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From the Blue Letter Bible
New Living Translation
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| If I could speak in any language in heaven or on earth[fn1] but didn't love others, I would only be making meaningless noise like a loud gong or a clanging cymbal. | |
| If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I knew all the mysteries of the future and knew everything about everything, but didn't love others, what good would I be? And if I had the gift of faith so that I could speak to a mountain and make it move, without love I would be no good to anybody. | |
| If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it;[fn2] but if I didn't love others, I would be of no value whatsoever. | |
| Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud | |
| or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. | |
| It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. | |
| Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. | |
| Love will last forever, but prophecy and speaking in unknown languages[fn3] and special knowledge will all disappear. | |
| Now we know only a little, and even the gift of prophecy reveals little! | |
| But when the end comes, these special gifts will all disappear. | |
| It's like this: When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child does. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. | |
| Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.[fn4] All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me now. | |
| There are three things that will endure-faith, hope, and love-and the greatest of these is love. | |
| Footnotes: | |
Greek in tongues of people and angels. |
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Some manuscripts read and even gave my body to be burned. |
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Or in tongues. |
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Greek see face to face. |
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| 1 Corinthians 13 | ||
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Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.
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