1 Corinthians

Chapter 13

Love as the Measure of Every Gift

Paul pauses the discussion of spiritual gifts to show that without love even the most striking speech, knowledge, faith, sacrifice, and suffering amount to nothing. He then describes love's patient, truthful, enduring character and sets it above gifts that belong only to the church's present partial knowledge. The chapter closes by naming faith, hope, and love as what remains, with love standing greatest among them.

This chapter stands at the center of Paul's teaching on spiritual life in Corinth. It does not replace the discussion of gifts, but gives the measure by which every gift, ambition, and practice in the church must be judged.

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1 Corinthians 13

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vv. 1-13

Love

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I¹f 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.

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. 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.

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01vv. 1-13LovePaul says that the most remarkable gifts and even costly acts of surrender are empty without love. He then names what love looks like in practice and why it surpasses prophecy, tongues, and knowledge: love belongs not merely to the church's partial present, but to what endures when the partial gives way.