1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Paul sent this letter to the Christian community in Corinth while he was staying in Ephesus. Wikipedia's article on the letter places that stay in the range of 53 to 57 CE, which is the window most scholarship works with. He was not writing in the abstract. He had received a report about the congregation from people connected to a woman named Chloe.

The King James Version puts the report this way: "For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you. Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ." The church had sorted itself into camps named after teachers.

The complaints stack up across the letter. There were lawsuits between members, a sexual scandal the congregation was tolerating, and a shared meal that had stopped being shared, where some ate their own food early while others went hungry. Paul asks them, in the King James wording, "have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not?"

The argument directly around chapter 13 is about spiritual gifts. Chapter 12 insists that the same Spirit hands out different gifts and that no one gift marks a superior Christian. Chapter 14 sets rules for speaking in tongues in the assembly so that outsiders can follow what is happening. Chapter 13 is wedged between them, and two sentences hold it in place: "But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way" at 12:31, and "Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts" at 14:1.

Verses 1 to 3 build a set of conditions, each one bigger than the last. The King James Version: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing." Verse 3 adds giving away everything he owns, and giving up his body.

Then the verses people search for. King James Version, 13:4-8: "Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away."

Verse 8 does not stop where the popular quotation stops. Paul immediately explains himself: "For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away." Then the mirror, and the summary the chapter is famous for: "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."

Read straight through, the shape is plain. A church has been ranking itself by which gifts its members display. Paul answers by naming the one thing that will still be there when the ranked gifts have run out.

Paul never defines love here. He makes love the subject of a run of verbs and lets the behavior do the defining. That is a smaller and more useful claim than a definition. It gives you something you can check against a Tuesday.

Most of those verbs are negative. In the King James wording of verses 4 to 6, eight clauses say what love will not do: it envieth not, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity. Inside those same three verses, only suffering long, being kind, and rejoicing in the truth are stated as things love does.

The negatives are aimed. Being puffed up is the exact charge Paul had already brought against the Corinthians on another subject: "Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth." Envy, boasting, and self-seeking are the behaviors a status contest produces. He is holding up a description that his readers would recognize as a photograph of themselves in reverse.

Verse 8 makes the one forward-looking claim in the passage, and it is comparative. Prophecy, tongues, and knowledge all run out, and love is the item on that list that does not. Paul is answering the ranking question, and the answer is that the ranked gifts are temporary by design.

It is not a passage about romance. The Greek word throughout is agape, the word the New Testament uses for covenant love and for love of neighbor, and the paragraph is addressed to a congregation about how its members treat each other in a room. Marriage, a spouse, and a wedding are absent from the chapter. Wikipedia's article on the chapter records the New Testament scholar Richard Hays cautioning that the wedding association can obscure Paul's original concern, which was the ordering of a divided congregation's common life instead of romantic love.

"Beareth all things ... endureth all things" is not a ruling on whether to stay somewhere you are being harmed. Read the sentence carefully. It describes what love itself does. It issues no instruction about what a person should tolerate, and it names no situation. If someone is quoting verse 7 at you to keep you in a house where you are frightened, that is a use the sentence does not authorize.

In the United States the National Domestic Violence Hotline answers at 1-800-799-7233, or you can text START to 88788. It is free, confidential, and staffed around the clock. If the danger is immediate, call 911. A safety plan and a high view of scripture are not in competition.

"Charity never faileth" is not a promise that a particular relationship will last. The clause sits in a list against prophecy, tongues, and knowledge, and Paul explains in the next two verses that he is talking about partial things being superseded. Lifting it out to guarantee that your marriage will hold asks the sentence to say something it never says.

It is also not a personality inventory. The verbs are third person and their subject is love. Paul does not write that you are patient or that you are kind. He writes that love is, and then leaves his readers to work out how far short of it their meetings had fallen.

The most visible difference is the noun. The King James Version says charity. The American Standard Version of 1901 and the World English Bible both say love. There is one Greek word underneath, agape. The 1611 translators followed the Latin caritas of the Vulgate, and English charity has since drifted toward almsgiving, which is why later revisions moved to love. The Catechism of the Catholic Church still prints charity, quoting this chapter at paragraphs 1825 and 1826, for the same Latin reason.

