1 Corinthians 13
About 1 CorinthiansWritten by AI
First Corinthians is a letter from Paul to a church he planted in Corinth, a busy, wealthy and diverse port city in Greece. Paul wrote it from Ephesus, around AD 54 or 55, and few doubt that it is his. It answers bad news he had heard and questions the church sent him in a letter of their own.
The church was gifted but divided. Members lined up behind favorite leaders, took each other to court, argued over sex, marriage and food offered to idols, and turned worship and the Lord's Supper into occasions for showing off. Paul takes the issues one at a time, often starting with "Now about."
Watch how every answer comes back to the cross and to love. Chapter 13 is the heart of the letter, and chapter 15, on the resurrection, is its great climax: “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.”
Before you read 1 Corinthians 13Written by AI
Love is the more excellent way. Without love, even tongues, prophecy, knowledge and great sacrifice amount to nothing. Paul describes what love does and does not do, and says gifts will pass away but love never ends. Read it in context: it is aimed at a gifted church that was failing to love.
Love
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a ringing gong or a clanging cymbal. If 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. If I give all I possess to the poor and exult in the surrender of my body, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no account of wrongs. Love takes no pleasure in evil, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love 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. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial passes away.
When 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. Now 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.
And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love.