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.
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1 Corinthians 13: GWC
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Translated in 1916, published in 1937.
1 Corinthians 13
13
1 If I were to speak in the language of men, or of Angels, yet not have charity, I would be like a clanging bell or a crashing cymbal.
2 And if I have prophecy, and learn every mystery, and obtain all knowledge, and possess all faith, so that I could move mountains, yet not have charity, then I am nothing.
3 And if I distribute all my goods in order to feed the poor, and if I hand over my body to be burned, yet not have charity, it offers me nothing.
4 Charity is patient, is kind. Charity does not envy, does not act wrongly, is not inflated.
5 Charity is not ambitious, does not seek for itself, is not provoked to anger, devises no evil.
6 Charity does not rejoice over iniquity, but rejoices in truth.
7 Charity suffers all, believes all, hopes all, endures all.
8 Charity is never torn away, even if prophecies pass away, or languages cease, or knowledge is destroyed.
9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part.
10 But when the perfect arrives, the imperfect passes away.
11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I understood like a child, I thought like a child. But when I became a man, I put aside the things of a child.
12 Now we see through a glass darkly. But then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know, even as I am known.
13 But for now, these three continue: faith, hope, and charity. And the greatest of these is charity.
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