Verse 4 opens differently. The KJV and the ASV both say charity or love "suffereth long, and is kind." The World English Bible opens "Love is patient and is kind." The Greek verb is makrothumeo, which Strong's derives from makros, meaning long, and thumos, meaning wrath. Long-tempered is closer to the parts of the word. Patient is closer to how English speakers use language now. Neither is a mistake.

Verse 5 is where a single English word has done real damage. The KJV reads "is not easily provoked." The ASV and the WEB both read "is not provoked." Bible Hub prints the Nestle, Westcott and Hort, Byzantine, and Textus Receptus columns for this verse side by side, and every one of them reads ou paroxynetai with no word for easily in it. The softer KJV line has been quoted in a great many arguments about temper, and it is a translator's addition.

Verse 8 splits over a prefix. On Bible Hub's Greek columns for this verse, the Byzantine Majority Text, the Greek Orthodox text, and both Textus Receptus editions read ekpiptei, from ekpipto, to fall out or fall away. The Nestle, Westcott and Hort, SBL, and Tischendorf columns read piptei, simply to fall. The King James "never faileth" follows the first. Wikipedia's article on the chapter notes Anthony Thiselton rendering the shorter verb as love never falling apart. To see how modern versions handle it, open the chapter at BibleGateway and switch versions there.

The best known textual variant in the chapter is not in verses 4 to 8 at all. It is in verse 3, and it is one letter. Some manuscripts read kauchesomai, that I may boast, and others read kauthesomai, that I may be burned. Wikipedia's article on the chapter lists Papyrus 46, Sinaiticus, and Vaticanus behind the boasting reading, with Metzger, Fee, Fitzmyer, and Thiselton preferring it, and Barrett, Bruce, Conzelmann, and Collins arguing for burning. The KJV and the ASV both print the burning reading. The disagreement is live, and this page is not going to settle it.

Agape is doing specific work. Greek had other words available for affection between friends and for desire, and the New Testament reaches for agape when it means covenant love, love of God, and love of neighbor. It is a word for how you treat someone whether or not you find them appealing, which is a heavier thing to promise at an altar than most couples realize they are promising.

The word for kind in verse 4 is chresteuomai. Wikipedia's article on the chapter says it occurs only here in the Greek Bible, and Strong's concordance lists 1 Corinthians 13:4 as its one New Testament occurrence. This verse is the only evidence for how Paul used it. Translators reach for the related adjective and for usage outside the New Testament, which is why English versions land on kind, good, or benevolent without much variation and without much certainty.

"Beareth all things" in verse 7 is stego, a verb Strong's builds from stege, the word for a roof. It appears four times in the New Testament, all of them in Paul: here, 1 Corinthians 9:12, and twice in 1 Thessalonians 3. It can mean to cover over, to shelter, or to hold up under pressure, and Wikipedia's article on the chapter records renderings from "puts up with" to "keeps all confidences." Covering somebody is a different instruction from putting up with them.

One small note that saves confusion. The KJV reads "seeketh not her own." That her is a grammatical artifact. The Greek noun agape is feminine, so the reflexive pronoun attached to it is feminine too. The ASV prints "seeketh not its own" for the same clause, translating the same word.

Weddings, first. Wikipedia's article on the chapter calls it one of the most frequently chosen readings at Christian weddings, notes that it appears among the appointed New Testament readings in the Catholic Order of Celebrating Matrimony, and reports that the Church of England describes it as the most popular reading at its weddings. Two people who have known each other for three years stand in front of their families and hear a description of conduct that was written to a church which could not get through a meal together. The reading still lands. It helps to know what you are borrowing.

Funerals, next, usually for the last two verses about seeing through a glass darkly and about faith, hope, and charity abiding. Then the harder hours, which are the reason this page exists. A marriage that has gone quiet, a parent who is difficult and is not going to change, three in the morning after a fight, reading verse 5 and recognizing yourself in the wrong column.

One more group, and they are the ones this page owes something to. People who have had verse 7 read to them by somebody who wanted them to stop complaining. If that is you, the sentence is describing love, and it is not licensing what is being done to you.

A practical way to use it. Take one clause and leave the rest of the chapter alone. Run that clause across a single week. Vaunteth not itself is a specific test, and so is seeketh not her own, and either will keep you occupied for seven days. That is closer to what Paul was asking of a congregation than a single moved reading of all ten verses.

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