The Three Graces of Faith, Hope and Love
The Three Graces of Faith, Hope and Love.
“Now there are three things that will endure forever: Loyal Trust, Patient Hope and Agape Love. And the greatest of these is Agape Love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13).
Faith, Hope and Love are all Gifts of God’s Grace. The most powerful description of love, and thus the greatest love chapter in Scripture, is 1 Corinthians 13. To wrap up his discussion of love, and agape love in particular, Paul finishes with an unforgettable bang… his short list of what is often called the Three Christian Graces, also known as the Theological Virtues: Faith, Hope, and Love. These eternal qualities are called Theological because God is the whole point… He is the source and origin of these graces; He is the main object of these qualities; He is the primary target of these virtues from us; and God through His Spirit offers us these gifts by infusing them into us who trust and hope and love in Him. These three divine gifts, or graces, form the very foundation of the Christian life. God knows that we can’t manufacture these qualities on our own. These virtues are not human achievements. We can’t simply demonstrate them through our strength of will, or natural giftedness, or our superior genes. Trust, hope and love are supernatural gifts in the Holy Spirit. We are given in God’s mercy the ability to be faithful to Him, to hope in Him, to love Him. And it’s clear that in Scripture these gifts are offered to us on a silver platter in Christ, because God knows we are helpless to develop these godly qualities under our own steam. Do we want a stronger trust in God? A more patient hope in whatever circumstance? An unconditional love for our neighbors and enemies? Only God can make that possible in us, and as Father Cantalamessa says, “The Holy Spirit is the well-spring and the power of all three Theological Virtues. All three have their origin in the Spirit.” (Come, Creator Spirit). Paul clearly lays out all three graces being given through the Spirit in Galatians 5:5-6: “Through the Holy Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope… For in Christ Jesus, the only thing that really counts is faithful trust as brought to perfection through agape love.”
Faith Defined – (Hebrew, enumah; Greek, pistis); a relationship word regarding covenant faithfulness to the Faithful One; loyal trust; consistent reliance; steadfast commitment; confident belief; active faith; firmly persuaded; persistent loyalty. “Without trusting fully in God, it is impossible to be well-pleasing to Him.” (Hebrews 11:6).
Hope Defined. (Hebrew, tikvah; Greek, elpis). The biblical words for hope point to being able to anticipate the future with pleasure, to welcome whatever comes next, to have confident expectations of good in one’s life. Hope is faith in the future and a deep assurance of God’s hand in whatever is coming around the corner. The root word in Hebrew is “qavah” which means to wait, literally to weave together the strings to make an unbreakable cord. So in Scripture we find that occasionally the words hope and wait are somewhat interchangeable. The Greek word is “elpis,” and means much the same thing. As has been said by many, hope is faith in the future tense.
Love Defined – Hebrew, ahavah; Greek, agape). Affection, loyalty, care, the aspects of compassion, mercy and grace. Love wants what is best for the other person, and desires the highest good for another. Love is not a feeling or emotion but an act of the will that realizes what is best for someone else and then follows through and does what is needed for that person’s benefit. Agape love is the supreme of all the loves, “the highest level of love known to humanity,” (C. S. Lewis), and thus can only come from above with God as its source. Agape love is the ultimate expression of God’s nature, the essence of His character. Agape love is not Eros, which is romantic love. It is not Phileo, which is brotherly love. It is not Storge, which is family love. Agape love is the divine love that can only come to us from the heart of God through His Spirit. Agape love is the love shared between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God is truly the source of all these other loves, but it is only agape love that is poured into our hearts from the Holy Spirit to those who trust in Jesus (Romans 5:5). Agape love is an eternal virtue outlasting all the other virtues. Agape love is the primary fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22). Agape love, the sacred love of God, is universal and worldwide in its scope; it is an unearned gift of God’s grace; it is highly active as it fleshes out God’s heart and makes His love visible; it is sacrificial as it demonstrates self-denial for the benefit of others; it is unconditional and freely offered to others with no strings attached, no demands, nothing required of the person being loved.
