Faith Hope and Love

These three elements of the Christian faith are always curiously strung together by the apostle Paul. I say "curiously" knowing full well that it makes complete sense. Faith Hope and Love, seems like a very natural order and it is, but I think, like most of scripture, this phrase was meant to be more than a mere phrase.

Unfortunately much of scripture has been reduced to coffee cups and t-shirts, not that this is wrong, but its dangerous to be sure, if our intake of God's holy word doesn't consist of much more than this. Scripture was not written in phrases and shouldn't be read that way, but this is not the focus of this little rant. Faith Hope and Love are, but how we "intake scripture" plays a huge part.

I once heard a preacher say "this is nothing but weight" while holding his bible in the air. He is correct, and we should be glad to let scripture weigh on us, even when it is uncomfortable, and it will be. The reason I point this out is because it would be to easy, like many other scriptures, to reduce a small part of scripture, like "Faith Hope and Love," to a catch phrase, or even worse a mantra, that we repeat over and over trying to work ourselves up spiritually.

To be fair, scripture does in many ways excite something in a believer, but its primary effect on us mortals should be change. The image scripture gives us is like clay on a potter's wheel, and the hands of the potter is his activity pressing in on your life...his will not yours.

So that is my "hope", to share some thoughts on faith hope and love as I have let this one little part of scripture just sit on me today.

Here is my first initial thought. Faith Hope and Love are listed together because they are supposed to be together. In fact this thought is the thought that made everything clearer for me.

Think about it, how Hopeful is your Hope with out genuine Love or Faith in the object of your Hope? How weak is Faith without the Hope of fulfilled promise and Love that can be trusted without question? Then there is Love, remove Love from anything and, well... that's the last point...

First, Faith. Faith one of Paul's three essentials, is best described ,in most applications as "fully relying on God for salvation." It is Faith or trust in God that helps keep us centered on God. Scripture will, in a very popular verse on Faith, tell us that without Faith that it is "impossible to please God." Faith is, spiritually our sight as believers. So we look to God in Faith and because of our Faith in Him. In other words "walk by Faith and not by sight."

Why is Faith so crucial, because of Hope and Love. We can rely on God for salvation, because Jesus is the Hope of that salvation, and Jesus purchased our salvation in one sovereign act of Love. This works in the reverse as well. Out of love Christ died for us giving us the Hope of new life through Faith in his sacrifice. Easy right, but powerful.

Maybe one way to read through scripture is to ponder. How does this encourage me in my Faith? What Hope is offered here? How is God's Love revealed? How does this.motivate me to Love? After all, we are only able to Love fully because He first Loved us. Or as my kids story bible puts it, and they were "Lovely because he Loved them."

So let's take Faith as it is intended to be, yolked together with Hope and Love, but let's remove Hope. See how quickly it falls apart! Why have Faith in Love if there is no Hope? If scripture is true, and it is, and Faith is the substance of things Hoped for, well we no longer have substance to our Faith without Hope. Not just any Hope mind you, but Hope in Love. That is to say hope in God. Remove Hope, and you have put your Faith in a Love without Hope, a Love without substance, and Love without Christ

Now why can't I have Faith in Love apart from Hope? Well first we don't define Love on our terms, a common mistake we make all the time, we start with us and move to God, this should be reversed, see first his holiness then you can try to share your opinions. Love is defined by God, and defined as God. The truest Love is God's Love, and you can have Faith in that Love (trust for salvation) because it is the only Love that can offer redemption, restoration, reconciliation, in one word, Hope. Faith in a hopeless Love is Faith in a false Love.

We have, unfortunately, removed Hope from our equation, so the Love you have put your Faith in is no longer complete, it no longer carries the promise of Hope. This is the false love that we are too easily swayed by. False loves are real, and really powerful, and demonic. It smells like love with all of its allure, but taste of poison. It is a false sense of security, happiness, and comfort. While it offers feelings that mimic qualities of God's true Love, in the end they can offer no substance, much less salvation. They are shallow, but feel very deep, and we are easily trapped by easily turned hearts.

