Love Is Patient, Love Is Kind: 1 Corinthians 13 Explained

The heart of 1 Corinthians 13

The chapter is 13 verses long and takes about two minutes to read aloud. This is its center, in the World English Bible:

“Love is patient and is kind. Love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud, doesn’t behave itself inappropriately, doesn’t seek its own way, is not provoked, takes no account of evil; doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will be done away with. Where there are various languages, they will cease. Where there is knowledge, it will be done away with.” (1 Corinthians 13:4–8).

The last verse names what stays. “But now faith, hope, and love remain”, Paul writes, and then he ranks them: “The greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13).

Why Paul wrote it: a church in pieces

Paul had started the church in Corinth, a busy Greek port city, a few years earlier. While he was in Ephesus (1 Corinthians 16:8), word reached him that it was coming apart. There were “contentions among you” (1 Corinthians 1:11). Some people followed Paul, others Apollos, others Peter. Believers were suing each other in court (1 Corinthians 6:1). At the shared meal, some ate and drank their fill while others went without: “One is hungry, and another is drunken.” (1 Corinthians 11:21).

Chapters 12 to 14 take on one more quarrel: whose spiritual gift counted most. Speaking in other languages seemed especially impressive, and some members seem to have looked down on the rest. At the end of chapter 12, Paul says, “I show a most excellent way to you.” (1 Corinthians 12:31). Chapter 13 is that way, set right in the middle of an argument about church.

It opens with the things the Corinthians admired most: languages, prophecy, knowledge, mountain-moving faith, even giving everything away. Without love, Paul says, all of it is noise: “If I speak with the languages of men and of angels, but don’t have love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.” (1 Corinthians 13:1).

What does agape mean?

The word for love all through this chapter is the Greek noun agape. It was an uncommon word until the Bible’s Greek translators and the first Christians took it up. English has one word for love, and Greek had several, such as eros for romantic desire and philia for friendship.

Here agape means love that acts for someone else’s good, whether or not they’ve earned it and whether or not you feel like it. That’s why Paul’s list is made of verbs in Greek. It says what love does and what it refuses to do. You can’t see a feeling, but you can see someone being patient.

Love is patient: what each line means

• “Love is patient and is kind.” The Greek word for patient means slow to anger, and it’s used for patience with people. Kindness is the active side: patience holds back, and kindness reaches out.
• “Love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud”. Envy resents what you have. Bragging wants you to envy me. Paul had already told this church, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” (1 Corinthians 8:1).
• “doesn’t behave itself inappropriately, doesn’t seek its own way”. Love has manners, and it doesn’t need to win. Paul’s rule a few chapters earlier is the same: “Let no one seek his own, but each one his neighbor’s good.” (1 Corinthians 10:24).
• “is not provoked, takes no account of evil”. Love isn’t touchy. The word for takes account comes from bookkeeping, and it’s why some translations say love keeps no record of wrongs. Love stops keeping the ledger.
• “doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth”. Love gets no pleasure from someone else’s failure, and it doesn’t need a comfortable lie.
• “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.” Love doesn’t give up on people. Think of the friend who keeps believing in you after you’ve given up on yourself. This doesn’t mean believing every lie or putting up with harm.
• “Love never fails.” This doesn’t mean love always gets the result you hoped for. Paul means it never ends. The next lines list things that will stop, and love isn’t one of them.

Why love outlasts everything else

The Corinthians prized prophecy, languages and knowledge. Paul says all three will end, because each gives only part of the picture: “For we know in part and we prophesy in part” (1 Corinthians 13:9).

He gives two pictures of what that means. One is growing up: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child” (1 Corinthians 13:11). The other is a mirror: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face.” (1 Corinthians 13:12). Mirrors in Paul’s day were polished metal, and Corinth was known for its bronze. You could make out a face in one, but not clearly. That’s how we know God now.

Faith and hope carry us until we see him. Love goes on after that, which may be why Paul calls it the greatest. It’s the one thing on his list that you’ll never outgrow.

Why is it read at weddings?

It wasn’t written for one. Nobody in this chapter is getting married. Paul was writing to a whole congregation about how to treat one another.

It still belongs at a wedding, because a marriage needs everything on this list. Just remember who Paul had in mind: people who were getting on each other’s nerves. Year 20 of a marriage will need this chapter more than the wedding day does.

How to put this chapter to use

1. Read verses 4 to 7 slowly and put your own name where it says love. Notice where you stop believing it.
2. Pick one line and one person. If you’re keeping score with someone, start with “takes no account of evil”.
3. Read chapters 12 to 14 in one sitting, so you hear this chapter inside the argument it belongs to.

Our guide to reading a Bible verse in context shows how to do this with any passage. For more on this theme, see our list of Bible verses about love, and if keeping score is the hard part, try Bible verses about forgiveness.

Common questions