Mormon pivots to the final aspect of the trilogy of faith, hope, and charity. Having defined faith as the active agent and hope as the understanding of the goal, charity becomes the qualification for one of the main objects we are to learn in our journey to God. Mormon declares that unless we are “meek, and lowly of heart, … [our] hope is vain, for none is acceptable before God, save the meek and the lowly in heart.” That sets up a definition of the type of person that we are to become.
How do we learn those attributes? Through charity. Without charity we are nothing; but, of course, now we need to understand why that might be true.
The specific phrase “[I]f he have not charity he is nothing,” echoes 1 Corinthians 13:2. It also appears in the Book of Mormon, in 2 Nephi 26:30. Rather than suppose that Mormon learned the phrase from Nephi (though he certainly could have), it is probable that 1 Corinthians influenced the vocabulary in both cases (here, in verse 44, and in 2 Nephi).