The Greatest is Love. In other words, the most important thing to remember as we follow Jesus is that our trust in Him is activated by our unconditional love to others; our faithfulness to Christ is made effective by the divine love we show one another; our belief in the truth of Christ is energized by our demonstration of God’s love; the supernatural love that we show others reveals our loyal trust and living faith; our trust in Jesus gets its exercise through a lifestyle of agape love.
Faith Described – “The upright and just person, the person in right standing before God will attain life through his loyal and trusting faithfulness to God.” (Habakkuk 2:4). Faith is not merely believing that God exists, it is steadfastly trusting Him with your life; faith is not a cognitive effort, an intellectual acceptance of a list of doctrines; faith believes in the truths of Jesus and is determined to demonstrate those truths; faith is the deliberate choice to develop a faithful relationship with God; faith is to confidently take God at His Word and rely on His promises; to have faith is to actively believe in God and not merely accept beliefs about God; faith is that which brings our hopes into reality; faith is accepting all the evidence we need to prove what is still unseen; faith is the absolute conviction that there are divine realities which exist but are unseen; faith is the acceptance of the fact that the invisible fashioned everything that we see; faith is trusting in God’s character and presence; faith is convinced that past experiences, even despite appearances, reveal God’s presence and love; faith is the confident response of our reliance on God after His initial gesture of grace; faith is when we move toward God in trust after He first moved towards us in love; faith is the confidence we have in God that guarantees the blessings we hope for; faith is the practical ability to find peace in those beliefs our reason has already accepted; faith is perceiving as real fact that which is not revealed by the senses; faith is when we find it reasonable to cling to God even though He is the Final Frontier and largely unexplored by us humans; faith is daily commitment to remain loyal to the God of Scripture; faith is being firmly persuaded that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are the ultimate and eternal truth that is the foundation of the world; faith is the steady trust in God that allows a believer to remain faithful.
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:13).
Hope Described. “Hope moves the heart of God to come to our help with His grace.” (Father R. Cantalamessa). Hope is confidently expecting a positive outcome, as opposed to despair, which is fearfully expecting a negative outcome; hope is trusting God for one’s future, as opposed to doubt, which is distrustful of God for one’s future; hope is an optimistic assurance based on reality, as opposed to wishful thinking, which is based on uncertainty; hope is a patient waiting that keeps one actively moving forward, as opposed to a frustrating resignation which passively keeps one stuck; hope is the strong inner urge to work through a difficulty and do what one can to solve it, as opposed to the inclination to avoid a difficulty and thus not solve anything; hope is the positive conviction that there is something substantial to look forward to, as opposed to one’s pessimistic belief that the future holds nothing but a bleak emptiness; hope is the anticipation of a triumphant future in the long run, as opposed to someone who doesn’t even believe in the possibility of a long run of any kind. As the ancient Church Father put it, “Hope is the loving movement of one’s spirit towards that which it hopes for.” (St. Didacus). So hope is not only a deep assurance and steadfast conviction, but also includes the object of the hope itself, the hope in the flesh, Jesus Christ, “our blessed hope” (Titus 2:13).
Love Described. In Paul’s phrase “fruit of the Spirit” in Galatians 5, the word for fruit is singular. The passage does not say “fruits.” One fruit, one product, one result of the Holy Spirit’s effect on our life. Agape Love is indeed the one, singular, unifying fruit of the Spirit, and the list of virtues following are all seeds within that one fruit. The fruit is agape, and the seeds of agape love that spread that love are mentioned in that passage: joyful love, peaceful love, patient love, kind love, wholesome love, faithful love, gentle love and a love that is under self-control. Those are the products of the Spirit’s work in the garden of our heart. Those qualities are what love looks like, the outworking of love. Agape is a seed-bearing love that spreads God’s love in this world. The fruit of agape love is produced by the Holy Spirit in believers as they abide on the nourishing vine of Jesus. That is the only way to stay fruitful in the Christian life, the only way to grow in the fruit of the Spirit. Paul says much the same thing in Colossians 3:12-14, when, after listing much the same in terms of character qualities, he says, “And over all these virtues put on agape love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” (NIV).
