Some word definitions are in order here before we even begin discussing this subject:
English words in the Bible such as faith(ful)(ness), believe, and belief are all translated from the Greek root pistis. Its meaning, according to Vine is “primarily, firm persuasion, a conviction based upon hearing (akin to peitho, to persuade), used in the N.T. always of faith in God or Christ, or things spiritual.”
Hope (elpis) or trust (elpizo) means in the NT, “favorable and confident expectation...It has to do with the unseen and the future, Rom. 8:24, 25. Hope describes (a) the happy anticipation of good (the most frequent significance)..; (b) the ground upon which hope is based..; (c) the object upon which the hope is fixed.” (Vine)
Love (agape, agapoo) “are used in the N.T. (a) to describe the attitude of God toward His “Son..'the human race, generally..; and to such as believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, particularly..; (b) to convey His will to His children concerning their attitude one toward another...and toward all men..; (c) to express the essential nature of God.” (Hogg and Vine)
I Corinthians 13:13
The most familiar appearance of this triad appears in I Corinthians 13:13 as part of Paul's discussion of the gifts of the Spirit. After enumerating some of these gifts, he begins to set them in perspective for the Corinthians by explaining that some of the gifts they hold most dearly will pass away. But what will remain are faith, hope, and love. “And the greatest of these is love.” This passage has continued to cause major divisions between Christian denominations over the years, especially between those who agree with the Pentecostals that the “sign gifts” such as prophecy and speaking in tongues are still alive and well today and most other denominations who feel that these gifts died out early in Christian history. And there even some fundamentalists who would label practices such as tongues-speaking as coming from Satan.
Paul makes it quite clear that these spiritual gifts will pass away “when the Perfect comes.” But that begs the question as to what the “Perfect” in fact is. Some of the churches I have attended have defined it as the completion of the New Testament, an explanation which does fit in well historically with the rough time frame during which most occurrences of prophecy, miracles and speaking in tongues begin to fade from the Church.
But an alternative explanation would treat the coming of the Perfect as the Second Coming of Christ, which is still off in the future. One seeming problem with this view is that presumably with the Second Coming, the New Heaven and New Earth will be ushered in and at that point (a) faith will be replaced by sight and (b) our hope will have come true.
Without further clarification in the Bible, it is probably best not to come down too strongly on one side or the other. And it is especially foolhardy to label a phenomenon which may have been sent by God as being a work of the Devil.
Another issue which is a bit confusing is the fact that neither love nor hope appears in the various listings of spiritual gifts. It is true that faith is found in the enumerations in I Corinthians 12:8-10 and 13:1-3. But it is a specific type of mountain-moving faith apparently being referred to there, probably equivalent to “the working of miracles” in I Corinthians 12:27-31.
By contrast, the listing of the fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians 5:22-23 can be seen to contain all three of these properties. Love is listed quite prominently as the first in that list, which also cites patience (a natural result of hope) and faithfulness. The spotlight on love here echoes the statement in I Corinthians 13:13 that love is the greatest.
I Thessalonians 1:3; 5:8
These are the only other places in the New Testament in which the same triad of faith, hope, and love appears within a single verse. The first passage reads (starting with v. 2): “We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers constantly remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”
At this point, one phrase should stand out like a sore thumb – “your work of faith.” Since most evangelical churches tend to make a sharp distinction between these two almost diametrically opposed concepts, I decided that I needed to get some enlightenment from the scholarly tomes in my personal library. Here is the best summary I could find:
Wanamaker: “The well-known triad of faith, love, and hope recurs often in Pauline and other early Christian literature...Paul uses it here to express the essence of his readers' experience as Christians. He does this by using each member of the triad as a subjective genitive to the verbal idea contained in the governing noun. Thus Paul remembers 'their work that proceeds from their faith'...The radical distinction that Martin Luther claimed to have found in Paul's writings between faith and human striving (work)...needs careful qualification. In Galatians, where Paul attacks 'works' most vigorously and contrasts them with 'faith,' he has a particular type of 'works' in mind. He condemns those proceeding from the Jewish Torah...Our text clearly indicates that Paul did not conceive of Christian faith as radically opposed to works. For him Christian activity proceeds from faith...Paul does not specify what the 'works of faith' consisted in here, but his readers probably would have understood it in terms of the totality of their new Christian life-style that distinguished them from the pagans around them and from their own past. The expression 'labor of love'...like the preceding phrase 'work of faith,' cannot easily be given a specific content.”
That brings us up to I Thessalonians 5:8 which appears at the end of the book stating, “But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.” These two similar verses serve to bracket the whole book of I Thessalonians. Also, coincidentally, this is a shorter version of another famous listing in the NT, that of the armor of God found in more detail in Ephesians 6:10-17. The imagery in these two verses can be compared below:
I Thessalonians Ephesians
breastplate of faith and love breastplate of righteousness
shield of faith
helmet of hope of salvation helmet of salvation
This points to the fact that there is nothing particularly sacrosanct about which piece of armor is associated with which spiritual property. It is the overall picture that matters.
One would have expected that “love” would be somehow highlighted in these passages just as it was in I Corinthians, but that is not the case. So what can we make of the order faith-love-hope in these two passages in I Thessalonians? Perhaps we are to see here a chronological listing in which faith in God began the spiritual journey (past), followed by love of God and one's fellow man (present), and culminating in the hope of salvation (future).
Other Passages in I Thessalonians
This important triad actually appears in two other places in this epistle. And these add further definition, or confusion, to our understanding of their significance. I realize that it may be a stretch to call these instances of an actual groupings of this triad (here and in subsequent places in the New Testament which will be discussed elsewhere), but my justification for doing so in the case of I Thessalonians is based on the fact that they are associated together quite strongly in the two passages discussed above.
I Thessalonians 2:19-3:5
In this passage, Paul begins by asking this congregation: “For what is our hope or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming. Is it not you?” This is followed by an extended section in which Paul tells them that he had sent Timothy to check up on them to gauge the strength of their faith (the word appears five times) and encourage them in it. And as he closes, he says in his blessing to them, “And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all just as we abound in love for you.”
Note how Paul approaches this from his personal point of view first by alluding to a future judgment in which he hopes to present them before God as evidence of his stewardship over the great responsibility God had entrusted him with. And in a similar manner, he has Timothy look for evidences of their faith, which will culminate in growing mutual love between Paul and the Thessalonians. Thus, the order “hope, faith and love” is entirely appropriate here.
I Thessalonians 4:9-14
By contrast, this section is devoted to encouraging the brothers and sisters in two ways, urging them to not only keep increasing in their brotherly love for others but also not to grieve over those who have died and lose hope since “we believe (pisteuomen) that God will bring with Jesus those who sleep in him.” In this context, you can see that the order love-hope-faith makes perfect logical sense.
The above examples show how Paul can take the same basic concept and utilize it in a variety of different ways. We will see more occasions where this happens in Part 2 of this brief study
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