1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. – 1 Cor. 13:1-3
Let a man have what he will, and let him do what he will, it signifies nothing without charity. Which surely implies that charity is the great thing, and that everything which has not this some way or other contained or implied in it is nothing; signifying as much as that this is the life and soul of all religion, without which other things that bear the name of motives are empty and vain. And particularly faith is here mentioned as being nothing without it. That faith which has not love in it, though it be to such degree that men could remove mountains, yet is nothing, like an empty, vain thing, and like the body without the spirit.
~Jonathan Edwards~
Charity and Its Fruits: Living in the Light of God’s Love (Wheaton, IL; Crossway Books; 2012) p. 39
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