read “the perfect” as eschatological; Clement of Alexandria alone read it as present maturity. These interpreters belonged to different centuries, wrote in different languages, lived in different cities, and disagreed with one another on many things. On the direction of this passage, all but one agree --- and on the canon reading’s absence, all of them do.

The canon view faces acknowledged difficulties. The most careful cessationist scholars --- including Richard Gaffin, who wrote extensively on the gifts --- hold the eschatological reading of “the perfect” while maintaining cessationism on other grounds. B.B. Warfield’s Counterfeit Miracles never cites 1 Corinthians 13:10 at all (Decker). That is a significant concession from within the tradition that most needs the canon reading to succeed. The scholars who have thought most carefully about this passage from a cessationist perspective are not confident that the canon view is exegetically defensible.

The maturity view captures something real. Paul’s broader theology does treat gifts as servants of maturation, and Ephesians 4:11-13 is a genuine parallel. Jesus’s own use of teleios in Matthew 5:48 establishes that the word describes a present ethical pursuit, not only a future event. The maturity view functions better as a corrective --- a reminder that “the perfect” has a present dimension of growth in love --- than as a complete account of 1 Corinthians 13:10, because it cannot explain the personal intensity of “face to face” or the impossibility of any present human state matching “know even as I am known.”

Each reader must weigh the evidence. The text is genuinely open at several points. The exegetical question remains in honest dispute among careful scholars. What the evidence does not support is the casual confidence that sometimes attaches to each position --- as if the Greek settled what the Greek has, in fact, left open.

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Common Ground

The debate can obscure how much all serious readers share. The agreements are not trivial concessions --- they are the substance of Paul’s argument.

Love is permanent and supreme. Paul says it directly, and every tradition agrees:

“Charity never faileth.” --- 1 Corinthians 13:8 (KJV)

Love is not one virtue ranked first; it is the character of God himself (1 John 4:8), and it outlasts every gift. Cessationist, continuationist, Catholic, Orthodox, Reformed, Pentecostal --- all confess this without qualification.

Present knowledge is genuinely partial. Whether partial knowledge gives way to complete knowledge at the close of the apostolic age, at the Parousia, or in the eternal state --- every view agrees that we now see through a glass, in a riddle. That shared limitation ought to produce shared humility. Every preacher, every theologian, every commentator who has written on this passage knows “in part.”

Something better is coming. All four views agree that the present mode of knowing God is incomplete and will one day be superseded. The disagreement is about when and what --- not whether. The “then” of verse 12 is genuinely better than the “now,” and all of us live in the “now.”

“Face to face” is our destiny. All traditions confess that believers will one day see God directly. The disagreement is about timing and mechanism, not about the promise itself. Every reader of this text is waiting for the same thing. Whether you hold to a completed canon or a coming Christ, the promise of unmediated divine communion belongs to you.

The gifts serve the body’s edification, not individual status. Across chapters 12-14, Paul is consistent: gifts exist to build up the body of Christ, not to confer prestige on individuals. This is the point that started the entire argument --- the Corinthians had turned gifts into badges of rank --- and it is the point Paul will not let anyone forget. Whether gifts continue or have ceased, their purpose was never self-display.

Faith, hope, and love remain. In the midst of every interpretive disagreement, these three remain now. They do not wait for the resolution of the teleion question. They are the shape of Christian life in the between-times, and love is the greatest of them.

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How to Read This Study

This study is organized so that each chapter can be read independently or in sequence. Here is what each one offers:

• Chapter 1: Scripture --- The full exegetical analysis: Greek text, verse-by-verse grammar, word studies, translation comparisons, and the four candidate interpretations examined against the text. Start here if you want the evidence.

• Chapter 2: Christocentrism --- What Jesus taught and demonstrated about love, knowledge, and the age to come. The Moses typology, the already/not-yet kingdom, the Spirit’s guidance into “all truth,” and the demand that we hold our convictions in a way that looks like the one who promised to come again.

