Persevering in Faith, Hope, and Love: 1 Corinthians 13:13

By Contributing Writer, Yvonne

“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love”. (1 Corinthians 13:13)

Paul has reached the climax and conclusion of his wonderful love sermon.

Love - the most powerful force that drives the universe, is always accompanied by other graces. Faith, hope and love are bound together as the links on a chain, united, connected, mutually dependent on each other. This is inevitable as they all stem from the same source, the same Spirit. In summing up the essence of love, lets take a look at this triad of graces.

Grace #1: Faith

What is faith? How should we define it?

Our world is charmed by sayings that extol the need for faith. I have a beautiful plaque in my house that says, “If you have faith, you can do anything.” Really? Don’t we have to qualify? Faith in what? Myself? Money? My friends? The Government? As humans we have a deep need to put our faith in something. We all have faith. Even the devils have faith and tremble. (James 2:19)

The faith that will keep us going, that saves, that brings eternal life, is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Hebrews 11 is the faith chapter. It tells us, “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Let’s take a look at some of the results of faith:

• By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command.
• By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did.
• By faith Enoch was taken from this life.
• By faith Noah built an ark to save his family.
• By faith Abraham obeyed God’s call and was enabled to become the father of all believers.
• By faith Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs of the same promise, lived in tents in their land of promise.
• By faith Isaac blessed Jacob.
• By faith Jacob blessed Joseph’s sons.
• By faith Joseph spoke about the Exodus that would happen 400 years after his death.
• By faith Moses’ parents hid him for three months.
• By faith the Israelites passed through the Red Sea.
• By faith the walls of Jericho fell.

The author of Hebrews goes on:

^“ And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets— who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight.”

Faith is a grace that is unexplainable, mysterious, miraculous. It is something that Jesus Christ supernaturally works in our hearts.

Grace #2: Hope

What is hope? Hope is the opposite of despair, discouragement, despondency, and suicide. It is more than optimism, positive attitude, or the anticipation of a reward. Hope is the drive that propels us through the shadows and dark valleys. It is the realization that God’s perfect plan is unfolding, and that there will be light at the end of the tunnel.

Already over thirty years ago, Francis Schaeffer analyzed society and noted that one word summed up the prevailing mood of our day: Despair. We so quickly are like Christian and Hopeful in John Bunyan’s story of Pilgrim’s Progress, who found themselves imprisoned in the castle of the Giant called Despair. They managed to get out of this prison when they remembered that they had the key to unlock the door. Do you know what that key was?

The key of hope is a refrain we find throughout Scripture. It is:  Remember! Remember! Remember!

The only way out of despair is to go to God’s Word, which will remind us that right from the beginning, our God is a faithful God who has always kept His promises.

Don’t put your hope in princes. Don’t put your hope in money. Don’t put your hope in anything in this temporal world. Just hope in the Lord. If you are low on hope, open the Scriptures and read about all the great things our Savior has done throughout the ages. Remember them. Tell them to your children. Celebrate the Lord’s Supper together with the saints so you will remember and believe.

Grace #3: LOVE (The Greatest of These!)

Hope and faith foreshadow love.

C.S. Lewis, in his book, the Four Loves, points out that the English word love should really be broken down to include at least four definite graces. He identifies:

# 1 – Affection - taken from the Greek storge. It means  fondness through familiarity.
# 2 – Friendship – taken from the Greek philia. It refers to love between friends, and people who share common interests.
# 3 – Romance – taken from the Greek eros. It is the sense of being in love with someone.

These three loves are universal graces, says Lewis, comparable to the sunshine and rain which God bestows on believers and unbelievers alike. Without these loves, this world would soon cease to exist. But the fourth love is the most significant, the most awesome reality.

# 4 – Charity – from the Greek agape. 

As Jonathan Edwards explains in his book Charity and its Fruits, agape love is that deep, personal, unconditional gift of love that God has reserved to shower on his people. God is love. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us”. (1 John 4:10) God loved us, but not because He needed us, as we are wholly superfluous creatures. God made us to love and perfect us. He made us to be His bride, to live in a special love relationship with Him.

As C.S. Lewis says, God made us with a deep need to give and receive love. That’s what makes us so significant. He set His love on us. That is awesome. We are not stocks and blocks. He made us in such a way that we can withhold ourselves, our wills and hearts, from God. We can also freely offer it back to Him.

Loving God is all about doing His will. Agape love demands that we give our will to God, for we cannot serve two masters without hating one of them. We do not give our will to God because He needs it—God needs nothing, so His love for us is entirely for us: we are God’s beloved. And in God’s great Love we will find ourselves and the purpose for our existence.

We love God when we praise Him in our thoughts. But, as every Christian knows, we love God chiefly as we love others. Every stranger that we feed or clothe is Christ to us. Every act of kindness to one of the least of creatures is an act of kindness to Christ.

Who will every truly understand the depths of love? It is a great mystery. It is a knowledge that is too much for us.

Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. Keep walking. Keep working. Keep planting. Plow your fields in faith. Sow your seeds in hope. In due time the God of love will grant an eternal harvest.

 

 

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