1 Corinthians 13 — The Love Chapter
Paul's hymn to love — read at weddings, but written to a divided church about how to live together.
1If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal.
2And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.
4Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil;
6rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth;
7beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall be done away.
9For we know in part, and we prophesy in part;
10but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.
11When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things.
12For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known.
13But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Answering the Text
1 Corinthians 13 is called the love chapter because it contains the New Testament's most concentrated and lyrical description of agapē — Christian love. Paul defines what love is (patient, kind), what it is not (envious, boastful, proud), and what it does (bears, believes, hopes, endures). No other single chapter in the Bible so completely portrays the character of love.
Paul the apostle, writing to the church in Corinth from Ephesus around AD 53-55. The chapter sits in the middle of his teaching on spiritual gifts (chapters 12-14). It is not a stand-alone poem but Paul's argument that no spiritual gift has value without love.
The word is agapē (ἀγάπη). It is not romantic love (erōs) or friendship (philia) but self-giving, covenantal love that wills the good of the other regardless of return. The same word describes God's love for the world (John 3:16) and Christ's love for the church (Ephesians 5:25).
Not directly. Paul wrote it about love in the gathered church — how Christians treat each other when they exercise spiritual gifts. But because biblical love is one in essence, the description applies beautifully to marriage, parenting, friendship, and any relationship the believer enters. Hence its perennial use in weddings.
'And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.' Paul names love as the greatest of the abiding virtues because faith and hope are temporary — they reach their fulfilment when we see God face to face. Love alone passes unchanged into eternity.
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