1 Corinthians 13:9-10 - Homiletics

Partial knowledge.

"We know in part." Partial knowledge is of four kinds.

I. There is a partial knowledge that is a NECESSITY . The knowledge of the highest intelligent creature must by the necessity of nature be partial. What he knows is as nothing compared with the knowable, still less with the unknowable. "Who by searching can find out God?"

II. There is a partial knowledge that is a CALAMITY . Our necessary ignorance is not a calamity; on the contrary, it is a benediction. The necessarily unknown acts as a stimulus to our intellectual faculties. But our ignorance of things that are really knowable must be ever more or less a disadvantage. Ignorance of true ethics, of political economy, agriculture, laws of health, beneficent rules of conduct, true religion, entails incalculable injuries. Ignorance of these things is the night, the winter, of intellect.

III. There is a partial knowledge that is SINFUL . A partial knowledge of our moral condition, the claims of God, the means of redemption, where a fuller knowledge is attainable, is a sin. Ignorance of Christ in a land of churches and Bibles, is a sin, and that of no ordinary heinousness. It is a calamity to the heathen; it is a crime to us.

IV. There is a partial knowledge that is BENEFICENT . Our ignorance of our future is a blessing. Were the whole of our future to be spread out before us, with all its trials and sorrows, and all the circumstances connected with our death, life would become intolerable; it is mercy that has woven the veil that hides the future.

CONCLUSION . Our partial knowledge should make us humble, studious, undogmatic. devout.