Scripture Reading – 1st Corinthians 13:1-13
The Gift of Love
1
If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging
cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have
all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. 3
If I give away all my
possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant
5 or rude. It does not insist on
its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; 6
it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but
rejoices in the truth. 7
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as
for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, 10 but
when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I
thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For
now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part;
then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love remain, these
three, and the greatest of these is love.