“To you who are listening, what I say is this: Agape-love your enemies! Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you… Treat other people as you would like them to treat you. Agape-love your enemies, do good, and lend expecting nothing back! Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High. For He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” (Luke 6:17-36).
Jesus is the Author of our Faith, our Hope, and our Love. Not only that, but He is also the Perfecter of our Faith, our Hope, and our Love. Yes, the Spirit of Christ is clearly both the originator and the finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). And the same principle holds true for the other two Christian graces of hope and love, with Jesus being the both the founder and the completer of hope and love. The Greek word for “author” of our faithfulness means originator, primary source, creator, initiator, one who causes something; the same Greek word also means pioneer, trailblazer, captain, pathfinder. Yes, in terms of Jesus and the three Christian graces, He is all that more. Christ is also the “perfecter,” which means finisher, completer, consummator. Jesus is in charge of the whole process, from planting the first seeds of faith, hope and love in us, to the crucial role of bringing these graces to their fulfillment in us. Jesus is all in all, from beginning to end
Christ Originates the Three Graces. “It is by grace that you have been saved, through faithful trust; not by anything of your own, but by a gift from God; not by anything that you have done, so that nobody can claim the credit.” (Ephesians 2:8, NJB). Jesus is the author of our faith story. Our faith is of His creation. He began it by drawing us to Him, by dropping a mustard seed of faith into our hearts to get things started. God’s gift. The believer didn’t start the faith. We have no reason to boast about whatever kind of shape our faith is in. We don’t have the right to pat ourselves on the back for walking down the aisle to be saved. We didn’t open the door to a life of faith, hope and love. We didn’t put ourselves into the position of becoming followers of Jesus. Christ gave us the seeds of His perfect character, which perfectly trusted in the Father and steadfastly finished the race. He completed what He started in His faithful life. So, Christ has the kind of faith we want. If we have to choose between the faith of Christ or the feeble faith that we manufacture on our own, we will choose Christ’s faith. It makes perfect sense that we would want to participate in and be shaped by His perfect faith, not our imperfect faith. We would naturally want Christ’s faith to live through us. We would want to adopt the virtues of Christ as our own. Since we have a choice in the matter, we want to be hid in Christ. We have done nothing to be especially proud of in our life of faith, hope and love, have we? It has been the virtues of Christ that are triumphant. It is the graces of Christ that we have been living into. The graces are free, unearned, unworked-for gifts, and we owe it all to Him who started the whole process. We will find that the more deeply we recognize our lives in Christ and His life in us, the easier it will be to disengage our ego in our spiritual development. Let’s face it, our own faith is a house of cards. The faithfulness of Jesus within me is a solid house built on a foundation of immovable rock. “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faithfulness of the Son of God.” (Galatians 2:20).
Christ completes our faith. As we participate in the faith of Christ within us, as we live into Christ’s faith, we will notice that our faith depends on Him from beginning to end. Just as Jesus finished what He started in His own life, He wants to finish what He started in each of us as well. He has a strong desire to bring our faith, our hope and our love to full maturity. He wants to perfect His qualities within us, to make our divine virtues complete. The three graces continue to be gifts from God, and Jesus wants them to be full of life and growth. The job of Christ’s Holy Spirit is to transform us until He consummates our faithful life at the end of the race, to finish our faith, our hope, our love as we reach the finish line. “He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6). God promises to sustain His good work in us. We didn’t originate our spiritual life, and we won’t complete it. We didn’t start the race of trust, hope and love, and we won’t finish it on our own. Christ’s perfect faithfulness finished His race as He now sits at the right hand of God, and His graces infused within us will enable us to run until we also get the prize. This is how we share the life of the risen Christ. We imperfectly participate in His perfect faithfulness. This takes the pressure off, doesn’t it? We don’t have to somehow magically manufacture perfect trust, perfect hope, perfect love. Christ’s perfect faith is already within us. We need to instead mature in our participation in His character and life, by feeding it, following it, submitting to it, studying it and growing in it. We don’t have to possess our own version of a perfect faith. We instead imperfectly live into Christ’s faith within us. And He will be sure to perfect our faith, hope and love at the finish line.