1 Corinthians 13: Faith, Hope & Love, Part 1

Chapter 13 famously concludes with —

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

What few notice is that this famous triad appears elsewhere in the New Testament —

(1Th 1:2-3 ESV) We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers,  3 remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

(1Th 5:8 ESV)  8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.

And less obviously in such passages as —

(Rom 5:1-5 ESV) Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.  3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,  4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,  5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. 

(Gal 5:5-6 ESV)  5 For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.  6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

(Eph 4:1-6 ESV)  I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called,  2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,  3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  4 There is one body and one Spirit– just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call–  5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism,  6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. 

(Col 1:3-5b ESV)  We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you,  4 since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints,  5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. 

It’s clear that this is no mere rhetorical flourish! These three words stand at the very heart of Paul’s theology, coursing from his earliest to his later epistles. In fact, many commentators conclude that the three words were the core of Paul’s preaching (and I agree).

Why? Well, let’s start with —

(1Co 13:7 ESV) Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Here we see the three virtues, along with endurance, tied to love, with love being the root. Love hopes. Love believes. Hence, Paul credits a certain theological primacy to love. That is, we have faith in Jesus only when we first learn to love Jesus. We have hope in the resurrection only when we love the God who will raise us from Sheol to live with him.

Based on Romans and Galatians, you’d think that faith would first, but 1 Cor 13:7 suggests a different reading of —

(Rom 5:1-5 ESV) Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.  3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,  4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,  5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. 

At first glance, it sounds like we begin with faith, and so we have hope, and therefore God pours love into our hearts by the Spirit.

But what if “because God’s love has been poured into our hearts” modifies all that goes before. What if, for instance, “we have been justified by faith … because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us”? What  if “hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us”?

The Greek is ambiguous as to whether the Spirit pours God’s love for us into our hearts or pours our love for others, a love given by God, into our hearts. I think both are certainly true statements, and Paul may well mean both, but he is likely thinking primarily in terms of our love for God — since Romans is built on the backbone of Deuteronomy (really, but that’s not today’s lesson).

(Deu 30:6 ESV)  6 And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live. 

(Rom 2:29 ESV) 29 But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.

Paul sees the coming of the Spirit as fulfilling Deu 30:6, the means by which God circumcises the hearts of his children — so that they will love God with all their heart and all their soul.

Hence, it makes sense to read Rom 5:1-5 as saying faith and hope spring from our love for God. How can we have faith (trust, faithfulness, belief) in someone we don’t love? Isn’t it love that tells us to be faithful to God? Aren’t I faithful to my wife because I love her? Doesn’t love come first?

Well, no — not for many of us — not when it comes to God. For many, we respond out of fear, choosing to “love” out of fear of hell. Which is a problem.

(1Jo 4:16-19 ESV) 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.  17 By this is love perfected  [teleioo] with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.  18 There is no fear in love, but perfect [teleios] love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected [teleioo] in love.  19 We love because he first loved us. 

You see, love is to seek the good of the one loved, but if we love out of fear, our motivation is entirely selfish. We “love” to keep our souls out of hell, not because we want what God wants. We want to flee damnation, not to serve God. And that makes for misery.

So love is the greatest, in part, because love is where our relationship with God — if we’re in right relationship — begins. Fear of punishment is for the unperfected. And “perfect” takes us back to 1 Cor 13:13 and “that which is perfect” — teleios. Perfect love — the love fit for eternity — releases fear and runs toward God as a child runs toward her father. Love, maturity, and the Second Coming all merge into perfection — a perfection anticipated in the Christianity community by the power of the Spirit.

“As he is so are we in this world” (v. 17) is the explanation. Because God himself is perfect and lives in a realm without fear, as God abides in us (through the Spirit), he gives of himself and we lose all fear.

So I’m wandering a bit, but for a purpose. As the commentators like to say, the gospel is shaped by our eschatology. The better we understand where we’re headed, the better we understand where we are.

So a couple of intermediate points.

* Faith, hope, and love are gifts. We receive these by the Spirit. God’s love is poured into our hearts by the Spirit, and so we respond in faith, hope, and love — all springing from what God has done within us. Hence, they really are, in a sense, charismata (gifts).

* Love is the greatest gift because it’s where we begin in our relationship with God. It’s why God gives us his Spirit — a plan that traces all the way back to Moses — so that we would be able to honor the greatest of all commands —

(Deu 10:12-17 ESV) “And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul,  13 and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD, which I am commanding you today for your good?  14 Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it.  15 Yet the LORD set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day.  16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.  17 For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe.”

And, of course, God’s love for us and our love for God overflow into love for our neighbor and, most especially, our fellow believers in Jesus. And this shapes the Christian community — the church — to be a light on a hill, salt, and a temple for the Spirit.