Faith, Hope, Love

In I Corinthians 12, Paul is instructing the church in Corinth regarding spiritual gifts. He concludes the chapter by writing (31) “But earnestly desire the greater gifts. And yet, I am going to show you a far better way.” He continues in Chapter 13, elaborating on the gifts with the additional caveat that without love, the gifts are useless. Starting in verse 8, he affirms that “love never fails,” then proceeds to outline that the spiritual gifts are temporal, they will be done away with, their purposes fulfilled. 

Spiritual Gifts will Pass Away. Paul likens spiritual gifts to partial knowledge. They are similar to looking in a mirror in a dark room, you can see an image but it’s not very clear. He emphasizes this point with another observation that there is a time for acting and thinking like a child. But when we become adults, we move on to adult activities. The partial (spiritual gifts) will pass away. This reminds me of the verse in Ecclesiastes 3:1, where the Teacher expounds that “There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every matter under heaven.”

Faith, Hope, and Love Remain. This, then, begs the question “If spiritual gifts are “the partial” what is left? What will be “fully known?” Paul answers with the concluding statement (v. 13) “But now faith, hope, and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Elliott’s Commentary reads “Gifts such as the Corinthian Church rejoiced in shall pass away when the perfect succeeds the imperfect; the graces of faith, hope, love shall remain in the next life, exalted and purified.” It is of note that Paul used the singular “remain” and not “remains.” This is no mere slip of the pen, This is intentional grammar. Faith, Hope, and love are seen as a unity. 

A common belief today is that everyone will go to Heaven. This is not the case. Simply being a good person will not get you into Heaven. Faith, Hope, and Love; and Heaven remain for those who have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Those who have not accepted Him will not be in Heaven. God does not send us to hell, which we all deserve. He gives us a choice to avoid that fate. When we make him our Lord and Savior, there will be a change in our lives.

Faith is defined in Hebrews 11:1 as “the certainty of things hoped for, a proof of things not seen.” Certainty in this instance can be read to mean assurance or title deed. Title deed represents absolute ownership as it is a document constituting evidence of a right, especially to ownership of property. Although we haven’t seen it, our faith will be rewarded, that we know because the things we have hoped for in Christ are divinely guaranteed. When did God ever go back on His word? Faith accepts as fact what our physical senses cannot experience.

Hope, in a Biblical sense, is not the hope we have on earth. Earthly hope is a feeling of expectation, a desire or wish for a certain thing to happen. As a sports fan, I hope that my team will win. If I am traveling, I hope for good weather. Earthly hope is what I wish  to happen. 

Biblical Hope is an expectation with certainty that God will do what He has said. Hope in the Biblical sense is capitalized. It is a step further than the dictionary definition. Our Hope is in God, based on the fact of who God is and nothing else. It’s more than us uttering a prayer for good weather. Someone else may be praying for rain to help his crops grow. God has not said that all our prayers will be answered as we desire. James 4:3 reads “Beloved, let’s love one another; for love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. God has promised us eternal life with Him in Heaven. Clarence L. Haynes, Jr. has written “You cannot have Hope unless it is tied together with faith. In essence, you have Hope because you have faith and you have faith because you have Hope. However, you don’t just have faith in faith or hope in hope, there is no real value in that. What matters most is the object of your faith and hope – that makes all the difference.” That faith and Hope is centered in God.

At this point, it would be easy to think that faith and Hope will cease once our faith is made sight and our Hope in God has come. But that’s not the case. Our faith will only increase because our trust in Him will grow greater. Our Hope has been realized for all eternity as a continual communication of God to our spirits. We don’t remain the same in Heaven, we will see progress for all eternity. Where there is Hope there is progress. We will still learn in Heaven.

Love Which brings us to Love. Faith, Hope, and Love is not a progression from one to the other. As we observed earlier, Paul treated these three graces as a unity. We don’t move from faith, to Hope, and then to Love. Each builds on the other. I tread softly here but I think it could be said that Love is the greatest of equals. God is Love. When our faith is made sight, when our Hope has been realized, our Love abounds as we are in the eternal presence of our God and Savior. Love is an essential part of who God is. After all, in I John 4:7-8 we read “Beloved, let’s love one another; for love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

We are commanded to love.

Love is from God.

Whoever loves knows God.

If we don’t love, we don’t know God.

God is Love.

If we believe those five statements we carry the Love of God with us here on earth and for eternity in Heaven. There are no qualifications placed on who we love. The poor, the rich, those of other races, those who don’t think like we do, those who are overbearing and obnoxious, those who deny Christ, Democrats and Republicans, sinners should all be objects of our love. The Great Commission (Matthew 28:20) tells us to “teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.” That includes love. Go out in love.