If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels,
but have not love,
I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 And if I have prophetic powers,
and understand 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 I have,
and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love,
I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient and
kind;
love is not jealous or boastful;
5 it is not arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable or resentful;
6 it does not rejoice
at wrong,
but rejoices in the right.
7 Love bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends; as for prophecies,
they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease;
as for knowledge, it will pass
away.
9 For our knowledge is imperfect and
our prophecy is imperfect;
10 but when the perfect comes,
the imperfect 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 gave up childish ways.
12 For now we see in a mirror dimly,
but then face to face. Now I know in part;
then I shall understand fully,
even as I have been fully understood.
13 So faith, hope,love abide, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
