1 Cô-rinh-tô 13

Without love, nothing

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.^{a 2}I 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.^b

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.^{c 7}There is nothing love cannot bear, no time when it stops believing or hoping, nothing it cannot endure.^d

Love never comes to an end

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.^{e 11}When 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.^{f 13}As things are, then, three things last: faith, hope and love. And of these three, the greatest is love.^g