If I speak in the words of men and angels but don’t love anyone, I am only a meaningless noise. If I speak God’s word with power and reveal all his mysteries, and if I have a faith that can communicate with mountains and make them move but don’t love the people around me, I am nothing. If I give everything I have to the poor and even allow myself to be burned at the stake but don’t love the people around me—I could boast about it, but I wouldn’t gain a thing. No matter what I say, what I believe or what I do, I’m nothing without love.
Love is patient, love is kind. It never envies, it doesn’t boast and it isn’t proud. It’s not rude, self-seeking or easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes and always perseveres. Love never fails.
But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will be forgotten. We now know only a portion of the truth and what we say about God is always incomplete, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult I put my childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in an old mirror; soon we will see clearly. Now I know in part; soon I will know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three things remain for us to do: believe in God, hope in him and love. The greatest of these is love.