"And now these three remains: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."
In 1 Cor 13 Paul teaches us about the importance of love (agape). He mentions a lot of things, but without love they are nothing. He ends the chapter with the only things which will not come to an end - Faith, Hope and Love (agape) and the biggest is the love (agape).
1 Cor 13, Paul only covers the explanation of love, but when he ends the chapter, he brought in faith and hope. It looks like these three forms a trinity which will live forever. To understand more, we need to look at Paul’s explanation in Rom 5:1-5. In these five verses, Paul shows us how these three golden attributes fit together. He starts to explain that faith is through Jesus Christ, Hope is a focus on Father and Love (agape) is what the Holy Spirit works in us. We can see that these golden attributes are embedded in the trinity of God and form a trinity on its own to explains God and our relationship with Him.
To understand Paul’s teaching we need to scrutinise these verses more. Verse 1 starts to explain the role of Faith in our lives. Through our faith in Jesus Christ, we are justified and have peace with Father. It is as if faith is a doorway through which we receive access to the grace of Father. By entering Father’s grace, we can now rejoice in something, and that something is the Hope we have in Father. Hope is to expect something good. Something we have not received yet, but what we believe is out there. Heb 11 explains the concept of Hope further. On a first read, one might think that the author of the Hebrew letter is explaining faith, but one needs to take his definition of faith into account - “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Heb 11:1). The definition of faith in the Hebr 11 is stating that he is talking about Hope. He he explains the faith of the faith heroes and said “By faith Noah…” he is talking about the hope that Noah and the others had in Father.
In Rom 5:3-4 Paul explains that the hope in Father is a strength for our suffering on earth. To ensure that we can overcome the suffering and therefore share in a stronger hope in Him, Father has given us the Holy Spirit to work Love (agape) in our hearts - “... because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us” (Rom 5:5). To understand the love (agape) of Father better, we can look at Matt 22: 37-40 where Jesus summarises the law (10 commandments) with the concepts of Love. He explains that first, you need to love (agape) Father and then the neighbour as yourself. In the second part, He explains that we need to love (agape) ourselves before we can love our neighbour. The love (agape) the Holy Spirit work in us is, therefore, love to Father, to myself and others. When I have this love (agape), the suffering of this world will only produce perseverance which will later produce character and later hope in Father. Love (agape) is, therefore, the most important one as it will equip us in our day-to-day life here on earth.
Both Faith and Love work to one point, the point of Hope of the glory of Father. Through the hope in Father, we an elevated like the heroes of faith in Heb 11 to live life on the promise of God. A life dedicated to Father is a life where our minds are elevated into the spiritual dimension of Father, while we act in the body in the dimension of the flesh.
Appendix:
The four types of love described in the Bible are:
- Eros - Describes the sensual or romantic love.
- Storge - Describes family love, the affectionate bond that develops naturally between parents and children, and brothers and sisters.
- Philia - Describes the powerful emotional bond seen in deep friendships.
- Agape - It is the divine love that comes from God. Agape love is perfect, unconditional, sacrificial, and pure.