Love

Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13:13

Finishing off today looking at these three things which last forever – today we are looking at Love.

There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 

John 15:13

This is Easter Monday, and what a demonstration of love we have just seen – Jesus dying on the cross for us. There could never be more powerful demonstration of God’s love for us.

We are repeatedly told in the Bible that God’s love is faithful, that it is steadfast, that it is everlasting, yet we can doubt that. Perhaps we don’t feel good or worthy enough to receive that love or perhaps that hasn’t been our experience, we have only experienced rejection failure, hardship and we wonder where God is let alone feeling His deep compassion and heart of love towards us.

If this is the case dear friend, still be assured that God is a God of love, look at the cross, look at His son hanging there bearing all the pain and suffering of the world. He has taken it all upon Himself bearing it, paying the price for the sin and chaos and separation which is the reality of the world we live in.

Why? Why did He do that? Because of His great love towards us, so that we may be reconciled to God and have peace with Him. So that the love of God may be poured out into our hearts that we may know Him, know how deeply, committedly He loves us from the beginning of time, in working out this plan of salvation, to all eternity, God loves us.

So these three things remain – faith, hope and love, the greatest of these is holding onto the love God has for us.

Yes and that means you too my friend, God has set His steadfast, faithful, eternal love upon each one of us. As we hold onto faith as we hold onto hope let us also hold on to the love of God which endures forever.!

Hope

Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinithins 13:13

Last week we looked at Faith, this week we are looking at the second of these three things which last forever – Hope.

Let me first of all say what this Hope isn’t! It isn’t wishful thinking! It isn’t saying things like “I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow”, when there is absolutely no basis for holding to that hope. We use this word hope so loosely that it is hard to define it in a meaningful way.

But let us start by saying that hope needs a foundation, it has to be placed in something/someone trustworthy. Otherwise we are just going to be disappointed, and every time we place our hope erroneously in something/someone untrustworthy it erodes our hope and we become cynical and bitter and find it hard to take people at their word and which then reflects in our reluctance and inability to trust in God.

So hope, as in one of these three things which are going to last forever, what is it?

It is a desire with an expectation of obtainment or fulfillment. So it isn’t a vague wishful thinking, but there is an expectation of fulfillment. So hope in the bible is based on an expectation that God is faithful and that He will fulfill what He has promised, He will do what He said He would.

How do we know this, that God is trustworthy? Well we can read through the Old Testament and see in the history of the Israelites how again and again God did what He said He would do. We can see that He was faithful and as we move into the New Testament we see all His love and promises for redemption fulfilled in Jesus. Perhaps the thing which proves Him most trustworthy of all is that God did not withhold His own Son, His beloved son, so if He was willing to give up His Son so that we can be reconciled to Him surely this is definitive proof that God is trustworthy and we can place our hope in Him?

He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

Romans 8:32

God then is our solid, secure anchor on whom we can place our hope.

¹⁹ This hope is a safe anchor for our souls. It will never move. This hope goes into the Holiest Place of All behind the curtain of heaven. ²⁰ Jesus has already gone there.

Hebrews 6:19

As we go into Easter week and think of the death and resurrection of Jesus, we see that Jesus has already gone into heaven before us to prepare a place for us. He is there, He is waiting, He is preparing our place.

Do not let your heart be troubled. You have put your trust in God, put your trust in Me also. ² There are many rooms in My Father’s house. If it were not so, I would have told you. I am going away to make a place for you. ³ After I go and make a place for you, I will come back and take you with Me.

John 14:1-3

That hope that we are speaking of then is an eternal hope, it is found in Jesus, it is firm and sure, we have the surety of it, the conviction, the evidence.

Our outward present circumstances then are not the end of our story, but we have a hope for a better, more glorious, more secure future for eternity and that is firm, that is fixed, that is unmovable.

Our hope is sure and will last for ever.

Faith

As we enter into April our thoughts turn towards Easter, and just for a change I thought that over the next three weeks our meditations could be on Faith; Hope and Love.

Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinithians 13:13

This verse is often mis-quoted; quoted out of context and sentimentalized during Wedding Ceremonies, but let us think on them as the things which are going to last forever, looking firstly at Faith.

So what is faith?

The best definition of faith is found in Hebrews 11:1

“Now Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”

So faith is a reality, there is assurance, there is evidence for it, there is substance to it; it is not vague or woolly, or inconsequential.

The ESV Footnotes says: “Faith is a settled confidence that something in the future – something God has promised – will actually happen because God will make it happen.”

So faith is in God, faith is in His promises.

Our faith then is a belief in God, that God is all powerful, that He can make things happen; and that God is faithful to His promises and will do as He says.

But how can we know that?

Simply by knowing Him! As we come to know God more fully our belief and our trust in Him grow. We get to know Him firstly through the Bible, we read about Him in the old Testament, we read of His acts of mercy and grace towards His people; we see that He set His faithful love upon them and worked on their behalf to bring about their redemption, saving them from their waywardness. Then as we move into the New Testament we see God revealed through His Son Jesus, who is “the exact imprint of His nature” (Heb 1:3)

We see Jesus and He shows us the Father heart of God. We see Jesus, the sacrifice of the Father in giving up His Son for us that we may be saved, that we may be loved, that God’s own promises would be fulfilled in bringing salvation to all who would believe.

But what does that mean for us in the everyday? What about when our circumstances are tough and we find it hard to see past them to see God?

Well, we can trust our past experiences of God; we can trust the experiences others have had as described in the bible. And we can trust facts over our feelings, that such a God who was willing to fulfil His own plan of salvation, through the costly sacrifice of His own Son, who proved Himself by sending His Son – this God is worthy of our trust. This is the God we put our faith in.

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Romans 8:32

So we have assurance that God is for us, the evidence of that is found in Jesus. We may not see, but we KNOW. We know God, we know what He has done for us, and we have been shown how much He loves us.

“Now Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen“

No matter our circumstance then, or the fact that we are clinging on to Faith with our finger nails, we have the assurance that the things promised and hoped for will come to be, even though as yet they may seem afar off.

May we be strengthened in our faith today dear friends as we know, trust and put our faith in our faithful God, looking to Him who promised and who is faithful to keep His promises.

Be blessed.