The pandemic seems to have a spawned a certain number of apocalyptic memes. The Bible is unique among religious manuscripts in that it presents a complete and orderly timeline of events, beginning with the creation of the earth and ending with its dissolution. When Earth ceases to exist, what will remain? According to 1 Corinthians 13:13, that would be faith, hope and love.
Of all that exists, why are these three things so essential that they should outlast creation as we know it?
Consider faith, the first to appear on the list. We know from a reading of Genesis that God created people because he desired a relationship with beings made in his image.
Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness..."
Genesis 3:8 speaks of God’s walks in the garden with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. When Adam and Eve sinned, this wonderful face-to-face interaction came to an end, and humans are now unable to experience God in person as they once did. In our current state, we must exercise faith to communicate with God since we cannot perceive him with our five senses. Hebrews 11:1 defines faith as “confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Bottom line: without faith we cannot engage with God. Without faith in his goodness we have no desire to engage him.
Hope, like faith, also relates to the unseen. It is the expectation of future events and realities. Hope cannot exist without a vision of the future. Romans 8:24 states:
…hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
That’s right. Hope includes waiting, and we aren’t always good at that, are we? Having spent more than two decades in the software development field, I can attest to the fact that our world is obsessed with going faster today than the day before. When Eric and I got our first computer (a 386) we were excited about being able to download pictures. We’d click on a text description of one, go watch TV for an hour and come back and check on it. We’d be excited if it was half loaded in that time. Now, as we move towards 5G, we are impatient if there is a visible lag when we stream our movies.
In the 1680s, the minute hand was added to clock faces. Before then, keeping track of minutes seemed unnecessary. Today the smallest increment of time in use is a Planck time and is often expressed as follows:
O Lawd, what does that even mean?!!
Real hope is patient, and does not measure time the way the world does. I think of Nelson Mandela sitting in jail cells for 27 years, dreaming of the day apartheid would be no more. He says of his imprisonment:
I never lost hope that this great transformation would occur… Even in the grimmest times in prison, when my comrades and I were pushed to our limits, I would see a glimmer of humanity in one of the guards, perhaps for just a second, but it was enough to reassure me and keep me going.
Hope is tenacious stuff. It is the engine that drives us towards the fulfillment of our vision. At times, if we cannot muster a vision for ourselves, we can rest assured that God has one for us, and his desires for us are always benevolent.
Jeremiah 29:11
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
When we accept God’s plans for us, we can be confident enough to put our full hope in them, for he will not fail us.
Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.
One thing to note. Though God is faithful and keeps his promises, he does not guarantee that we will see the fulfillment of all our hopes in our lifetime. The Bible is not a sitcom where all the loose ends are tied up tidily in less than an hour. Millions lived in the 400 year period between the Old Testament and New Testament in hopes of seeing Messiah, but there was nothing but silence. Hebrews 11 unflinchingly presents heroes of the faith who did not live to see what they hoped for. However, they remained confident that the promise would come to fruition. Hope deferred is part of the human condition.
At the appointed time and place, God births his promises. As we celebrate Christmas, we can be thankful that our hopes become even more powerful as we know that Jesus advocates for us before the father’s throne (1 John 2). Our ultimate hope is that we will someday inhabit a world where there is no more need for tears.
Lastly, we turn our attention to love. When we see God face to face again, faith and hope will be actualized, and will diminish in importance. Unlike faith and hope, love is for us to fully experience now as well as for all eternity. The apostle John joyfully declares:
...what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!
When we give and receive love, we truly reflect the essence of God, for God is love (1 John 4:16).
Faith, hope and love are the vital signs of the Christian life. Without them we must question if we are spiritually alive.
Now for the benediction (Romans 12:12):
Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
Nina Kylstra. Member of the LifeWay body of Christ for 22 years. Wife of the lovable Eric Kylstra for 30 years. Life-long follower of Christ.