¹If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have selfless love, I have become a sounding copper or a clanging cymbal.

²And if I have prophecy and understand all the mysteries and all the knowledge, and if I have all trust, so as to remove mountains, but do not have selfless love, I am nothing.

³Even if I give away as food all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have selfless love, I derive no profit.

⁴Selfless love is patient, is kind; selfless love is not envious, selfless love is not boastful, is not puffed up,

⁵does not act unbecomingly, does not seek the things of its own, is not easily provoked, keeps no account of wrongs,

⁶does not delight at the unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth,

⁷bears all things, trusts all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸Selfless love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will be abolished; whether tongues, they will cease; whether knowledge, it will be abolished.

⁹For in part we know and in part we prophesy;

¹⁰but when the perfect may come, then the in part will be done away.

¹¹When I was a child, I was speaking like a child, I was thinking like a child, I was reasoning like a child; but now that I became a man, I have done away with the things of the child.

¹²For presently we see through a glass in obscurity, but then face to face; presently I know in part, but then I will know fully, even as also I have been fully known.

¹³But now these three abide: trust, hope, selfless love; but the greatest of these is selfless love.