HOPE, FAITH AND LOVE
(week 47/09)
OLUBI AND SARAH JOHNSON
1 Corinthians 13:13 ESV: So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Hope, faith and love are the three eternal virtues of God.
Love is the greatest of these three virtues because Love is the purpose or motivation of hope and faith:
Hope is what Love desires to give but is not yet a reality:
Colossians 1:27 ESV: To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Ephesians 4:13-15 ESV: until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, (14) so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. (15) Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,
God desires to give us the fullness of Christ in all His glory: this is the hope of glory.
Faith now creates what love hopes for:
Ephesians 2:8 ESV: For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
Hebrews 11:1 AMP: NOW FAITH is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses].
Hebrews 11:3 ESV: By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.
Faith is put to work or motivated by love:
Galatians 5:6 AMP: For [if we are] in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith activated and energized and expressed and working through love.
Love then gives what faith has created:
John 3:16 ESV: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Hebrews 2:10 ESV: For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.
So love is the goal, purpose and motivation of hope and faith and so love is the greatest!
