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The Superior Way of Love

13 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels
but have not love,
    I have become a noisy gong
    or a clanging cymbal.

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 have not love,
    I am nothing.

If I give away all that I own
and if I hand over my body so I might boast[a]
but have not love,
    I gain nothing.

Love is patient,
love is kind,
it does not envy,
it does not brag,
it is not puffed up,
it does not behave inappropriately,
it does not seek its own way,
it is not provoked,
it keeps no account of wrong,
it does not rejoice over injustice
    but rejoices in the truth;
it bears all things,
it believes all things,
it hopes all things,
it endures all things.

Love never fails—
but where there are prophecies,
    they will pass away;
where there are tongues,
    they will cease;
where there is knowledge,
    it will pass away.

For we know in part
and we prophesy in part;
10 but when that which is perfect has come,
    then that which is partial will pass away.

11 When 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 away 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,
    even as I have been fully known.

13 But now these three remain—
    faith, hope, and love.
    And the greatest of these is love.

Footnotes

  1. 1 Corinthians 13:3 Other mss. say be burned.