• The Excellence of Love

  • 1 If I speak with the tongues of mankind and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
  • 2 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 away all my possessions to charity, and if I surrender my body so that I may glory, but do not have love, it does me no good.
  • 4 Love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous; love does not brag, it is not arrogant.
  • 5 It does not act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit; it is not provoked, does not keep an account of a wrong suffered,
  • 6 it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
  • 7 it keeps every confidence, it 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 with; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away with.
  • 9 For we know in part and prophesy in part;
  • 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away with.
  • 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 faith, hope, and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.