more excellent way
Definition
The more excellent way refers to 1Cor. 12:31 (“I show you a more excellent way”), where Paul points to love (agape) as the highest good — surpassing all charismatic gifts (tongues, prophecy, knowledge, healing). The way is not an alternative to gifts but their fulfillment and direction; it is the “highway” on which gifts reach their telos.
In George Warnock’s The Vision and the Appointment (b9), the more excellent way is the central theme of pneumatology. Not gifts for their own sake, nor spiritual experiences, but love as the aim. Without this orientation, gifts devolve into display, experiences into narcissism, and spirituality into selfishness.
George Warnock (b9)
Warnock shows that Paul’s movement from 1Cor. 12-14 always points toward agape:
“The more excellent way is not an alternative to spiritual gifts — it is the highway on which the gifts are meant to travel. Love is the atmosphere in which all God’s gifts bloom and reach their appointed destination.”
(The Vision and the Appointment, Pneumatology, Chapter 5)
The implication: gifts without love are noise and smoke. Gifts as services (diakonia) toward love transform into authentic charismata. Warnock states this not as moral lesson but as pneumatological reality.