In verse 1 Paul starts off naming the spiritual gifts and calls out the lack of importance they have and how insignificant the person is without love in their hearts. Imagine you have the spiritual gift of wisdom or knowledge or speaking in tongues but you are just not a loving person. How wasteful would that be to have that gift and not be loving. The next thing we look at is how to define love.
If you have ever been to a wedding then you more than likely have heard 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. In these verses Paul uncovers what love is. He says it is patient and kind and does not boast and whole host of other descriptive terms. But if you read verse 8 you will see that love cannot fail. The verse reads "love never fails." If you love someone and you no longer love them, you never loved them. You may have loved the feeling of being around them. You may have loved how they made you feel, but did you actually love them? If you did, then it would not be past tense.Love doesn't end and it cannot fail.
The last verse is 1 Corinthians 13:13 points out three attributes- faith, hope and love. We might say that faith is the most important to have as in faith in God. Or maybe hope is the most important as in hope that God will answer prayers. But if there is no love of God and love for others, then what do the others matter? Paul says the greatest of those three is love and God shows this to us by having sent his son Jesus Christ to die for our sins.
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