For small groups · 10 questions
1 Corinthians 13 Bible study questions
Without love, gifts and sacrifices are nothing. Love is patient and kind. Faith, hope and love remain, and the greatest is love.
Read the chapter aloud first. Then take the questions in order: what it says, what it means, what to do. About 45 minutes. Skip any question that doesn’t fit your group.
Start here
- Who taught you the most about love?
Look: what does it say?
- What does Paul say is nothing without love?1 Corinthians 13:1-3
- List what love is and what it is not.1 Corinthians 13:4-7
- What will pass away, and what will remain?1 Corinthians 13:8-13
Understand: what does it mean?
- Paul wrote this to a church fighting over gifts. Why put it here?1 Corinthians 13:1-2
- Many hear this at weddings. How does it read for a church or a family?1 Corinthians 13:4-7
- Why is love greater than faith and hope?1 Corinthians 13:13
Live it: what will we do?
- Put your name in place of love in verses 4 to 7. Which line is hardest to read?1 Corinthians 13:4-7
- Whose wrongs are you still keeping an account of?1 Corinthians 13:5
- What is one patient or kind thing you could do for someone at home this week?1 Corinthians 13:4
Close in prayer
Ask God for the one part of love each person finds hardest.
1 Corinthians 13
Lumin Translation. It prints after the questions, so the group has the words in front of them.
1 If I speak in human tongues and in the tongues of angels but have no love, I have become a noisy piece of brass or a crashing cymbal.
2 And if I have prophecy and know every mystery and all knowledge, and if I have faith in its fullness, enough to move mountains, but have no love, I am nothing.
3 Even if I hand out all my possessions as food for others, and if I surrender my body so that I can boast, but have no love, it does me no good.
4 Love is patient; it is kind. Love does not envy; love does not brag; it is not puffed up.
5 It does not behave disgracefully, it does not pursue its own advantage, it is not quick to anger, it does not keep an account of wrongs.
6 It takes no delight in injustice, but shares the joy of the truth.
7 It bears everything, believes everything, hopes everything, endures everything.
8 Love never fails. But as for prophecies, they will be set aside; as for tongues, they will come to an end; as for knowledge, it will be set aside.
9 For our knowledge is partial and our prophesying is partial,
10 but when what is complete arrives, what is partial will be set aside.
11 When I was a little child, I used to talk like a little child, think like a little child, and reason like a little child. Now that I have become a man, I have set aside the ways of childhood.
12 For now we see in a mirror, and the image is puzzling, but then we will see face to face. Now my knowledge is partial; then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known.
13 And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, but the greatest of them is love.
Lumin’s own translation, drafted with AI from the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, checked verse by verse against them, and approved by Lumin. Brackets mark verses not found in the earliest manuscripts.