The Greatest of These is LOVE!
What are some powerful forces in life? What has the power to move you?
Is faith a strong force? A mustard seed of faith can move mountains (Mark 11:23). What about hope? One great gift we have as believers in Christ is hope for the blessed future that lies ahead. God often tells us that a powerful gift He gave us is love. Love is one of the most powerful things in existence.
What is love? What does love mean to you?
What are some verses of Scripture about love?
The apostle Paul wrote about how strong love is. He devoted many verses in the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians to it. Verses 1-3 say “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”
What is Paul saying in these verses?
He’s saying that love is essential for any part of life to be meaningful. Without love, nothing matters. I can speak with the intelligence of a scholar but without love, it’s nothing more than blabbering like a baby.
The next verses he wrote on love are often used in marriage ceremonies. 1 Corinthians 13:4-6 says “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.”
Do we want our spouse to be patient, kind, modest, generous, & humble? And wouldn’t we want them to be able to hold their temper & not get angry? And not keep a record of everything we do wrong? Those are all qualities we desire our companion to have.
Love is all of those things!
In verse 8 we read, “Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.”
What’s Paul saying in that verse?
All things will cease or pass away. All things except love because “love never fails.”
On this topic, the McArthur Bible commentary says “This refers to love’s lastingness or permanence as a divine quality. Love outlasts all failures. Paul strengthens his point on the permanence of love by comparing it to the spiritual gifts which the Corinthians so highly prized: prophecy, knowledge, & languages, all of which will have an end." All these will end but love is eternal!
In these verses, we see how powerful & essential love is in the Christian life. Now let's fast forward a couple of verses to the verse we are going to dig deeper into. In verse 13 Paul writes, “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13 (NIV)
In the original language faith is the Greek word pistis (pis'-tis). What is the Christian faith? This word means a conviction of the truth of something. It’s a belief.
About faith, the Word of God says, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) “So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.” (Romans 10:17) “Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.” (Mark 11:23)
2 Corinthians 5:7 is another verse that indicates how powerful faith is. That verse says, “For we walk by faith, not by sight. Faith is a powerful gift of God.
Hope is the Greek word elpis (el-pis). It means an expectation of good especially about fulfillment of God’s promises.
What is hope & what kind of things do we put our hope in?
The ultimate object & source of hope is God. God has been our true hope for generations through His mighty deeds. God redeemed the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. When they were freed, He provided for their needs in the wilderness, formed a community on Sinai, & led them to settle in the land of Canaan. These miraculous acts were a base for confidence in God’s purposes. Even when Israel was unfaithful hope was not lost because God’s faithfulness had not wavered. Because they always had secure hope in the Lord, Jeremiah addressed God as the “Hope of Israel” (Jeremiah 17:13)
The last thing on this list is love. The word translated here as love is the Greek word, Agape. What is agape love?
Agape is the very nature of God. 1 John 4:16 tells us that God IS love itself! That verse says, “God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him”. Agape is the word used by believers to describe the pure, selfless, unconditional love of God. It's the word in the original language from which John 3:16 is translated. Several other verses about the love of the Lord are translated from this same word.
Romans 5:8 reads, “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Matthew 22:37: “And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
Christians are also identified by this type of love. John 13:34-35 says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
In this verse, Jesus isn’t just asking us to love one another with this powerful love. He didn’t say “If you don’t mind, would you please love your neighbor…” No, He is telling us we are to love this way. The Word of God says “Just as I have loved, you also are to love one another.”
When we do this the lost will witness us sharing this level of love. This type of love, & the results of this love, are contagious. When someone sees how powerful it is they will want it in their life too.
And now the 10-million-dollar question, why is love the greatest of these 3 eternal gifts?
The book of John & his three letters are filled with the theme of love. God gives us His love, and we reflect that love back to Him: “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Jesus said, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. … My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. . . . I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other” (John 15:9–17).
Here we see that love is something that has always existed among the persons of the Trinity. Love has no beginning and does not end. And this is the love into which we are invited. Jesus desires for future believers to be part of His love as well: “I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them” (John 17:26).
First Corinthians 13:13 lists love, along with faith and hope, as a gift that lasts forever. The lasting nature of faith, hope, and love makes them greater than all other gifts of the Spirit, which are temporary; the gifts of prophecy, tongues, and knowledge all come to an end. Of the three “forever gifts,” love is the greatest. Why do you think love is the greatest of these 3?
Love is greater than faith and hope in that both faith and hope depend on love for their existence. Without love, there can be no true faith; a loveless faith is nothing but an empty religious exercise. As Paul says, “If I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”
Without love, there can be no genuine hope; a loveless hope is impossible because we can’t truly hope for something that we do not love. If we say we hope our team will win the ball game it is because we have some degree of love for that team. Faith and hope are both meaningless if not accompanied by love.
God is love and He gives us love from His own love. God is not faith, nor is He hope. He does not have faith or hope, as a part of Himself, to give to us. Rather, He gives us the revelation, or knowledge, of Himself that produces faith and hope in us. But God is LOVE.
Dr. Tony Evans further explains the reason why love is the greatest of these three eternal gifts. In his study Bible he writes, “In eternity, you will no longer need faith because you will have sight. You will no longer need hope because your expectations and anticipations will all have been met and exceeded. But the love that will characterize our eternal relationship with God will continue since “God is love” (1 John 4:8)."
Paul saved the best for last. Love may be mentioned third, but it is the greatest because LOVE is the essence of the glory of God.
“And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13 (NIV)
Never pass up a chance to share love with someone. You never know how far that love will go. I love you all & may God bless you!
