• The Excellence of Love

  • 1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
  • 2 And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
  • 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
  • 4 Love is patient, love is kind, is not jealous, does not brag, is not puffed up;
  • 5 it does not act unbecomingly, does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered;
  • 6 it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
  • 7 it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
  • 8 Love never fails, but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.
  • 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
  • 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.
  • 11 When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child. When I became a man, I did away with childish things.
  • 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.
  • 13 But now abide faith, hope, love—these three; but the greatest of these is love.