1st Corinthians Chapter 13
Prince has a song called “Adore”. It’s a great song. I got mad when he said, “Love is too weak to define just what you mean to me.” Then I realized that I didn’t have a clear definition of love. I was always told that God Is Love. And you can find that phrase several times in the Bible. But not in 1st Corinthians chapter 13. There, you will find a very specific definition for the word “charity”. But many people replace the word “charity” with “love”.
The King James version was very careful to use the word ‘charity’ instead of the word ‘love’. Love can mean many different things to many different people. But the King James version of 1st Corinthians chapter 13 makes clear the definition of ‘charity’. The writer takes a whole chapter to explain it.
Unfortunately, when society decided to change the word from ‘charity’ to ‘love’, it diminished the effect of both words.
You hear people say, “I don’t want your charity.” Charity is what you give to the poor or to someone beneath you.
“What makes you think you’re better than me?”
People are rebuking 1st Corinthians chapter 13, and they don’t even know it. They have diminished the power of the word ‘charity’ and what we, as a people, should give to one another.
When you replace the word ‘charity’ with the word ‘love’, then you say, “God is love”, you take away the responsibility of ‘man’ showing ‘charity’, as the Bible defines it, towards one another. That makes everything in 1st Corinthians chapter 13 the responsibility of God, not the responsibility of one person towards another.
God is responsible for performing all of the “definition” as it is outlined in 1st Corinthians chapter 13. Not you. Not me. God. Because ‘God is Love’.
How awkward is it for a man to tell another man, “I love you”? They’re not gay, just good friends, like David and Jonathan were. When the Bible uses the word ‘charity’, it tells a man explicitly how we are to act towards one another. When you use the word ‘love’, as it refers to the omnipotent God, it is referring to “being with, supping with, residing with” our Lord and Savior.
The world has changed the definitions that God intended for ‘charity’ and ‘love’. Society has made the Bible out to be this complicated book that very few can understand. But it’s really very simple.
If you understand and accept the definition of ‘charity’ as it is described in First Corinthians chapter 13, then you will understand that it’s our responsibility as people to have charity towards one another. That’s the way God intended.
I charity you.