1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all the secret truths and mysteries and possess all knowledge, and if I have faith so that I can remove mountains, but have not love I am nothing.
3 Even if I dole out all that I have [to the poor in providing] food, and if I surrender my body to be burned or in order that I may glory, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love endures long and is patient and kind; love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy, is not boastful or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily.
5 It is not conceited; it is not rude and does not act unbecomingly. Love does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it.
6 It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail.
7 Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything.
8 Love never fails. As for prophecy, it will be fulfilled and pass away; as for tongues, they will be destroyed and cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
9 For our knowledge is fragmentary, and our prophecy is fragmentary.
10 But when the complete and perfect comes, the incomplete and imperfect will vanish away.
11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; now that I have become a man, I am done with childish ways and have put them aside.
12 For now we are looking in a mirror that gives only a dim reflection, but then we shall see in reality and face to face! Now I know in part, but then I shall know and understand fully and clearly, even in the same manner as I have been fully and clearly known and understood.
13 And so faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Amplified Bible, Classic Edition (AMPC)
Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation