³¹ But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.^(A)

The Gift of Love

13 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.^{(A) 3} If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast^[a] but do not have love, I gain nothing.^(B)

⁴ Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant^{(C) 5} or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs;^{(D) 6} it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.^{(E) 7} It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.^(F)

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.^{(G) 13} And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.

Gifts of Prophecy and Tongues

14 Pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts and especially that you may prophesy.^(H)

³⁹ So, my brothers and sisters, strive to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues,^(A)

⁶ “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.^(A)

⁸ More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ^(A)