1Cor 13 | ISV | STEP | The Supremacy of Love If I speak in the tongues of humans and angels but have no love, I have become a reverberating gong or a clashing cymbal.

1 Corinthians 13

1 The Supremacy of Love

If I speak in the tongues of humans and angels but have no love, I have become a reverberating gong or a clashing cymbal. 2 If 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.Matt 7:22; 17:20; Mark 11:23; Luke 17:6; 1Cor 12:8-10, 28; 14:1 3 Even if I give away all that I have and surrender my body so that I may boast ^{▼▼Other mss. read my body to be burned} but have no love, I get nothing out of it.Matt 6:1-2

4 Love is always patient,Prov 10:12; 1Pet 4:8

Love is always kind,

Love is never envious

Or vaunted up with pride.

Nor is she conceited,

5 And never is she rude,1Cor 10:24; Phil 2:4

Never does she think of self

Or ever get annoyed.

She never is resentful,

6 Is never glad with sin,Ps 10:3; Rom 1:32; 2John 1:4

But always glad to side with truth,

Whene'er the truth should win. ^{▼▼Lit. but rejoices in the truth}

7 She bears up under everything,Rom 15:1; Gal 6:2; 2Tim 2:24

Believes the best in all,

There is no limit to her hope,

And never will she fall.

8 Love never fails. Now if there are prophecies, they will be done away with. If there are tongues, they will cease. If there is knowledge, it will be done away with. 9 For what we know is incomplete and what we prophesy is incomplete.1Cor 8:2 10 But when what is complete ^{▼▼Or perfect} comes, then what is incomplete will be done away with.

11 When 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. 12 Now we see only a blurred reflection in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now what I know is incomplete, but then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.Matt 18:10; 2Cor 3:18; 5:7; Phil 3:12; 1John 3:2

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