THE MEANING OF CHARITY

And now abideth faith, hope charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

1 Corinthians 13: 13

Consider what this charity is. What is the nature, and what are the properties of it? Paul’s word is agape, exactly answering to the plain English word love. And accordingly it is so rendered in all the old translations of the Bible. … The first Bibles I have seen, wherein the word was changed, were those printed by Roger Daniel and John Field, printers to the Parliament, in the year 1649. … Probably it was then that the Latin word charity was put in place of the English word love. It was in an unhappy hour this alteration was made; the ill effects of it remain to this day: and these may be observed, not only among the poor and illiterate: not only thousands of common men and women, no more understand the word charity, than they do the original Greek; but the same miserable mistake has diffused itself among men of education and learning. Thousands of these are mislead thereby, and imagine that the charity treated of in this chapter, refers chiefly, if not wholly, to outward actions, and to mean little more than almsgiving! … Had the old and proper word love been retained, there would have been no room for misrepresentation.

But what kind of love is that whereof the apostle is speaking throughout the chapter? Many persons of eminent learning and piety apprehend, that it is the love of God. But from reading the whole chapter numberless times, and considering it in every light, I am thoroughly persuaded that what Paul is here directly speaking of, is the love of our neighbor. … But it must be allowed to be such a love of our neighbor, as can only spring from the love of God. And whence does this love of God flow? only from that faith which is of the operation of God; which whoever has, has a direct evidence, that “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself.” When this is particularly applied to his heart, so that he can say with humble boldness, “the life which I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me;” then, and not till then, “the love of God is shed abroad in his heart.” And this love sweetly constrains him to love every child of man with the love which is here spoken of: not with a love of esteem or of complacence; for this can have no place with regard to those, who are (if not his personal enemies, yet) enemies to God and their own souls; but with a love of benevolence, of tender goodwill to all souls that God has made.

– John Wesley, “On Charity” as referenced in the KJV Devotional Bible, Hendrickson Publishers, 2011 Edition.