| 13:1 | IF I speak with the eloquence of men and of angels, but have no love, I become no more than blaring brass or crashing cymbal. |
| 13:2 | If I have the gift of foretelling the future and hold in my mind not only all human knowledge but the very secrets of God, and if I also have that absolute faith which can move mountains, but have no love, I amount to nothing at all. |
| 13:3 | If I dispose of all that I possess, yes, even if I give my own body to be burned, but have no love, I achieve precisely nothing. |
| 13:4 | This love of which I speak is slow to lose patienceit looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive: it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance. |
| 13:5 | Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not touchy. It does not keep account of evil |
| 13:6 | or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it shares the joy of those who live by the truth. |
| 13:7 | Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. |
| 13:8 | Love never fails. For if there are prophecies they will be fulfilled and done with, if there are "tongues" the need for them will disappear, if there is knowledge it will be swallowed up in truth. |
| 13:9 | For our knowledge is always incomplete and our prophecy is always incomplete, |
| 13:10 | and when the complete comes, that is the end of the incomplete. |
| 13:11 | When I was a little child I talked and felt and thought like a little child. Now that I am a man I have finished with childish things. |
| 13:12 | At present we are men looking at puzzling reflections in a mirror. The time will come when we shall see reality whole and face to face! At present all I know is a little fraction of the truth, but the time will come when I shall know it as fully as God has known me! |
| 13:13 | In this life we have three lasting qualitiesfaith, hope and love. But the greatest of them is love. |
1 Korintus 13 - Philips NT in Modern English
