Hope

1 Corinthians 13:13. “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

Many years ago I read the familiar 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians (the “love chapter”) and puzzled a bit at verse 13. After the beautiful discourse on the character of love, the chapter culminates with a statement that compares the importance of love with that of faith and hope, implying that these are the “big three.” I could easily grasp the importance of love and faith as foundational to my understanding of what it means to follow Jesus. Love is the central message of the Gospel (John 3:16), and we enter into an eternal relationship with God by faith (Ephesians 2:8-9). But I wasn’t sure how hope made it to the top three.

Hope as a noun is “the sense that what is desired can be had;” or as a verb “to look forward to with desire and reasonable confidence.” I started thinking about why scripture places so much importance on this. I’m no psychologist, but humanly speaking, it makes sense that people are motivated and encouraged as they believe that there is something good or desirable that lies ahead. Hope is an energy giver.

So what is that “something good” we desire? For the follower of Jesus, the easy answer is eternal life with God (not to digress, but the most poignant description of heaven for me is in Revelation 21:4 where heaven is described as a wonderful place where “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” – what a stark contrast to the world today).

But there is more. I am convinced that there is much good to look forward to in our time on earth. I could go on and on about this (maybe I will another time!), but let me suggest just one aspect of the hope we can have. As a follower of Jesus, God gives us the Holy Spirit to live in us and guide us. As we yield to the Spirit’s leading, he transforms us into people whose lives, according to Galatians 5:22-23, are increasingly characterized by “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” There are a lot of temporal things that I could hope for (and often do). But the hope that God could make me this kind of person is absolutely staggering. Imagine people describing you with these words – now that’s a hope to get excited about!