Love never ends: the meaning is essentially the same as “love … endures all things” in verse 7. Here the statement serves to introduce a series of contrasts between love and other spiritual gifts.

The rest of the verse is divided into three parts. The verb translated will pass away here and in verse 10 is the same Greek word. Good News Bible uses several synonyms for stylistic reasons: “are temporary,” “it will pass,” and in verse 10, “will disappear.” Will cease translates an unrelated word with similar meaning. These two words seem to mean that the three gifts are temporary. In the following verse Paul states that they are “limited” or “incomplete,” or even “imperfect” in relation to love, which is “perfect.”

As in 12.28, prophecies are “messages that come from God” and refer to normal human speech. Tongues, on the other hand, as in 12.28, 30, refer to “strange sounds” or “ecstatic speech” (Good News Bible‘s “strange tongues”). Good News Bible is correct to add the words “gifts of speaking” before “strange tongues.”

In many languages it may be necessary to show the contrast between love that endures or never stops, and the three gifts that are limited and temporary.

Alternative translation models for this verse are:
• Love never ends. However, the gifts of proclaiming God’s message, speaking in strange sounds, and knowledge are only temporary or imperfect.

Or:
• Love lasts forever. There are messages from God, but they are temporary; there are gifts of speaking in strange sounds, but they will cease; there is knowledge, but it will pass away.

Quoted with permission from Ellingworth, Paul and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, 2nd edition. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1985/1994. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .