1 Corinthians 13 – A paraphrase
IF I have the language never so perfectly and speak like a pundit and have not the knack of
love that grips the heart, I am nothing.
IF I have decorations and diplomas and am proficient in all up to date methods and have not
the touch of an understanding love, I am nothing.
IF I am able to hurt my opponents in arguments so as to make fools of them, and have not the
‘wooing’ note. I am nothing.
IF I give no end of money and goods to benefit the poor and have not enough love to take them
sometimes, I am nothing.
IF I surrender all prospects and leaving home and comforts, give my body to be consumed in
the heat and the sweat and the mildew of India and have not the love that yields its rights,
its coveted leisure, its own convenience, its pet plans; if give myself to the showy sacrifice
of a missionary career and turn sour and selfish amid the little daily annoyances and
personal slights of a missionary life, I am nothing – nothing !
IF I can heal all manner of sickness and diseases but wound hearts and hurt feelings for want
of love that is kind, I am nothing.
IF I write books and publish articles that set the world aflame and fail to transcribe the word of
the Cross in the language of love, I am nothing.
WORSE
IF I have not love, I may be competent, busy, punctilious, affluent and well equipped, but like
the church of Laodicea, be nauseating to Christ.
(Taken from an early edition of Headway, the magazine if Methodist Evangelicals Together)