![]() While faith and hope can be rooted in past and future events, when we have faith and hope it changes the way we live. One thing that faith, hope, and love all have in common is that they all affect the way we live in the present. So how does faith, hope, and love work together? What is the meaning of these three being linked together? How Do Faith, Hope and Love Fit Together? Christian love is an action meant to be repeated over and over again each moment as we live our lives. You can’t promise to love someone later and not love them now. You can’t point to your love in the past and then escape the duty of love in the present. Love, therefore, is always something expressed in the present. Love is when you do what’s best for another at whatever cost to yourself (John 15:13). In short, love is more than a thought or a feeling according to the Bible. Out of faith, hope, and love Christians are probably most familiar with what the Bible says about love. We are “waiting for our blessed hope” and “we wait for with patience.” “Waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.” (Titus 2:13) “But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” (Romans 8:25) But when faith is pointed towards the future and towards blessings not yet fully given, I believe this is when the Bible includes the word hope. And today we have faith that the historical work of the gospel accomplishes certain blessings for us right now.Īgain, faith and hope are certainly connected, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). These are events that actually happened even though we don’t see them. A Christian has faith in the historical works of God like the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. I believe hope is when your faith is expressed towards the future.įaith is more general than hope because it relates to the past, present and future. Biblically this is accurate in that hope looks ahead to the future promises in Christ that are not yet fully realized at this point in history. Most define “hope” as an expectation for something good. ![]() But this does not mean we have blind faith or a faith not rooted in evidence and objective truth.įaith and hope are very similar. So even though there’s a lot of strong evidence for Jesus as God, we have faith in Jesus because we did not see with our own eyes what he did on earth, we do not fully see him now, and we obviously cannot see the future. ![]() Faith is not absent of evidence, only of sight. There’s more to faith than that, but there’s not less.That’s the baseline definition of faith at least. When the Bible talks about faith, the object of that faith is always the same, Jesus Christ.īut what is faith exactly: Faith is believing in things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). While Christians certainly should not be prideful or arrogant about their superior faith, we must also be clear for our own benefit and the world’s what we mean when we say we have faith. The world says you can believe in whatever you want as long as you are not stating other people’s beliefs are lesser than your own. While it is socially acceptable to “have faith,” it is still and will always be disrupting and awkward to the world when you state, “I have faith in Jesus Christ.” Faith as the world uses this word is worthless since the object of this type of faith is not important. It is a pacified word because culturally people know you don’t simply mean one truth, religion, or Savior is being highlighted when you say something like, “I have faith,” or, “I’m a person of faith,” or “What faith group are you from?” You are safe when you talk about “faith” these days. ![]() It may surprise you, as it did me, that when you begin to study what the Bible says about faith, hope, and love, you will find that these three are linked in other places (Galatians 5:5-6, 1 Thessalonians 1:3, 1 Thessalonians 5:5-8) other than 1 Corinthians 13:13 as well.įaith is perhaps the most abused Christian term because it has been adopted by so many religions and people who use it entirely different than the Bible. What’s the connection here? And why is love elevated above faith and hope? To me it’s always seemed a bit random to list faith, hope, and love together. While the more specific spiritual gifts like prophecy, tongues, teaching, and so on are obviously important in Christianity, Paul here elevates these three gifts and states other gifts will vanish one day (1 Corinthians 13:8-10) but these three will remain. 1 Corinthians 12 to 14 are three chapters focusing mainly on spiritual gifts. In context Paul lists faith, hope, and love as three primary gifts all Christians will always have. What does the Bible say about faith, hope, and love? 1 Corinthians 13:13 (NIV) says, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
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