1 Corinthians 13 - Tree of Life Version

The Superior Way of Love

¹ 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.

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 have not love, I am nothing.

³ If I give away all that I own and if I hand over my body so I might boast but have not love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not brag, it is not puffed up,

⁵ it does not behave inappropriately, it does not seek its own way, it is not provoked, it keeps no account of wrong,

⁶ it does not rejoice over injustice but rejoices in the truth;

⁷ it bears all things, it believes all things, it hopes all things, it endures all things.

⁸ 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.

⁹ 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.