Love Defined
1 Corinthians 13If I speak with the tongues of humans or angels, but don’t have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith that can move mountains, but don’t have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body that I may boast, but don’t have love, it profits me nothing.
Love is patient. Love is kind and not envious. Love doesn’t brag, and it isn’t arrogant. It doesn’t behave inappropriately, it isn’t self-seeking, it isn’t easily provoked, it doesn’t count up wrongs. It isn’t glad about injustice, but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will be ended. Where there are tongues, they will cease. Where there is knowledge, it will be ended. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, then the partial come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I thought like a child. Now that I have become an adult, I have ended childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, even as I am also fully known. But now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.