Tap any verse number for what that verse means.
1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a ringing gong or a clanging cymbal.
2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have absolute faith so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3If I give all I possess to the poor and exult in the surrender of my body, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no account of wrongs.
6Love takes no pleasure in evil, but rejoices in the truth.
7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be restrained; where there is knowledge, it will be dismissed.
9For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
10but when the perfect comes, the partial passes away.
11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I set aside childish ways.
12Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love.
Understand This
1 Corinthians 13, explained
What 1 Corinthians 13 is saying
Situated between chapters 12 and 14 on spiritual gifts, this hymn to agape functions as the epistle's theological center of gravity. Without love, the most spectacular gifts—tongues, prophecy, mountain-moving faith, martyrdom—are nothing. Love's attributes are described in fifteen verbal clauses, and its permanence is contrasted with the partial and temporary nature of current knowledge and prophecy.
The background behind it
While sometimes read in isolation as a philosophical or romantic text, this chapter is fundamentally ecclesiological—written to a specific community abusing specific gifts. The literary form draws on Jewish wisdom hymns and Hellenistic encomia but serves a distinctly christological purpose; many scholars note that substituting 'Christ' for 'love' reveals a portrait of Jesus.
Themes running underneath
Agape is not sentiment but the governing virtue that gives all other spiritual gifts their purpose and legitimacy. The eschatological horizon—'when the perfect comes'—situates present spiritual experience as partial and anticipatory. The triad of faith, hope, and love, with love as the greatest, provides a theological hierarchy of abiding realities.
Why it still matters
This chapter stands as a permanent corrective to any spirituality that prizes spectacular experience over costly love. It redefines greatness in the community of faith.
Scripture text: Berean Standard Bible — used by permission, Bible Hub.