Love
1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a ringing gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have absolute faith so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and exult in the surrender of my body, but have not love, I gain nothing.
- 1CO 13:1[NOTABLE]Read at almost every wedding, but Paul wrote it to a church at war with itself over gifts and status. Without love, even the greatest gift is just noise. Love here is something you do, not just something you feel.
4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no account of wrongs. 6Love takes no pleasure in evil, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be restrained; where there is knowledge, it will be dismissed. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when the perfect comes, the partial passes away.
- 1CO 13:8[NOTE]WHEN THE PERFECT COMES. Cessationists say the perfect is the finished Bible, so tongues and prophecy stopped once it was written. Continuists say the perfect comes when Jesus returns, because then we shall see face to face, 13:12, and Paul already said the church would not lack any gift while it waits for Jesus to come back, 1:7. Both sides love the Bible. Either way, love never fails.
11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I set aside childish ways. 12Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love.