Love Defined

¹If I speak with the tongues of humans or angels, but don’t have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

²If I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith that can move mountains, but don’t have love, I am nothing.

³If I give away all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body that I may boast, but don’t have love, it profits me nothing.

⁴Love is patient. Love is kind and not envious. Love doesn’t brag, and it isn’t arrogant.

⁵It doesn’t behave inappropriately, it isn’t self-seeking, it isn’t easily provoked, it doesn’t count up wrongs.

⁶It isn’t glad about injustice, but rejoices with the truth.

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

⁸Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will be ended. Where there are tongues, they will cease. Where there is knowledge, it will be ended.

⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part,

¹⁰but when completeness comes, then the partial will come to an end.

¹¹When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. Now that I have become an adult, I have ended childish ways.

¹²For 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 am also fully known.

¹³But now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.