Turned easily because they have no fullness, they slow feed us into deprivation and starvation, making us crave more of an empty fruit. This is why we feel such a strong and real need for these false loves, they get us hooked, and we make the mistake of assuming they are actually strong and real. We loose our appetite for real genuine and true Love after being feed dressed up cancer. They eat away at you, having mush more in common with bondage and addiction that the Love they mimic. It is the constant lie of the enemy, "trade that Love for this Love, trust me its better."

Our Hope, Christ, offers us a sweet guide through these treacherous waters that we too often find ourselves in. Jesus, who is love incarnate, offers us the right to be called sons and daughters of God through his redemption and reconciliation of the world on the cross, and by extension an easy test for true Love. It is this question. Does this Love bring you closer to the Father? If not, it is Hopeless destructive and damning, and if you have put your Faith in it, it has been misplaced. Whatever other sins this false Love may have led you into, you are first and foremost and idolator of this false Love. Then solution, taking our misplaced Faith and removing it from this false Love and placing it in a Love that is simply saturated with Hope.

Jesus came in Love to reveal to us the Father, if that Love you claim to have, or be in, does not bring you closer to your creator it is simply sinful. Honestly, how can you place your Faith in a Love as Hopeless as that? If you think about, all perversions of Love are actually Faith in a Love, but apart from Hope. A false Love, again, really powerful, really deceptive, claiming all the promise of Love, but giving you poison instead. Faith in Love, but without Hope is Christ-less and selfish, and will ultimately destroy those involved.

Now let's place Hope back into the equation, but remove Faith instead. Hope is all well and good, as discussed from the above paragraphs, important and nessecary if we are to become part of Gods love, and even partake in loving God, and having that love overflow into all of our relationships. And as we have explored, we cannot love in any right or full way that is not God's love for us and through us.

Now if scripture is right, and it is, and hope is the substance of faith, the faith can be explained as the essence of hope. Put it this way, if the substance is a fragrant oil for insense, then faith is the aroma of the oil. For us it is the gift we have been given in order to reciprocate, or send back, that love. Using the oil analogy again...
God loves us and shares with us the gift of hope, the oil, he ignites the oil with his revealed love to us, and we return with faith, the aromatic fumes. In one word, worship.

Worship may throw you off a bit, but understand it as the outward expression of inward Faith. I can tell what you put your Faith in by what you worship. Some of you would rightly point out, but Sam, we through Faith out of the equation, and you are right. The way we remove Faith is to remove worship, but we can never really stop worshiping, so we just mis-direct it. Maybe onto some of those false loves we have already talked about. Faith is, including all that we have already mentioned, the return we give back to God. This Faith, is not born in us, but given to us when God shows us His Love by Offering Hope. Faith that is not directed back to Hope and Love, is a human made hollow Faith. It's empty promises, not sincere commitment.

So remove Faith, and thus remove worship. And we are left with Hope in a Love with no return. Sure, they may fake it, but it is ultimately empty and void of trust and service. No one gives love more extravagantly than Jesus Christ. He gives and gives, knowing that he is going to be betrayed and crucified. Would you love someone and serve them if they were going to betray you? Would you die for that person after they falsely accused you and turned you over to death? This type of Love is Hopefully, and inspires Faith.

Hope in this Faithless Love id the difference between Judas, and Peter. Both Betrayers, both flawed, one spurned Faith, the other responded to Faith by offering his. How different would marriages be, if each partner, when let down or sinned against, responded by serving more, by Loving harder, by becoming more Faithful?

Lets restore the equation, and now remove Love. You have Hope (substance), you have Faith (the return, the desire to be loved and to love), but you don not have Love. Love as a noun, as a person, a place that your Faith and your Hope can rest secure. 1Co 13:1  If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Scripture is correct once again, you have nothing.

There is Hope, however, Hope that I dare say is trustworthy and full of Faith. That is, that when we had nothing, God gave us something. Joh 3:16  "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. The most famous verse in scripture Hopefully has a little more meaning to you now. If I may, let me rewrite an little bit..."For God so loved the world, the he gave his only Son named Hope, that whoever has Faith in him should not perish but have eternal life."

This Hope, this Faith and this Love, is true and real. It does not depend on you for completion, it is complete in itself. It is free to all who would receive it. It is incomparable, steadfast and powerful. You can put your Hope here, you can put your Faith here, you will be Loved here. 1Co 13:13  So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.