1 Corinthians 13
13
Love
1What if I could speak
all languages of humans
and even of angels?
If I did not love others,
I would be nothing more
than a noisy gong
or a clanging cymbal.
2 #
Mt 17.20,21; 21.21; Mk 11.23. What if I could prophesy
and understand all mysteries
and all knowledge?
And what if I had faith
that moved mountains?
I would be nothing,
unless I loved others.
3What if I gave away all
that I owned
and let myself
be burned alive?#13.3 and let myself be burned alive: Some manuscripts have “so that I could brag.”
I would gain nothing,
unless I loved others.
4Love is patient and kind,
never jealous, boastful,
proud, or 5rude.
Love isn't selfish
or quick tempered.
It doesn't keep a record
of wrongs that others do.
6Love rejoices in the truth,
but not in evil.
7Love is always supportive,
loyal, hopeful,
and trusting.
8Love never fails!
Everyone who prophesies
will stop,
and unknown languages
will no longer
be spoken.
All that we know
will be forgotten.
9We don't know everything,
and our prophecies
are not complete.
10But what is perfect
will someday appear,
and what isn't perfect
will then disappear.
11When we were children,
we thought and reasoned
as children do.
But when we grew up,
we quit our childish ways.
12Now all we can see of God
is like a cloudy picture
in a mirror.
Later we will see him
face to face.
We don't know everything,
but then we will,
just as God completely
understands us.
13For now there are faith,
hope, and love.
But of these three,
the greatest is love.
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Contemporary English Version, Second Edition (CEV®)
© 2006 American Bible Society. All rights reserved.
1 Corinthians 13
13
The way of perfection — love
1-11And the way I will show you is the way of perfection. I may have knowledge, but it is still fragmentary, I read as it were on a mirror the reflections which I cannot yet quite make out. I prophesy partially, not fully and perfectly, and so is it with other gifts of the kind, tongues and healing and so on. These are, as it were, but the infancy of the Spirit, its first faint babblings and lispings, but love is full, complete, perfect. Here and now it is the all-inclusive, towards which all these other gifts point, and when love is fully come, there will be an end of these partial utterances of the Spirit. Therefore love is above all things necessary. What are all these other gifts without it? What is the speaking with tongues, the utterances of men or angels, without it? Merely a repetition of the old religions with the clashing of cymbals and beating of gongs. And what does it avail to prophesy, to have an intellect which can grapple with all mysteries and knowledge, and to have so powerful a faith as to be able to work miracles with it, if love is not the crown, the aim, the end of it all? It is all worthless. And to give away all your possessions without love, and to embrace martyrdom and the stake without love — how empty, how vain and worthless! For love includes all that is good — all patience, kindness, tolerance, forbearance, faith and hope; and love is antidote to all evil, all jealousy, and boasting, all ugliness, selfishness, ill-temper, evil thinking. Love can never take any pleasure in these things, the joy of love comes from truth. And so it shall come to pass that all other things will change, pass, and be no more, but love will remain. All that is partial, imperfect, incomplete must have an end, but love will never fail. 12In that perfect day of love we shall see face to face, we shall know then as now we are known, 13and though now we see faith, hope and love, these three, abiding with us, the greatest of them is love.
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Translated in 1916, published in 1937.