The Greatest of These Is Love

[Guest guest]

Earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you still a more excellent

way. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a

noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 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 have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I

deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient

and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does

not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not

rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes

all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends; as for

prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for

knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is

imperfect; but when the perfect

comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child,

I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up

childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I

know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully

understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these

is love.

 

Saint Paul ~~~~ 1 Corinthians 12: 31 — 13:13