1 Corinthians 13
13
The way of perfection — love
1-11And the way I will show you is the way of perfection. I may have knowledge, but it is still fragmentary, I read as it were on a mirror the reflections which I cannot yet quite make out. I prophesy partially, not fully and perfectly, and so is it with other gifts of the kind, tongues and healing and so on. These are, as it were, but the infancy of the Spirit, its first faint babblings and lispings, but love is full, complete, perfect. Here and now it is the all-inclusive, towards which all these other gifts point, and when love is fully come, there will be an end of these partial utterances of the Spirit. Therefore love is above all things necessary. What are all these other gifts without it? What is the speaking with tongues, the utterances of men or angels, without it? Merely a repetition of the old religions with the clashing of cymbals and beating of gongs. And what does it avail to prophesy, to have an intellect which can grapple with all mysteries and knowledge, and to have so powerful a faith as to be able to work miracles with it, if love is not the crown, the aim, the end of it all? It is all worthless. And to give away all your possessions without love, and to embrace martyrdom and the stake without love — how empty, how vain and worthless! For love includes all that is good — all patience, kindness, tolerance, forbearance, faith and hope; and love is antidote to all evil, all jealousy, and boasting, all ugliness, selfishness, ill-temper, evil thinking. Love can never take any pleasure in these things, the joy of love comes from truth. And so it shall come to pass that all other things will change, pass, and be no more, but love will remain. All that is partial, imperfect, incomplete must have an end, but love will never fail. 12In that perfect day of love we shall see face to face, we shall know then as now we are known, 13and though now we see faith, hope and love, these three, abiding with us, the greatest of them is love.
Currently Selected:
1 Corinthians 13: GWC
Highlight
Share
Copy
Want to have your highlights saved across all your devices? Sign up or sign in
Translated in 1916, published in 1937.
1 Corinthians 13
13
Love: The Superior Way
1If I speak human or angelic tongues#13:1 languages, also in v. 8 but do not have love,#Jn 13:35; 1Jn 4:7–12 I am a noisy gong#Mt 10:9 or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy#1Co 14:1,3–6,22–39; Eph 4:11; 1Th 5:20 and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can move mountains#Mt 17:20 but do not have love, I am nothing. 3And if I give away all my possessions, and if I give over my body in order to boast#13:3 Other mss read body to be burned but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4Love is patient,#1Th 5:14 love is kind. Love does not envy,#Nm 25:13; Gl 4:17 is not boastful, is not arrogant,#1Co 4:6 5is not rude, is not self-seeking,#Mk 10:45; Php 2:4 is not irritable,#Ac 17:16 and does not keep a record of wrongs. 6Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth.#Ps 119:142; Jn 8:14; 14:6 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures#Jms 1:12 all things.
8Love never ends.#Mt 7:25,27; Lk 6:49; 11:17; 13:4; 16:17; Ac 15:16; Heb 11:30; Rv 11:13; 16:19 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. 9For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, 10but when the perfect comes, 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. When I became a man, I put aside childish things. 12For now we see only a reflection#13:12 Lit we see indirectly as in a mirror, but then face to face.#1Jn 3:2 Now I know in part, but then I will know fully,#Pr 2:6; Jn 17:3; 1Jn 4:8 as I am fully known.#1Co 8:3; Gl 4:9 13Now these three remain: faith, hope,#1Th 1:3 and love — but the greatest of these is love.
Currently Selected:
:
Highlight
Share
Copy
Want to have your highlights saved across all your devices? Sign up or sign in
© 2017 Holman Bible Publishers