Charity

Charity is the rendering in the Authorized Version of the Greek word agapē, which most modern versions translate as love. The word appears most prominently in 1 Corinthians 13, the great apostolic treatise on love, where Paul describes it as the supreme gift that surpasses tongues, prophecy, knowledge, faith, and even martyrdom: If I have not charity, I am nothing. The passage enumerates love's qualities — patience, kindness, absence of envy or pride, endurance of all things — before concluding that charity never faileth while prophecy and tongues will cease.

The Authorized Version's choice of charity preserved the Latin caritas of the Vulgate, which had connotations of Christian generosity and benevolence toward the poor. While love more accurately captures the Greek term's range, the older rendering shaped centuries of Christian devotion and continues in liturgical and rhetorical tradition. The word agapē appears with similar prominence in the Johannine literature, most famously in the declaration God is love (1 John 4:8, 16).