1 Corinthians 13 - The Text-Critical English New Testament

The Way of Love

¹ If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I am 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 move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

³ If I give away all my possessions to feed others, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but do not have love, I receive no benefit.

⁴ Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not puffed up

⁵ or rude. It does not seek its own way, it is not irritable, and it keeps no record of wrongs.

⁶ It does not rejoice over unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth.

⁷ It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

⁸ Love never fails. 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.

⁹ Now we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

¹⁰ Yet when the perfect comes, the partial will come to an end.

¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, and I reasoned like a child. But when I became a man, I set aside childish ways.

¹² For now we see in a mirror by means of an obscure image, but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known.

¹³ And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.