³¹ But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.^(A)

The Gift of Love

13 If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have 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 do not have love, I am nothing.^{(B) 3} If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast^[a] but do not have love, I gain nothing.^(C)

⁴ Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant^{(D) 5} or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs;^{(E) 6} it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.^{(F) 7} It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.^(G)

⁸ Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. ⁹ For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, ¹⁰ but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. ¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. ¹² For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.^{(H) 13} And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.

God Is Love

⁷ Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.^{(A) 8} Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. ⁹ God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.^{(B) 10} In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.^{(C) 11} Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.^{(D) 12} No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.^(E)