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³¹But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.

The Gift of Love

13If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ²And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast,^* but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ⁷It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. ⁹For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; ¹⁰but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. ¹¹When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. ¹²For now we see in a mirror, dimly,^* but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. ¹³And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Psalm 33

The Greatness and Goodness of God

¹ Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous.
   Praise befits the upright.
² Praise the Lord with the lyre;
   make melody to him with the harp of ten strings.
³ Sing to him a new song;
   play skilfully on the strings, with loud shouts.

⁴ For the word of the Lord is upright,
   and all his work is done in faithfulness.
⁵ He loves righteousness and justice;
   the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.

¹² Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord,
   the people whom he has chosen as his heritage.

²² Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us,
   even as we hope in you.

31 ‘To what then will I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? ³²They are like children sitting in the market-place and calling to one another,
“We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
   we wailed, and you did not weep.”
³³For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, “He has a demon”; ³⁴the Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!” ³⁵Nevertheless, wisdom is vindicated by all her children.’