20. The Connections of Love
Love urges us toward faith and hope that are focused beyond our own needs and desires … When we look at the final quality within the great triad of faith, hope and love, we find that love also connects and interacts with its fellow qualities.
We saw this in several examples in past chapters, and it is never clearer than in Paul's words to his friend Philemon: "Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the Lord's people" (Philemon 1:7).
Here, the love Philemon had shown Paul and others clearly led to joy and encouragement (directly associated with hope) for many among "the Lord's people." The connection between love and hope is also made clear by Paul in verses such as this one in the Book of Romans: "And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit …." (Romans 5:5), or this one in 2 Thessalonians 2:16: "May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope …"
The love-hope connection is so clear and direct in verses like these that we can take great encouragement from the effects of love on our hope. The more we love, the more hope grows in our lives.
And there are other ways in which love connects with the qualities of hope and faith. In the previous chapter we saw how Paul spoke of "the faith and love that spring from the hope" (Colossians 1:5). We have also seen, in Galatians 5:5, that the same apostle writes, "For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope…" At first sight, these two verses may seem to contradict each other. Does faith come from hope (Colossians 1:5) or does hope come from faith (Galatians 5:5)? The answer is that both spiritual qualities interact with and upon each other, so both statements are true.
In fact, in the very next verse in Galatians, Paul continues: "…The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love" (Galatians 5:6). Here we see that faith, for it to be true, has to be expressed through love. This is the same as saying that faith works through love (NKJ, ESV, HCB, and many other translations), and the same could be said of hope – hope works through love. Faith without love is cold and empty belief (James 2:19), just as hope without love is limited and selfish hope. It is only through love that both qualities develop fully and are properly expressed.
Love challenges us to ask "why do we believe, and why do we hope?" Love urges us to a faith and hope focused beyond our own needs and desires to a faith that works for others and a hope that is centered on them as much as on ourselves (Romans 11:14). Love prompts us to find that God is not only a God of love, but also a God of faith and of hope – and that in seeking faith, hope and love in our lives we are seeking the character of God himself.
Hundreds of scriptures tie into this truth, and we can learn much by noticing and focusing on them. We hope that the scriptures discussed in this book will help you to recognize similar verses when you find them in your own personal study.
Taken individually, these and many other verses throughout the New Testament give us continual glimpses of the connections among faith, hope and love. Taken together, these same verses show that the three qualities cannot exist in isolation. Using our analogy of the tree of faith, hope and love we can confidently say:
Faith establishes hope and love,
Hope supports faith and love,
Love produces faith and hope. All three are necessary, all three will always be needed – which is why, Paul tells us, all three remain.
AFTERWORD
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If you do not have access to a Bible to read the additional verses given in each chapter of this book, to continue your study of this topic, or for Bible study at any time, we recommend the BibleGateway.com website which gives free access to many translations of the Bible in over 70 languages.