• Chapter 3: Antiquity --- How the earliest Christians understood 1 Corinthians 13:10, from the Didache to Augustine. Full quotations, source citations, and the striking absence of any canon-completion reading across the entire period.

• Chapter 4: Reality --- The four major views presented at their strongest, with each view’s pastoral fruit and honest challenges. The cessationist-continuationist intersection, and why this passage does not settle that debate as directly as either side sometimes implies.

• Chapter 5: Synthesis --- Where the evidence lands: areas of agreement, areas of tension, the weight of evidence honestly assessed, questions for the reader, and the love imperative.

• Appendix A: Word Study --- Complete Greek word studies for every key term in the passage: teleios, katargeo, pauo, esoptron, ainigma, prosopon pros prosopon, epiginosko, ek merous, and nyni de. Designed as a standalone reference.

• Appendix B: Patristic Sources --- All early church quotations collected chronologically, with full citations from the ANF, NPNF, PG, and PL.

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The Heart of the Matter

It would be possible to read this entire study and miss the point --- because the point is not the question we have been asking. The question “What is the perfect?” is genuine and worth pursuing. But it is not Paul’s question.

Paul’s question is: What matters most?

He introduced chapter 13 with a promise --- “I shew unto you a more excellent way” --- and then he spent the entire chapter demonstrating what that way is. The structure is telling:

Verses 1-3 establish the premise. A person can exercise every gift with maximum intensity and still be nothing without love. Tongues without love: sounding brass, a tinkling cymbal. Prophecy without love: nothing. Knowledge without love: nothing. Even giving away all possessions, even martyrdom --- without love, these profit nothing. This is a radical claim. The most spectacular spiritual achievements, devoid of love, have zero value in Paul’s accounting. The Corinthians who were most impressed by tongues and most proud of their gifts needed to hear precisely this.

Verses 4-7 describe what love looks like. Not an abstraction, not a feeling, but a series of concrete behaviors: patient, kind, not envious, not self-promoting, not easily angered, not keeping accounts of wrongs, not rejoicing in evil but rejoicing in truth, bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things. These are descriptions of how a person acts toward specific people in specific situations --- including, presumably, toward people who disagree about to teleion.

Verses 8-13 provide the theological argument. Love outlasts everything. Gifts are for now; love is forever. Whatever “the perfect” is, love survives its arrival intact. Love does not belong to the partial age any more than it belongs to the perfect age --- it belongs to both, because it belongs to the nature of God himself.

And he answered his own question without a trace of ambiguity:

“And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” --- 1 Corinthians 13:13 (KJV)

The gifts are temporary. Love is not. The gifts are partial. Love is not. Whatever “the perfect” is, it will not supersede love. It will be love’s fullest expression.

This means that the debate about to teleion must itself be conducted in accordance with the commandment that the passage exists to establish. A cessationist who uses this text to dismiss charismatic brothers as credulous has failed the love test. A continuationist who uses it to dismiss cessationist concerns as faithlessness has failed the unity test. A technically correct interpretation held with contempt for those who disagree is a contradiction in terms, measured by the standard of the very chapter we are interpreting. Jesus prayed for those who would believe through the apostolic witness --- every one of us --- “that they may be made perfect in one” (John 17:23, KJV). The word is teteleiōmenoi (τετελειωμένοι), the same root. Whatever “the perfect” is, Jesus prays that its character will mark his people in their unity.

The early church read 1 Corinthians 13 with its eyes on the horizon --- hopeful rather than polemical, less interested in which gifts were ending than in what was coming to replace them. Chapter 5 closes with that posture in full; it is worth arriving there.

Whatever “the perfect” is, it has not yet come. We are still, every one of us, seeing through a glass. That is precisely why love is the command of the hour.

And that --- Paul would want us to know --- is not the partial truth. That is the whole of it.