1 Corinthians 13

1Suppose I speak in the tongues of human beings, and of angels too. If I do not have love, I am no more than booming bronze or a clashing cymbal. 2I may be able to prophesy, and know every mystery and everything there is to know; I may have all the faith there is, enough to move mountains; but if I do not have love, I am nothing. 3I may hand out everything I own as food for others; I may hand over my body to the flames; but if I do not have love, it does me no good at all.

4Love is patient; love is kind. Love does not envy, does not show off, is not puffed up. 5It does not behave shamefully, it does not look for its own advantage, it does not lose its temper, and it does not keep a tally of wrongs. 6It takes no pleasure in wrongdoing, but shares the joy of the truth. 7There is nothing love cannot bear, no time when it stops believing or hoping, nothing it cannot endure.

8Love never comes to an end. But prophecies will be done away with; tongues will fall silent; knowledge will be done away with. 9For what we know is only partial, and our prophesying is partial too. 10But when what is complete arrives, what is partial will be done away with. 11When I was a child, I talked as a child talks, thought as a child thinks, and reasoned as a child reasons. But I am a man now, and I have done away with childish ways. 12For now we see by means of a mirror, as if in a riddle, but then we will see face to face. Now my knowledge is partial, but then I will know fully, as God has fully known me. 13As things are, then, three things last: faith, hope and love. And of these three, the greatest is love.