1 Corinthians 13

Love: The Superior Way

¹If I speak human or angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.²³If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.⁴⁵And if I give away all my possessions, and if I give over my body in order to boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.⁶

⁷Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant,⁸⁹is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs.¹⁰¹¹Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth.¹²¹³It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.¹⁴

¹⁵Love 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.¹⁶¹⁷For we know in part, and we prophesy in part,¹⁸¹⁹but when the perfect comes, the partial will come to an end.²⁰²¹When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put aside childish things.²²²³For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, as I am fully known.²⁴²⁵Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love — but the greatest of these is love.²⁶