Understanding Love, Hope and Faith
(week 51/06)
Olubi Johnson
We wish you all a Christ-centred and Christ-revealing Christmas celebration where you experience a greater degree of the love of God and consequently a blessed and destiny fulfilling New Year in Jesus Name!
1 Corinthians 13:12-13 NKJV: And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Here, the scripture tells us that love, hope and faith are eternal but the greatest of these is love.
Why is love the greatest?
Love is the greatest because God is love and God is the beginning of all things and so love is the beginning of love, hope and faith.
1 John 4:8, 16 NIV: Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.
Love is God’s good will to men even when they do not deserve it.
Matthew 5:44-48 NKJV: But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? 48 Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.
That good will is what causes God to conceive good thoughts towards us: It is these thoughts of good will that create hope.
Jeremiah 29:11 NKJV: For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
When time comes for the hope to become an experiential reality then the hope gets substance and becomes faith.
Hebrews 11:1 NKJV: Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:1 NIV: Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
This faith is released by speaking God’s Word and corresponding actions which then creates the reality of what love conceived as hope and faith gave substance to.
2 Corinthians 4:13 NIV: It is written: “I believed; therefore I have spoken.” With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak
Hebrews 11:3 NKJV: By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
James 2:26 NKJV: For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.
So the greatest of love, hope and faith is love since it is love that is the beginning of all of them: love conceives hope, which grows to become faith when the time of fulfilment comes. Faith released in words and actions then causes what love conceived to become an experiential reality.
In our article next week, we will see how love, faith and hope are developed and form an eternal cycle.
