Translation
and if I have prophecy and understand
Go to footnote numberall mysteries and all experiential knowledge,
Go to footnote numberand if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have sacrificial love, I am nothing.
Paraphrase
and if God gives me the important gift of communicating spiritual truth in a way that relates to everyday life, and the gift of comprehending all the as-of-yet-undisclosed truths of God as well as perceiving all the experiential knowledge possible, and if God gives me the gift of abnormally strong faith sufficient to command mountain-sized problems to move and they move, but if I do not accompany those gifts with sacrificial love I have wasted my efforts by working to make myself into something that has no value.
Footnotes
1
This word means “to see, know or perceive.”
2
This type of “knowledge” is the practical knowledge for life that is only acquired through experience in living. It would be impossible to gain “all” of this kind of knowledge because it is impossible to experience what everyone experiences. But the point here is that if I could be miraculously endowed with the gift of knowledge on such a high level but did not have love, I would still be nothing. There would be no value in having such a gift without love.
THE BIBLICAL CONCEPT OF MYSTERIES
We think of a mystery as something hard to figure out, but the Biblical term is different. In the Bible, the idea of a mystery was a truth that God would reveal to mankind at some point, but He has not done so yet. It is not something that we can figure out; it must be revealed by God. And it will be revealed, we just don’t know when.
God wants to reveal Himself to us so that we can understand His character and what He requires of us. However, He does not dump all of that revelation on us all at once. He has given it to mankind piece by piece.
This topic of mysteries in the Biblical sense is related to the burning question and the unutterable burden, both of which are later clarified by God’s light, and then He follows that with His guidance for what to do about it, completion. This process is closely related to the topic of tongues.