---
title: "What is love (charity)?"
url: "https://seekabove.com/answers/what-is-love"
description: "Love — what the Church calls charity — is the virtue by which we love God above all things and love every person for God’s sake. It is the greatest of the virtues, the one that gives all the others t…"
published: "2026-06-05"
updated: "2026-06-05"
category: "Virtue and Holiness"
scripture: ["1 Corinthians 13:4-7", "John 13:34-35", "1 John 4:7-8", "Matthew 22:37-39", "John 15:13"]
catechism: "CCC 1822–1825, 1827, 1829"
---

# What is love (charity)?

## Short answer

Love — what the Church calls charity — is the virtue by which we love God above
all things and love every person for God's sake. It is the greatest of the
virtues, the one that gives all the others their life and direction, and it is
ultimately a share in the very love that God himself is.

## Full explanation

When the New Testament talks about love, it usually doesn't mean an emotion or an
attraction. It means a deliberate, self-giving willing of what is good for
another — choosing their true good and acting on it, even when no warm feeling
is present. This is why Jesus can *command* love. You cannot command a feeling,
but you can command a way of treating people, and that is exactly what charity
is.

The Church calls charity the greatest of the three theological virtues, and it
helps to see why. Faith lets us know God; hope lets us trust him and reach
toward him; but love is the actual union — it is faith and hope arriving at their
destination. Think of an arch made of stones. Every stone matters, but there is
one stone at the top, the keystone, that locks all the others in place; remove
it and the whole arch falls. Charity is the keystone of the Christian life. The
other virtues are real and good, but love is what holds them together and
directs them toward their purpose. A courage without love can be mere
recklessness; a generosity without love can be mere showing off. Love is what
makes the rest genuinely good.

Charity is also not something we drum up from our own emotional reserves. We can
only love this way because God loved us first; his love is poured into us, and
ours becomes a kind of echo or overflow of his. Picture a fire. A fire doesn't
strain to give off warmth — warmth is simply what fire does. When God's love
truly takes hold in a person, love for others stops being a grim duty squeezed
out by willpower and starts becoming the natural radiance of a heart that has
been set alight. We still have to choose it, and often it costs us, but its
deepest source is not us; it is God burning in us.

Finally, charity has a particular shape: it always travels in two directions at
once. We love God above everything, and *for his sake* we love every human
being — including the difficult, the undeserving, and the enemy. The two cannot
be separated. Anyone who claims to love God while despising the person in front
of them has misunderstood the whole thing, because the same love reaches in both
directions. To love God truly is to find yourself, sooner or later, loving the
people he loves.

## Why this matters

It is possible to be religiously busy — correct in belief, disciplined in
practice — and still be cold. Charity is the safeguard against that. It is what
keeps faith from hardening into mere opinions and keeps moral effort from
curdling into pride. Love is also the one thing that lasts: knowledge fades,
projects end, but a life spent in genuine love is a life that has touched the
eternal, because it has touched God. Everything else in the Christian life is
meant to flow into this.

## Common misunderstanding

People often equate love with strong feeling, and then conclude that they "can't"
love someone they don't like. But charity lives in the will, not merely in the
emotions. You can will and seek another person's good — pray for them, refuse to
harm them, help them concretely — long before you feel any affection, and
sometimes you never feel it at all. The feelings are a welcome gift when they
come, but the substance of love is the steady choice to seek what is truly good
for the other.

## Scripture connections

- **1 Corinthians 13:4-7** — Paul's portrait of love as patient, kind, and
  enduring describes charity as action and disposition, not feeling.
- **John 13:34-35** — Jesus makes love the identifying mark of his followers.
- **1 John 4:7-8** — love comes from God, and "God is love," grounding charity in
  God's own nature.
- **Matthew 22:37-39** — the two great commandments bind love of God and love of
  neighbour together.
- **John 15:13** — the greatest love lays down its life for others, showing love
  as self-gift.

## Church teaching references

- CCC 1822, 1823, 1824, 1825, 1827, 1829
- The tradition consistently names charity the "form" of all the virtues — the
  one that animates and orders the rest toward their true end.

## Reflection question

Is there one person you find it genuinely hard to love right now — and what is
one concrete good you could will and do for them this week, regardless of how
you feel?