“Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.  For we know in part and we prophesy in part,  but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.  When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.  For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
  So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

1 Corinthians 13:8-13

Have you ever been reading through a passage and a question jumps into your mind that you just didn’t expect?  For example, “if the greatest of these is love then why isn’t it first?”  It happens to me all the time; and I love it!  The Bible, the word of God, is a mine filled with value that must be mined and experienced miners know when to get excited.  That first hint of gold, that moment when you know there might be more here and that more is the real vein of value.  These random questions are that moment and I have learned to get excited.  Just a little more digging and I am going to find something valuable.

So, what are we talking about when we are talking about faith, hope, and love?  I am not a Greek or Hebrew scholar, but I have come to recognize that I have to be careful when trying to clarify the meaning of words in the Bible.  Our contemporary understanding of a word might not be the understanding that the author intended to convey to his reader.  You and I today live in a culture that has come to view faith as blind.  It is something that we believe apart from evidence.  But this is the exact opposite of the meaning intended by this author.

The word used by the writer is the Greek word pistis.  According to Strongs, pistis comes from the Greek word pĕithō.  Pistis means a persuasion or conviction of the truthfulness of something.  This persuasion or conviction comes from pĕithō which is a verb that means to convince by argument that something is true or false.  It is to agree that something is true or false based on an argument that something is true or false.  So, the author of this passage understands that faith is the belief that something is true based on an argument.   To share the author’s faith is to agree with the author that something is true.

Regarding hope the author uses the Greek term ĕlpis.  Ĕlpis is the anticipation or, expectation of or convince in something.

Marty is one of my favorite examples of how these two terms work together.  He and I served together through two deployments and we are also avid video gamers.  In the years that we have served together I have seen repeatedly his competence in action.  Each of those observations is an argument for my conviction that Marty knows what he is doing.  If I explained them to you there is a good chance that we would agree that he is competent.  We would share faith in Marty’s competence.  I included that we are avid video gamers because in this aspect of our relationship I have also seen Marty snatch victory from the grasp of defeat when I thought victory was impossible.  Marty doesn’t give up and even when surrender might be warranted from my perspective, I know that if Marty is still working at victory we might have a chance.  This is how hope is connected to faith.  I know that Marty is both competent and tenacious.  If we were to find ourselves together on a real battlefield in which we were outnumbered, surrounded, and overmatched I would look to Marty.  I would look to Marty and as long as he was still working, I would have hope of victory.  But my hope is not a blind overly optimistic hope.  It is based on a faith in Marty that is built on a reasonable argument about who Marty is.  It is based on what I know.

When the author of Hebrews writes, “…faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Heb 11:1, ESV)” he is reminding you that those things you already know of God are those things that that you can base your hope for the future on.  When we can’t see the future, we can rest upon who God is and know, as a conviction, that the future is good.

This is where love comes in.  The term the author is using here is agapē.  Agapē love is an affection or benevolence for the object of that love that results in active love, i.e. charity, or an affection or benevolence that results from the active love of another.  Therefore love is both first and last.  However, before we get there, this still hinges on two things that we have not discussed; the object of our faith and hope and what it means to the author to abide.

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

1 John 4:7-8

First, let us abide.  Faith, hope, and love abide.  Abide is from the Greek word mĕnō.  Mĕnō is a verb which means to continue, to dwell, to endure, to be present, and to stand.  We are to dwell in faith, hope, and love.  We are to endure in faith, hope, and love.

Now, faith and hope are not enough in and of themselves; there must be an object of faith and an object of hope.  The author of First Corinthians was writing to the Corinthians regarding several disputes among the believers at the Corinthian church.  They wanted to know how to be the best Christians they could be.  After addressing those questions, the author describes the more excellent way, the way of love or more specifically the way of God’s love.  This way is central in that it is how we are to evaluate everything else that we, as the church, are doing.  The more excellent way is to abide in your faith in God’s love.  How has God demonstrated His love to you in the past?  Do you know that when you count your blessings you are really remembering all those times in which God has lavished His love on you?  The single greatest blessing of all time is that God gave His son on your behalf that one day you would be worthy to stand in His presence free of the judgment required for your own sins.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

John 3:16

Each of those demonstrations is a reason for you to hope that His love for you will continue.  To hope that you will one day stand in His presence.  When you rest in that reality then you can stop living your life trying to make up for the mistakes that you have made.  You are free to live your life in such a way that it demonstrates the love of God.  Our faith, our hope, and our ability to love are built on the love that God has shown for us.  If you don’t believe that He loves you, then you can not hope that He will ever love you, and you are not free to love anyone past your own desires to get something in exchange for that love.

Anyway, all of that came as the result of one random question. A question I am sure was presented by the Holy Spirit and answers that came as the Holy Spirit taught me as I sought the meaning of each word. My hope is that my random thoughts might help you to answer some of your own or even better help us all to generate more random thoughts that will each lead to a rich, deep vein of the most eternal value. If you read anything else that I write do not hesitate to ask questions. Iron sharpens iron as we clarify and reclarify our understanding of God’s word. And if you have a random thought of your own on other topics, drop me a line and ask me if I know the answer. If I don’t well then… maybe, we can work God’s mine together. I am sure that what ever we find it will add to our faith and secure our hope that God will love us forever.

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Strong, James. A Concise Dictionary of the Words in the Greek Testament and The Hebrew Bible. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2009. Find this resource in the Faith, Hope Love (Life) Store