If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

And if I have prophetic powers - that is, the gift of interpreting the divine will and purpose; and understand all the secret truths and mysteries and possess all knowledge, and if I have faith so that I can remove mountains, but have not love I am nothing - a useless nobody.

Even if I dole out all that I have to give food to the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love endures long and is patient and kind; love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy; is not boastful or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily.

It is not conceited - arrogant and inflated with pride; it is not rude, and does not act unbecomingly. Love does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it - pays no attention to a suffered wrong.

It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail.

Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstance and it endures everything without weakening.

Love never fails - never fades out or becomes obsolete or comes to an end. As for prophecy, it will be fulfilled and pass away; as for tongues, they will be destroyed and cease; as for knowledge, it will be superseded by truth.

For our knowledge is fragmentary and our prophecy is fragmentary.

But when the complete and perfect comes, the incomplete and imperfect will vanish away - become antiquated, void and superseded.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; now that I have become a man, I am done with childish ways and have put them aside.

For now we are looking in a mirror that gives only a dim reflection of reality as in a riddle or an enigma, but then, when perfection comes, we shall see in reality and face to face! Now I know in part; but then I shall know and understand fully and clearly, even in the same manner as I have been fully and clearly known and understood by God.

And so, faith, hope, love abide; these three, but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:1-13)