Charity is the pure love of Jesus Christ. Jesus taught His followers to love one another and to love and pray for their enemies. Service to others should be for the love of God and the love of fellowmen rather than for personal advantage or any other lesser motive. Only by voluntarily giving out of an abundant love for our neighbors can we develop charity. It is our challenge to purify our hearts and thoughts so that we may serve one another in the pure love of Christ.

"It is a duty which every saint ought to render to his brethren freely—to always love them, and to ever succor them. To be justified before God we must love one another: we must overcome evil; we must visit the fatherless and the widow in their affliction, and we must keep ourselves unspotted from the world: for such virtues flow from the great fountain of pure religion" (Joseph Smith Jr., in History of the Church, 2:229).