[1] If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
[2] If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing.
[3] If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
[4] Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud
[5] or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.
[6] It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.
[7] Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
[8] Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever!
[9] Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture!
[10] But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.
[11] When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.
[12] Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.
[13] Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.