What Does 'Charity' Really Mean? Lost Meanings in the King James Bible

Open a modern Bible translation to 1 Corinthians 13 and you will read, "Love is patient, love is kind." Open the King James Version and you will read, "Charity suffereth long, and is kind." The word is different, and the difference matters more than most readers realize. "Charity" in the KJV is not a mistranslation, and "love" in modern versions is not necessarily an improvement. The two words carry different theological weights, and understanding why the KJV translators chose "charity" -- and why modern translators abandoned it -- illuminates one of the most important doctrines in all of scripture.

The Greek word behind both translations is "agape." In the Greek New Testament, agape is distinguished from three other Greek words for love: eros (romantic desire), philia (friendship and affection), and storge (familial bond). Agape occupies a category above all three. It is selfless, unconditional, and oriented entirely toward the good of the other person. It is the word used when John writes, "God so loved the world" (John 3:16), and it is the word Paul uses throughout 1 Corinthians 13. When the text was translated into Latin by Jerome in the fourth century, he chose "caritas" -- a word that meant "dearness" or "high regard" and carried connotations of costly, sacrificial love. Caritas implied that the love in question cost the giver something. It was not mere affection; it was love that required giving up something of yourself. The English word "charity" descends directly from caritas and, in 1611, still carried that meaning: love that sacrifices, love that costs, love that acts.

The shift to "love" in modern translations happened because the English word "charity" narrowed over the centuries. By the twentieth century, "charity" had come to mean primarily "giving to the poor" or "a charitable organization." Translators worried that modern readers would read 1 Corinthians 13 and think Paul was talking about philanthropic donations rather than the highest form of divine love. So they replaced "charity" with "love." The problem is that "love" in modern English is even more ambiguous than "charity." We love pizza, we love our dogs, we love our spouses, and we love God -- all with the same word. The Greek distinguished these; the Latin distinguished these; the 1611 English at least gestured toward the distinction. Modern English collapses everything into a single syllable that can mean almost anything.

This is where Latter-day Saint scripture makes a remarkable contribution. Because the Book of Mormon uses KJV English, it preserves "charity" where modern Bibles have moved to "love." And in Moroni 7, Mormon delivers an extended discourse on charity that functions as both a commentary on 1 Corinthians 13 and an expansion of it. "Charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him" (Moroni 7:47). That definition -- "the pure love of Christ" -- does something neither the Greek, the Latin, nor the modern English achieves. It identifies the source. Charity is not just any selfless love; it is the specific love that Christ embodies and extends. It is love filtered through the Atonement, love that reaches the undeserving precisely because it is not earned. Mormon's definition anchors the abstract concept in a person, and that person is the Redeemer.

Mormon also preserves the practical dimension that Paul emphasizes: "Charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things" (Moroni 7:45). Notice the verb "suffereth" -- in KJV English, this means "endures" or "permits," not "experiences pain." Charity endures long. It is patient not because it feels nothing but because it chooses to bear what it feels. That is the caritas principle: love that costs something, love that endures even when the object of that love is unlovable. This is why Paul says charity is greater than faith and hope (1 Corinthians 13:13) -- because faith and hope are oriented toward the self (what I believe, what I hope for), while charity is oriented entirely toward others.

The practical takeaway for scripture study is this: whenever you encounter "charity" in the standard works, do not reduce it to "love" in the modern sense. Read it as caritas -- costly, sacrificial, Christlike love that acts regardless of whether the recipient deserves it. The KJV Word Guide and Topical Guide can help you trace every occurrence of "charity" across all four standard works and see how the concept develops from Paul through Mormon to modern revelation. The word the KJV translators chose in 1611 was not a mistake. It was a window into the nature of God, and Latter-day Saint scripture keeps that window open.