The Gift of Love
13 If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.(A)3 If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.(B)
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant(C)5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs;(D)6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.(E)7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.(F)
8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.(G)13 And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.
Footnotes
- 13.3
Cross references
- 13.2 : Mt 7.22; 17.20; 21.21; Acts 13.1; 1 Cor 12.9; 14.1
- 13.3 : Mt 6.2
- 13.4 : Prov 10.12; 1 Pet 4.8
- 13.5 : 1 Cor 10.24; 2 Cor 5.19
- 13.6 : 2 Jn 4
- 13.7 : Rom 15.1; 1 Cor 9.12
- 13.12 : 1 Cor 8.3; 2 Cor 5.7; Phil 3.12; 1 Jn 3.2
