Faith, Hope, and Love - Breaking It Down

And now the three of these remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. - 1 Corinthians 13:12-13

While I’ve read this verse what seems like a billion times, I haven’t thought a ton about how faith, hope, and love are interconnected. Why on earth is love greater than faith or hope? Lucky for me, my new church bible is reading through the beginning of 1^st Peter, which discusses just that! I know it’s a lot of verses below, but bear with me…I think it’s worth it!

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him. - 1 Peter 1: 3-9

There’s so much good stuff in here, but I’ll just stick to what these verses say about hope, faith, and love.

Hope - God gives us a living hope for our daily life and for an eternal future with him.

To hope for something means to strongly desire it and to in someway trust in it. God is awesome in that he gives us both present and future hope – we can hope for a living, active relationship with God now and an imperishable inheritance with God in the future. That’s pretty fabulous considering many things I put my hope in (my plans, my family, etc.) definitely aren’t gonna last forever.

Faith - God helps us maintain our faith in this living hope and tests it to prove it’s true.

To me, faith seems like it’s consistent belief in the living hope that God gives us. The more this faith is tested through trials (not my favorite thing, let me tell you!), the stronger it becomes!

Love - Genuine faith in the living hope of God is a way we show God we love him.

Consistent faith in the living hope of God allows us to love God even when we can’t physical see him. When I say I want to love God more, it seems like a good way to start is to try to better understand the living hope God’s given me and to practice consistent faith in this hope – not an easy task, but certainly a worthwhile challenge!

So why is love greater than hope or faith? I certainly can’t answer that definitely – but my thoughts based on this verse are this:

Love of God stems from consistent faith in and deep understanding of the living hope God has given us.

While it’s certainly not easy, breaking down loving God in this way gives me little steps that I can do daily (learning more about my salvation, making small choices to put my trust in God in trials) that can help me love God more!