The Supremacy of Love

1If I speak in the languages of humans and angels but have no love, I have become a reverberating gong or a clashing cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can understand all secrets and every form of knowledge, and if I have absolute faith so as to move mountains but have no love, I am nothing. 3Even if I give away everything that I have and sacrifice myself,a but have no love, I gain nothing.

4Love is always patient;

love is always kind;

love is never envious

or arrogant with pride.

Nor is she conceited,

5and she is never rude;

she never thinks just of herself

or ever gets annoyed.

She never is resentful;

6is never glad with sin;

she’s always glad to side with truth,

and pleased that truth will win.b

7She bears up under everything;

believes the best in all;

there is no limit to her hope,

and never will she fall.

8Love never fails. Now if there are prophecies, they will be done away with. If there are languages, they will cease. If there is knowledge, it will be done away with. 9For what we know is incomplete and what we prophesy is incomplete. 10But when what is completec comes, then what is incomplete will be done away with.

11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, and reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up my childish ways. 12Now we see only an indistinct image in a mirror, but then we will be face to face. Now what I know is incomplete, but then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

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