1 Corinthians 13:2

The context

Chapter thirteen sits between a discussion of spiritual gifts and an argument about their use in the assembly. The Corinthians prized displays of knowledge and speech, and Paul answers by imagining those gifts at their maximum. The chapter is a deliberate interruption, and its subject is the necessary condition of everything else.

What it establishes

It establishes that the value of a gift is not measured by its power or its orthodoxy but by the love with which it is exercised. The verb is stark: without love the gifted person is nothing, not merely less effective.

What it does not establish

It does not make love a saving work. Paul is not putting love in the place of grace as a ground of standing; he addresses the use of gifts in a community. Nor does nothing describe a final verdict; it concerns present reality.

Short note, first pass, October 2026. Corrections welcome.

Cited in these answers

• I fell out of faith as a Christian because of Mark 11:23-24 when Jesus says that God will grant us whatever we ask as long as we have faith. I did, I prayed, no new girl, no new car, and thus, no more Bible studies.

Part of Scripture, Opened — the exegetical layer behind every citation on this site. Scripture quotations are from the ESV.